ReachdTV: Interview with Vanessa Fox - PubCon 2007
The Reachd team is at PubCon 2007 in Las Vegas Nevada. We've been able to connect with a lot of great people in the SEO and Internet marketing industry. The conference is a great but since you aren't here with us we thought we bring the conference to you. So we are going to be posting a few blogs over the next couple of days with interviews that we are filming at Pubcon. Here is our first interview.
Rodney Bartlett of Reachd.com interviews Vanessa Fox of Ignition Partners (formally of Google.com and Zillow.com). The main question.. what would Vanessa do if she was a real estate agent? Learn more about Vanessa Fox on her website
If you are subscribing to our blog via email you can view the PubCon 2007 interview with Vanessa Fox on the Reachd site.
Having Problem with the video? You can get the content the old fashioned way read the Video Transcript of Vanessa Fox Interview
Transcript of Video with Vanessa Fox and Rodney Bartlett
Rodney Bartlett: I am Rodney Bartlett with Reachd. We are here at Webmaster world 2007 in Las Vegas and I am speaking with the Vanessa Fox, formerly of Google, Zillow and now with, I am sorry I forgot already.
Vanessa Fox: I am working as an entrepreneur in residence for Ignition Partners, I also Features Editor of Search Engine Land.
Rodney Bartlett: So, we are going to ask Vanessa, if you are realtor, how would you market yourself or market your listings?
Vanessa Fox: So, I think it is really important always to have a website, I mean clearly that is the first step, but once you have the website there is just some very simple things to keep in mind that will really help. Really pay attention to what it is did that your audiences is searching for. So, you might even have two different types of audience’s right, buyers and sellers websites. So I think it is really important to you see what they are searching for I have seen this. This is actually an example I used for years, which is that you might have a paid that has houses for sale, in the text, but may be no one is actually searching for houses for sale, maybe they are searching for homes for sale or real estate or they are searching for some other thing that is not exactly there. I think people who are new to the search space, think the search engines are little smarter than actually are and think that they can make those connections or someone searching for houses for sale and I have a site on real estates that’s going to be a connection there and the truth is that it does not actually happen at all that way. So, definitely look through some more search word and then put those terms on your page, the title tag, the heading tag the meta-description and then somewhere in the content, do not spam it, but just make sure that those words appear. That is actually probably the number one easy thing that does like makes a lot of difference. So that would be the first thing I would say to do.
Rodney Bartlett: What about the like in the offline space, a lot of realtors that we talk to, in that flyers and all that kind of stuff. How would you mixed those two worlds or would you?
Vanessa Fox: Yeah, I would definitely do a combination. I mean for one thing you don’t want rely on search entirely, because the thing was searched is that you cannot guarantee any kind of ranking and it is always going to go up and down based on with the search engines are happen to do that, they are with their algorithm. So, I think diversity in your approach is really going to help you for those times when you experience dip in one or the other, you kind of see the other one going in. So, real estate historically they have done a lot of those things, so they there is probably - agents probably have a good handle on what things tend to work and what things do not. One thing I might suggest though like, agents do lot of things send those cards of calendars and all these different things and I think that a lot of them do these things just because they really spend done and may be a better thing to do at this point, since there is all new opportunities search, CPC, CPM on things like Zillow. There is all these other things that you can send your advertising dollars on that it is a good idea they not just do things, since you always done them, but instead really take a look at ROI and say all these postcards helping me, do they really bring leads or could I spend that same amount of money on search advertising and get more on topics. So, you might experiment around, mix it up a little and see what works.
Rodney Bartlett: One more question, vanessafoxnude.com - time for an explanation?
Vanessa Fox: Well, that is the kind of - so it goes away back and that is my site, my Blog where I talk a lot and ever has got me into a little bit of trouble. There are not any pictures on that site, but back I went to Google SEO, Search Engine Optimizers do this for a living. One of them in particular, I am not going to name in names, but his name is Dave Nailer, thought that it would be really fun if he could rank for the query vanessafoxnude, he wanted to be number one for it. So he was and I was like “well, hey, I can do that too, I bet I can totally knock you out of the rankings and I know that could make couple of weeks to rank number one for that my self and now it is just like cannot get rid of it, it just has life of its own now.
Rodney Bartlett: Right, well thanks.
Vanessa Fox: Yeah, thanks a lot.
Rodney Bartlett: Yeah thank you Vanessa, appreciate it.