The Technology Studio

(Part 3/5)

Read ‘Who leads the pack for commercial property websites in the UK? Part 1: Website Grader’

Read ‘Who leads the pack for commercial property websites in the UK? Part 2: Google Page Rank and Inbound Links’

In the previous parts of this blog series we looked at the marketing effectiveness ratings of UK commercial property websites according to WebsiteGrader.com and at Google Page Rank and inbound links (according to Alexa.com). Now we turn our attention to website traffic.

Traffic

Using Alexa.com (established as the most used website for traffic stats) we looked at the rank (in terms of traffic) both globally and for UK based visitors. The following table looks at the global traffic rank (e.g. google.com is ranked at number 1):

This definitely weights towards the multinational commercial property organisations such as CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, Instant Offices, Jones Laing LaSalle & Chesterton. This therefore begs an obvious next question: “What does this table look like if we looked at UK traffic figures?” (which is what we are focussing on in this analysis). Does this change the list much?

The following table outlines ranking for UK traffic only:

The simple answer is that 75% of the companies are the same as the global list. However, you do see significant differences. For example:

Scottish Property, Eddisons, Commercial Property Database, Goadsby, and Bidwells make it onto the list despite their UK only focus. However, as an example we would like to use Paramount Investments which comes in 23rd on the list. Paramount Investments are a commercial property investment consultancy based in London whose online marketing is an example of what it takes to punch well above your weight on this list. They track and monitor their search engine positioning on keywords such as “Freehold Pubs for Sale” and publish market leading blogs with the latest news and information on their specialist commercial property investment niches. Then they collate their KPIs (traffic sources, conversions, leads, click through rates) and implement changes that impact on their top and bottom line.

It is probably those that disappear from the list that are more interesting. These are CBRE (#2), Cushman & Wakefield (#3), Jones Lang LaSalle (#6), DTZ (#12) and The Crown Estate (#20). This really demonstrates the value of localised SEO activity and how Google’s algorithm is very specific to search terms and location. Just because you have a Google Page Rank of 7, WebsiteGrader score of 98/100 and rank #3 on the global traffic list (as Cushman & Wakefield do), you are not guaranteed a first page slot on Google when searching for “Offices in Basingstoke”.

This list also shows how UK focused portals really come into their own, probably due to their targeted SEO efforts, combined with their nationally distributed, larger property portfolios. EGPropertyLink, ShopProperty and NovaLoca all appear in the top 10 sites for traffic in the UK.

Read ‘Who leads the pack for commercial property websites in the UK? Part 4: The Top 100’

(Part 2/5)

Read ‘Who leads the pack for commercial property websites in the UK? Part 1: Website Grader’

In the previous part of this blog series we looked at the marketing effectiveness ratings of UK commercial property websites according to WebsiteGrader.com. In this part we will be looking at how Google views the value of commercial property web sites using Google Page Rank as the metric for doing this. Please note that we could look at other search engines but given Google is the dominant player, we assume that if you rank well for the Google search term it follows you probably will for other search engines.

Google Page Rank

Now a lot has been written about page rank and its importance (or otherwise) but there is no doubt that this is the most public indicator of the value of a site to Google. However, it does not automatically follow that a site with a page rank of 5 will listed above a site with a page rank of 3 on a search results page. A search on the term “Commercial Property” in google.co.uk today (22^nd Feb 2010 @15:10) shows www.ukbusinessproperty.co.uk as second on the list despite it having a page rank of 2 (and despite 74 of this list having a page rank of 3 or above). There is a lot more to SEO than a good page rank for one keyword or term. However, the companies in the list with a page rank of 5 or above are listed below:

Some surprises again?

EGPropertyLink – doesn’t even feature on this list as it has a page rank of 4. Despite this, it still commands a lot of traffic and when searching on the term “Commercial Property” in Google.co.uk today (22^nd Feb 2010 @15:10) it shows first on the list. However, it does probably mean that for less popular, more local, keywords such as “Industrial units in Aldershot” (we promise we picked this at random) it doesn’t rank as highly as NovaLoca, ComProperty and many local agents (EGPropertyLink’s first entry is 26^th on the list).

The Crown Estate – this is similar to Land Securities as it seems to punch well above its weight in terms of page rank (and WebsiteGrader result). Looking more carefully this high ranking is probably mainly due to the quantity and quality of the 221 inbound links from other websites according to Alexa.com (which include high ranking sites such as Google.com, BBC.co.uk, Guardian.co.uk, Economist.com, and sky.com). It really shows the importance Google places on inbound links.

But not such a surprise …

The top 20 here are probably more representative of a list of top commercial property organisations in the UK than the previous section. This is almost certainly because the larger the company, the more likely you are to have inbound links to your site from well viewed sites (news stories, blogs etc.). It shows how hard it is for smaller organisations to break in and how much effort this really takes.

To give you an example of what we mean, the table below lists the top 20 websites from the list in terms of inbound links (often referred to as back links) as measured by Alexa.com:

If you want a very full explanation on Google Page rank and the Google algorithm, you may want to refer to the article “Page Rank Uncovered” by Chris Ridings and Mike Shishigin but beware, it is not a short document.

Read ‘Who leads the way for commercial property websites in the UK? Part 3: Site Traffic’

(Part 1/5)

If you are a commercial property agent, have you asked yourself the following questions?

1.  Am I falling behind in the fight for the digital space?

We strongly suspect you may not even know how you stack up. We certainly couldn’t find a good analysis of who the winners and losers in the online UK commercial property space are.

2.  Who is winning and what are they doing right?

Hopefully this article will help you to understand who is winning a lot better. We have looked at a number of data sources to come up with a list.

3.  What are my opportunities to win online?

Now that’s the hard question. Albert Einstein once said “Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” Winning online is usually a combination of client passion, an excellent technology partner, and the appropriate business resources (both money and human).

At The Technology Studio we believe that websites are only really about two things:

1. Getting as many of the right people to visit your site as you can
2. Making it as easy as possible for those people to find what they are looking for

The first is all about Search Engine Optimisation or SEO and this is what this article focuses on. The second is all about usability. For example, you can have a site with a great Google page rank and great SEO but is hated by users and is very poor at converting visitors to leads. That site will still rank highly on the lists below as there are many more objective metrics for SEO (e.g. visitors, page rank, back links) than for usability.

Anyway, onto the analysis.

The Analysis

Methodology

This is normally the long boring part that you had to write in science reports at school. To make it easy for the reader, we will put a lot more detail in the final blog article in the series (for any insomniacs) but suffice it to say that we used a number of sources to get a representative list of more than 100 significant players in the commercial property marketing sector in the UK and then ran a lot of data queries over a period of a week to identify the top 100 and their key data and statistics.

Marketing Effectiveness

We didn’t want to just do some analysis on who got the most traffic (though we have that later in this series of articles) but wanted to give you a view on the marketing effectiveness of the websites. We looked around for an independent assessor and decided to use Websitegrader.com. In essence, WebsiteGrader looks across many of the parameters that Google uses to assess the value of your website and analyses how effectively it implements technology and content. It then turns this into a score out of 100 to rank a website vs. the 2m+ other sites it has already analysed. These are the top 22 from the list of UK commercial property websites we analysed.

Some surprises? We think so. It is worth noting a few on the list.

NovaLoca – this site didn’t exist 30 months ago yet has risen to 3rd on this list in that time. We are biased (The Technology Studio built NovaLoca) but it is a triumph that this is possible despite lower traffic levels, a lower number of back links and a UK only presence unlike many of the top 20. From our point of view this is directly due to the tenacity and innovation in the team and frankly a lot of hard work but we are pleased it is paying off.

Land Securities – this is a great success story and we commend everyone working on this site as it scores 97/100 (and a Google page rank of 6/10) and this despite it only being ranked 51^st in the list for UK traffic. We also like the layout and usability of the site – a really good all round success story and one others should aspire to and could learn from.

EGPropertyLink – being careful to be fair, 30 out of the 100 sites have a score of 90 or more putting them in the top 10% of sites in the world according to WebsiteGrader. However, whilst EGPropertyLink is the dominant UK portal with the most properties, it only comes in 23^rd on this list.

Read ‘Who leads the pack for commercial property websites in the UK? Part 2: Google Page Rank’

Twitter is still a relatively new marketing tool for most businesses and one which in many cases (from our experience) many business owners and marketers are yet to realise the potential of. One reason for this could be the fact that historically it has been difficult to see the value of it for you business.

Things have now moved on with a number of Twitter statistics and analytics tools being developed which all work to give you an idea of how Twitter can/is promoting your company and driving business online. This article gives a list of these websites and applications as well as a few tips on using Twitter for business. These tools could really help you evaluate the effectiveness of Twitter to ensure you are using the latest online communication tools to build your business.

For further information on using Twitter and other online marketing tools to drive business contact The Technology Studio on 0845 642 9885 or email info@thetechnologystudio.co.uk