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As a real estate professional, you qualify as a prime prospect for most companies
offering real estate SEO (search engine optimization) services.

You want more sales and more listings and they want you to
believe that they can give that to you.

If you haven’t already gotten calls, emails or letters from a few real estate SEO
companies telling you that they can get your real estate website into the top ten of
this or that search engine… get ready, because they’re coming…

A lot of real estate professionals struggle with whether or not to make an
investment in a company to manage their SEO campaign.

Will it be worth your investment? Will you get burned?

There is no right decision, but there are smart ones and dumb ones.

Here are a few things to think about as you make your decision about real estate
SEO:

1. SEO is just one piece of the internet marketing puzzle. Hiring a
company to optimize your real estate website for the search engines is not
necessarily a bad thing, just understand that it is only one part of your internet
marketing plan. Focusing too much on SEO leaves a lot of money on the table.
Having good rankings makes it seem like your website will be a successful generator
or real estate leads. Not so.

In the past, search engine optimization WAS pretty much synonymous with internet
marketing. SEO WAS marketing on the internet – that was all you needed to do to
get noticed and get leads. Times are different now.

Understand that your marketing has to be right FIRST, before you even set foot onto
the internet and spend time and money bringing prospects to your real estate
website.

That means you need to identify your market, create a message suited perfectly for
them and deliver that message with the media that they are known to respond to.

That must be done before you even think about SEO.

——————

2. There are no SEO guarantees. Many SEO companies that are out there
cold-calling realtor lists often guarantee results or give the impression that there is
some guarantee of results.

There are no guarantees. Results-based guarantees from a Search Engine
Optimization company are a good sign for you to run the other way.

Don’t even waste your time talking to them.

——————

3. Listen to exactly what the company you are speaking with is offering.
Most SEO companies that call you will make bold promises about improving the
rankings of your website. Many of them are very good at what they do. Sounds
simple enough, right?

But what exactly is your goal – Good rankings or more real estate business? Don′t
get caught up in the myth that better rankings = more sales or more leads or
listings. Better rankings equals better rankings. That’s it.

In a nutshell, know that SEO is important and good search engine rankings are
important… but SEO is not a silver-bullet for your real estate business. It will not fix
your marketing and although a well optimized real estate website might bring a
flood of prospects to your door, what good is it if they never knock and ask to come
in?

——————

4. Marketing is marketing is marketing… Always has been, always will be.
The internet hasn’t changed anything about that. What the internet does do is give
you a very efficient delivery system to use for your marketing message.

Whether or not you seek outside help for your internet marketing campaign, the
important thing to remember is that you don’t abdicate responsibility for your own
marketing by “outsourcing” it. Outsourcing your own marketing, even on the
internet, is not a smart decision. After all, marketing is by far the most leveraged
activity you can possible engage in.

Marketing IS the business you are in.

You are the mastermind. You come up with the plan… THEN you hire someone to
do the implementation.

Jason Leister, the Real Estate Technology Guru ™, is owner of Computer Super
Guy, LLC, a Chicago-based technology firm that helps real estate professionals
profit with technology.

Visit the
Real Estate Technology Guru
to subscribe to our free monthly eZine, ProfIT, and receive a FREE copy of
our special report “The Truth About Real Estate Websites and Search Engine
Optimization.”

Categories : SEO Tips // Add Comment »

Web site owners need to have realistic expectations when it comes to the world of keyword selection.

It’s essential to understand your audience, as well as to aim appropriately at powerful, concise keywords that are not vague or generic—those broad, expansive keywords that rarely attract the audience you are seeking–and lead to disappointing rankings and wasteful expenditures of cash resources.

If you want a healthy return on investment (ROI) with search engine optimization (SEO), your success – or failure – hinges on the keywords you select when combined with other factors like link popularity and web site design.

If your web site has content and design barriers, lacks saturation (a term used to describe how well a site is indexed by search engines) and isn’t found on many other relevant web sites, you’re odds of ranking well are pretty low.

Be careful with keyword research so that you don’t miss excellent opportunities or aim so broadly that you target phrases that will never rank well. Get your act together. Here are 5 tips to guide you along the way in your research. They may help you make good choices, achieve high rankings and bring more traffic (and leads) to your web site.

1. Know your audience and think through your business goals.
Many businesses simply pick keywords out of thin air. They don′t talk to customers or hot prospects in order to determine what might be a useful set of keywords. Your keywords need to match your business strategy. What are your main products? Where are sales lagging? Are there products or services that do well and could soar with SEO? Which products have the highest margins? You should have scores of other questions that make sense for your business. The information should be readily available. If it’s not, you’re way behind in the SEO process.

2. Watch the broad search terms.
Companies make a mistake in this area more than any other place. The keyword landscape is more inviting than a one-hour toy store shopping spree for a child. The excitement forces people to ignore reality. Who can blame them? Wouldn’t it be great to be #1 on Google for “food,” “cars,” “software”? Yes, single words can help drive sales. But they’re difficult to achieve. Link popularity, web site content, site structure and other considerations will impact rankings.

3. Learn how to form search terms.
You can start with “automobile” all you want, but build on your core phrase by adding on other words like “suppliers,” “products,” “services,” “companies,” “firms.”

4. Analyze log files.
Often overlooked and easily underplayed, web site log files reveal much about the way people search. You can generate many keyword and search phrase ideas just by examining the data with an intuitive sense.

5. Know your link popularity.
First you need to know your competitors – compare their link popularity to yours. How far do you need to go to catch up? Study who else links to their site. Would those web sites be willing to link to your site? Would you be required to do a link exchange with them? Use a Link Popularity Check (www.checkyourlinkpopularity.com) service to ascertain how your site is faring with link popularity.

Get additional keyword tips through our free keyword development white paper. Our FREE SEO white paper, “Reality Check: A Straightforward Guide to Keywords and Search Engine Optimization (SEO),” helps business owners navigate the often misunderstood world of keyword selection, including how to pick them right words and mistakes to avoid.

Get your copy today here:
http://www.fathomseo.com/forms/keyword_form.asp.

About the Author
Michael Murray is vice president of Fathom SEO, a Cleveland, Ohio-based search engine optimization firm. A member of Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), he also authored the SEO white paper, “Search Engine Marketing: Get in the Game.”
michael@fathomseo.com

Categories : SEO Tips // Add Comment »

Rebuild Website or Perform SEO… which should you do first?
A lot of website owners are interested in rebuilding their website and in performing search engine optimization (SEO), but can’t. Budget constraints won’t allow for both and so they struggle with which one to do first. Rebuilding a website is a great idea. Performing SEO is better.

The Internet is vast…truly vast. It is comprised of, at last count, over 8-billion web pages and that number increases daily. People need a map to chart this unimaginably large landscapes and search engines are the maps. SEO provides pointers to your business on the maps; rebuilding your website does not.

If you understand the following statement, then the decision is very easy to make – in order to become visible to their second audience (the visitors), websites must first receive adequate top rankings (the first two pages of listing results) by their first audience (the search engines).

Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization is probably the single most important marketing technique that a website owner can do to increase visibility and visitors. Greater visibility and highly targeted visitors improve sales, which in turn, improves the bottom-line.

Numerous studies have proven just how important SEO is for online businesses:
-50% of those who bought from online retail sites arrived via the search engines (Aggrandise.com, 2002).
-Between 85 and 90% of people use search engines to find websites they′ve never visited before.
-The Financial Times reported August 2002, that every day over 340-million web users rely on search engines to locate new businesses (DISC).
-57% of Internet users search the web each day, making search the second most popular Internet activity next to checking email (81%) (DISC).

Studies have also proven that SEO has the best return on investment (ROI) of any form of advertising in terms of cost-per-acquisition (CPA). Savvy website owners who realize just how fierce competition on the Internet is use SEO to position their business ahead of their competitors. If you are not incorporating SEO as part of a website marketing/promotion strategy you are losing out, because your competition mostly likely is!

If done properly, the results from SEO are very impressive. One of our long time clients in the printing industry has been operating the same site for almost five years. Instead of rebuilding their website which has a very simple design, they decided to perform SEO. That same site now delivers so much business that SEO is the only form of sales and marketing they use (both online and offline). Another client now does as much business in one day as it used to in seven. And this
client originally wanted to rebuild their site first. And to this day, the site is still the same except for some minor regular updates. In the past, the client did a lot of print advertising, but because of great SEO results, they have cut their advertising costs in half and achieved sales growth of 700%! For more great examples, read the case studies on the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) website.

Rebuilding a website
Rebuilding a site makes it look nice, provides fresh content, and sometimes improves navigation. Will any of these lead to increased visitors? Most likely not. Making aesthetic changes does very little to increase a website’s visibility on the Internet. It is estimated that 56% of ALL websites are “lost in cyberspace”! What is the point of spending money on rebuilding a site if no one ever sees it? It would be a complete waste of time, money, and effort – all of which translate into a very poor ROI.

Your website is competing with over 8-billion (at last count) other pages on the Internet. It will be “lost” by not having it visible to the search engines – akin to putting up a flashing billboard on a deserted island! It can be the greatest billboard ever designed, but because of its isolated location very few people will see or read it, and thus, it will be a poor source of revenue generation.

The fact is, there are lots of great websites on the Internet. So what? What’s the use of having a great website if no one knows about it or can find it? And even if people do know about it, you are still not reaching the largest Internet demographic: the 85 to 90% of ALL Internet users who find what they are looking for by conducting searches on search engines!

The top-4 search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL (CyberAtlas, May 2003). How do they compare in terms of traffic? The info below shows the top 5 results of the Top-50 Internet Property Rankings for October 2003 (ComScore Media Metrix, Nov. 2003). Keep in mind that the table shows total number of unique visitors, not total number of searches. So while MSN is
tops in terms of traffic, Google is still the king of search.

Rank Property Unique Visitors (in thousands)
1 MSN-Microsoft sites 109,334
2 Yahoo! sites 108,673
3 AOL Time Warner Network 108,394
4 eBay 62,454
5 Google sites 58,209

The point of the table is that four out of the top five most-visited sites are search related sites. SEO is your mechanism for becoming visible to this group. SEO is critical to the success of your online venture. Rebuilding is also important, but it can wait.

Other considerations
-Ask yourself, what will deliver more results to my business: rebuilding or SEO?
-What is the purpose of your site? If you use it to bring in customers or sell products, then SEO is definitely the one to do first. If visitors and sales aren’t important, but having a beautiful, stylish site is, then by all means rebuild it.
-To deliver maximum benefits your website has to be both people and search engine friendly. Will rebuilding accomplish this?
-Some owners think they’ll rebuild the site first and then perform SEO, only to discover afterwards that their budgets won′t allow for it. Ask yourself, do I want to be stuck with a nice looking site that delivers NO more traffic than its predecessor?
-Your website should be an asset, not an expense. It should be generating you income or leads, or providing useful information about your company. If it isn’t then why have it?
-In the US, 13% of traffic to a website comes from search engines, up from 8% for the previous year. International figures were even more striking with some countries having search engine referral rates as high as 21%! (WebSideStory, Mar. 2003). SEO makes your site search engine friendly. Rebuilding it may or may not, depending on how skilled in SEO your webmaster is. There’s far, far more to SEO than just inserting META tags (title, description, keyword tag).

SEO first, rebuild second
It really is a much wiser choice to perform SEO first. Later if the results indicate the need to make improvements, then proceed with rebuilding your website. Involve your SEO in the rebuilding process – their input/ advice will be invaluable!

About the Author
Chris Genge is the President of 1st on the List Promotion Inc, a website promotion firm that
specializes in search engine optimization and pay per click management. Chris writes on current
and emerging search engine marketing theories and has been involved in the SEO industry since
1997. He and his team focus on researching and implementing the most effective search engine
optimization techniques. To learn at http://www.1stonthelist.ca/

Categories : SEO Tips // Add Comment »

The name of the game is search engine optimization and there are 20 winners and a million losers. It is a massive game that is conducted each and every minute by the top search engines. The fun is the referee of the game tries to modify the format each minute, to make the game useful for the spectators, in this case the folks who search. This is a high stakes game with billions of dollars at stake and the rules change daily. The playing field changes daily and the folks who compete constantly change. Wow what a fun filled game this is. This game has consistently shown that the folks with the right tools win consistently and the ones’ who don’t but with good ideas win at random and like shooting stars fade out real quick.

Search engine optimization is a tough game to play and there are penalties for foul play and this could mean thousands of missed opportunities for your business. The folks out there keep the secret strategies to themselves as they can profit a lot out of it. But a few folks who intend to make money or simply for the fun of helping others achieve the glory of being in the top 20, have developed very good nifty tools. This article is about these tools and the techniques behind them. Google ToolBar is the first and foremost tool that every website owner should have. This tool has much functionality like popup blocker etc. The feature that helps SEO is the page rank bar and the add-on features it provide. The Back links checker is capable of displaying all known back links for your webpage that is known to Google. The similar page feature is very helpful to know your competitors.

Lets look at the top 4 categories of tools needed for SEO:

1. Keyword Tools: the keyword density is the number of keywords present as a percentage of the total words in that page. The keyword density could really depend on what you are targeting and usually a trial and error. This tool provides the details about the density without counting them yourself each time. The other keyword tools are keyword suggestion and research tools that give the right keywords to employ for your optimization, keyword optimizers, keyword typo’s tool.

2. Page Rank tools: This is a broad category with many tools under this umbrella. The page rank checker is a simple tool to check your rank and also some versions provide the rank of the competition as well. There are some additional nifty tools like the Google dance tool and the future page rank checker.

3. Meta Tag related tools: Meta tags are needed to describe the webpage for the search engines and other bots. The tools under this umbrella are Meta Tag generators, Meta Tag analyzers, Meta Tag replicator.

4. Link Analyzers: This contains the back links checker, the broken link finders, sitemap generators, Link popularity checkers, Link suggestion tools, Internal link density checkers, I also found a good one – link relevancy checker. These tools are very very important for your page rank if not for your search results.

Most of these tools with basic features can be found for free and there are some good tools that need special licensing and most of them provide a good way to reach the top 20 and be part of the winners and not be in the millions of folks who loose for each and every keyword. There are many keywords you can target and be part of the top 20. The first step is choosing a less competitive keyword and get to the top 20. Well before you put that SEO cap to get down and dirty, please go through the suggested tools in this article. There are a few good tools that have a demo period for you test out whether it is suitable for you. One such product is the SEO Elite.

For more resources on SEO and to try out some good tools you can visit http://www.seo-software-tool-experts.com You can download a free trial version of a good search engine optimization and web site ranking tool from the website as well – the SEO Elite v3.

Categories : SEO Tips // Add Comment »

How many times have you seen an article referring to SEO (search engine optimization) as a “Black Art″ or “underhanded”, “manipulative”, “sleazy″, “deceptive”, “sneaky″ etc?. I could go on and on but you get my drift. The thing is – our industry has a pitiful reputation which is being reinforced on a daily basis by the media and word of mouth.

This realization hit me between the eyes recently when I read a comment in a search engine forum from an SEO who claimed he used his ethical SEO methods as a Unique Selling Point. Look what we’ve been reduced to – differentiating ourselves from the masses because we DON′T break the rules. What other industry could boast such a thing? Apart from the used car industry, I can’t really think of any.

So where did this nasty reputation come from and why has it been allowed to propogate? Well, it′s mainly care of the hundreds of cowboys out there who decide one day they are online marketing experts, announce themselves as SEO’s and set up a backyard biz, deciding (naively) that the fastest way to achieve high rankings is to break the rules, “crack” the search engine algorithms and undermine the search indexes by generating pages and pages of search engine spam. They do this by creating doorway pages designed for search engine spiders rather than humans, complete with hidden text, hidden links, cloaking and lots of other “tricks” they come across as they surf the Internet.

Problem is these self-proclaimed experts don’t bother to do their research and learn that such spamming techniques have long been ineffective. Nearly all the search engines these days have sophisticated methods of detecting and removing spam within days of receiving submissions. Penalties for spamming the search engines differ from engine to engine, but can range from being “red flagged″ and put on a watch list, to being hit with a ranking penalty, to having your site permanently banned from their index (in severe cases). The type of scumbag SEO’s that would play Russian Roulette with their client’s web sites in this fashion are well-deserving of scorn. It can take months for search engines to lift such penalties, if they decide to at all.

While ineffective, such search engine spamming techniques have defined the reputation of the search engine optimization industry to date. In turn, this reputation is eroding business for so-called “ethical” SEO’s – a term I use loosely to describe SEO’s that don′t try to undermine the search engine indexes when optimizing web sites. Actually, I’m not really comfortable with the term “ethics” to describe SEO. Until the industry establishes and accepts a standardized Code of Practice, we are just measuring others by our own personal standards and a set of arbitrary rules. But the SEO’s I’m talking about strive to keep search results as relevant as possible by revising the visible site content and following the guidelines set down by the search engines in the optimization process. Some SEO’s call this “White Magic SEO” – a tongue in cheek response to the “Black Magic″ jibes I guess.

Not surprisingly, search engines have been reduced to lumping all SEO’s into the “untrustworthy” basket. On their Webmaster Do’s and Don’ts page (http://www.google.com/webmasters/dos.html), Google state: “Be very careful about allowing an individual consultant or company to ‘optimize’ your web site. Chances are they will engage in some of our “Don’ts” and end up hurting your site”. Chances are? Sounds a bit presumptuous if you ask me. Likewise, at a recent search engine conference, a representative from AltaVista declared that “all SEO’s could be described using four letter words”. The typical Internet user can only come to the conclusion that, according to some very reliable sources, SEO’s are not to be trusted – now how fair is that?

So the main problem is – how do we address this reputation issue? Do we establish and agree on a standard Code of Practise as in development on sites such as the World Association of Internet Marketers (http://www.waim.org/ethics.html), SEO Consultants (http://www.seoconsultants.com/seo-code-of-ethics.htm) and SEO Pros (http://www.seopros.org/members/practices.htm)? Do we race around locating and reporting search engine spam in the hope of improving our reputation in the eyes of the search engines? Or do we simply follow our own set of standards and hope potential clients can come to their own untainted conclusions? Personally I’m looking forward to the day when I no longer detect immediate suspicion when I tell people I optimize web sites for a living.

About the Author
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank. Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia & New Zealand and is well known and respected in her field. For more of her articles on search engine ranking and online marketing, please visit http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com

Categories : SEO Tips // Add Comment »

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a necessity for the success of almost every site. SEO is the use of keywords from the beginning of the site that is called page title to throughout the website content. In particular, the density, placement and the actual keywords phrases themselves.

The first thing you need to do when you begin chasing a good search engine ranking is decide which words you want to rank well for. This is called keyword analysis.

There are many tools which provide you data to choose your keywords and phrases. Some of the popular ones are:

http://wordtracker.com

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Do you think that to get the keywords and put them in your site content will give you the top rank in the highly competitive market. Absolutely not. So here are some guidelines regarding keywords and phrases which you must bear in your mind:

Relevance: Keyword should be relevant to your site at the same time excessive repetition of one keyword is considered “Spam” by most engines. For example you have your site domain name is “xyz” if you repeat it 100 times in the space of keywords you are making several mistakes and not taking the full advantage of keywords power.

Use Power Combinations: Some search engines look at the first 200 characters or keywords (in Meta tags). Use the space effectively like if your site is offering different deals so you can use “digital camera, handy cam deals” instead of digital camera deals and handy cam deals. This way people searching for both keyword combinations will pull up the page with less space used.

Use Phrases: In a recent study conducted by one of the major search engine, it shows that over 65% of all searches made use phrases rather than single words. Try to put more key phrases instead of single key word.

Number of Keywords or Phrases per Page:Search engines look at only a certain portion of your page. The more pages your site has, the more keywords you can target. I would say you can optimize one page with 3 keywords or phrases. I would urge starting with one or two.

Keyword font:Write the keyword in bold and italic. Keyword text should be larger then other text size. Put keyword in to bulleted list.

Belongingness: If your site offers a product from a well known company with brand recognition, include that company name in your keyword.

Branch out your keyword: Try to get into the mind of someone else who would find your site/product useful. It means you have to pick up more words which someone can use to fetch the information your site contains. Use plurals and put the hyphen to separate the keywords or key phrases.

Places to put keywords: Search engines give higher relevance to certain words and phrases within HTML documents so it’s vital to put your keyword phrases in the right places. Keywords should ideally be placed in the following sections of your web page:

Page Title – you must creatively include your keywords in a professional looking title. Google’s maximum character count for page title is 83. Yahoo’s maximum character count is 111.

Headings tags like H1 H2 and H3 - Placing the primary keywords in these sections is equally important as putting them in page title. Don’t use filler words like: and, for, the, or etc.. they are neglected anyway by the search engines. You should strive to make optimum use of this place.

As links - Start the link with keyword. Use more text internal links between the body content. Don’t create simple link like “click here” instead you can use few other words which will work as a keyword for you and acquire a better rank in search result.

Meta Tag - Till few months back we considered it as the most significant part of the site but dependency on the Meta Tag is diminishing. However we should not get complacent and ignore the importance of it. Be careful when you put keywords in keyword meta tag and description meta tag. It should be meaningful, informative and relevant with product or service you are offering.

Alt tag – Alt tags are also displayed as a quick pop-up when you point mouse over an image. Images don’t show in text browsers so ALT tags tell the visitor what it′s about. You should frame main keyword(s) in the ALT tags, but don’t over do it because you could get dropped in the result.

Local based site: Suppose you are offering some service which is limited in the particular city that is called local based site. Here you need to mention your complete address with city name an zip code in the header of your home page. Use city name as a keyword in the links which you put in the bod body text.

One final tip I would suggest on using keywords and key phrases if your site is having separate pages use different keywords phrases for each page. This tactic will work as a magic to optimize your web pages and getting good rank in the search engines. Ultimately more traffic on your website.

By: Nidhi Modi

Nidhi is a Search Engine Optimization expert. She has keen interest in Internet and serch engine related marketing. Besides work she loves preparing Indian cuisines and shooting natural photographs. Nidhi lives in Seattle,USA with her husband.

To contact Nidhi, e-mail her at nidhi.great@gmail.com

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