ZipRealty, Inc.

NYSE: ZIPR

Analysis of ZipRealty’s network of real estate websites from a search engine marketing perspective.

Strengths

Ranks number six for “MLS listings” and “buy a home” and number seven for “realty”.
The ZipRealty iOS app rank in the top 5 in a search for “real estate” on the iTunes App Store.
Good internal linking and URL structure.

Branded search (ie, searches with “ZipRealty” in the query) make up the bulk of top-ranked keywords. Instead of capturing new visitors through non-branded queries, visitors already know the ZipRealty name from elsewhere.
Network of geo-themed sites have excessive reciprocal links. ZipRealty owns BostonRealEstateAdvisor.com, FresnoRealEstateAuthority.com, etc which all link to each other in their footers. Many of these sites have thousands of inbound links yet rank for very few of the keywords they would want to be associated with.
Non-optimization of their keyword-rich domain real-estate.com
Maintaining quality leads through their use of inboxdollars.com.
Non-renewal of domain names. OrlandoRealEstateAuthority.com and SanDiegoRealEstateAuthority.com, both formerly registered to ZipRealty, have expired.
Indexing issues. Although ZipRealty’s homepage states they have nearly 1 million homes in their database, Google has only about 10,000 property listing pages in their index for ZipRealty.
Searches of the brand name have decreased, coinciding with the bursting of the real estate bubble.
ZipRealty decline in Google search volume

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