COVER STORY
PeerStreet.com/ThinkRealty
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extensive in-house community, generally the group is able to avert major problems even when projects run into snags.
SEO ADVANTAGE: WHEN A SEARCH ENGINE EXPERT IS ON YOUR SIDE B rett Crosby spent a decade at Google before co-founding PeerStreet with Brew Johnson, and even before that he was on the very leading edge of search
ALL PLAYING ON THE SAME TEAM
“One of the most important things I learned during my time at Google is that you need to be mission-focused and ensure that the mission matters to the people working for and with you,” said Crosby. For PeerStreet, the mission revolves around making the financial industry transparent, profitable, and beneficial for everyone involved. That kind of passion is a critical component to the company’s success thus far as well as their hiring process. “We feel like PeerStreet could ultimate- ly be one of the most important financial businesses of all time if we do things right,” Crosby said. “Our team members are really the unsung heroes here (and so are our fabulous wives). There are literally dozens of examples of really incredibly talented people working with us.” “Trying to do big things with a mis- sion results in attracting the right kind of people to your business,” Johnson added. “There is this interesting network effect when the more people you bring in who are attracted to your mission and dedicated to it, the more people are interested in be- ing involved. We want to have a profound, positive societal impact so that at the end of the day, our impact is the reward and the dividends are the cherry on top.” Johnson concluded, “One of the big- gest reasons that PeerStreet is experienc- ing so much success is our team and our united belief in what we are doing. We want to bring transparency and the par- ticipation of the community back to the real estate and financial industries.” •
technology. “I was one of the co-founders of Urchin Software Corporation, the company that was acquired to build Google Analytics. I then stayed on at Google for nearly ten years launching products and growing them,” he said. He provided Think Realty Magazine readers with some key insights on keyword marketing: Keyword marketing involves purchasing advertising that will appear along with the results of a keyword search on the results page of a search engine or using search engine optimization (SEO) in order to achieve high page rank- ings for specific terms. For example, a real estate investor in Omaha, Nebraska might want their website to appear on the first page of results whenever some- one searches for the phrase “Omaha real estate.” Crosby said that there is a big difference between “keywords that you show up for organically and the ones you should be paying for.” He recommended going into the Google’s Adwords Keyword Planner to determine howmany people are actually searching for any keyword that you believe is relevant to your website. “You may find out that no one is searching for a word after all,” he said, meaning that you probably should not spend time or money trying to rank for it. Crosby also recommended that real estate investors be “hesitant to try to rank for extremely general terms like “real estate.” Those terms are likely to be extremely challenging to rank for and not generate the traffic you want anyway. “Try to find something niche, but not so niche that it gets no traffic,” he said. Build content on your website about your niche not just to raise search engine rankings, but to be extremely helpful to the people who visit your webpage. There are also several things that may not feel like a big deal but that can be detrimental to your search engine rankings. “For example, 404 errors on your site, duplicate content, failing to give your images proper names, and not using H1 tags on your website to tell the search engine what is important can all hurt your rankings,” Crosby said. H1 tags are headings within a webpage that stand out to search engines in a page’s HTML code. Crosby also warned that buying search traffic can be a great short term strategy, but that it may be more difficult to convert purchased leads and benefit from them over the long term. Spending time getting an organic search strategy in place can pay dividends. “Of course, just when you think you’ve got it all right, Google will update their algorithm and you might not be ranking highly anymore,” Crosby laughed. He said that the best way to avoid this is follow SEO best practices: keeping content fresh, relevant, and linked to other authoritative sources.
“Our goal is to deliver the best risk-adjusted returns possible to investors.” Brew Johnson, Founder and CEO
Historic Loan Terms
ATTRACTIVE RETURNS 6–12% Yield
CONSERVATIVE LTV 75% & under
SHORT DURATION 6 to 24 months
Invest as little as $1,000 in a single loan or diversify by building a portfolio of investments across property type, region, maturity date, and loan originator.
*For illustration purposes only, does not reflect actual loans available for investment.
thinkrealty . com | 25 The Information is not an invitation, offer or inducement to acquire or dispose of, or deal in, any interest in security, or to engage in any investment activity. Strategies or investments of the type described herein involve risk and the value of such strategies or investments may be volatile. Such risks include, without limitation, risk of adverse or unanticipated market developments, risk of counterparty or issu- er default, risk of adverse events involving any underlying reference obligation or entity and risk of illiquidity. In certain transactions, in- vestors may lose their investment or incur an unlimited loss. This brief statement does not disclose all the risks and other significant aspects in connection with transactions of the type d scribed herein.
PeerStreet does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the Information which is stated to have been obtained from or is based upon trade and statistical services or other third party sources. All opinions and estimates are given as of the date hereof and are subject to change without notice. The value of any investment may fluctuate as a result of market changes. The Information is not intended to predict actual results and no assurances are given with respect there- to. There is no guarantee that the past investment results of Peer- Street will be repeated in the future and no representation is made or implied that they will be. Other methods of calculating returns may produce different results.
This notice is issued with and forms an integral part of information supplied in the form of a printed document (“Information”) and should be particularly noted in connection with that Information. This docu- ment has been prepared by Peer Street, Inc. (“PeerStreet”) for infor- mational purposes only and without regard to the particular needs of any specific recipient. All Information is indicative only and may be amended, superseded or replaced by subsequent summaries and should not be considered as any advice whatsoever, including without limitation, investment, legal, business, tax or other advice by Peer- Street. Any such advice should be sought from an appropriately qual- ified and/or authorized professional.
Carole VanSickle Ellis is the editor of Think Realty Magazine. She can be reached at cellis@thinkrealty.com.
24 | think realty magazine :: october 2017
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