What is a search engine's job?

Question: What is a search engine’s job?

Answer: To offer up the most relevant and freshest content it has based on the terms we use to search.

Why? Search engines like Google, (Bing and Yahoo) want to provide everyone with the latest and most useful on target content they can so we keep coming back. The more ‘eye time’ on their pages the more opportunity is created to click those paid-for-ads.

That’s it in a (proverbial cyberspace) nutshell!

Granted this explanation is a gross over simplification, yet... The more you understand what the search engine wants to accomplish the more opportunities you’ll find to get your brand out there and seen.

Let me put it this way...

We wouldn’t do over a billion searches a day on Google if they didn’t offer up the answers and content we were looking for.

This is why geographic or hyper-local blogging is so powerful. People out of town checking out your area, yet more so, locals looking for the best deal on a new coffee pot, the best chicken teriyaki joint, the lowest price on a set of tires for the car, when is the museum open, what's playing at the cinema, what grocery store has the best deals this weekend, the phone number for the local cleaners, and yes, real estate. You know (or should) if all we talk about is ourselves and how we’re the #1 choice in real estate people are not going to find us very interesting, nor are they likely to follow or engage us, and neither will Google, Bing, or Yahoo. I hope you see the obvious, search engines need content. A lot of it. Not necessarily content about you (like advertising), but the content people look for every single day. I want Google, Bing and Yahoo to consider me a good source of relevant content. If they do they will choose my content as a 'best solution' to fulfill the searchers request.

Blogging about your community creates an opportunity to become a purveyor of content that the search engines will want to offer up. If they find you a reliable source of good local information your visibility will grow.

What is marketing? I heard this so many years ago I can’t remember who said it or how exactly they put it, but I morphed it into this...

Marketing is two things...
1. Attract people who are not doing business with you and convince them they should.
2. Convince your present clients they should keep doing business with you.

There’s no denying in today's world that pull is more powerful than push. Getting and staying in front of people means what you have to say better have some value, be useful, hopefully interesting, and/or entertaining.

Write about the world your clients live in. Address their interests, needs, wants, and desires... And the more your topics align with what the search engine needs to fulfill its objectives, the more you’re going to be smack dab in front of your audience creating opportunity.

When people do have a need for a real estate professional, who do they know? Who will they remember? Who will they call?

What is a search engine’s job? It’s a job very much like yours.