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Google yourself.

Literally.

Type your name into a Google search box and see what you find.

Better yet, type your name and your industry name (e.g., “Lisa Smith Real Estate”).

If I were a member of the public, and a friend said, “I have a Realtor you should use the next time you buy or sell a home,” this is the first thing I would do.

I would Google them, spend probably 30 seconds looking at the results, and make some sort of a judgment as to whether the person looked “legit” or not.

How often do we Google other people and make snap judgments based on what we find? I do this constantly.

Blink

I think a LOT of business is won…and lost…purely on these “Blink“-type decisions.

And the worst part is this: when you lose in this fashion…you never know it.

There is simply no way to measure how many times someone Googled you…checked you out…and moved on to “next.”

How People Search for Realtors

Shifting gears slightly, if I were not in real estate, and I was looking to buy or sell a home in my town, here is the basic search I would do:

And, in my case, here are the results I’d find:

In our home community, we rank #2 (as of 6:00 am on June 22, 2010).

We spend a significant amount of time, energy and resources doing things to stay on “Page 1″ of the Google search results for our town, because we know how critical this is.

The latest NAR Survey shows that 90% of all buyers search for homes online, right? Web rankings translate straight to our bottom line…and yours, too, whether you realize it or not.

In two weeks, I’ll close on a $1.4M sale that resulted from a web lead I got because of these great rankings. We have a steady stream of leads that come to us purely because of the good SEO work we’ve done over the last five years. Literally every day new opportunities come to us because of these rankings.

Enhance Your Digital Footprint

When you Google yourself, do you like what you see?

A better question: when other people Google you, do THEY like what THEY see?

If you don’t like what you find when you Google yourself, here are some action steps you can take to increase your “digital footprint” (note that I am NOT mentioning “have a great real estate website with page 1 Google rankings,” because at this point that objective is a GIVEN; all of these other ideas are designed to help your primary website get even greater SEO):

• Write a consistent blog with quality content | This is the big one…and probably also the most difficult to do well and consistently well. But when I think of the biggest and most respected names in real estate, they all have one thing in common: they write a quality blog and they post consistently.
• Social Media | Tweet, post to FaceBook, etc. You know the drill by now.
• Shoot lots of video | You’ve surely heard this by now, but YouTube is now the #2 search engine behind only Google itself. Further, video seems to rank higher faster than straight content. So, get yourself a Flip cam and start making video about yourself and about real estate.
• Amplify | Amplify.com has some incredible SEO sauce in it. Find interesting things to Amplify and use strategic keywording.
• Arkayne | Like Amplify, but with less strength.
• Posterous | Like Amplify, but with less strength.

There are many additional things you can do; this is just a partial list.

We believe that the real estate company with the most “massive digital footprint” in a given market has a significant competitive advantage. And we think it’s clear that this trend is only going to intensify over time…