Happy Mother's Day! My mom never understood SEO and digital marketing, but you would've never known from the questions she asked about my career and the attention she gave when I answered. Moms are the best. I hope you, your spouse, and/or your mom have a wonderful day today. 🧡

The Lead

• I wish I wrote this. Claudia Tomina shares everything you need to know about Google Business Profile video verification, and a bunch of stuff you didn't know you need to know. Bookmark it. Share it. It's terrific.
• When size matters. Buffer's new guide to Facebook Ad Specs and Image Sizes is also fantastic and worthy of bookmarking, sharing, etc.
• Not gonna say I told ya so, but... On LinkedIn, Mark Williams-Cook does a brief unpacking of Google's "site quality score." He says it "appears to be based on how many people are specifically searching out that website." If you're a VIP reader, please get in the archives and re-read issues 70 and 71 right away.
• What makes content great? Harry Clarkson-Bennett answers that question this way: "Anyone can answer questions effectively now. You have to stand out. For people and the algorithm. Be memorable."
• AI ads takeover. Google Ads just announced "AI Max," a new set of tools that "brings the best of Google AI to help you take your Search campaigns to the next level." You know I'm not a paid ads knower, so I turn to people like Greg Finn to help me make sense of it. He's usually pretty tough on Google, but says AI Max is a mix of positives and negatives. (Maybe Philip Pasma, who specializes in paid ads for real estate, will weigh in soon, too. #hint #hint)
• Refreshing honesty! If you've noticed that video doesn't do well on Threads, it's by design. Meta's Adam Mosseri gave an amazingly candid answer to a user's question last week: "Video in general does less well on Threads because we rank more for perspectives and conversations than for entertaining content."

Coming soon! Forever Clients: A Million-Dollar Client Loyalty System. This new class will show you how to turn your past clients into your biggest fans -- clients who come back, send referrals, and wouldn't dream of hiring anyone else. Want first dibs when it launches? Get on the waitlist today, and I'll send you the details when it's ready.

Tip of the Week: When you can ignore GBP's "Service area" field

If your Google Business Profile is verified at a physical address that you show on your GBP, there's no reason to also set a service area (or areas). You can ignore the "Service area" field in your GBP dashboard.

The only thing that setting a service area(s) does is tell Google how to draw the red coverage area on the map when you're not showing your verified address. It's a decoration only. It won't help you rank in all the cities/counties where you do business.

Deep Dive: How Buyers & Sellers Find Agents in 2025

It still makes me cringe.

Back in 2023, shortly after I launched SEO Savvy Agent, I scored a few great speaking engagements, both virtual and in person. The most common talk the organizers wanted was an introduction to SEO for real estate agents -- why it's important, a high-level look at how to do it, etc.

In this presentation, which I gave more than once, I said that SEO is important because buyers and sellers are on Google every day looking for real estate agents.

So far, so good.

I presented this in the framework of the AIDA customer journey. My slides showed how buyers and sellers might search at each stage of the journey as they go through the funnel from thinking they might need to buy or sell (Attention) to making the decision to hire an agent (Action).

I did this because, if you're in marketing, frameworks like AIDA make an easy-to-understand visual to explain to non-marketers how people make buying/hiring decisions. You look at that funnel above and it just makes sense.

AIDA is a great framework...that was invented in 1898. 😲

I'd give those talks differently today, because the funnel is dead. Everything is different.

In today's Deep Dive, let's talk about 1) How buyers and sellers find real estate agents today, and 2) How your marketing -- from SEO to social media, email, video, and more -- must adapt to the modern customer journey.

Clean is out. Chaos is in.

The problem with AIDA and most of the other customer journey models is that they assume people move very cleanly from one step to another in the lead-up to a buying/hiring decision. I wrongly suggested as much in my talks. UGH

A few years ago, Google studied modern shopping behavior. They observed hundreds of hours of real behavior across 301 shopping journeys -- they did videos, screen captures, and conversations with the people they were studying to understand what happens during a buying journey. Then they had behavioural scientists examine all the data. The end result was this visual depicting today's customer journey:

That's from a 98-page Google research paper subtitled, "Making sense of the messy middle." I think it's become a somewhat seminal document because I keep seeing smart people calling today's customer journey a "messy middle" instead of a funnel.

The circle up top is a purchase trigger. The circle at the bottom is the purchase itself (or the hiring decision). Here's what Google's paper says about what's in the middle:

When I think about some of the buying and hiring decisions I've made recently, the chaos of that image is spot on. We're trying to find a new lawn care company right now, and between my Googling, asking on social media, visiting company websites, checking Google Business Profile reviews, getting recommendations from friends, etc., etc. ... that image is sooooo relatable. I bet it is for you, too.

A cleaned-up version

Google's researchers ultimately came to this new, cleaned-up model of the customer journey:

Here's how the research paper describes it, and I'm gonna bold a few things that need emphasis:

Let me explain why I bolded those three parts:

"Ever-present backdrop of exposure" -- I love that they drew exposure as a circle around all aspects of the customer journey. Circles have no end. We're all constantly exposed to new information, new advertising, and new marketing messages. We bounce from our phones to the TV, then we use our laptop or iPad while half-watching TV.

Exposure is a constant. You never know when someone is going to come across your competitor's name/brand. Or, if you're lucky, when they'll come across yours. Take a look at this post in our local community Facebook group last week from a total stranger named Sarah:

We did a blog post a month ago about new restaurants. The blog post ended up in a Google AI Overview. Sarah randomly Googled for restaurant info, made a screenshot, shared it on social media...and suddenly 100+ people are exposed to my wife's brand as a trusted source of local info. Crazy. (The person in the comments who said, "If Cari McGee said it, it must be true" didn't hurt the cause, either.) Exposure can happen anywhere at any time.

Now back to that research paper...

"All of the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions the shopper has" -- I bolded that part because that's your brand right there. All of this exposure, as people research and evaluate in the "messy middle" (and outside of it, too), impacts how and how often people think about you. The more they think about you, the better. That's the idea of "prominence" I've been hammering in this newsletter for months.

"After purchase comes experience with both brand and product, all of which feeds back into the sum total of exposure" -- I bolded this because of the "after purchase" part. We have to take better care of our clients. The problem with the funnel model is that it ends at the bottom. But your clients never stop experiencing and being exposed to your brand. They'll continue to see you on social media, as they search, etc. They'll also keep seeing your competitors -- remember, exposure is always "on." How you treat them after they sign very well may determine if they hire you again, or if they choose another agent they were exposed to after closing day.

Is it top of funnel? Or bottom? No one knows. And we should stop caring.

Back in my HomeLight days, I wasn't part of the hands-on SEO team, but I sat in the same meetings with them and joined in the same Slack conversations. I watched, listened, and helped whenever I could as they built out content plans to attract buyer and seller leads that they could refer to you for 25-30% of your paycheck.

Back then, a lot of the focus was on "sell house fast" and "best real estate agents" content, which was seen as bottom-of-funnel and strong for lead gen. They generally avoided the "pros and cons of living in [LOCATION]" and "moving to [LOCATION]" articles because those were considered top-of-funnel. Buyers doing searches like that were just exploring.

But, as today's customer journey shows us, exploration (and evaluation) is always happening.

I've mentioned in this space before, Cari has several blog posts that would traditionally be considered top-of-funnel, but they drive a ton of business. There's one post, in particular, that's responsible for probably $200K GCI in the past five years. She even got a "come list me" comment on this supposedly top-of-funnel blog post. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If you're an active blogger or YouTuber, you're probably also getting business from so-called top-of-funnel content like "living in" and "pros and cons." I think your experience, and mine above, is proof that the funnel is dead.

A hypothetical real estate buyer journey

Let's say Amanda and Jason are thinking about moving because they have a child on the way. Here's how they don't behave: They don't wake up, say "We need an agent," Google one, and hire the first person they see.

Here's what they do instead:

• Jason has started engaging on Instagram with parenting/kid content, so one day he sees a Reel about "5 Signs You're Outgrowing Your Home" from a local agent. He sends it to Amanda.
• Amanda Googles "best school districts in [LOCATION]" and clicks on a blog post mentioned in the AI Overview (or showing up somewhere on Page 1). Maybe it's written by the same agent from Instagram. Maybe not.
• A week later, they see a For Sale sign in their neighborhood from one of those same agents.
• Amanda hops on Zillow to see what homes cost. One of those same agents pops up on a listing. Let's call her Agent Z.
• Jason finds a YouTube video tour of a neighborhood across town. Again, Agent Z.
• Amanda tells a friend at work that she and Jason are thinking about a bigger house. The co-worker mentions Agent Z, says they had a great experience, and that Z is still in touch regularly, even though the sale happened years ago.
• A week later, Amanda searches "top real estate agents near me." There's Agent Z again -- on Google or maybe even on ChatGPT.
• They click the link, browse her website, like what they see, and fill out the contact form.

That's not a funnel; it's 7 or 8 nonlinear touchpoints across 4 or 5 different online platforms, plus a couple that are offline. Customers today zigzag back and forth from platform to platform, online to offline, and back again, before a decision is made.

Bottom line: Buyers and sellers don't find you after going through a nice, clean funnel. They zigzag toward you in the "messy middle" of their chaotic customer journey...or they zigzag toward another agent. (There's one exception to this, which I'll mention below.)

Your takeaways: So what does all this mean for you, a local real estate agent? Here's what I'm thinking:

1. Exposure is really freaking important. In the absence of a well-defined funnel/journey, when buyers and sellers bounce around from search to social media, to TV and radio, to YouTube and TikTok, a big part of your job is showing up.
2. Brand is also really important. The Google researchers put it this way: "Brands can inspire powerful emotional responses...and their impact can be felt throughout the decision-making process." Yep, even when the journey is messy, brand matters.
3. Customers are fickle. Your great blog post may convince some buyers and sellers to work with you, but if you're not visible as they zigzag to the next platform, they might find an agent they like better.
4. The one exception? Loyalty can trump all of this. Yes, you want to attract buyers and sellers who are in the "messy middle," but you also need to keep your existing and past clients out of that middle. A great client experience can do that -- something that lasts beyond the closing table. As the Google researchers say, "A brand that provides a good experience has a head start here, and a brand that delivers an amazing experience might even become a trigger itself." In other words, creating client loyalty means your clients spend less time exposed to competitor brands in the messy middle, and you become part of the trigger event next time they buy or sell.

Toolbox

One of my favorite SEO tools just got better.

​Also Asked now supports city-level searching. This means you can see "People Also Asked" results for just about any city around the world.

Here's a quick use case: We work in the Tri-Cities, WA, market. We get a fair amount of relocation buyers coming here from Seattle and Portland. So I can type "tri-cities" or, more specifically, "living in tri-cities" as my keyword, then set Seattle as the city, and Also Asked will show me the People Also Asked questions that people in Seattle ask about the Tri-Cities.

Super helpful to understand what searchers in a specific location ask about your market! 💡

Burning Question

From an anonymous agent: "Would sharing the same content to other platforms be considered unoriginal content?"

If I'm understanding the question correctly, the answer is yes...with an asterisk.

If it's about taking a blog post or some website content and sharing it on another website, that would create what we call duplicate content...and there are potential problems when that happens.

However, it's fine to take a YouTube video and embed it on your website, even with the exact video transcript that's also on the YouTube page. It's also fine to share the same image and text caption on multiple social networks. That's no big deal where SEO is concerned.

I'm planning to do an entire Deep Dive on duplicate content very soon, so consider this a little preview...and thanks for the great question, mystery reader! 😅

(Have a question I can use in a future newsletter? Ask me here.)

Marketing, Unlocked

Clear to Close

There's such a thing as too much SEO.

Many years ago, there was a big dustup in the SEO industry when Google said adding too many pages to your site at once could be a red flag. Getting too many reviews in a short period of time is another red flag. You can also go overboard with using the same anchor text too many times on internal links, or putting your primary keyword on the page so often that it's unreadable.

It all reminds me of a life tip my mom gave me when I was young: Moderation in all things. She must've told me that a million times.

Turns out that moderation applies to SEO, too. She was the best mom in so many ways, including giving out smart SEO advice. 😍

Closing Gift

On Threads: It wouldn't be Mother's Day without a song from Mr. T.

Thanks for reading! Happy Mother's Day to you if you're celebrating. And if you're missing your mom today, I'm right there with you. Hang in there. 🥰

Matt

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