Real Estate SEO Adviser

Low-Maintenance Ways to Boost Your SEO

Let me be the first to tell you that real estate search engine optimization (SEO) is a long-term strategy. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

But even a 26-mile marathon begins with a single step and consists of many individual strides. This is also true of a real estate SEO campaign, which begins with a single step (like putting up a real estate website or blog) and consists of many individual strides (like publishing content, networking, etc.).

So yes, search engine optimization is a long-term strategy. But that doesn’t mean it’s overly complex or difficult. In fact, there are plenty of simple techniques you can implement over the next few days to boost your real estate website’s visibility over the long haul. I call these techniques “low-maintenance” because they don’t require extensive preparation or technical know-how.

So without further ado, here are five low-maintenance strategies for real estate SEO:

1. Submit a Press Release Online
Many real estate agents don’t realize they can publish / syndicate a press release online for less than $100. Even better, you can optimize your press release for SEO by including keyword-rich links to your website. The “optimized press release” is a technique I use about once a month for myself and also for clients. It brings publicity, direct exposure, and yes, SEO benefits.

I use and recommend PRWeb.com as a primary source of distribution. But I also use PRLeap.com, PRLog.org, OpenPR.com and others. The cost for submission varies from one service to another (PRWeb.com costs about $100, while PRLog.com is free).

2. Publish Articles Online
Article writing and distribution is another easy but effective way to bolster your real estate search engine marketing program. When you write a high-quality real estate-related article, and that article gets reprinted onto other reputable websites, it helps build your professional credibility. But that’s not all it builds … it is an SEO technique that can help you build your search engine visibility as well.

When you create an interesting and/or helpful article and syndicate it online, that article can travel a long way. And because it takes your author’s note and hyperlink with it, the article increases your link popularity (the number of websites that link to yours). This has a direct and positive impact on your overall search engine ranking.

3. Revisit Your Page Titles
The title elements that are used across your real estate website have a lot to do with the search engine visibility of individual web pages. This is another area where you can boost your real estate SEO without a lot of time or technicality.

A title element is a line of HTML code in a web page that describes the content of that page. Titles tell people what a page is about (when they appear in search engine results), and they also help search engines understand your page content and categorize it accordingly.

You can optimize your title elements for people and search engines alike by including specific key phrases within each title … phrases that accurately describe the content of that page. Thus, you will want a unique title element on every web page (since every page is, or should be, unique).

The World Wide Web Consortium (the guys who developed web standards in the first place), put it this way: “Thus, instead of a title such as ‘Introduction,’ which doesn’t provide much contextual background, authors should supply a title such as ‘Introduction to Medieval Bee-Keeping’ instead.”

4. Add 10 Pages of Content to Your Site
Some people might read this sub-heading and say, “Now wait a minute! I thought these were going to be low-maintenance SEO techniques.” Don’t be intimidated by the idea of ten additional web pages. I’m not suggesting 5,000-word essays here. I’m talking about ten short topics related to your business, with a web page for each of them.

See the five techniques listed in this real estate SEO article? In about two hours’ time, I could easily expand each item into page length, thus creating five new web pages. What would the benefit be for me and my readers? More useful information for my readers, and extra web pages for SEO “weight” for me. Plus, the extra pages will allow me to diversify my SEO campaign by focusing on a broader range of search phrases.

Glossaries, Q&A pages, and community profiles are some good ways to implement this tactic on a real estate website.

5. Blog Regularly
If you’re serious about search engine visibility, you should publish a real estate blog. To be more specific, you should blog on a regular basis. This will support your search engine optimization program in a number of ways, but the benefits don’t end there — blogging can bolster your reputation as well. A quality real estate blog can help you grow your website, acquire inbound links, build your reputation, inform your readers, reinforce your brand … the list goes on.

In keeping with our “low-maintenance” theme, blog publishing is easy. Once you have your blog setup, you can create new blog posts as easily as you would create an email message. Type your content, click the “Publish” button and be done with it.

Because of this simplicity, you can blog often. Do it three times a week for a year, and you’ll have more than 150 pages of additional web content. Great for readers, and great for search engine visibility.