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7 Days to Better Your SEO | Day 7: Website Submission

August 25, 2009

7 Days to Better Your SEO
(Search Engine Optimization)

Day 7: Website Submission

I am going to end my 7 part series to a better SEO with site submission.  It a simple concept, yes, but one that is often overlooked.  While some companies out there offer a free submission service to hundreds of sites I prefer to at least manually submit to the major search engines myself.  Also the other 100 or so they speak about comprise of less than 2%-5% of the total searches and are not worth your time.  Focus on the ones that count.

Website Submission

Submitting your website to search engines is very important for obvious reasons but sometimes is not as easy as it looks.   As a REALTOR you need to consider 2 types of search engines.

Mainstream such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing

Portal sites such as the Real Estate Library and REALTOR.com

Submitting to the major engines is not always as simple as it seems and finding the other smaller focused engines might even be more challenging. 

Here are some instructions to submitting to the Major Search Engines:

Google- Google is pretty straight forward.  Just navigate to this page and then choose what you are submitting; website, sitemap, or local business information

Bing- Bing is Microsoft’s newest search engine.  If you want to submit your site here you first need a Microsoft LiveID.  If you do not  have one you will be asked to create one.  To begin go to the submission page.  In order to complete the submission process Bing requires authentication to ensure that only the rightful owners are provided with information about their websites.

There are two ways to prepare your website for authentication, both of which rely on your adding an authentication code on your website.
 
1:  Bing provides a custom XML file containing your authentication code that you can save to the root folder of your website.
2: Meta tag authentication – They provide you <meta> tag containing the authentication code that you add to the <head> section of your default webpage.

Yahoo- To submit your website to Yahoo go to this page.  You will also need a Site ExplorerID which you can sign -up for when you submit your site.

Here are some real estate portal sites you might also consider.  I do not endorse any but they are a good way to get a relevant link.  Some of these sites charge a fee for inclusion.

Real Estate Specific Sites

The Real Estate Library - Contains all the tools that real estate professionals and clients need. We currently have more than 100,000 resources essential to building your career and keeping it on track.

Zillow- Zillow.com is an online real estate service dedicated to helping you get an edge in real estate by providing you with valuable tools and information.

Trulia - Trulia is a real estate search engine that helps you find homes for sale and provides real estate information at the local level to help you make better decisions in the process.  They also now have a Agent directory.

REALTOR.com- Of course everyone knows this one.  All REALTORS who are NAR members are already included in directory but they do have ways to enhance your presence.

Linking

Before I close this series I also want to emphasize the importance of linking.  Getting quality inbound or reciprocal links is also a very important aspect of any good SEO campaign.  Probably the most overlooked aspect when you are trying to do your own SEO optimization.  Quality links can be as important in terms of SEO value as content sometimes.

Try searching for other websites and blogs that would be associated with your keywords by preforming searches on the major engines listed above.  These websites are already indexed by the search engines so by linking your website to some of these can give you some important relevance rankings. Also it can serve as an alternate path for the search engine bots to find you if your site is new.

Linking to other websites

If you find a really nice site that is using your keywords or perhaps is in your industry, make contact and ask for a link.  Inbound links are the best but most of the time you need to settle for a reciprocal link.  Maybe a builders website in your market would be a target for a reciprocal link.  Perhaps an inbound link from a mortgage company you work is also another idea.  However you do it, links are important.  Google says so very clearly.  The more relevant inbound links you have the more relevant Google will consider you.

Blogging

Be a contributor on related blogs.  When you make comments you can also enter your website address.  Now you might have heard a lot of blogs have a no-follow attribute when you enter your website.  This is true, but not all do and the worst case scenario is that you are getting your name out there and adding to your sphere of influence and building creditability.

Article Writing

If you have the time Article Writing can be a very rewarding experience.  There are many sites that allow you to submit articles for inclusion on their site.  These articles then have a section about you where you can add an inbound link to your site.  These articles are then used in other sites giving you the credit and link back.  Some examples of article sites are;  EzineArticles,  GetMyArticles, Go Articles, and The Real Estate Article Directory.

So give some a try and see what results you get.  The important thing to remember is that this is an ongoing process and you should always be working on your SEO.

I hope you enjoyed this 7 part post and check back as I will continue to bring you other tips on website development and optimization.

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7 Days to Better Your SEO | Day 6: Links

August 21, 2009

7 Days to Better Your SEO
(Search Engine Optimization)

Day 6: Links

Any good SEO strategy should include link building.  Link building is based upon the concept of Link Popularity which is a concept I explained in a past post.

When thinking about links you should consider these types of links.  I ordered them in the level of importance.

  1. Inbound Links – Someone links to YOUR website but you do NOT link back to theirs.
  2. Reciprocol Links – Both websites link to each other.
  3. Outbound Links – You link to another website but the other website does NOT link back to you.
  4. Internal Links – Links on your website that links to pages on yourown website.

Inbound Links

Certainly the hardest type of link to get but search engines like Google weigh these heavily.  Why?  Because if a website links to only you and you not back, the search engines feel that you must be an authoritive source to have an inbound link.  But keep in mind if you have a real estate website in Florida and a pizzeria in Dallas, TX links to you the relavance ranking Google will give you is most likely quite low.  However the same Pizzeria in your market area would bwe more relative and certainly a ne wdevelopment in your town even more.

Here are some ways you can build your inbound links. Some are fairly easy to do while others take some effort. After all if no effort was involved everyone would do it.

Remember that the Internet is based on content and the success of the Web is built upon the proliferation of accessible information. If you build a website with information people want, they will come. If you build good content people will then want to link to it. But always be mindful of not getting into link spamming or placing links on sites that practice the same.

So what are some of the ways you can build some good inbound links.

  1. Place your links on directories
  2. Join social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Active Rain, etc.
  3. Write articles in enzines
  4. Create pages in hub sites such as Squiddo or Hubpages
  5. Use Yahoo or Google news
  6. Embed links in video’s you post to YouTube
  7. Use Microblogging such as Twitter
  8. Of course set up your own Blog

Linking

Another interesting way to get your links out is allowing people to easily bookmark your pages.  Services such as “ShareThis” provide code to put on your webpages which visitors can click on and book mark your webpage on major social media sites.  Write good content and people will bookmark you.

Press Releases

Press Releases are another great way to get your links out.  Services such as PR.com allow you to post a press release for a reasonable fee.  When you create a release you can then add your link.  They also offer a free service but you do not get the luxury to add your link.  But even the free release will be picked up by Google News and be broad-casted.

Google Alerts

Try setting up alerts on your keywords and when you get hits, examinene the source and then comment on the sites if you can.  Much of the news comes from Blogs so you can then comment on the Blog.  Good relevant comments will ensure the Blog master will publish your comment.

Relationships

Don’t forget the simple ways too.  Within your profession you have established relationships with Mortgage Brokers, Appraisers,  Home Inspectors, etc.  Why not ask for a link to you on their website.  The very least is you can get a reciprocal link on a relevant site.

Link building is a evolving process and you never really stop trying to build links.  Even if you participate in social networking, blogging, etc. on a regular basis you will begin to see your link count go up.  Remember good content is the key for good link building.  Have a site that becomes an invaluable resource and build upon that.

Reciprocal Linking

While not as important as a good inbound link, never the less having multiple reciprocal links will also help you build link popularity.  Keep them in your market area and try building links with local businesses, complementary associates such as Inspectors, Appraisers, etc. 

Outbound Links

Outbound links are obviously the easiest to get but getting good ones are a bit harder.  Building quality outbound links to good authoritative sites  will help the search engines see where your relevance is.  Also by linking to these sites you will provide useful information to your viewers as well.  Remember you should get permission.

Internal Links

Internal links help the search engines know what is important to you.  By links Allendale Homes to a page on your site titles allendale-homes.html and then having that page discuss Allendale homes will establish a clear path for the search engines to see how important that keyword phrase is.

The moral of this post is, build links, keep building them over time.  Make them authoritative and of value.  Links help boost your SEO and they also provide your viewers some enriching related content.

Good luck.  Up on Day 7 is Site Submission.

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7 Days to Better Your SEO | Day 5: Headings

August 18, 2009

7 Days to Better Your SEO
(Search Engine Optimization)

Day 5: Headings

Day 5 brings me to discuss Headings.  To maximize your SEO you need to use these properly.  A heading in HTML is simply a title or a subtitle. By placing content inside a H1-H6 tag the text displays bold and larger than the body text.  The lower the number the larger the text typically.

Here are what the H1-H6 tags might look like.   If you have a WYSIWYG editor you will usually find a drop down menu with the default selection as “Paragraph” which is regular body text, followed by Headings 1-6.  You also may find other attributes like Preformatted or DIV.  We will save those for a later dicusssion.

H1 Tag

H2 Tag

H3 Tag

H4 Tag

H5 Tag
H6 Tag

The way the Headings look is really for the benefit of the reader, but the Heading value is for the benefit of the search engines.  Headings are weighted higher by search engine crawlers than standard content.  The  added benefit is they are one of the most simplest things you can do with your HTML content that can give you a small boost towards search engine optimization.  You can use headings tags from H1 to H6 and each will signalfy a level of importance from H1 being the most authoritative to H6 being least important.

Heading tags are very simple to use. The difficult part is determining what to put in them. Let’s look at the following example:

<h1>Real Estate in Fairfield, NJ</h1>

Very simple, right? Heading tags are very easy to add, but you should keep them reserved for important keywords and keyword phrases. Heading tags are also hierarchal.  Consider the following example:

<h1>Real Estate in Essex County</h1>

<h2>Fairfield Real Estate</h2>

Your most important phrase being Real Estate in Essex County with the second most important being Fairfield Real Estate. I like to think of Heading tags a lot like an outline. Your second-level tags should relate to the heading above.  You use the h2 tags to further sub-divide described in the h1 tag.  You then use the h3 tags to further divide the content in the h2 tag above and continue as far down as you need it.  However I rarely need to go beyond a h3 level.

Since Headings are used to show importance you also want to consider what you are going to use them for.  Remember we want to draw out the attention of your keywords here. Now take this example:

General Keyword:  New Jersey Real Estate
Micro Keyword:  Pascack Valley Real Estate

H1 Heading:  Top Pascack Valley Real Estate Agent

Some Useful Tips When Using Headings

  • Header tags should contain your target keywords along with any other descriptive text relevant to the content of the page.
  • Search engines give more importance to Header tags  as compared to other text on your page.
  • Use your most targeted keyword phrases in heading tags on your webpage.
  • Add highly relevant keywords in your headings. 
  • Analyze the relevancy of your keywords and place most important keyword in your h1 tag.
  • Think about the layout of your page with the h1 tag being your most important keyword and make the keyword phrase targeted, not generic.
  • Your h2-h6 headings should break down the information to the higher heading above.  So a h3 heading should relate to its h2 heading.

Here is how one might see how the headings are used in a webpage.

h1
     h2
          h3
              h4
      h2
           h3
      h2
 

Next up Links.

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7 Days to Better Your SEO | Day 4: Good Content

August 12, 2009

7 Days to Better Your SEO
(Search Engine Optimization)

Day 4: Good Content

I apologize for not getting this post out on Monday but I re-wrote it several times. 

When a REALTOR needs to write content two important factors should immediately come to mind.  Community and real estate advise.  The former will build good local content and the latter will reinforce your role as a professional.

You might have heard the phrase “Content King” when talking about writing good content.  If your site is the most authoritative site for its subject matter, you will not only draw interested buyers but in all likelihood rank well in the search engines.   I wrote a similar post a few months back “Writing Good Content” where I focused on structure.  Today I am going to take that a bit further and talk about conceptual ideas when thinking about writing your content.

Keywords

One concept I spoke of was the importance of “Keywords”.  This is the first commandment of good SEO content.  When you consider which keyword phrases you are going to use, consider what your expertise is and what is the target market you are trying to attract.  If you specialize in Condo Buyers in Miami, FL, then you need to maintain this idea throughout your website.  Too many people try to be master of all and wind up in the search engines eyes, the master of none.  So when considering keywords think like a buyer orseller would.

Keyword Considerations

Let’s use the example of “Condo’s in Miami, FL” as our basic concept for our website.  Now in thinking of what to write we know that our main keyword phrase needs to appear in the web page.  If it is not there the search engines will never know it is important to you.  Your goal is to convince Google, for example, that you are the most authoritative site for Condo’s in Miami, FL.

Another consideration is making your keywords as specific as possible. Going after highly targeted keywords not only will bring you more qualified prospects but will also be easier to achieve favorable results with.  The big franchises invest a substantial amount of money on keyword phrases like Floria Real Estate, so competing with them is futile.  The more precise phrases like Shadow Cove Condo’s Miami FL is a very specific phrase and also contains your main keyword phrase of Condo’s in Miami, FL.

Keyword Frequency

Keyword Frequency refers to how many times your keyword appears on a page.  You can ask 10 different SEO experts on the optimal amount and you will get 10 different answers.    Some even believe that this is not even important anymore but I think for the average non SEO professional writing content it is a good rule of thumb to use this as a guideline to ensure you are focusing on your keywords.  The other issue us that Google prefers one amount while Yahoo another.  So in my opinion to offer the best chance of success without creating multiple pages for each search engine I would like to see your keyword and keyword variations repeated on your page 10-13 times.  That is also based on a 700 or so word page.

Keyword Prominence

Keyword Prominence is how early or high up on a page your keywords are found.  I absolutely like to have my keywords in my first H1 tag on my page and also have it again as far forward in my first sentence.

Word Stemming

Word stemming is a term that refers to the ability to use all variations – singular, plural, verb form as well as similar words to be returned for a given search query.  So for you the above example the word “condo” when searched by Google would also return some of these stems; condos, condominum, condominums, etc.  So by using the logic of the stems you can further enhance your own keywords.

Keyword Placement

So where do you want to place keywords?  Here is a list of places where your keyword should be going.

  • Certainly use them in your Meta <title> tag(s).
  • Use your Keywords in the Meta <description>.
  • Use them in your Meta <keyword>.  The jury is out on if this is really very important anymore but since it is a supported HTML Meta element, can’t hurt.
  • Keywords are important in your header tags; <h1> or other headline tags.
  • Use Keywords when possible in your links <a href=”http://yourrealestateoffice.com”>keywords</a>.
  • Use them in the body copy for sure.
  • When possible use Keywords in alt tags.
  • Using your keywords in a URL or site address is also a good idea, e.g., http://www.keyword.com or
    http://www.wesitename.com/keyword.htm.

What Keywords do I use?

Here are some suggestions;

  • Think about your service area from a community perspective.  If you specialize in the Pascack Valley, NJ area, include pages on the town communities, lifestlye, market reports, local business, etc.
  • Keyword on competitors websites.
  • Visible page copy on competitors websites.
  • Try searching Google and see what the results return.
  • Use an online tools like: Google Keyword Tool
  • Pay attention to stemming for your keywords – Particularly to what the root word is and what Google considers to be a match for that word when optimizing pages over time.
  • You can do brainstorming to identify correct keywords for your site.

Writing the perfect content is not easy but once you understand the placement and usage of keywords and phrases you can then write solid, readable and friendly content for your readers.  Remember Content is King and if you write good quality and ORIGINAL content you surely will have some degree of success if not for a outstanding website.

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7 Days to Better Your SEO | Day 3: Sitemaps

August 7, 2009

7 Days to Better Your SEO
(Search Engine Optimization)

Day 3: Sitemaps

Today I want to talk about Site Maps. A Sitemap is basically a list of all the pages in your website. They are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages in their sites that are available for crawling.  Sitemaps are not “Site Indexes”  and people sometimes use the term interchangablilty.  In reality a Sitemap categorizes from top to bottom while a Site Index sorts and stores web page information alphabetically.  These are usually web pages that you have on your site and list all the pages.  They are also good to have as they serve the human purpose first allowing people to easily find pages and the search engines will crawl them as well.  Sitemaps or Site Indexes  are important to use if you have a site that uses a lot of Adobe Flash or any medium that a search engine would have trouble indexing.  They also stand in as a navigational aid by providing a summary of a websites content at a glance.

A new concept was put into action in 2005; Google introduced their idea of XML Sitemaps. The XML Sitemaps (approved by MSN, Yahoo, Ask and Google) let the major search engines receive updates when the content on a web page is edited/updated. Web crawlers usually discover pages from links within the site and from other sites. Sitemaps supplement this data to allow crawlers that support Sitemaps to pick up all URLs in the Sitemap and learn about those URLs using the associated metadata. Using the Sitemap protocol does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site. A newer feature of these XML Sitemaps is that it can summarize how frequent a specific website is updated and can store the last time the content on that website was updated.

Site maps were introduced because the complexity and amount of websites that are added to the internet everyday is far beyond what it was even 15 years ago. The search engines were even skipping over websites because there was just too much information to process. Now Google, MSN, Ask and Yahoo can find information faster and with more efficiency.

So now the question is how do you build an XML page for the search engines. Luckily there are plenty of programs out their what will do that for you quite easily. Some are free and some cost a nominal amount. Just go to CNET’s Download.com and search the term “sitemap” and you will find plenty.  I have used SoftPLUS GSite Crawler and SiteMap Pro in the past and they both work very well.  GSite was free the last time I checked and you are encouraged to make a donation to support the future development while SiteMap Pro was $59.

Before I close I want to just touch 2 terms I referred to in this post.

Metadata is simply  “data about other data”.  It is used to describe information about the information you are using.  For example for Sitemap maps, certain metadata may describe when the page was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a general-purpose specification for creating custom markup language.  The term extensible is used to indicate that a markup-language designer has significant freedom in the choice of markup elements.  Simply put it is a format that a programmer (or program) uses to create a sitemap or other files that use the XML protocol.  Then the search engines in this example will understand how to read the file since they know how to read the XML protocol.

I will be back Monday with Day 4: Writing Good Content

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7 Days to Better Your SEO | Day 2: Anchor Text

August 6, 2009

7 Days to Better Your SEO
(Search Engine Optimization)

Day 2: Anchor Text Optimization

Anchor text (or links, link label or link titles) is the highlighted or hyper linked (clickable) words or phrases in the content of a webpage.  Used properly it can tell a search engine what the page is about and gives useful information to the readers of your content.  This hyper linked text is used to define the subject matter of the content on the web page and amplify the target or landing page URL for the keywords appearing within the anchor text.

Anchor text can appear all throughout your website and finding the perfect sentence structure to link is easy if you follow these simple instructions.

STAY AWAY from using words like “click here” or “read more” as anchor text.   Keep your reader enticed; use a format similar to this instead.

We can help you create the perfect professional website; curtailed to your specific needs as a Real Estate Expert!

——– Instead of ——–

We can help you create the perfect professional website; curtailed to your specific needs as a Real Estate Expert! Please click here.

Anchor text is so important to the relevance of a web page’s SEO whether it is to an internal or external link.   So take fifteen minutes to go through a web page you manage and correct that futile anchor text.   Believe me you’ll be happy you did!

By linking relevant keywords in your anchor text you tell the search engines the keywords are important.  The search engines bots will analyze the text of the anchor and what is clicks to.  So hyper linking to a phrase like “Fort Lee Condo” instead of  “Click Here” you are helping define your keyword target to the search engines.

When you are thinking of what to hyperlink, think of your SERP (Search Engine Result Pages).  A SERP is the listings of web pages returned by a search engine.  So what do you want your viewers to type into Google for example to yield your SERP.

When using anchor text you want to link together related SERP’s to help define your target keywords.  If I was an Agent specializing in the Fort Lee Condo market, my related internal pages might be as follows;

  1. A page on the Fort Lee Condo market
  2. Sold data in Fort Lee by month
  3. A page on lifestyle of Fort Lee
  4. Anchors to a Fort Lee Condo IDX search
  5. A page on Fort Lee schools
  6. A external link to the Fort Lee town website
  7. Maybe links to Fort Lee business, community, etc.

Now I understand in the real world your anchor text cannot always be perfect, but that is part of the fun of the whole SEO process.  If it was easy everyone would be doing it.

Now as I said search engine bots like Anchor Text.  The inclusion of important keywords in the anchor text can make a big difference in the final ranking of your websites pages.

Most search engines give weight to the anchor text on your pages and by taking some time to properly use them can make a significant impact on your site SEO.

So take a look at your own website and see where you can make some changes.

Good luck.  Next up on Day 3 will be Site Maps.

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