How To Get Top Search Engine Listings For Your Real Estate Web Site - Get Articles by Stan Smith |  |
> Get Articles > Search Engines and SEO > How To Get Top Search Engine Listings For Your Real Estate Web Site How To Get Top Search Engine Listings For Your Real Estate Web Site Download as PDFStan Smith stanhometerrasimarketing.com Master Realtor Internet Secrets Revealed http://www.realtorinternettips.com Search engines are a key tool in the Internet Realtor’s arsenal. The effective use of search engines can insure that your website gets a steady stream of traffic. The Pay per Click Advantage: The old way to getting the top listing on search engines required hours of tedious programming work – with no guaranteed results. Now, a new breed of search engines have made it easier to get the #1 listing for your category by using a time-honored technique – the good old auction. These new search engines allow you to select the keyword the best described your service and allows you to bid on the top spot. For example if you sell pet food – you can buy the keyword pet food. Now, everyone that enters the search term will see your website listing first. There’s a twist though. If your keyword is popular you could end up paying as much as $5.00 per click for the #1 spot. If your keyword is searched once every blue moon – you would pay as little as .05 cents a click. I like pay per click engines such as Overture.com because if I invest in the top spot for my sites, then my site will be listed #1 on Yahoo, MSN and Google which represents roughly 80% of the web audience. Another advantage is that sites like Overture.com keeps track of how many people actually searches specific terms. This means that you can find out the potential audience for your search term before actually bidding. This gives you the opportunity to search for niche terms that get a lot of traffic but have gone unnoticed by your competitors. These keywords are like winning lottery tickets and I never launch a site unless I can find the “magic word” You can check out the Overture Term Suggestion Tool by visiting www.overture.com and going to the Advertiser Tools section. Look around a bit and you will find the Term Suggestion Tool (overture moves the link around a lot). In my book Master Realtor Internet Secrets Revealed, I walk you through a fool-proof way to find your Magic Search word and how to use it to generate high-quality hot leads to your website. You can check it out at www.RealtorInternetTips.com Search Engine 101: Search engines are the most sophisticated and useful tool on the Web today. Search Engines are the phone book and tour guide of the web – directing millions of users a day to their preferred destinations. An estimated 80% of all web traffic is routed through search engines – making them a valuable tool for web users. Search Engines do their job by periodically visiting every web site on the web and indexing them. The grunt work is done by small automated programs called spiders that crawl the web looking for new sites. These spiders gather information about the sites they visit and relay it back to “Search Central” for cataloging. Sites are catalogued using a super sophisticated and super secretive algorithm. This algorithm spits out a ranking for your web site and voila your #1 or #2000. Right now, there are millions of super smart people trying to crack the code for these algorithms. Keeping it simple, amazingly enough is the best strategy for consistently getting ranked in the Top 10. I talk a little more about this in the next section. Making Your Site Search Engine Friendly: Without getting too technical there are a few ways that you can tune up your realtor site for the search engines. Here are some quick tips: - Make sure you use the word Real Estate or Homes in the title of each of your web pages. The title of each of your pages can be seen in the top-most blue bar (in Internet Explorer). Also, it helps tremendously if your page title includes the same keyword that you are bidding on in the Pay Per Click Search Engine. - Choose text over graphics. Search engines are automated indexers who love words. The more words you give them the better the like your site. Real Estate sites that have large page-smothering graphics will always rank lower than sites that have descriptive text talking about real estate and selling homes. - Alt-Tag your pictures. When you place a picture of your homes on your site – always add an “alternate description” to the picture. This description will be shown even if your picture doesn’t load correctly. In fact, some search engines regard descriptive alt-tags as a plus in their ranking calculations. - Fill Your Keyword Meta-Tag: Make a least of 10-15 keywords that describe your site and include these keywords in the keyword meta-tag on your site. Caution – don’t stuff this tag with hundreds of keywords. This tactic worked in 1996 but it doesn’t work now – in fact most search engines will ignore the tag if it is “stuffed” with random keywords. Telling the World Your Open for Business: Ok. You’ve found a great keyword in Overture and made your web site absolutely irresistible to the search engine spiders. Now it’s time to submit your real estate lead generation site. Now I know there are tons of free search engines out their and if you want to submit to them that’s fine. However, I’ve found the vast majority of search engines to be a waste of time because they just don’t get any traffic. I recommend concentrating your efforts on Overture.com, Google and if you have $300.00 to invest – on Yahoo. Here’s a hot tip, almost everyone uses Google’s search engine listings. So submitting your site to Google will give you the best bang for your buck, especially because it’s free (for the moment). Search Engine NO-NO Here are some search engine tactics some realtors use that don’t work and can even get your site banned by the search engines! 1. Submitting to FFA (Free For All) Sites – FFA sites are pages that allow you to list your site for free in return for your email address. Millions of hapless users submit their site to these pages in the hopes of getting quick traffic. These sites have been proven not to work and are generally considered a nuisance. So much so that if a search engine sees your site listed on a FFA site it might get banned. So avoid FFA sites all together. 2. Hidden Text – Some believe that they can trick the search engines into ranking their site highly by repeating a popular keyword hundreds of times. They change the keyword’s font color to the background color of the site – making the word invisible. The search engines know of this tactic and they have programmed their spiders to ignore the junk keywords and in some cases blacklist the site. 3. Constant Resubmissions – Once you have submitted your site your done. Constantly resubmitting your site is considered to be a form of spam by many search engines which could lead to your site being banned. Only resubmit your site if your site drops drastically in the rankings or if you radically chance the content on your site. 4. Using exotic techniques like cloaking and doorway pages. These techniques are used to fool the search engine spiders into ranking your site highly. The problem with these techniques is that they require constant monitoring and carry the risk of your site getting permanently banned if you’re discovered. Don’t take the chance. One last piece of advice; don’t spend too much time poring over your site’s search ranking. Improving your search engine rankings is just one key to the success of our Real Estate Lead Generation Web Site. You also need to make sure you have a good inventory of listings, a reliable method for converting lookers to buyers, and a effective referral system. All of these factors will insure the success of your web site – not just one. Good Luck ***************************************** Stan Smith is the author of the popular eBook Master Realtor Internet Secrets Revealed! You can subscribe to his free e-zine by sending a blank email to realtortipsgetresponse.com or by visiting www.RealtorInternetTips.com How useful did you find this article? 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