Posts Tagged ‘seo’

Post

SEO for Listing Presentations

In Marketing on Sep 07 by jason Tagged:

I recently found an agent in New Hampshire who proudly boasts (and should) his search engine placement as part of his online listing presentation. And I bet it’s really effective for him. Having a strong search engine presence is an excellent low cost, high ROI way to get new listings out to a large number of qualified people.

If you’re not doing it already, add some concrete search engine rankings to your listing presentation. Not everyone will be interested in them. But if your numbers are impressive, impress them!

More than SEO

Excellent search engine placement is only one kind of Internet-info you could add. You could also include things like:

  • Property marketing reports from REALTOR.com,
  • Unique visitors to your website, or
  • The number of websites a property gets posted to

Sellers are starting to respect good SEO. But if you’re not quite at the top yet, pick other information that strengthens client confidence. They need to know that you will get their home sold the fastest and for the most amount of money.

Post

Real Estate Podcast SEO

In Blogging,Marketing,Real Estate,Technology on Jul 01 by jason Tagged: ,

If you’re keeping up on different real estate marketing strategies, you’ve surely heard of podcasting. I won’t discuss all the benefits, at least not for this post, of how real estate podcasting can strengthen your market presence or improve relationships with customers. Rather, I’d like to hit the debated topic of optimizing podcasts for search engines and show you how it can be done.

Like I mentioned in Free Real Estate SEO, search engine optimization is hard work. Doing so for podcasts is even harder. If you’re willing to put in some elbow grease, read on.

Podcast SEO

Most search engines can’t extract information from podcasts. After all, it’s just an audio file. So here are a few SEO tips to help your podcast move higher up for its topic.

  • Use Good Metadata
  • Write Transcripts
  • Optimization on-page text
  • Submit your podcast feed to podcast search engines (especially Podscope)

Good Podcast Metadata

For HTML documents, metadata is slowly going by the wayside. The information is frequently inaccurate and some search engines completely ignore it. However, for podcasting, metadata is still helpful.

Metadata (or ID3 tags) is extra information embedded in your podcast to let search engines and listeners know what it’s about. Whatever software you are using, look for a place to add ID3 tag info like:

  • Title
  • Genre
  • Artist
  • Album
  • Description

These terms may not make a whole lot of sense when you’re doing real estate commentary, but they’re the standard fields used by the different systems and aggregators. These fields will frequently be indexed, so be sure you fill them in. Oh, and make sure they’re accurate too.

Tip: “Album” is good for categorizing your podcasts. You can use it to name your series on Buying a New Home or keep all financing podcasts grouped together.

Transcripting Your Podcasts

This one is huge. It’s time consuming, but extremely important to be sure that search engines get your content. Just type the whole podcast out and you’ll be good to go. If you really don’t want to spend the time, there are many transcription services that you can hire, too.

Optimal Podcast Environment

I don’t think this header really says what I want, but it was a choice between “optimal podcast environment” and “Hug your podcast with optimized text.” Anyway, the idea is to be sure that the link to your podcast is surrounded by a keyword rich summary of your podcast’s topic. Search engines will see these extra on-page factors and appropriately deduce the topic.

Podcast Search Engines

This is where people search for podcasts, so be sure you submit your feed to all the podcast directories out there. And don’t forget Podscope. You also want to ping services such as Weblogs Audio.

Get Podcasting

If you’ve read this far, I’d guess you already have a podcast or are very close to starting one. Again, this stuff isn’t really hard. It just takes a lot of work. If you have any questions on how to move forward with any of the things I mentioned, let me know. Also if you have other ideas on how to optimize your podcast, I’d love to hear it!

Post

Free Real Estate SEO

In Marketing,Technology on Jun 26 by jason Tagged:

Getting started with search engine optimization

Many SEO firms that I’ve dealt with (yes, the same ones that call at 2:00pm on Friday afternoon!) seem to make search engine optimization or high search engine ranking an obscure lofty goal that only they can achieve. Granted, it can be very time consuming, but it’s still very doable. Below I outline some strategic tips to optimize your real estate website that will hopefully get you up to the first page or even the first spot.

Magic SEO Ingredients

The magic ingredient to top search engine placement is… Hard work. Other key ingredients to get you there are:

  • Good content
  • Good inbound links

Yep, that’s it. There’s no special tricks that you need to use or special programs that you need to buy. If you continue on, you’ll see why good companies charge a pretty penny for their services. Let’s start with some definitions…

What’s Good Content?

If you’re talking about heaven and hell, “good” has to be absolute. When talking about search engines, good is very relative. What is it relative to? Well, it seems to be just about everything. The quality of your content is ranked based on a whole bunch of factors by Google and other major search engines. The goodness of your site and content are valued based on both on and off page factors. However, not to fear. Here it is in a nutshell:

Good content is unique, authoritative, frequent, and relevant.

Make it unique

Unique means don’t go pirating text verbatim from other websites. Let your own creative juices flow. If you don’t have any, at least use your own words, paraphrase and cite the site. Copying content not only infringes on others’ copyrights, but it also devalues your copied content and your site. You may see short term gains, but it’s not worth it because you’ll lose out over the long haul.

Make it authoritative

Who knows your market better than you do? Hopefully, no one. But even if you’re not at the top of the game (yet), be sure you let people know that you’re on your way up. Show off your knowledge of your market in a way that is beneficial to your readers. If you have the only information and the best information for your market, your readers will appreciate you and the search engines will move you up.

I should explain this one a little more. Having authoritative content doesn’t automatically move you up. Better ranking is a result of more voluntary inbound links, more readers as determined by feed and search engine “spyware,” and frequently updated content (see next point).

Make Frequent Additions

Search engines like sites with frequently updated content. This doesn’t mean just changing a title or adding a picture. Change means adding new pages or new articles as often as you can. These pages will let search engines robots know that your site is alive and growing. They will then visit you more often.

I’ve found that Google robots will visit daily if I make daily changes. If I slow down, they slow down. This has played a role in search engine placement as well. The more frequent the changes, the higher the site moves in placement for certain keywords. Try it with your site and share your results!

Make it relevant

Keep your content relevant to the theme of your website. If your site is about Idaho real estate, be sure your article ties in to Idaho real estate. For example, a properly themed article could discuss market conditions, home mortgages, or buyer tips.

What’s a Good Inbound Link

Think of it this way, links are like business references. Good businesses refer good businesses. So, you want good websites linking to you (if you’re a good business, that is!). Here’s the nutshell again:

Good inbound links are natural and abundant.

Make it natural

You can’t really force nature, can you? Natural links are links that occur naturally through voluntary linking through peers or visitors who think your site is worthy of mentioning. Because it’s voluntary you’ll see varying anchor text, varying page placement, and hopefully written in context (like within a paragraph rather than a link at the bottom of a page). It’ll be natural.

Change up your links

Well sometimes you have to encourage people to link to your site. In doing so you may provide them with some HTML code with your keyword-laden anchor text with a great description that properly contextualizes your link. Unfortunately, if everyone uses that same link, search engines may recognize this as link spam and eventually devalue the link. Providing link options may be more effective.

Avoid Bad Sites

Link farms, free-for-alls, and the like are typically worthless when it comes to building your link strategy. They’re considered “bad neighborhoods.” So don’t be associated with them. Don’t link to them. And don’t link from them.

Make it plentiful

This is yet more hard work that will pay off in the long run. The more websites that point to you, the better. Contact websites that have similar themes to yours and ask them to link to you. In most cases you have to give them something in return. So start a reciprocal link page or directory.

Keep in mind, however, that links from link directories or reciprocal links aren’t as rank-powerful as one-way links coming from another well-themed site.

Anything else?

Of course! There’s always more complicated and more technical details of search engine optimization and ranking. But this article is not about making you an expert on SEO. It’s about giving you an adequate overview of how to place high in search engines. By now you can at least make a better decision of whether you will do it yourself or hire it out.

Post

Real Estate Blog SEO Misconceptions

In Blogging,Real Estate on May 18 by jason Tagged:

Todd over at Realty Blogging pointed out a common blogging misconception that I see with my clients as well. It’s the “If you build it, they will come” mentality.

This misconception says a few things. If I start blogging about real estate…

  1. I will rank higher in the search engines for my market area.
  2. I will have lots of traffic so I can sit back and watch the new buyers and listings roll in.

Real estate blogging brings higher placement

Well, this is partly true. It will bring better placement, but not necessarily for one key phrase like “Lewiston Idaho Real Estate“. The key with real estate blogging is to discuss everything real estate related in your market area. Now the term “related” is very subjective. It could mean discussing area schools and finances. But it could also mean posting about local events such as parades or baseball games.

The goal of a real estate blog is not just top search engine placement for real estate. A more important goal would be to develop loyal customers.

Your real estate blog is like a big fishing net that catches all kinds of search phrases for your area. You see, if you are discovered through high search engine rankings for a phrases such as “your county fair dates” or “your city parade”, eventually you will be deemed the local expert of your community. People will recognize you and your website as the authoritative source of your area. This will keep them coming back to you.

Blogs bring more traffic

Maybe. First, they have to find you. In other words, you have to market your blog. This includes having the right terms for high search engine placement, Internet advertising (PPC or banners), and offline advertising (newspapers, magazine, etc.)

Second, you have to write about what people care about. This will get them coming back. “They know you care when you care about the things they care about.” No you won’t have to blog about Aunt Emma’s poodle. All you need to do is keep in mind what they may be looking for. Is it local events? Could it be special taxes that affect your area? You know your market, so you need to decide. If you can’t figure it out, ask your clients!

Having a real estate blog is just like any website or any other business venture. It takes a lot of work, planning, and stick-to-it-iveness. Just because you have one doesn’t mean you’ll get lots of traffic or make millions. Make a big net and reel ‘em in!

How are you using your blog? I’d love to hear about it!

Post

Google Blacklist Paranoia

In Marketing,Technology on May 15 by jason Tagged:

Now that people are becoming more familiar with Google’s ability to blacklist a site, there seems to be a mild paranoia that lurks whenever a site isn’t in the Top 10. Although search engine placement is “easy” it’s still a lot of work, not to mention time consuming. So maybe you just need to put more work into establishing good content and good backlinks.

Still paranoid?

SEO Junkie offers a free Blacklist Checker to help you to determine if your site, or any site that you link to, is banned by Google. It’s a handy app and it sure beats doing the searches manually on Google.

Blacklist Checker: Reverse Engineered

Well, I haven’t really done this and don’t intend to. However, it seems that the software does a series of searches on Google to determine whether a site is indexed and calculate its Page Rank. It crawls through your site, with some options, and runs the same check for any of the domains of your outbound links.

SEO Junkie’s software is simple, straight forward, and gets the job done. Check it out!