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Have you been trying to get your site to the top of the search engines,
but you're confused about just how to do it? Don't worry, you're
certainly not alone. Even within the SEO industry, experts argue quite
frequently about the real 'how to's' of good ranking.
So, why would you want to try and figure the whole mess out? Because
the benefits far outweigh the pain of wrapping your brain around the
concept of SEO.
You can take some of the pain away by simply trying to understand the
mind and needs of your target consumer and building a site that
delivers those needs. The goal of any good search engine is the same.
Search
engines view us everyday folks as their target consumer and they want
to deliver to us the most relevant and useful websites when we type in
any search phrase. If I go to Google and type in 'dentist in tacoma,
wa' they work hard to ensure I don't get a bunch of websites describing
the Toyota Tacoma truck owned by the dentist in Phoenix.
With
that in mind, you can look at several factors when optimizing your
website. Here are my top five picks for most important factors in
building great ranking:
1. Title tag. Located within the HTML
meta tag section, the title tag is the 'name' of your website and
should contain at least one keyword phrase. Don't use your name, don't
use your company, simply use your keyword phrase(s) such as Phoenix
Real Estate & Homes for Sale. Don't stuff it full of 50 words!
2.
Anchor text of links. You must have a reciprocal linking campaign and
when you request links from other sites, it's crucial that you use your
keyword phrases as anchor text whenever you have another site link to
yours. Anchor text is the description that the other website owner will
use for the link. My anchor text for this site varies, sometimes I use
'Real Estate Virtual Assistant' and when you click on it, you get sent
to my URL. It's important to vary your anchor text with different link
partners so you target more than just one keyword phrase. Use
variations like 'Real Estate Search Engine Optimization' or 'Real
Estate Website Design.' Target those keywords that people would use to
find you and don't make it too generic or 'top level'. Millions of
sites have 'real estate' in them, you'll never get to #1 with that
phrase. However, if you're a Houston Texas agent and you use phrases
like 'katy real estate' 'tomdall homes for sale' 'cypress homes' you'll
have very targeted traffic and see results sooner than even trying to
optimize for 'houston real estate.'
3. Keyword Use. If you've
done one and two above, but your website doesn't mention your keywords
anywhere else in the site then you'll miss out on the rankings you're
hoping to cultivate. You don't want your keyword phrases appearing so
often that you site becomes unreadable, but you do want to judiciously
include three to five good keyword phrases several times on each page.
Be certain to use a different set of phrases on each page. If you have
to create content in order to use the phrases, then by all means do so!
My own website would not rank well for Search Engine Optimization if I
didn't include valuable articles and tips on SEO. Why should it? How
would you know that I can do search engine optimization if it wasn't
mentioned frequently on my site? How could you trust me to do your SEO
if there was no explanation on my site of how I do it?
4.
Accessibility. This is the element that many people don't realize is a
big issue for their website. If the search engines can't 'see' your
pages, then they can't determine what your content is and how you
should rank for it. This includes missing pages, bad linking structure
and most importantly for the real estate industry |TEMPLATE WEBSITES |
Often, real estate agents will purchase a template website and never
realize that the wide majority of their pages are virtually invisible
to the search engines. Why? Because typically in order for the provider
to give you the ability to customize your own website, they need to
keep much of the content in a database. Then, to display the content on
your site, they have pages that pull that content from the database in
such a way that the search engine spiders cannot access the pages.
Check your own websites accessibility this way; go to one of the deeper
pages of your site (featured listings, about me) and copy the full url
from the address bar. Now, go to Google and paste that url into the
search box but use the arrows to get to the beginning and remove the
'http://' and then hit enter. Does Google have that page in the cache?
If you get 'Sorry, no information for the URL...' then your pages
cannot be viewed by Google. You might want to consider switching to a
pure HTML website. Or holler at your provider!
5. Links to
Internal pages. Basically, if you have pages of value, don't bury them.
Make sure that they are linked to from other key pages. It may not make
sense to have links in your menu to every single page of your site, but
at least a main subpage should contain a link to some of the deeper
pages of the site. For example, you can have a main link in your menu
to 'Area information' or 'Community info' and then on that subpage,
have a link to several various communities you serve with great
information about each area. Also include a call to action of some kind
whether it's a form to request a free relocation guide, or a link to
'sign up for new listings by email.' Lead conversion is why you have a
website and call to action is the way to generate leads.
There are many more factors to improving your search engine ranking. A terrific resource is a rich and detailed article on Search Engine Ranking Factors
that you'll find at the link (notice I used anchor text there). While
it may seem meaty, careful study will give you the ammunition you need
to further improve your skills when optimizing your website. It was
created with contributions from some of the best Search Engine
Marketers in the business.
Good luck to you and remember if you decide to delegate your SEO, keep us in mind.
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