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

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

Having worked with a number of blogging platforms over the years including Wordpress, ActiveRain (for Real Estate Blogging), and Blogger which is the back end for the blog here on Working The Magic I am blown away at the difference between using Blogger vs. ActiveRain.

Now ActiveRain is awesome for the amount of actual readership and commentary on posts in relatively short order so as a social network its very powerful and very targeted, but in terms of the blog posts in AR getting cached by Google I've found it to be very unsatisfactory. There are probably a number of reasons for this, not the least is the shear volume of posts taking place on AR. Google will only dig so deep into a site before it moves on to another site, so unless you are a featured agent or have a featured post I suspect that Google will not have a good way of getting to your post to cache it in the first place.

I've blogged a bit on ActiveRain for a couple of years and most recently this past week as part of an overall PR campaign to launch our Real Estate SEO Company and have received some great responses from AR participants on our business, so that part has been a success, but looking back at the posts that I've put on since I started blogging on AR I noticed that none of the blog posts have been cached by Google in the conventional way. Meaning I normally can't go to the post and then pull the cache from my Google Toolbar. What that ultimately means is that AR is not as effective in getting my keywords into Google and for my SEM (Search Engine Marketing) efforts.

Now if you contrast that to the blog on Working The Magic, what is quite interesting is that using Blogger we are getting our posts to show up in the Google cache within a few hours to a couple of days. Even though the blog itself is hosted on our own website, we use Blogger to ultimately generate the blog and ftp the blog with all the navigation up to our website. Since Blogger is a Google company the blog posts go immediately into the Google cache or in relatively short order which is what we ultimately want since many of the long tail searches that result from the blog post will bring potential clients back to our blog and hopefully learn about how we can help them achieve top rankings in the search engines.

If you check out the post prior to this one which is CMS for Real Estate... Blog for Opinions... and then look at the Google cache for that post you'll notice that it has already been spidered by Google. This is way cool since as a brand new site (less then 40 days old) much of the rest of the site has not been cached by Google however by using Blogger we are able to get a lot of keyword rich content into the Google cache which means when Google chews it all up and is searching for somewhere to send their visitors we have a reach chance of getting that traffic.

Obviously once we have done a lot of our SEO activities on the site this content will be valued even more highly in Google and then watch out traffic.

Labels: Blogging, Content, Google, SEO Strategies, Website Design

CMS - Content Management System vs. Blogging for Real Estate

Okay... I'll let you in a little secret... It's much easier to blog on SEO then it is to blog on Real Estate. First of all blogging is about having an opinion, making an argument and backing it up with content. It's hard to take a controversial position on real estate. I know. I've tried. Now that's not to say there aren't agents who have a particular bent and can find something worthwhile to blog about in real estate however generally speaking when you blog about about a home you don't want to alienate potential clients in your marketplace. No matter how much of a dog a property might be or how overpriced it might be its hard to put that into a blog online. It's not that it isn't true, its that the seller might get bent out of shape and to some extent go after you and/or your office. Who wants to justify with their broker their opinions especially if the broker was hoping to get that listing in house with another agent? I know I don't and I didn't.

So blogging is a bit difficult for real estate other then stating the facts... That's where a CMS comes in. Instead of taking an opinion why not simply build out a site which essentially acts as an alternative to the Chamber of Commerce website. Publish photos, events and activities, polls about stuff going on in the area and generally be a ambassador to the world for your community. If you take a look at our Birch Bay Washington Community portal website you'll see a lot of content relating to the community at large. In fact we have been so successful with the portal that if you search Google for "Birch Bay" you'll find that our site ranks #1 above the chamber of commerce... Believe me the Chamber wasn't happy about this and probably still isn't, but quite honestly I'm just better at internet marketing then the volunteers at the Chamber. Though not ranked quite as high our Blaine Washington portal is also ranked above the local chamber in Google as well. I remember a few years ago the Blaine Chamber actually called me in and they tried to strong arm me into giving up my domain name Blaine.net to the Chamber.

Back on topic though, a community portal that is well designed will give you an authority site which can then link to your real estate website. In addition its much easier to post on local events and activities then it is to blog on real estate topics generally speaking... Blogging in real estate can sometimes feel like cutting off the hand that feeds you, so in lieu of blogging building out a community portal with a CMS makes more sense. You might even be able to sell some advertising on your CMS as well... It's small money compared to the real estate you will sell, but it may offset or pay for someone to write content for your site.

We've tried a lot of CMS platforms. I've used Joomla, phpNuke, phpWiki, phpWebsite, Wordpress (technically a blogging platform), Xoops, and what we are using here (Blogger). Ultimately phpWebsite has really been the platform which we like the best. Out of the box it does most of the functions that you would expect a CMS to do including events calendar, photo albums, content pages, sub-pages, search, registration etc... What it doesn't do well that some other platforms do better is SEO friendly URLs, however the search engines have cached the results of many of the pages just the same...

The portal that we have done the most work on is for Bellingham Washington and that is http://www.bellingham.net/ . Check it out... I hope this gives you some ideas... Back to work!

Labels: Content, SEO Strategies, SEO Tools, Website Design

So you want to do SEO for a real estate website? What do you need?

Well generally speaking your going to need to be a bit of web designer, content developer, blogger, researcher, link builder and have a techie bent to name a few of the general job functions. You should enjoy getting under the hood of your website like your Dad used to like to get under the hood of the family car. If you don't like to do those things then obviously just like you would hire a mechanic to fix your car you are going to want to hire an SEO Company to work on your site.

Beyond that you are going to need some tools. Assuming the basics: Decent computer and internet connection, you are going to want to see what to see how consumers search in your marketplace. For that I recommend the budding SEO specialist to use the Free Wordtracker Service. You can enter in your city name or community and see what types of keywords are put into the search engines.

In addition you'll want to have the Google Toolbar installed in your browser with the PageRank feature enabled. When looking at your competition you'll be able to do a rough estimate of their competitiveness in your marketplace by looking at their PageRank. Typically the higher the PageRank the better they are at competing online. It doesn't mean they are optimized however Google rates content on sites with higher PR as more authoritative then sites with lower PR. You'll also be able to review who links to their site by checking backlinks with the toolbar as well.

As you review your competitions website you can put their site into http://www.alexa.com/ and check how much traffic they are generating. Most real estate website will have alexa traffic ranks in the millions however from time to time you'll find a site that is 500,000 or less which means they are generating a significant amount of traffic on the site and ultimately if the site is built properly generating a significant number of leads as well.

Want to see what your competition is ranked well on? Check out http://www.seodigger.com/ . This site will let you know what terms your competition is ranked under as well as the traffic from those terms and where they rank in their search engine positions.

Ever wonder what Google is looking for relating to the terms you are optimizing around? Try out Google Sets. Even though it is in the Google Labs it will give you an idea of what Google is expecting to find when you put a couple of the cities you are optimizing for in sets. Ussually go with a small set since the larger the set the less targeted the key phrases that Google will provide via sets. I've used Google Sets for a number of years. It also gives me a good idea of who I might want to try to get a link from. If Google is expecting some content relating to another neighbor city then I should pursue a link from agents in that city as well.

I know the guys, Gabe and Kirk, use a number of other tools to quickly evaluate competition for a given market, however the above are ones that I use for my quick research and site buildouts.

Using the Mechanic example above... We are Real Estate SEO experts. Just like you wouldn't want a jack of all trades mechanic to work on your Porche, you don't want just anyone who claims to do SEO doing your Real Estate SEO. That's what we do... Real Estate SEO!

Labels: SEO Strategies, SEO Tools

Despite spending the majority (An understatement) of my time working SEO, Search Engine Optimization, to achieve top organic results in Google and other search engines I enjoy experimenting with online advertising campaigns.

Online advertising campaigns work well in the early stages of launching a website to drive traffic and begin converting leads from day 1. The downfall of this type of advertising campaign is that visits to a website will be determined by the amount of continued daily or monthly spend, but that is the subject of another post on the Return of Investment of SEO vs Pay-Per-Click. That said, to manage a successful online advertising campaign one must have the ability to monitor the generated traffic and conversion of leads for specific campaigns.

The best way I have found to track the results of individual campaigns is to "Tag" links. Tagging links involves creating unique link ID's with embedded information for each online campaign you have. This will allow Google Analytics the ability to track of the success of referring campaigns (If you are not familiar with Google's web analytic system you may want to read Who Visits Your Website? Use Google Analytics).

Specific instructions are found within Google's help archives titled How Do I Tag My Links? where you will find access to the URL Builder that makes monitoring and managing your online advertising campaigns possible.

To discuss long term online marketing and SEO strategies call 888-442-5115.

Labels: Google, SEO Strategies

It's a bit of an adrenalin rush to think about dominating a major search term like "Seattle Real Estate" vs a smaller market like "Bellingham WA Real Estate". Having dominated both terms for about five years I can tell you that as a REALTOR being dominant for Bellingham Washington is a much more fulfilling experience then dominating Seattle. The simple reason is that as an agent and now company owner it's hard to get motivated to drive an hour or more to preview and/or show property in a big city while being in a smaller community like Bellingham it usually takes less then 20 minutes to get most anywhere. It's really a function of efficiency and ultimately profitability.

Obviously the bragging rights of being dominant in Seattle is more significant since everyone who has been in North America (and for that matter the world at large) will likely know Seattle and assume (rightly) that Seattle is a competitive market and that the search term "Seattle Real Estate" is quite a feather in the cap. When letting many of those same people know that we are number 1 for "Bellingham WA Real Estate" their response might be "Where? Never heard of Bellingham."

Ironically even though we have had the ranking in both Bellingham and Seattle for a similar length of time our Bellingham team is out producing Seattle in terms of closed transaction and GCI by a margin of 30 - 40%.

Of course I wouldn't give up my rankings in Seattle since it is still profitable however knowing what I know now I recommend smaller markets rather then the major metros for optimization since ultimately agents will make more money dominating a smaller manageable market then trying to dominate a large major metro.

There is also the subject of the Long Tail of Search. Given that more sales are generated from longer tails (or more targeted search phrases) the leads generated for Bellingham WA Real Estate will frankly just convert at a higher rate. That means less wasted time following up with leads from a large metro (which in many cases means they don't know the market very well) to following up with leads which are more targeted (which means they do know what they are looking for) and as a result closing ratios will go up significantly.

The one trade off is that in a major metro sometimes the price point can be higher then in the smaller markets, but then there are small boutique markets where the median price range is actually higher then the major metro.

So the perspective is this. If you are in a smaller market it is possible if not likely that you can make more money dominating that market then trying to dominate a larger metro based market with the right online SEO strategies. There is usually less competition (easier to get to #1) and it's easier to manage the business that you generate.

If you are in a major metro instead of trying to dominate the major metro figure out a sub market or sub city that you can easily manage and grow your business from there. Eventually you can grow your team into the larger metro, however for efficiency and profitability start with the smaller city and grow up... Crawl, Walk and then Run

Labels: Business Development, SEO Strategies

How did your visitors find your website?