OK...so you’ve been wondering, “How AM I doing with SEO?” (it’s been in all the Knoxville, Tn newspapers) and why should I care?

Well, if you are wondering...real quick...Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.

Ok, so...What happens when I get more traffic to my website? Easy. The answer is Attention!

When more people are looking at what you’re doing, chances are some of these lookers might have a notion to give you a call and want your services, maybe you’re exactly what they’re surfing for, You’ll get to make some $$$.

...and if you’re wondering why this question is even being asked. Well, if you’ve gotten this far reading this, maybe your one of those lost souls who missed that class on why SEO is so important. You may need to catch up.

You might already know how much influence that Google group, and a couple others, have on the inter web. These days you can hardly surf the web without them knowing all about who you are, what you like to look at while you sit with your iPhone, your iPad and we can’t leave out your desktop computer. With all that knowledge flying about, about almost every one of us, it only makes sense that we should care about how we can put that information to work for us. Yep, here’s where that SEO stuff comes back into our conversation.

SEO is a way to help connect. Real Estate agents want to connect with home buyers, they want home sellers to connect with them, the marketing guys want you to see what they’re trying to sell this week. Your business should orbit around SEO it’s how people find you and you find them. There is, of course, much more to this SEO stuff than what I can jot down here, you’ll just have to do some digging to find out, it’s well worth your effort, maybe I’ll get around to writing a little more later.

I provide professional real estate photography for real estate agents and commercial photography for commercial marketers in Knoxville, good photography provides them a platform to show off from, I provide that platform.

This is one way I’ve used SEO to connect with you, the reader, I hope you’ll contact me if I can help you out with your real estate photography needs, or if you need help marketing your commercial services or a product you’re trying to sell or even if you have a question about whatever, I’ll try to help. I have a good reputation and I give a 110% guarantee. Give Me a Call Today! Smiles.
Mike ONeill Photography  865 292-3865

A few truths about SEO to help get you started.

https://ppmag.com/news/5-seo-truths

1. SEO is not a marketing plan

SEO is a small piece of marketing. Good SEO practices can gradually build up website traffic from interested prospects. However, SEO is not a stand-alone substitute for good marketing.

2. SEO is a long-term play

If you’re banking on a quick fix to acquire new clients, SEO isn’t the tool you’re looking for. On average, it takes 3.4 months for a targeted piece of content to appear in search results.Consider paid advertising through social media or Google AdWords if you want faster results

3. SEO is a competition

There isn’t necessarily a standard benchmark for SEO. Yes, there are best practices, but the ultimate goal is to do enough to outrank your competition.

Pro tip: Try to post evergreen content that will stand the test of time and drive traffic to your website over a long period.

4. SEO is an investment

To be successful at SEO, you need to invest either time or money. Working with an SEO consultant or agency could run $500 to $1,000 per month and you’ll need at least six months’ worth of help. To do it yourself, be prepared to dig in. Greer estimates that he spent more than 400 hours on SEO work for his own website before he started seeing results.

Pro tip: When creating content for your site, go for quality over quantity. It’s better to create one amazing blog post with in-depth info than to blog every day with less engaging content.

5. SEO relies on good content

Ultimately, Google and the other search engines want to deliver good results to users. So your web pages need to serve the content that those users are looking for. It needs to be well written, relevant, unique and updated frequently. Blogging isn’t mandatory to produce good content for SEO. Search engines reward you for any content updates to your site.

Today’s Knoxville real estate listings are put right into the palm of your hand.  In the recent past, Zillow.com and Realtor.com and a few others weren’t around to provide listing information, real estate agents were the primary source, and they only cared about reaching the buyer's agents and not the average home buyer.  With the advancements in technologies, agents can now market directly to the consumer.  Social media marketing trends have become the essence that some agents should have become comfortable with, but, Realtor.com reports only about 29% of agents really feel comfortable with social media.

Real estate agents really need to work at becoming more comfortable with social media marketing, it's reported that only 9% of real estate agents actually share their listings with social media sites; a direct link to potential buyers that really works well in the driving of awareness that leads to an interest with potential clients. Social media is a connection to the people; the audience where 72% of adults are active on social media sites like Facebook.

Social media is an ever-changing medium, the main requirement: all the content needs to be good, be useful and up-to-the-minute information for the reader, sharing the latest advancements and trends in photography and video can assure that your social media profile stands out and finds the audience you want.

Building your online reputation should be the most important reason to use social media to build your business, providing quality content is the best way to stand out from other agents and position yourself as an industry expert.  Real estate photography is an excellent media to use to engage your audience, it creates an emotional connection and gives the impression of providing special treatment, it provides clients a feeling of being inside the listing and it can generate more inquiries.

Digital photography has become the requirement in real estate marketing, photography captures a listings’ personality and is a showcase for its character, it allows clients to navigate properties as if they were actually there, making it easier to relate to the listing.  Real estate photography is more likely to generate a higher price per square foot, will receive on average 61% more attention and spend fewer days on the market.  Photography is surprisingly influential with a power to lure in clients or even turn them away. 

Finding and using social media properly is a great way for real estate agents to grow their business and strengthen their online reputation positioning themselves as an industry expert, keeps your readers interested and engaged in your postings and makes it a lot easier to attract new clients.

Read a little more,

Social Media Marketing for Real Estate Agents and Brokers

https://www.business.com/articles/social-media-marketing-for-real-estate-agents-and-brokers/

My real estate photography business, Mike ONeill Photography, is designed around helping my clients; by providing a consistent level of professional real estate photography and services, it's my continuous responsibility.  I want return business, I know that won't happen if I do not deliver the professional services, my clients expect. 

My job is to meet my client's demands and be good at anticipating their now and future needs. Working with real estate agents is a must-do part of my job, my clients know I value and I understand the way they market, not just to sell a listing but to help them pick up more listings in the future.  It’s not hard to understand that the better the professional photography and services I provide, the better my real estate agents’ marketing results will be, and the more listings the agent sells, and the more that agent will come to depend on me to photograph their future listings that I helped them to get.  

Robert Nowell is a Canadian photographer who understands the photography industry and how its changed over the years but also knows how the old business of business to business really hasn’t changed that much from the old fashion providing good customer services.  I think he explains pretty well how I feel I want to run my Knoxville business.

Photography Business Basics

By Robert Nowell 

http://sproutingphotographer.com/the-3-basics-in-business-that-havent-changed

Take a few pictures and they will come is an outdated view of real estate marketing. If you don’t show off a home with professional-quality photography, the odds are against you when it comes to getting the best offer and selling it quickly (http://retipster.com/ignore-professional-photography-real-estate-investing/). Just recently, I came across a video by a real estate professional that I would like to share with Knoxville agents. Pete Lorimer is a listing agent in Los Angeles, California. As the top agent in his brokerage for several years, he knows a thing or two about what it takes to sell homes. Check out Pete’s short video with straight talk for realtors where he outlines his reasons for saying, “You absolutely must, must, MUST have professional photographs taken in a house.” Pete asserts that your buyers will “swipe away” any homes shown using DIY photographs but will shortlist properties shot by professionals.

In my career as a real estate marketing photographer, I’ve been called numerous times to re-photograph listings that were not done by professionals. In those cases, I hear the same stories: the old pictures don't show off the house, agents and sellers became frustrated, and the listing became stale. These issues can be avoided when you use a pro from the start.

“You absolutely must, must, MUST have professional photographs taken in a house …”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1oti7sF_1s

This point has also been made before by:  North Carolina real estate agent Leigh Brown in this video

Many times real estate photographers will have to solve on-the-job problems and sometimes the answers aren’t always easy.  Larry Lohrman, the blog owner of “Photography for Real Estate”, a blog post for discussions about real estate photography, recently got this question from one of his readers:

Professional photographer, John, a wedding and portraiture photographer asked:

“I upgraded my camera from a D-90 to a D7100 and I still get this reddish brown color cast in a lot of interiors. I have tried adjusting color balance to the flash mode or sunlight mode instead of A (auto mode) with little success…. I have tried raising the color temperature manually and that sometimes helped in certain rooms, but not too often. It seems the auto mode works the best then I adjust the color balance in photoshop as needed but this a lot of extra time… Do you know of anything I can do to get more accurate exposures on interiors?”

Real estate photographers, including those just starting in the business and also the experienced ones, have to deal with many problems while photographing a property. Knoxville real estate agents are not always aware of the obstacles that their professional real estate photographer has to deal with on the job. Every day their job is to help make a house look good while at the same time dealing with houses not being ready for photographs, rainy days, overly bright windows and last minute cancellations, as well as technical issues like white balance, fill flash, color cast, verticals, and more.

In recent years photography has become the most important aspect of any real estate marketing campaign, selling a Knoxville, TN home is just like selling any product, It's important agents understand as much as possible what really goes into the photography of their listings, and as equally important too it's important for the photographer to know his business and to know his or her product. In the photography business, being a Knoxville real estate photographer is much more than just taking photographs, they have to be a marketing person too.

Larry's response to the question:

1. “Color balance: Interiors photographers have to deal with color balance issues more than other photographic situations because of many temperatures of light sources in rooms. Different light bulbs can have different color temperatures. The reddish brown can be old incandescent. John was shooting JPG so when the color balance came out of the camera off he had a hard time changing it. The best way to deal with color problems is to shoot RAW. Shooting RAW makes your life much easier in post-processing. Lightroom is designed to deal with RAW files quickly and easily! You can make color adjustments to a RAW file that you just cannot do to a JPG!

2. Using flash in interiors: John was shooting with his flash on his camera resulting in a very flat looking lighting. It is much better to keep your flash off your camera when shooting interiors, the results have flat looking light when the flash is on the same axis as the lens. Put it on a light stand, that doesn’t slow you down that much.

3. Verticals and barrel distortion: John wasn’t correcting verticals or removing barrel distortion. When shooting weddings and portraits neither make much difference but in interiors they become a big deal. Learning to use Lightroom is the fastest and easiest way to correct verticals and remove barrel distortion.”

These problems are minor and not so hard to work out, the more experienced the photographer the better they’ll be at handling any situation.  Knoxville has many really good experienced photographers, and the Knoxville housing market is one of the stronger markets. if your a Knoxville real estate professional, probably what’s best to take away from this blog is to choose the experienced photographer, they will provide you with better service and better photography, you’ll end up selling your listings quicker and you'll make more money.

Mike ONeill is an experienced real estate photographer.    www.mikeoneillphotography.com                                                                                   Contact us today for a promotional discount to try our services.                                     

We all know how 1st impressions work; they grab our attention and when it comes to marketing one of your real estate listings here in Knoxville, TN, its pretty much the most important thing in the world -- to you the agent.  In 2015, over 92% of prospective homebuyers started their home search looking on line, and if you don't have the quality images that prospective homebuyers are looking for you might be out of luck, and those prospective homebuyers go looking for another agent who can grab their attention.  Spending a little money, having professional photography done on that little cozy shack can sell that property quicker and make you a little more money.  Read on...

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They say a picture is worth a thousand words – but when it comes to selling a home, the right picture could be worth much more. According to the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) 2015 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 92% of prospective homebuyers use the Internet to look for new homes, with 42% beginning their home search online. The same study found that 87% of homebuyers rated photos as very useful in their online home search – even surpassing detailed property information (84%).

It is no secret that buyers value the ability to view images and video of a property before deciding if it is worth visiting in person, and technology has made it much easier to do so. It has also enabled buyers who are out of state to narrow their home search and even, in some cases, to make a decision if they are unable to physically visit the property before moving.

Technology has also made it cheaper and easier to take photographs and publish them online. However, just because it is possible to take, edit and upload a photo from a smart phone does not make it ideal. Anyone can do that. It is the quality of the photos that can help differentiate a real estate agent’s listing.

Professional photographers should have the equipment – like cameras, lenses, light kits, etc. – needed to provide sharp, high resolution images of a property. They may also have unique accessories or tools, like drones or video equipment that can help a listing stand out from the crowd. But it takes more than nice equipment to take a great picture. Professional photographers also understand how to use lighting and angles to their advantage. And those who specialize in real estate photography know how to use their skills and equipment to show off the best features of a home in the best way possible.

While hiring a professional real estate photographer comes at a price, real estate agents might consider it an investment. One doesn’t have to search long to find testimonials from agents who report selling homes faster or for a greater price per square foot as a result of hiring a professional real estate photographer. Investing in high quality photography not only has the potential to impact how fast, and for how much, a home sells, but also demonstrates the level of service an agent provides to his or her clients – which could prove beneficial for securing referrals and other future business.