How Realtors can use a neighborhood lifestyle search tool to enhance their SEO rankings

Eric Hempler is a smart guy.

Whenever anybody searches in Robbinsdale, Golden Valley, Crystal or New Hope and surrounding towns in Minneapolis for a school, Eric wants them to find him.

He’s not a teacher, administrator or school board member. He’s a real estate agent.

He’s an agent with Keller Williams Classic Realty Northwest and while most agents will say they have local knowledge of the schools, Eric shows he’s got a ton of information about local schools on his web site.

For example, check out the information he posted on Spring Lake Park Schools.

Spring Lake Park Schools

Spring Lake Park School District 16 serves Spring Lake Park, Blaine, and Fridley with three K-3 elementary schools, a grades 4-5 intermediate school, a 6-8 middle school, a four-year high school, a Learning Alternatives area learning center, online distance learning academy, and Lighthouse Program for the highly able student. With 4,600 students, District 16 is personal is size, extra-large in opportunity. The same is true about the school community. The high school has a seven-period day. Opportunities in Emergency Health Care students are 17-time world champions. In a national ranking, Physics students had the highest average of any AP class three of the past four years. The math team recently placed 7th in the state and a state tournament entrant 12 years in a row. The number of Advanced Placement opportunities are among the state’s highest. Six were honored in the most recent National Merit Scholarship program. The middle school offers accelerated mathematics, differentiated English and science, state-of-the-art industrial technology labs, performing arts, band, and family and consumer sciences. Students scored higher than the mean of students from 41 countries in the Third International Mathematics & Science Study. Middle school academic teams were first in the state, 6th in the nation, in a math competition. They were first in the state in the Minnesota Quiz Bowl.Elementary reading is literature-based and writing is integrated into all subject areas. Language arts skills include reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Basic skills are incorporated into activities that challenge thinking and offer curricular stimulation appropriate to needs, abilities, and interests. Both science and math use a “hands-on” approach. An elementary academic team was first in the nation in the 2003 National Geography Olympiad. They were also first in the state, 8th in the nation, in Knowledge Bowl competition. Three coordinators direct the K-12 gifted and talented program. Students participate in accelerated or enriched courses, advanced placement courses, independent study, mentorships, and college and university option courses.The Community Education department offers comprehensive school and community programming for all ages.The school community is vibrant, yet retains a small-town feel. It is home to the National Sports Center, Minnesota Medical Enterprise Park, Medtronic, Onan, Unity Hospital, Anoka County Human Services Center, Anoka-Ramsey Community College, Northtown Regional Shopping Center, USA Cup (the largest youth soccer tournament in the world), the 3M Championship on the senior golf tour, and the PGA world-class TPC of the Twin Cities golf course.

He includes a hyperlink as well.

Pretty cool, right?

“I know many second-time home buyers are not only looking for a home near where they work, they are also concerned about schools. My goal is to give them a good idea of the different school districts in the area,” he said.

Eric didn’t stop there.

He also incorporated the SpatialMatch neighborhood and lifestyle search map on that page. He posted the page showing the result of a search for schools in the district. Hundreds of schools appear on the map. Also showing, are the school district boundaries.

What this allows home buyers to do is to not only read about the schools, but to also visualize where the schools are located in relation to the neighborhoods they are considering. There’s a distance slider that allows you to create a mileage circle around each school so you can see how far the school is from each home being considered.

From there, on SpatialMatch the home buyer can also view more detailed information such as grade levels, enrollment, number of full-time teachers, student-teacher ratio, ethnicity, number of students by grade, lunch information, etc.

“Eric’s use of SpatialMatch to accentuate his local school information is very clever,” said Grant Gould, VP for Home Junction Inc., “Because not only does it provide a quick and easy way for buyers to check out the schools in the area, but it also adds more content for search engine optimization purposes.”

Ahh, like that Shakespeare dude once said, there’s the rub. Sure, in the past, it was nice for a real estate agent to have school information at their finger tips.

But in the Internet age, people are using their finger tips on Google, Bing and Yahoo to find information about schools, and the more content you have on your site that is relevant to their searches, the higher you will rank in the results. The higher you rank, the more likely they are to find you.

Eric’s use of SpatialMatch is a very clever SEO strategy.

Like we said, the young man is smart. SEO smart.

You can see Eric’s site here: http://www.erichempler.com/schools-in-twin-cities-2