Some Google History Google began in January 1996, as a research project by Larry Page, who was soon joined by Sergey Brin, two Ph.D. students at Stanford University in California.  They hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better ranking of results than existing techniques, which ranked results according to the number of times the search term appeared on a page. Their search engine was originally nicknamed "BackRub" because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Links are the highways that Google and other search engines travel in an effort to determine the popularity, relationship and relevancy of every page and website they come across. Very generally speaking if a website has a large amount of links pointing to it search engines can assume that others will also find that resource to be valuable. Search engines have evolved from simply counting the number of links (They now look at quality of links, originality of content and other trust factors) but this basic idea still exists. There are two types of links; "external" and "internal" An internal link is a hyperlink that links to another page on the SAME website. An external link is a hyperlink that links to another page on a DIFFERENT website.

Internal links will generally make up your navigation, links to your articles and blog posts, and all the pages on your website. An optimized internal link structure helps search engines efficiently index your content and check for updates, along with ranking your pages for the best keywords. Optimizing your internal link structure includes having proper categories and search friendly content, featuring your best pages by linking to them more, and taking a look at the anchor text of each link. Anchor text is the visible text that you click in a link. In this example link: Real Estate SEO, the words "Real Estate SEO" are the anchor text. Search engines associate the anchor text of a link with the page the link leads to (In this example our SEO website WorkingTheMagic.com) and will begin ranking our site for those keywords. External links on your website send visitors to other websites.  External links on other people's websites to yours are called "backlinks" for you, also called incoming links, inward links and inlinks.

To improve rankings in the search engines the key is to get relevant, quality links from respected websites to yours. The more relevant backlinks the better, especially if those backlinks contain the keywords you are trying to rank for in the anchor text like "Seattle real estate" or "Phoenix homes for sale". I'll cover some effective linking strategies in future posts and for now subscribe to this blog. Related Posts: Evaluate Your Google Competition 8 Tips: Online Lead Capture SEO to Capture a Major Metro

Labels: blogger, SEO Strategies, Website Design

A Blidget is a widget that displays your blog (Example below to the left). As ridiculous as that is to say Blidgets are a simple - and free - way to drive additional readers to your blog and make it more 'sticky'. You can make a custom Blidget for your blog in minutes and then share or embed your Blidget on as many websites as you want. Once it's setup your Blidget's views, clicks and subscriptions are all tracked for your use.

	5 steps to making a Blidget for your blog Step 1 of 5: Visit the Make Blidget page at Widgetbox. I've taken a screenshot of the page shown below. Once there, enter in your Blog URL (aka your blog web address) and click "Continue".

	Step 2 of 5: Customize the size, color, style, title and caption for your Blidget as much or as little as you like. Don't worry too much about making it prefect if you can't decide, you can easily change these features at any time in the future.
	Step 3 of 5: Chose an image that will appear at the top of your Blidget or enter in the address of an image already on the web. Add relevant tags and description for your blidget for others to find. Other visitors may want to embed your Blidget on their website, always good! Click "Publish Blidget" when done.
	Step 4 of 5: Almost there. If your Blidget looks good click the big green "Get Widget" button.

	Step 5 of 5: Chose from Flash or Javascript code, or from one of the optimized selections for all different types of blogging platforms. Flash seems to work best for ActiveRain posts. Click "Copy". Now paste the code in blog posts, along your blog navigation bar, on your other blogs or websites, wherever you want your new Blidget to show up!

Labels: Blogging, SEO Tools

Starting today we're offering one FREE month - no strings attached - of our Silver Level SEO Coaching ($500 value) to any real estate professional who completes our SEO Questionnaire. If you are interested in finding out what it takes to effectively compete online in your market and begin implementing our proven strategies then this is an offer you can't pass up. Limited spots available so sign up now.


About The Coaching Program

• 1-on-1 Consultations
• Competitive Analysis
• Keyword Research and Recommendations
• Site Audit & Analysis
• Ranking Report for Relevant Keywords
• SEO Strategies Updates
• Design and Content Recommendations
• Take the Questionnaire

Labels: SEO Strategies, SEO Tools, Working The Magic

After selecting the right search phrase (Generally "City"+"Real Estate" for the sites we work with) it is useful to be able to evaluate the competition already showing up in the results for that term. Use these tips to evaluate the competitive landscape for any given search term. These two factors, and having a solid SEO strategy, will determine the time and effort it takes to obtain top search engine rankings:


Factor #1: Age and Authority of the Domain
Aged websites will enjoy results from SEO efforts faster than new websites. New websites tend to take a little longer to get traction in Google, especially for highly competitive search terms.
Factor #2: Search Term Competition
The most accurate way to gauge the competition for a specific search term is to evaluate the sites currently ranking in the top 10 for that search term. Here are some things to look for.

• Number of backlinks for the top sites
  Backlinks, also called incoming links, are all the links from other websites to a particular site. Some search engines, including AlltheWeb, Google and Yahoo!, allow users to get a list of backlinks to a specific page by typing "link:http://www.WEBSITE.com" into their search boxes, replacing WEBSITE with the domain in question. From experience, AlltheWeb and Yahoo provide the most accurate counts of backlinks while Google only displays a fraction of the backlinks it recognizes.
  
  
• PageRank for the top sites
  PageRank is Google's proprietary measure of link popularity for Web pages. Here's what Google says "PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results". Typically the higher the PageRank the better they are at competing online, but does not necessarily mean a site is optimized for a specific search term. PageRank figures are updated quarterly and should be taken as a historical figure rather than up-to-date. PageRank is built into the Google Toolbar that you will need to install in order to view.
  
  
• Search terms in title tag
  When viewing the search result page for a specific search term take a look at how many of the results contain that exact search phrase in their title. For example in the Google results for "Denver Real Estate" nine out of the ten results contain the exact phrase "Denver Real Estate" in the title. Compare these results with the search result page for "Denver Property For Sale" that only has one result (#9) with the exact search phrase in the title. These results show that fewer websites are optimizing for the search phrase "Denver Property For Sale" making it less competitive of a term than "Denver Real Estate". More competition for the term "Denver Real Estate" makes sense because it is searched much more often.
  
  
• Number of national sites in top 10 (Trulia, Yahoo!, Realtor.com)
  The more national sites in the top 10 the less the competition. Trulia, Yahoo!, Realtor.com and a handful of other national sites work hard to achieve fairly good results for a lot of state and city real estate search terms. That said, these sites have a tough time competing against and out ranking well crafted area specific agent websites. If national real estate sites are dominating the search page for a specific search term this generally means there are not a lot of individual agents competing for that term. By implementing a good SEO strategy an agent website should always be able outrank the national sites in their specific area.
  
  
• Number of non real estate related sites in top 10
  Non real estate related sites showing up in search results are a sign of weak competition. Examples of this are when area newspapers and other websites with a strong web presence unrelated to real estate show up for real estate search terms.
  

If you're interested in having us provide you with a professional competitive analysis for your targeted search phrase(s) please contact us.

Labels: Google, SEO Strategies, SEO Tools

What are you doing to capture leads with your website right now?
Your website should be using 3, 4, 5+ ways to capture leads and convert traffic into contacts and ultimately closes. Assuming you are generating some traffic through your site, these are some of the best practices in online real estate lead generation that your competitor is already using.

1. Solid IDX Solution - IDX stands for Internet Data Exchange and is a property search site which allows the public to conduct searches of approved Multiple Listing Service properties in a certain area. For every client I have worked with their IDX platform is their #1 lead generating resource. There are quite a few IDX options out there and not every product is available in every city so finding the right solution for the right price may take some time. What I look for besides availability and price is a usable intuitive map search and the ability to integrate the product seemlessly into a site. Here are a few platforms I have had good experiences with:

• http://www.wolfnet.com
• http://www.homequestgroup.com
• http://www.realbird.com
• http://www.ihomefinder.com
• http://www.realpagemaker.com
• http://www.idxcentral.com
  

2. Property Request Forms - Not every visitor has the time or desire to browse all the listings and search the map. Some people just want to tell you what they want and have you get back to them with the details; property request forms are great for this. You, or your web guy/gal, should create a simple website form asking for their desired type of property, time frame for purchasing and current state in the buying process along with contact information. Put some links on your site to this "Property Request Form". You know what types of property area desirable in your area, create multiple similar forms for "Waterfront Property Request Form", "Condo Request Form", "Commercial Request Form", etc..

3. Visible Phone Number and Email on Every Page - This is self-explanatory but I am always surprised when I have to click around to find contact information for an agent on their website. Don't make it hard for your visitors to contact you. I'm not saying to put your photo on every page, but a phone number and email should be easy to find.

4. Contact Form's' - There should be some sort of lead capture on every page. On your content pages make it easy for visitors to get in touch with you about questions or comments. Contact forms (short ones asking for only a name, email, phone and question/comment) can easily be added to your side navigation or at the end of articles.

5. Relocation Packets and Baited Content - Relocation packets, neighborhood resources, in-depth school reports, and useful area information like maps and tourist information area great offers to entice visitors to fill out a contact form.

7. Available Online Agent - We have experimented with this in the past with mixed results but it is another avenue to explore. A Google search for "live chat software" brings up a mix of different options that allow your visitors to engage in a live chat or click to call features directly from your site.

8. Newsletter Email Capture - If you are an expert in your area on something it may make sense to begin building your email list for a weekly/monthly newsletter. This can be a great way to reconnect with past visitors and bring them back to your site month after month which can be helpful to increase your site traffic and search rankings. If you are blogging already, the blog posts you are already writing make a good base for your newsletter without the need for much additional content.

For more information on driving substantial amounts of traffic to your website by ranking at the top of the search engines visit WorkingTheMagic.com, a Real Estate SEO company.

Labels: SEO Strategies, Website Design

A few days ago Google updated the "What's an SEO?" page of their Webmaster Help Center. They have done a good job to outline the benefits professional SEO companies provide while giving advice on how to spot and avoid unethical SEO companies.

Here are the six questions - and our answers - that Google recommends you ask a prospective SEO company:

1. Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?
We have several examples of our #1 search rankings for highly competitive search terms in our SEO Portfolio. Because of client confidentiality we don't display every success story but we are happy to provide more examples if you contact us.

2. Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
Yes, we follow the technical and quality guidelines including:

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don't send automated queries to Google.
• Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Don't create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.
• Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

3. Do you offer any online marketing services to complement your organic search business?
We provide competitive analysis, keyword research, SEO strategy updates, technical assistance, webinars, monthly analytic reports; a full range of SEO Services and Real Estate Coaching.

4. What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe?
With our system we will give most anyone in the real estate profession top rankings (#1-5) in the organic search listings for their most relevant and highly searched term. We constantly track the climb in rankings and generally achieve our goal results 4-12 months from implementation with the factors being:

• Age of the domain (Brand new websites take longer)
  
• Search term competition
  

5. What's your experience in my industry?
We ONLY position websites related to the Real Estate industry.

6. How long have you been in business?
We have positioned Real Estate websites in highly competitive markets across the county since early 2002. Here is a bit of our Real Estate Business History.

To get in touch with one of our SEO Professionals or to learn more please contact us.

Labels: Business Development, Google, SEO Companies, SEO Strategies

In late February of this year we launched http://www.VancouverPowerSearch.com/ from scratch and now four and a half months later we are ranked on the front page of Google for the terms Vancouver Real Estate and Vancouver BC Real Estate. This is pretty fast results given the normal sandbox period for a new domain. A few months back we were noticing that Google was starting to rank sites a bit faster with the same system we have been using for the last six years and we couldn't put our finger on exactly what was going on however our latest site seems to be benefiting from the faster ranking on Google plus an additional boost from potentially owning the domain for a significant time before actually using it. Right now its just a hypothesis, but it seems that using an existing domain, even one that wasn't being used before may shorten the length of time necessary to get it ranking highly. Of course our eventual goal is to be ranked #1 for search terms relating to Vancouver, but that may take a bit more time. I thought this would at least be a good domain to track if you would like to see our rankings increase for domains we are working with.

Labels: Google, SEO Strategies

For me it's very simple. SEO gives the real estate agent or firm a truly unfair advantage over other agents or offices in their marketplace. Over the last six years as a real estate professional I have had a very profitable career in real estate and that is for one very simple reason: I know how to rank my real estate websites to the top of the search engines for the terms that consumers use for search. If you are in residential real estate the term that consumers use more often then not is "Your City" followed by the term "real estate" or to a lesser extent "homes for sale". These are the trump cards of real estate search for a given city period, end of report...

Sure Social Networking on ActiveRain, Localism and even your own personal real estate blog will generate you some traffic and may get you a few leads, but that will not even come close to the lead flow that you will get from dominating your search engine rankings for your city.

In an earlier post I talked about my real estate career to date and so far its been a very financially fulfilling ride. I have been profitable into the low to mid six figures my last five years in real estate. I've exited the day-to-day management of the real estate business and turned over the business to our team leaders, brokers and support staff. I do however keep my hand in the SEO side of the business which is essentially the marketing side of the business.

Getting back to the "Unfair advantage". I truly believe that many agents in the marketplace do see our positioning as an "Unfair advantage". What does that mean?

In a traditional real estate business, business is normally a function of advertising and getting your agents to spend their money to ultimately generate them (the agents) and you (the firm) income. The playing field is relatively level in that everyone can run the same ads, market in the same magazines, mail the same postcards and if anyone comes up with a better ad, a better magazine, or a better postcard anyone in the marketplace can essentially implement a similar plan. Any competitive advantage is soon lost due to agents copying or improving on an existing plan. Marketshare in the offline world is typically a function of spend and ego. Meaning the more you spend and the more outgoing your are the more marketshare that you have. Big firms have figured out that one of the best ways to grow is simply to recruit those agents who simply spend more and have bigger egos then agents at other firms which ultimately means more listings and more sides. Of course that was pre-internet.

Now that 84% of consumers use the web as their primary search vehicle agents who are offline are having to spend more and in many cases are losing marketshare to their online counterparts. Spend and ego are no longer the differentiators between agents. The true differentiator now is web positioning. Meaning where do you rank on the search engines. As much as Trulia, REALTOR.com, ActiveRain, Localism, HouseValues and HomeGain would like to get you to think that what is going to generate you business is using their platforms, the reality again is that the business generated from any one of these or all of them combined pales in comparison to search engine rankings.

So what again does an "Unfair Advantage" mean? It essentially means that you are able to generate significantly more leads, significantly better leads, and spend significantly less on generating those leads then your competition can. It means that because of the plethora of leads generated and your lead aquisition cost you can actually grow a business rather then be an independent contractor trying to figure out where the next deal is coming from. It means you have the ability to own a business rather then having a business own you.

How much of traditional real estate agents business is about networking and asking for repeat and referral business? I don't want to say that is a bad idea, but I'll be honest, In six years I have probably only asked that question five or six times and that was when I was still relatively new in the business and that is what I was told I needed to do.

SEO has driven my lead cost into the ground and given me such a competitive advantage that without taking out any loans or liquidating any assets and only using the cashflow from our real estate business we have been able to grow to three real estate offices, three affiliated teams and a couple of incubating teams. As mentioned in an earlier post if we hit our numbers this year we will grow from approximately $73 million in sales in 2007 to somewhere close to $100 million in sales in 2008 with very little overhead and very little risk.

Of course my real passion has been and continues to be web marketing so as a result starting our Real Estate SEO company allows me to really work in the industry that I really enjoy and that is online marketing for independent business people and to help those who want to own a real estate business rather then having the real estate business own them achieve their dreams through web positioning and online marketing.

Bottom line: If you do want to have a truly unfair advantage in your market then please give us a call. We'll either coach you on how to dominate your market through our coaching program or partner with you and do the work we know how to do internally and achieve the same result of getting you your unfair share of leads with which you can grow a business worth owning rather then being owned by your business.

Labels: Business Development, Google, SEO Strategies

We've been in discussions this last week with a client who is in a major metro who wants to dominate this major metro and the main metro term. It turns out there is some significant competition in this metro so we have been looking at what strategies it takes to go after a major metro.

Almost every major city in the country has many sub cities. Many of these sub cities and neighborhoods are not defended very well by the incumbent agents or brokerages which are being found under those search terms. Often who ranks there is a Homes.com, Trulia or REALTOR.com site. This makes these sub-markets great places to start when looking to go after a major metro. By building individual sites for these sub-markets and positioning them to #1 on Google it provides you with a great source of leads and assuming you are good at converting these leads into closed transactions it also provides you the ammunition to continue to build out additional sub cities / communities while positioning these to ultimately go after the major metro. Even though Trulia is competitive in a lot of markets so far we have found that getting above Trulia is pretty straight forward with the right methodology. Trulia is competing with a long tail approach meaning that even though there are some incoming links to their local pages the majority of the link juice has been diluted from the core site itself. Considering all of the drill down to most neighborhoods to compete against Trulia is again pretty straight forward. They don't have time to defend every small city. They are happy with getting the rankings where they get them and continuing to work on their overall strategies which trickle down to the local markets.

Of course if you have deep pockets and/or you really enjoy the web side of the business (and willing to spend significant time on the development and promotion of multiple sites at once) you may be able to capture a major competitive metro... You'll really need to have a well rounded plan to go after a major metro. A little bit of work on a lot of sites is a great way to get very little traffic to any site which ultimately means very few leads and very few if any closings.

So the methods that we would suggest for a major metro is sub-city real estate sites which ultimately link up to the major metro with SEO campaigns for all of the above to capture the major metro. Make sense?

Labels: Business Development, SEO Strategies

Since around March 2004 Google has placed newly hosted "real estate" websites in what is commonly referred to as a Sandbox. Essentially if your keywords include a significant number of references to real estate including your title tags and description tags it is likely that your site will not rank for a few months via Google. This is one of the reasons why when you do trade links with other sites you may rank on MSN and Yahoo however it seems that for a significant number of months you aren't even searchable on Google.

So how do you plan for such a contingency?

I recommend a longer term view of your overall SEO strategy. Plan on building a few links from the highest ranking sites that will give you a link almost immediately. I would suggest trying to find about 10 - 20 sites that will give you a link on a PageRank 3 page or higher if you can talk them into doing it. It might be a challenge since you will likely be trading a PageRank 0 or if you are lucky a PageRank 1 page for a link back from their PageRank 3 page. PageRank is currency in the link trading arena and if you can't trade like for like its sometimes hard getting in the game.

Anyway if you can get those links then let the site incubate for a few months before really starting a significant SEO push on the site. Once your site has been accepted by Google and isn't in the Sandbox anymore it becomes significantly easier to move up the rankings on the Search Engines. It still takes work and probably takes about 10 times the amount of work that you might expect (especially if you are requesting the links one by one without some sort of automation to the process).

Remember SEO is a long term strategy. Once your SEO strategy starts to produce results and you are able to monetize your strategy (get it to pay for itself) you have a business which will grow as long as you continue to reinvest in growing your business.
It starts with one site and then one lead and then one closing. Eventually you should have multiple sites, more leads then you and your team can handle and multiple closings per month, month after month.

Ironically this site is a brand new site and is still in the Google Sandbox :D

Labels: SEO Companies, SEO Strategies

Adobe Flash is one way to add media and rich Internet applications to a website. Done right flash is visually appealing and encourages a high level of interactivity with visitors making a website "sticky".

The problem with flash is that search engines like Google and Yahoo choke on understanding what content and links are contained within it. Because of this limitation, when incorporating flash into a design my recommendation is to do so sparingly to enhance an already search engine friendly website. Websites designed entirely of flash and not optimized correctly are completely invisible to the search engine robots whose job it is to determine what a website is about (To get a better idea of how search engine robots "see" a page try the Search Engine Robot Simulator). Being invisible to search engine robots will have a negative impact on a websites search rankings.

Optimizing Flash Websites
So we know that search engines cannot easily understand website content and links contained in flash. To optimize around this problem, code specifically for search engines to read must be embedded on all pages containing flash. This requires a bit more work and some technical skill or a designer/SEO professional with some JavaScript knowledge. Embedded content should contain identical information to what is already contained - hidden - in the flash. I won't get too specific on the technical details of doing this but more information can be found on the Google Code website under SWFObject as a standards-friendly method to embed and optimize Flash content.

Labels: Google, SEO Strategies, Website Design

A couple of days ago I mentioned SeoDigger as a way to evaluate what keywords your competition is ranked for, the amount of traffic those keywords are driving to their website and the ranking of those keywords on Google.

Labels: Content, SEO Strategies, SEO Tools