Real Estate SEO Adviser

Search Engine Visibility - The 12 Step Program

All recent agents who own websites want to be at the top of the search engines. But it’s obviously a numbers game, and only a small percentage of agents in a given town will find themselves in the top ten of Google, Yahoo, etc.

Many agents will hope for success all day long, but won’t get very far. Other agents will be proactive and take charge of their online visibility. This latter group will learn everything there is to know about real estate search engine optimization (SEO). For these go-getters, I offer the following “12-step program” for real estate SEO success:

12 Steps to Real Estate Search Engine Optimization

1. Key Phrases
Key phrases are the starting point for any SEO program. They are the building blocks upon which you will build your website content (see next item). Researching words and phrases through a tool like WordTracker.com can reveal the search behavior of your ideal audience. Armed with this information, you can create the kind of web content they’re after!

2. Quality Content
Developing high-quality content will help your real estate SEO program in three ways: It makes your link-building efforts much easier. It tells search engines what your website is all about. And most importantly, it keeps visitors on your site longer (giving you a better chance of turning them into clients). You’ll learn a lot more about creating web content in the Top Ten Agent e-book.

3. Site Structure
Believe it or not, your website’s structure plays a big role in search engine visibility. Good site structure will help search engines find and index all the pages of your website. Bad site structure has the opposite effect. For instance, dynamic Javascript menus and Flash-driven menus can slow search engine crawlers down considerably. But an alternate text-based menu can help them along their way.

4. Internal Linking
Internal links refer to the navigation elements within your website (menus, inline text links, etc.). A good internal linking structure will help search engines find all of your web pages. Putting key phrases in some of your text links also helps search engines understand your site’s theme.

5. Competitor Analysis
Study your competitors who already rank well in search engines to find out what they’re doing right. You can learn a lot from a top-ranked website within your niche, if you know what to look for).

6. Inbound Links
Inbound links (from other sites to yours) are a key part of search engine visibility - especially with Google. But many agents go about this process all wrong, causing themselves more harm than anything. That’s why I’ve integrated the process of link building within the new e-book, Top Ten Agent.

7. Blogging
Real estate blogs can play a major role in search engine optimization because they make web publishing quick and easy. Blogs are easy to use, making website owners more likely to create new content on a regular basis. Blogs can also attract inbound links, especially if you’re an authority.

8. Web Directories
Web directories can strengthen your link popularity and make you less susceptible to ranking fluctuations caused by search engine updates. I recommend to clients that they add their websites to one or two general directories (like Best of the Web) and as many niche directories as possible.

9. Niche Directories
Niche directories carry the same benefits of general web directories. But because they’re specific to your website’s topic, they can give your SEO program a lot of boost. An example of a niche directory for real estate agents would be the International Real Estate Directory (www.ired.com).

10. Press Releases
A real estate press release submitted online will often get picked up by respectable news websites, RSS feeds, blogs and more. If you hyerplink some of your key phrases, all of those blogs and websites will be pointing toward your website with key phrase hyperlinks!

11. Online articles
Online article publishing is one of my favorite ways to gain a lot of inbound links with only a little effort. Using websites like EzineArticles.com, you can tap into a large distribution network. You can also find dozens of niche websites who need quality content to publish.

12. Download the e-Book!
I know you’re very busy running your real estate business, but I also know that search engine visibility is important to you. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading my real estate SEO blog. That’s why I’ve taken my tried-and-true process for climbing the search engine rankings and “bottled” it up for you. Download your copy of Top Ten Agent today, and you can start following my path to SEO success.