Welcome to the top agent podcast, we speak to top industry leaders in real estate and extract their insights to help you grow your business. This podcast is powered by Web4Realty, the leading provider in real estate marketing tools as our way of saying thank you to our listeners.
We're offering an exclusive two month free promo to the best IDX websites, CRM, and email marketing tools in the industry. Just go to topagentpromo.com to claim this exclusive discount, no strings attached. If you're looking to attract leads, build relationships and close more deals, go to topagentpromo.com and get started.
Alright, I am very excited to introduce my next guest on the Top Agent podcast. I'm speaking with Christopher Audette, a Top Producing award winning realtor based out of Calgary, Alberta Canada. He's been a realtor since 2009 has accumulated a very long list of awards and recognitions, including the Hall of Fame Award with Remax which is awarded to those with over a million in gross commissions. He's also an SEO expert. He owns several websites that are lead funnel machines and I'm excited to get some information out of Chris to help everyone out here.
Kosta Panagoulias: So Chris, welcome to the top agent podcast.
Christopher Audette: Thanks Kosta very happy to be here.
KP: Amazing. So if you don't mind, you know, to start off, tell us a bit about yourself and how you landed into real estate, especially with such a digital online focus.
CA: Yeah, yeah, for sure. So So my name is Chris Audette. I'm a realtor here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, I founded a group called the the group at REMAX first. So most of those words and stuff in all fairness, that's the the team members that are out there plugging away and doing the dirty work. I got into real estate about, gosh, about 12 years ago now. Never with the intent of actually practicing myself. Although I did get into it myself after a bit.
CA: But I was running a small internet marketing company called Christopher and Co. It was a very small, not too lucrative company to be perfectly honest, doing SEO and internet marketing for other people. I changed the model on it a little bit where I wanted to actually be a part of other people's success. And I started working with a home builder or sorry, a home inspector. And we got talking to started looking at the whole category. And when I saw the numbers for real estate, and you know kind of where the sights and everything were at and how far behind the users and the homebuyers in the home sellers, it became kind of an automatic to jump into.
CA: So my initial goal with that was to build up a lead generation site, to help realtors that were really good at what they did, you know caring for their clients, becoming successful in what they did, and started off from there. I quickly realized that I wasn't having a lot of commission checks coming in, even though I was sending out a lot a lot of leads. So I started doing real estate myself and just kind of, you know, testing a lot of my theories and checking out what worked and what didn't work. And it basically evolved from there to starting my own team four years ago with a company or brokerage called REMAX first.
KP: That's amazing. That's incredible. So you started off in 2009 was that correct in the intro as a single agent?
CA: Yeah, 2009. And it was as a single agent, but I wasn't actually practicing, I became licensed to capitalize on the IDX speeds, and build up the website. And then the lead gen just kind of kind of naturally evolved from there. And it started, you know, back in the day when it wasn't all that competitive. It started real fast and we have leads pouring in real quick for a lot of smaller areas within our province of Alberta, which is kind of something that I'd like to talk about, you know, a little bit further on in segmenting you know, not going through the whole gussto but when you're doing your your internet optimization, your your search engine optimization, to not try and be the big dog. You know, there's there's a lot of fortune to be added being the little dog and it runs a lot more efficiently and effectively.
KP: Yeah, totally agree with that. Definitely want to jump into a lot of that stuff as well. So you, how big is your team now you said?
CA: We're at nine agents right now, so we just lost our mega team status. We were at 15 in our top here. First year we were one agent then two agents. I think we ended off the year with about seven. The next year we were at 15. And that was kind of our top and our on our top years. Well, we've gone through a few struggles in the last couple years, which in the world of SEO, you will. And if you put all your eggs into one basket, that can happen as well. And now we're, we're sitting nice and pretty at night. And with some of the new SEO initiatives that we've started off, which I'm willing to share about as well, we're open to be up to about 20 within the next two years.
KP: Amazing, amazing. Congratulations on that. I'm curious to ask like just given this pat the past call it 12 months, like during COVID. And just the amount of more people that have been online, have you noticed, like a spike in lead generating over the past 12 months? Or how's your experience been?
CA: Yeah, our traffic, we're just looking at those numbers a couple days ago, actually in our traffic is just lower than 20%. And that is really, you know, our latest SEO initiatives really haven't had a chance to take hold yet. SEO is a long game, not a not a short game. So that would be just just based on, you know, this, this new wave that we're in. We've kind of lost a few spots to one of our biggest competitors here in the city over the last bit as well. Last year, which we're working on getting back in speaking to him, they're they're up massive percentages, massive percentage, I won't even throw out their numbers because they're astronomical.
KP: Okay, Okay, perfect. And just for some context, I always like to ask this for our listeners. But how many transactions or sales volume do you do in a given year?
CA: Sure. So since we started up, the team are running anywhere from 150 to 250. And that's kind of our standard, our top year was 2017, I believe it was 282 2018 at 282. transactions.
KP: Wow, that's huge. That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that. Alright, so SEO, let's get into it. You know, this is a topic that every real estate agent, whether you're new or old, asks about at some point, you know, how can I rank on SEO?
KP: How can I improve my SEO? A lot of times you get these questions with people not even knowing really what SEO is. These are often questions that are very hard to answer because of how often things change. So, so I'm curious, like, back when you were starting out, like how has SEO change compared to you know, what it is, today?
CA: It's become a lot more technical, so Google's really changed there. Back in the day, when I started this, which was about two decades ago, now, working in the search engine optimization world, you you really had about 100 different criteria, maybe slightly more that Google looked at, in their algorithm as things to rank. They've got 1000s now and those 1000s change, you know, hourly, daily, you know, not even so much a year, when you see these big Google updates, the big ones that are that are broadcasted, it's, it's definitely fair bit more of a technical game than it used to be.
CA: Having said that, you know, if you're fairly on par, on the technical side, with the other sites, which are your competition, you know, you don't have to go up against an Amazon, you know, that that's, that's not our competition.
CA: Depending on where you are, your competition might be Zillow. That's, that's huge. That's pretty, pretty tough to go up against. Here in Canada, you know, realtor.ca remax.ca, those are, those are kind of the big guys.
CA: But a lot of the competition where you actually can compete, goes in up against your fellow agents, some of the top teams that are in your, in your city, typically rank fairly well, on the search engines, not always, but typically, some of the individual agents and some of these guys that rank really well, that don't do a lot of business. And, you know, that's kind of one of the other parts that own my touching on a little bit later.
CA: SEO is not the end all be all, traffic is definitely not the end all be all, but it's a really great start to building up a good solid flow, you know, in that funnel, leads to keep working. And from that point, it's it's really your opportunity to either capitalism or waste, and a lot of people waste, waste those leads. Real estate is still a belly to poly industry. So making those phone calls is really, really quite important.
KP: Definitely, yeah, that's exactly a topic I wanted to get into as well. But um, so you're saying a lot more technical, can you so when you say that a lot of agents listening who maybe aren't so tech savvy, might be intimidated by that? Should they be intimidated? Or is it something that you know, any agent with with a good website builder can get in and start working on their SEO?
CA: Yeah, yes and no. So you shouldn't be concerned. We, we did a website change we went over to a new platform, about a year and a half ago, and it devastated our rankings on the one site. So making big monumental changes all at once, you know, without doing the proper checking, and then just kind of taking other people's word for it. You know, I don't know that I'd be jumping in and doing that again. So, yes, it is definitely something you should be concerned about. However, you know, by running, and I did want to on one of your templates, actually, web.dev is a really simple testing site that you can jump on to. Check out one of the webmaster's template sites, for example, or one or two of of their client sites.
CA: When I ran it on yours, you know, the rankings, were really quite good. Best practices, 73, out of 100, accessibility 91 out of 100. And SEO was 92 out of 100. On that, that one template that I checked. So some some really good numbers there, you know, looking at that, I'm thinking we've got a good base that we could work off of.
CA: And then now we've got to go in, and we've got to set up a site architecture, you know, we've got to, we've got to lay the site out. So it actually make sense in Google's mind-- laid out as though it was a business. You know, does the linking structure of the site makes sense? Or is it a big jumbled garbled mess? Some of the other things to look at with that is the content on it.
CA: I over the over the years, our site has been been fairly well known within the city and lesser known myself, because I didn't really put my name out there. But you know, for those that were interested in delving a little bit further to see ruins the sites, I've had a ton an absolute ton of agents, talking to me about how they were going to get a site, and then just dominate the site and become the next number one agent in the city. And my answers were always pretty much the same on that in the conversations, which usually took about an hour, what are you willing to do to get there?
CA: They would talk about how much I put into it, you know, money wise, each each month, and the amount I put into hosting, the amount we put into custom programming, or into copywriting, the amount of hours that we put in ourselves. No, no, no, we're not, no, we're not willing to do that.
CA: If you get $100, a month budget, for everything on SEO, and you expect to be the top agent in your city on Google, and just be getting leads hand over fist and retiring from doing real estate yourself because you've got a team and agents that are handling it all for you... You're probably wasting your time, effort and money. Don't do it, you know, either commit to it and put together a realistic budget. And just go for it. Or don't, you know, you can do some really pretty amazing things with pay per click as well, on a decent converting website, you know, that that people like to be on.
CA: So kind of pick the, you know, first off where you want to put your concentrated efforts to whether it be organic search engine optimization and ranking naturally, which is kind of a public relations effort.
CA: You got to have something good behind it, and you got to promote it. Or whether you want to go on more of the pay per click, which is a pay per click model, you know, for every click that you get going through to your site, from the search engines, you're going to pay for that individual visitor.
CA: And you know a little bit of reality on that whole thing, if you paid for one person to go onto your site, one individual user, you're not going to convert that person into a client or a phone call or a commission check. If you do 100, you're maybe going to get one. If you do 200, you're a little bit more likely if you're proactive through the process and get it, follow up and you know, calling up on them right away and adding value immediately.
CA: So you know, once again, if you're if you're going to delve into this game, delve into it properly. Delve into it with a with a plan and a strategy but don't just wing it and throw some stuff together. Don't even throw a few $1,000 at at somebody that says that they're going to get you to rank number one in a month because it's likely not going to happen. But if you put a really good site together that's well laid out, got some really good content that talks topically about things like the community you know, so like our sites if you don't mind me saying-- www.Calgary-real-estate.com
CA: One of the sites where we built siloing within so really topic oriented, it doesn't just talk about the community, it talks about luxury homes within the community. And that is a page and it talks about all things that are related to luxury homes, prestige homes, custom built homes, that sort of thing, which is separated from the move up homes, which is separated from the state homes, are all separated from condos, apartment style, high rise, low rise, townhouses, names of the complex. You know delving really in quite in depth into each of those categories. And when you're building out your your website and the topic structure those website, Google's a bunch of technical dudes. And they like really comprehensive information. So when you're writing about, you know, luxury real estate in Aspen woods, which is one of the communities here in Calgary, they want to know that you're not just placing keywords all throughout the throughout that page and then expecting that you're going to rank, they want to know that they're sending users of their site to a really good resource that goes in fairly comprehensively into a topic. And it, it is accurate information that's well written.
KP: Yeah. Amazing. tips and advice there. I want to dive into a couple of the topics, though. And you mentioned a few of them, you alluded to a few of them, which is the content and like keywords. So keywords, for example, just because that's a very frequent question. A lot of agents ask about keywords, you know. How can I rank for for specific keywords? So how should agents think about keywords and like, what keywords or phrases should agents be focusing on?
CA: Right? So the typical agent wants to concentrate on one set of keywords. Most typically, like this is what I find over and over again, and it's proven every day by looking at the pay per click results on Google. So that little ad, in the top left hand corner where it says ad, those are Pay Per Click ads. And you can see what most agents are concentrating their efforts on.
CA: The city's specific, you know, in our example, Calgary real estate, that's the number one sought after term, both for search engine optimization organic, and for paid for pay per click. It is by far the most competitive because everybody's going after it, it's the most searched as well. So it's high traffic, but it's also by far the most costly and the least likely that you're going to rank under it if you're doing organic search engine optimization. So if you're doing pay per click, you're going to pay a lot for a very generic term, which is probably going to be a low converting, so you're gonna blow up a lot of budget on something that doesn't really work all that well. And then if you're doing organic, it is probably going to be years before you rank there. For the longest time, we ranked number one spot for Calgary real estate. It was a great term brought us a ton of traffic. But it didn't really amount to all that many checks. Like there wasn't all that many commission checks coming through, you know from that term, because it was very early on in the in the user search process.
CA: So when doing the keyword research, I recommend doing it just like the users (*prospective clients*) do. And you know, I've employed search engine optimization companies to run their programs that actually do the keyword research. They've actually typically gone off on these weird sidebars and we've always pulled it back to what we know to be true. If I'm interested in buying a home in Calgary, I'm going to go onto Google early on in the process and I'm going to type in Calgary real estate, Calgary homes for sale, Calgary homes, you know, one of one of those really large generic city terms. And I'm going to realize through my process that I'm not really interested in buying a home in Calgary, nobody buys a home in Calgary, I don't buy a home in a city, they buy a home in a smaller specific area. And the further they go along that process, the more refined or it's called a longtail keyword, the more refined that process goes.
CA: So I you know, I search Calgary real estate. I'm back in a month or two later, and I'm realizing that I'm actually buying in my community here. I bought woodlands, but I'm also interested in the nearby community of Woodbine. So I type in things like Woodbine homes for sale, woodlands, homes, maybe I'm interested in a townhouse. So woodlands, townhomes, townhomes for sale, I am most likely to end up on a page on my site, if I'm typing those terms in on Google, if I'm talking specifically and comprehensively in a very detailed manner about those terms on a page on the website. So I'm much more likely to go to my site, or one of my competitors sites based on that term, depending on our comprehensive and how well set up that page was for that specific term.
CA: So when you know when the real estate agents or even their web developers for that matter, are developed, or copywriters are developing out the the typically communities for these sites, you know, going in really comprehensive for longer tail more specific keywords that are further down their search. They're more likely to rank because it's less competitive, and it's more likely to convert into a paying client you actually close on, because they're further along that process. And really, that's all it boils down to is, you know, put together good site comprehensive copy on longer searches. And it's not even necessarily about catching them when they're further down the road. But it's about catching them when they're, when they're finding specifically what they're looking for.
KP: I love that. I love that. That's an amazing advice for sure. So I want to dive deeper into that now. So to figure out that you're suggesting go very community or neighborhood specific, but it's less competitive as opposed to doing something like Calgary real estate, for sure. And you're likely to convert more people and and get those checks, like you were saying, so get granular get specific. That's perfect. And now, actually on the website, so once you figure it out, okay, you want to focus on these particular neighborhoods or communities. Like what are you actually doing on your website? So let's say you mentioned a few communities already like woodland. So if you want to rank for, let's say, "woodlands condos for sale", like what are you actually doing on your website to help with that?
CA: Yeah, fair enough. So first off, so we've got the technical aspects, you know, page load speeds, how how it sits on on mobile device, we've got the on page, which is where most people concentrate. And that's, you know, picking the topic for that page, like Woodlands townhomes for sale. The the number one ranking item on a specific webpage is the title tag. So that's what comes up in the search results. So when you see in the blue, you know, the words that relate to the to the search that you just did, and that becomes typically the link on Google. That's, that's your title tag. So, you know, really honing that in and being very specific on that.
KP: Can I interrupt quickly? Is that is that also known as like a browser title?
CA: I've not I've not heard of it called that. But I gotta, I gotta admit with you, you're, you're probably much more up to date on more of the technical aspects of the sites and the and the optimization then then I am okay. Fair enough. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, that title tag or browser title would be, you know, really important part, the heading tags throughout so your h1 tag or h2 tag or h3 h4, and not just having them on, not over optimizing. Many people will try and keyword stuff as many keywords into that h1 tag as possible. Or they'll have multiple h1 tags, because h1 is the the you know, the big killer, killer title tag, their heading tag, having it actually rank hierarchically as though you were writing a newspaper article, or you know, if you were back in university and you were in you were writing a school paper. Having that makes sense. You have one heading and you have subheadings underneath that so you know one heading tag that's big and generic Woodlands real estate. Individual tags underneath that, say an h2 tag which is woodlands, luxury homes, woodlands, townhomes, woodlands, apartment style condos, having your h3 tags underneath that, just say the woodlands condos, for example. So Woodlands condos would be your h2. Under h3, you might talk about the heritage Woods condo, you would also talk about the crystal estates condos, you know, two condo complexes within. Once again, it may make sense because you're going from a big broad topic, down further, down further, down further with on on that page.
CA: And then the copy itself actually talking about those. Each of those heading tags is your your actual topic and delving down deeper and deeper into those having links off to more content off of the page as well as something that I find to be very important and hugely overlooked. So just as an example, if Google's looking at say my site and competitor B's site, and they're looking at woodlands, Woodlands townhomes for sale is that is that search term, if my competitor has five pages that are dedicated to woodlands townhomes, and each of those pages goes into slightly varying topics under that that bigger topic in detail, but I only have one, Google's much more likely to recommend them as an authority on that topic. And therefore rank them higher on the search results. So getting in really granular can be can be really quite advantageous for that. And then when you when you do that, you know taking it from from a very large very competitive city real estate type term down to the to the more granular you don't have to go after every single thing within your city.
CA: You know, one of the old school ways of doing real estate and being successful in real estate was to geo farm smaller specific areas. And then when it comes to the internet, everybody kind of goes the opposite way. They go very Big, very generic, I'm a specialist of everything, and I am everywhere. Well, if it doesn't work in the real world, it probably doesn't work quite as well online as well. So you know, pick a, pick a small cluster of communities and really go after those really hard, tons of detail, really prove to someone that you know about the area, and you know, don't just spew off a bunch of stuff that that sounds like you're part of my environment, language, but a bit of an idiot. If it would work, for someone who knows and lives in the area, and they would say, Oh, this guy knows the area, because he's talking about more than I do. And what he's saying jives with what I know the area, Google will look at it most likely, and say that say the same thing. So just get really, really in depth into certain topics. Don't try to be all things to all people. Don't try to go after super competitive things unless you're willing to commit to this for five years or more, because it's gonna take a minimum of three, if your whole hog for him there to get to it. And having said that every now and then we see sites to get lucky. And in a year in, they're already starting to do some rankings. But those are one offs. And they quite often don't last as well.
KP: Amazing. I love that. I love that. Thanks so much for sharing that. And it makes a lot of sense. What about like non listing related content specific to this geo farm area? Like, you know, does it make sense to talk about other than, like, what's for sale, and like about the community, but very specific things like, you know, best restaurants and Woodlands or things to do in the summer in woodlands, like how important or relevant is content like that.
CA: So I would say if it's good for the user, it's good for the search engine. Having said that, you want to make sure that you're not too far off topic. And I'll just give you an example where we messed that up in the in the past. Restaurants are a big thing for me. So I like to concentrate around restaurants. You know, it's funny that you mentioned that. So restaurants and builders were to two aspects of the site that I really delved into fairly heavily. We ranked incredibly well for all sorts of restaurant terms, people searching for restaurants, restaurants in Woodbine, blah, blah. When I actually looked at our Google Analytics, a large percentage of our searches were coming in for those terms, because I over optimized for those. And ironically, the search engine is actually starting to see us as more of a restaurant review or restaurant information site than a real estate site. So I would say absolutely, yes, 100%, do that. Just make sure you don't over optimize where you're getting off topic and then lean heavily into the other side.
CA: Another good way to actually do that too is, you know, conduct your research on Google and Google will have these little snippets of information and it changes daily, what they're adding in there. And the organic search results are becoming smaller and smaller onthe main page. Other suggested searches, people also search for common questions that people have. So if you go really generic on your, some of your Google searching, instead of typing in Aspen woods real estate, maybe type in a few other related terms, Aspen Woods shopping, things to do in Aspen woods, you know, like you were just saying, and then see what Google suggests is what other people are searching for as well. That's kind of like going to an authority within a topic, and finding out what that authority thinks you should be talking about. And they're actually the one that you're trying to get to rank. So you know, what they're saying that you should be talking about. Pretty good ones to talk about, you know, either as an FAQ or as a blog post, and then link back, you know, it's really good to make the connections back to the listings, because ultimately, that's what that's what people are looking for, that's what you're looking to help them with is you know, get in and buy a listing. So, if you can find a way that makes sense to tie it back to that listing page, that's another link from another page in your site. Off to that it's showing that this is an authority page on the site, you know, with the full listings within Aspen woods on it. You know, "do you do you love rouge restaurant in in Inglewood? You can live here too." 'You can live here too in Inglewood,' you know is a link back to the site or to that to that page. If you want to optimize it a little bit more search Inglewood homes for sale by rouge restaurant and have that as a link back to that page. And where you can do that on other sites great. You know where you've got full control of it on your site. That's even better. And it's it's just creating authority pages within your website. And hopefully your your website is being created or seen as an authority website on the web over and above your competition because that's that's that's really what it is.
CA: It's it's not necessarily about being the biggest, the best in the baddest, it's about just being that little bit better than your competition. So you can rank just a little bit higher, because the difference between being in the number four spot and the number three spot could be literally 70% of the traffic
KP: Interesting. No, that makes a lot of sense. How often are you adding new content to your website about these specific communities on your website? Or are you just relying on like the evergreen content, which could be relevant for for many months, years or even decades, in some cases?
CA: Yeah. And it was a mistake that we made, I ran on the exact same content with the only change of content being basically new listings, replacing old listings. And you know, that was our content changes within the site. It was, frankly, a radical mistake, it was nothing more than laziness on our side, to sit and let it happen for four or five years, we've started paying the price for that. And you know, where I was talking about that dropped from three spots for a spot? You know, we dropped from number one spot to number three spot, number one spot to number four spot. And so now we're going in, and we're really revising a lot of the content, we're keeping it up so that it's more current, we're adding new content. And if you can do it, do it. And if you're trying to get, you know, going back to that don't be all things to all people. If you're trying to do it for the whole city, it can be completely overwhelming. But if you're doing it for a smaller segment of the city, you know, you've always got new stuff, new news, new changes, new community development plans, new restaurants that are that are coming in new new housing developments. You know, we've got a ring road coming in, in just in not too far from from our community, you know, I could be updating on that on a continual basis. Google sees new things. Google wants to reindex your your page, maybe other related pages to it. You're adding value to your to your users, and you're adding value to Google as well. So yes, yes, I guess at the end of the day, the answer is, yeah, keep keep the keep the content, fresh and current. And try not to make it so big, that it's that it's overwhelming. And if it is, then hire that out.
KP: Yeah. So a couple questions. I have them like how do you know? How do you know not like when you're over optimizing for, you know, something to do like in your case, like Google eventually thought you were like, restaurant review site, or something like that? Like, like, how do you know what the sweet spot is?
CA: Yeah so a general rule of thumb that I've that I've tried to follow is, for every 100 words, use that key term, that key term or a key term derivative of it, no more than once. So if that key term was Calgary real estate, you know, in 100 words, I would want to make sure that I've used it once. And once only, probably a little bit better would be once every 200 words. If I've used it three times, in two sentences, I'm over optimizing way over optimizing. And there's also the you know, don't use the I'm a Calgary real estate agent that sells Calgary real estate to Calgary Real Estate Buyers. Boom, you know, you're you're down in the water, you're you're obviously just spamming. If you're looking for Calgary real estate, I'm an agent who's been delving who's been working with homes for sale in this area for a long time. We would love to help you with your real estate needs in Calgary. So, you know, once again, derivatives, you know, you'll see the same words. And Google's really smart, they'll kind of put it together that your topic based based on that. So if you know at minimum, I would want to see probably 500 words on a page that I'm optimizing. More recently, you know, I probably increase that to about 1000, maybe even 1500 and get really you know, H h1 based h2, h2, h3, h3, h2 and get you know more and more delving into the topics and I would kind of lay out those topics first. And then I would want to make sure you know when I look at it at a high level you know if I'm looking at the the headlines and the sub headlines, that the only words that I'm seeing on there are not Calgary real estate. I would want to see Calgary real estate, homes for sale in in Calgary, condos for sale in Calgary. Calgary real estate market stats don't mean like it just I would look out and I would look out and see. Okay, on CNN, that would make sense. You know, it's a very topic focused on a real estate agents website that doesn't do a lot of business that thinks they're smarter than Google. You know, if I'm looking at that and saying, well, that's that guy's site that I've definitely over optimized. So one or two times for every every 500 words is probably about about right once for every 100 I'm really really cutting too close to the cost.
KP: great advice. I love that. You mentioned it a few times. about, you know, being not only being on the first page, but you know that being first on organic results, compared to like number four or five on the first page, like how important it is, like, how significant is that gap?
CA: First of all between being number one to like number five on the first page, huge, huge, and it's getting worse and worse, as Google makes a lot of their changes. When I started this, like I said about 20 years ago, so it's been a while now, Google had more ad space up top and less organic results underneath, they actually ended up going and changing their model. So there was less ad space and more organic results, because they found that their, their ads weren't satisfying the users. And so they would, they were being deemed as less relevant, the less relevant years of searching. Think of it, think of it like this, if, if you've got a good TV program, you can sell ads. But if all of your TV program is commercials, you're going to get less viewers and therefore you're going to be able to sell us ads. So Google's always kind of playing that that balancing act right. Over the last while though, the ads now take up everything above the fold. And then they've got all these other results like shopping results, image results, carousel results, you know, we've got images and images and image, they've got frequently asked questions, other associated terms, they've got all of these different things that that play into that. So now, these Google organic results are really pushed out. So what was the number one spot, you know, which used to have two ads above it, now is a number six spot with five ads above it, and then maybe even a carousel below that. So just pushing all the results down. So the old, the old results used to be number one spot, we get about 90 out of 100 users typing in that term, 100 people viewing that page 100 impressions, if you will, there'd be about 97 that clicked on that first result would go down to about 80-85, on the second about 60 by the third, and then you drop down radically by the time you hit the fourth, we're down to like 30. And I'm spitballing these numbers but they seem about about right.
CA: Now, I would guess that the number one spot, if there's 100, people that see that page 100 searches on that page in a day, that number one spot probably gets about 35, the number on the organic, the number two spot probably gets, you know, 30, the number three spot probably down to about 1015 maybe. And I'm really spitballing these numbers, but it would be down at least by that much. And I know the number one spot recently in some stats that I'd seen was down to about 30 or 35%. So it's it's really dropped quite substantially. So you really want to make sure that you're up higher for relevant terms, relevant searches, even if there's less of them than being down, you know, I can claim to be really proud to rank for the term real estate, just the general term real estate and be in the top 10 results. In fact, I believe we do on our www dot real life estate.ca site. I'm pretty sure we're on the top, top 10 results for that. But we don't get any traffic from it. Or nine. We don't we don't. Yeah, and I mean, that's a big, big, big generic term. Right, but it does nothing for us.
KP: exactly. Alright, that's, that's great. Thanks for sharing that. You You mentioned this earlier. So about like the actual call to action, the CTA on the website. So for example, it is possible I think, to have great content that's getting a lot of organic visitors and traffic but but nothing's converting like no one's filling out a form. So you know what works well for you in regards to like call to action.
CA: Yeah, and you know, that's a whole other topic that could be an entire entire series, frankly, and it's one that people don't concentrate on enough. So I'll just give you kind of a high level of what what we look at. This was kind of a kind of bar from something else, you guys, honestly, if you're really interested in in that whole side of it, sign on to the newsletters from marketing Sherpa. Amazing stuff on there, they're really guides through some really good stuff, make sure that you have one call to action per page, it is so difficult to narrow down I've been doing this for years, it's still just oh, I just I want to add in a couple of other things I want to I want to target the sellers as well as the buyers. One call to action, like figure out what your one thing is on that page and then make sure that it is dominant, you know, whether it's because it's a big orange button, make sure that it's prominent, so it's it's nice and high up there. So as an example, on any of the sites that we've developed that you go to the main thing that people want to look at the pictures of the home, so on a property details page where you got one specific MLS listing, you know, it's nice and big pictures of the home right beside it. That's the that's the inquire on this one, but this is the view this home button. And air form I should say, and the button itself, you know, bright orange, bright red, bright blue, whatever it is, it stands, it stands out, draws their attention. They know that this is what they're looking at. And they know that this is the next action that they're going to be doing doing on it. So making sure that you figure out what that one action is. And then making it dominance and prominent are probably the two, two biggest things that will help on your, on your conversion.