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

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

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