Content is King, Part 1: Foundation Content

Inbound marketing is about being found

When you consider that there are somewhere in the neighborhood of a trillion web pages on the Internet, it’s hard to imagine ever getting noticed, even by the people who are interested in your products and services. But there’s good news here: first, many of those web pages aren’t indexed, which means you can’t find them if you don’t already know about them; second, many of the pages that are indexed are old, and contain information that’s no longer useful or relevant. Think of the Internet as one big stack of webpages. One of the ways search engines help users find what they’re looking for is by constantly stacking newer webpages on top of older ones. By creating new content, you can ensure that your website will stay near the top of the stack.

But what, you might ask, does this content look like? Generally speaking, content can be broken down into two parts: foundation content, and created content. Let’s start with the former.

Foundation content stems from your products

This is the main reason your clients are searching you out in the first place. As a real estate professional, you have an advantage over people in a lot of other industries: you’re blessed with a nonstop stream of fantastic foundation content that your customers want to look at, content that is constantly changing and readily available. That content, of course, is made up of your property listings and the geographic information inherent in a real estate transaction. Your leads or potential customers want more information about where they might want to relocate, what properties are on the market, what their asking prices are, etc.

Foundation content comes from the raw data supplied by property owners, MLS, and databases, which means that aside from acquiring more desirable listings (or, say, convincing a seller to install new fixtures), there isn’t much you can do to change it without being dishonest. Nevertheless, you can control how you present foundation content to your leads by providing more detailed information, higher quality pictures, easier search, and better ways for people to capture that information in preparation for their ultimate decision.

For more on content, check out our guide to created content.