SEO secrets of Kenyan Real Estate website

Propertyleo is Kenya's largest Real Estate website with nearly 1100 current property posts and 30 Agents. It boasts all the modern social features normally associated with a western site and has advanced searches returning property listings. The site is only six months old, but already a dominant player in Kenya Real Estate sector. But why such a following so quickly and what is next for the site.

The Kenyan internet sector is booming, so the press and papers keep stating at every opportunity. New quality sites keep appearing daily. Again this fact is true. But how many of these sites really go on and stand the test of time, make money for their owners and serve Kenyans who are becoming information hungry. Let me tell you about Propertyleo in more detail and why it might not only last but flourish into something special. One answer could be the long design and development time before launch. It was the test module for a bigger project called www.thisiskenya.net . All around the world popular sites are called by place names, bringing together local, national and community information. So you could argue that the site is 1 year old. It is right to give the site an age as it has certainly grown. Content hungry like most Kenyans, the site is establishing a reputation for independence and quality. The thisiskenya test module has become a site in its own right and the portal dream parked in favour of a partnership with AccessKenya's lifestyle portal www.home.co.ke . The @home portal is designed by Jenny Luesby African Laughter group. A well known Journalist with plenty of web experience; she is developing a young Kenyan team of journalist writing independent copy. This is important to propertyleo as we swop our property listings so that they appear on @home in return for articles written by her team. You might say a perfect content and link exchange benefiting both sites. We have effectively joined the race to create Kenyan's msn, the portal every Kenyan will set as their homepage.

Another reason why Propertyleo is progressing nicely is the huge amount of Search Engine Optimization SEO work undertaken. Back in March when we launched we had no web presence, no Google page ranking which is a real problem if you want Kenyans to find you at home and in the Diaspora. Keywords are used to locate information and articles on the internet. Real Estate is one of the most popular categories to search on as everybody dabbles, deals and has an interest in property. Kenyan Real Estate was chosen as our first key word. In June we appeared on page 32 of Google, effectively return result of 320. I quickly realised why Kenyan sites do not get the traffic and the best built sites offend fail at the first hurdle. It is all about understanding the internet and how it works. For a new site there is no quick win, unless you spend huge amounts of money on marketing campaigns, even then the returns are not guaranteed. The new E community section on propertyleo holds most of the answers. It is not by luck that the Keyword Kenyan Real Estate appeared in page 1 of Google rank 9. It occasionally slips back if I get lazy, especially now we are concentrating on other keywords, but the trend is progressive and I expect to hit the top 5 shortly. The secret is to consider SEO all the time, every article posted; every word uploaded on to the site has to be carefully scripted with keywords in mind. Search Engine spiders are busy analysing all the content on the web every 36 or so hours. No one really knows the full story of what they do or how they work. However you can make an educated guess based on analysis of earlier actions and this can guide future SEO campaigns. In my opinion it is all about movement, making a site breathe and live. If I do not post an article for a week or so I move down the Google page ranking, an absolute disaster for a new site like propertyleo. You might well ask why that is but the answer is very simple indeed. Your competitors are running their own SEO campaigns and busy creating their own web footprints. Analysis of the first 5 pages of Google is a very good indication of who is active. Some very old wed domains appear because of longevity and they are very hard to displace. But most are there because their SEO strategy is working and this brings their content up and deposes yours. Social and News websites cannot be ignored. The E community on propertyleo provides a comprehensive list of what works for us. New sites and fads will no doubt change the face of things but propertyleo endeavour to keep its users informed of our approach, strategy and insight for the Kenyan and global internet.

Back links are also very important to the whole SEO process. A little cottage industry has evolved out of the need to be seen on the internet. Propertyleo is now listed on over 100 sites and www.directorycritic.com has over 3000 useful free links. The problem is it takes very long to submit a link because they all require manual verification. But the more back links the spiders find the better as they can detect that your site is gaining a greater web presence. So Back links, social, news and own site content changes can deliver that winning SEO formula for a short period of time. The horror to this whole process is stop for a minute and your website goes into free fall. This very fact is why companies pay search engines like Google to be listed as a sponsored listing or ad. They are so advanced that the ads appear when someone search criteria matches your keywords. Facebook ads are slightly better value in terms of marketing spend per click but your site has to be generating enough income to warrant the expense. Propertyleo is approaching the point where it is starting to make money but the dilemma of where to reinvest on advertisement remains. People who read the daily papers tend not to be interested in the internet. In Kenyan radio and television are so expensive without any guarantees of extra visitors to the site. The slow, steady organic approach adopted by propertyleo is at least keeping us heading in the right direction. A competitor launched a similar property site the same time as us with a huge marketing spend on Nation, Radio, Google, Facebook and a magazine in a local supermarket chain. The problem with this approach was that after the initial bang, which was sizable it did not really change the price of fish. What I mean is that the site lacked content and users started to bounce the site. Bounce rate is a term that many of the analytical packages use to measure loyalty or return visitors. Propertyleo has a bounce rate of about 35%, lower towards zero the better. The average time spent on the site is also impressive at about 12 minutes. This is mainly because of the nature of the site and people's interest in virtually viewing as many properties before taking the time to physically visit them.

The plans for the site are continually taking shape and a new e-broacher section will launch shortly. We aspire to create a hotels and accommodation section as Kenyan tourism is so important to the county's economy and so is promoting Kenya. The name propertyleo was chosen so that the site was scalable and could roll out across East Africa. Like thisiskenya that plan has been quickly dropped in favour of creating something truly special for Kenyans, a site that accurately depicts the property sector here in Kenya. So please continue to visit our site, tell your friends, family and work colleagues and above all respect our commitment to remain an independent source for Property information here in Kenya. The SEO journey has just begun and we welcome your ideas for the site content and future sections. In my mind we have grown a child called propertyleo no more than 40%, the challenge ahead is to create a character and personality for the site that users can relate to. The bigger challenge is attracting and simulating interest in the internet to a greater proportion of the Kenyan populous and starting to change the culture.