Round and round we go! The world seems to be spinning away at an incredible speed and we’re now just 2.5 weeks out from IBS! We’ve got 5 team members presenting and are excited for a host of other programs down there. The big bad Omicron variant seems to be slowing down and from all accounts home builders are off to a great start in 2022. So far I’m really feeling ‘22.
This week’s news you can use is short and sweet, I’m talking CDP’s, Google Search Console updates, new home building indices (that word just makes you feel smarter when you use it), and I’m sharing a social media graphic size cheat sheet because its always changing and there are far too many to commit to memory these days.
SEO FOR BUILDERS
Stop the presses! After this was published my Search Engine Journal newsletter arrived and what to my wondering eyes did appear but an article about SEO specifically for homebuilders! Nothing in it is earth shattering news, but it is helpful to have it all in one spot and would be useful for builders to use a as checklist of sorts to grade their own efforts. And it’s literally the first time I have ever come across something for our vertical in a digital marketing newsletter.
CDP
Team ONeil is super bullish on the need for CDP’s. And I specifically am over the moon about them. Therefore, I try to include news about them as often as possible because they really do make my heart go pitter patter. As this article states, “CDPs collect, unify, and activate real-time data.” The need for these has arisen as the amount of data available to marketers has ballooned in recent years. Running successful marketing campaigns isn’t just about being able to execute campaigns on Google and Facebook, it’s about analyzing the data that those platforms provide, combining it with the data you collect on your website and then using that to direct your future efforts. That strategy and analytics is what sets marketing efforts apart, not the actual ad itself. A CDP exists to assist the marketing professionals in the data arena and that’s why I love it so much!
GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE
Speaking of data, here’s another place from which you can gather marketing intel. Search console is a free tool from google for all things SEO. And it’s recently been updated to include the Page Experience Desktop Report. It comes ahead of the rollout of the page experience for desktop being used as a ranking factor for Google search results which is coming in February or March. Looking at this data now will let your developers start to prepare your website for the rollout. While you’re in there taking a look at that you should give the Search Console Insights a try. It’s a pretty cool tool to check on your content.
HOME BUILDING INDICES
As we know, the market has been doing great since Christmas and now there’s some data to support that. First up, the housing starts and new home permits are up for December! That first bit of data is slightly misleading because single-family home starts were actually down, the overall increase was fueled by multi-family home starts. But that second piece about permits that does pertain to single family homes. Also for the totality of 2021, housing starts were up nearly 16% from 2020; single family starts alone were up more than 13% from 2020. As we all know, there are plenty of issues that continue to hinder builders from lumber to supply chain and staffing problems. In 2022, mortgage rates will continue to rise and home prices will too. But based on our builders forecasts for sales, we’re optimistic that as has been the case, new home builders will overcome the obstacles and bring more housing gains for 2022.
SOCIAL MEDIA IMAGE CHEAT SHEET
Here you go, all the social media image sizes to kick off 2022 in one infographic. Who knows how long this will be accurate, but it’s helpful for now!
Next Friday we’re covering can’t miss IBS presentations on the January episode of Homefiniti & Beyond. Tune in to find out which sessions we will be attending.
