Are You Losing the Search Engine Wars?
Matt Browne - Z57 REALTOR® Resource
Competition among search engine for top exposure is tough. Here's 10 tips for keeping your placement in the top 10.
(1) Pick your battles
The number one error most people make in search engine optimization is having unrealistic expectations. To put in plainly, there are some terms that are just too competitive to optimize yourself, like "Los Angeles real estate" or "New York real estate". For words such as these, choose a professional optimization firm to guide you. To get an idea if you are seeking an ultra competitive term, use this tool from Overture. Any phrase with a "count" of over 500 is probably out of reach.
(2) Investigate your competition
Once you have identified your desired keyword phrase, type it into any search engine and start identifying your competition. The search engines are obviously favoring these websites so see what common elements you can include on your website. It is very beneficial to your ranking if you obtain links from the websites that are currently placing on the first page of the search engines, so keep these people in mind for future link exchanges. See tip (6) for more detail about link exchanges.
(3) Populate your phrase
After you have pin-pointed your competition and keyword phrase you are ready to begin optimizing your website. The first place to insert your desired phrase is in the following locations:
Title Tag - Sample:
<title>San Diego Homes for Sale</title>
Meta Tag - Sample:
<meta name="keywords" content="San Diego Homes, Real Estate, Realtors">
Site Header - Sample:
<h1>San Diego Homes</h1>
Z57 clients have their phrase automatically populated throughout their website upon set up.
(4) Time to write
Once you have done basic optimization in tip (3) you need to begin adding content to your website. The more valuable pages your can put together for your visitors the more likely you will get the placement you are looking for. For example, providing your home buying information or a write-up on the area is a great way to boost the size of your website and therefore your visibility in the search engines.
(5) Ongoing content development
Most people create a website and then stop working on it all together. Where would Pepsi be if they never refreshed their marketing campaign? It's important to keep feeding the search engines fresh content on a monthly (at least quarterly) basis.
(6) Link development
Sometime called offsite optimization, link development is that act of increasing the number of links linking back to your website. Linking your website to Mapquest® is NOT considered a back link. Having Mapquest® link their home page to your real estate website IS a back link. A good place to start is with people in your sphere of influence who have websites. Ask them to exchange links in order to better both sites' placement.
You will link to them, so long as they link back to you. Try to get at least 10 new links per month and you will see yourself rise in the rankings. Once you have acquired these links, wait about 90 days and see how many are being registered by the search engines using this tool.
(7) Link phrase optimization
Ideally you want people to link to you with the keyword phrase you have identified. For example "Ann Arbor MI Homes" will be the title of the link for ClickAnnArbor.com.
(8) Quality counts
Gathering links is analogous to a politician acquiring endorsements. The larger (in stature) the website is that's linking to you, the better results you will see. For example, if Amazon.com or Realtor.com links their website to yours, it will be much more beneficial than "Joe's Guestbook."
(9) Avoid over-optimization
If you over-populate your desired phrase throughout your website you may be disregarded by the search engines. This is true for virtually any optimization technique; if you overdo it you may find your work has only left you three steps backwards.
(10) Continue to study
Even the best websites continually need to stay on top of changes in the SEO industry. To keep abreast of industry changes visit http://SearchEngineWatch.com for helpful tips and recent industry musings.
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