Top Ten Search Engine Subjects

Here at Advanced Access we are committed to the growth and success of your website. In our weekly Marketing Tips we enjoy keeping you updated with the latest tips, trends, and ideas to help you make the most of your website.

 

Within the last four months, members of our Website Marketing Team have attended various search engine conferences around the country. These search engine conferences are a review of basic search engine optimization items, discussing new trends, and providing new networking opportunities with other professionals in the field. Coming home from these informative conferences allows us to improve our clients results, share new information with our family of users, and keep you updated on how to reach that number one ranking in Google.

 

With 2007 now underway, staying on top of your game is now more important than ever. So let's get to the good stuff.

Top 10 Ways to Google Your Way to Gold

1. Target the Right Neighborhood

Just like "Location Location Location" is your oft-repeated mantra in real estate, it's the same for the search engines as well. Your meta content is easy to overlook, however, it is the foundation of your perfect "home" on the Internet. Make sure your meta title, description, and keywords are present and accounted for in your website. (We set up your meta information when you first purchased your site so the info is there. but keep reading!) What is most important though is to have any keywords listed in your meta information actually apply to the general subject matter and content found on your site. If you are trying things like listing every word you can think of that even slightly applies to real estate, you're risking having the Search Engines think that you can't decide exactly what your site is about and they may punish you in the rankings for it.

It is very important that you choose keywords that are appropriate and natural. "Appropriate" meaning that they actually appear within the content of your website and go along with the overall tone and theme of your site. "Natural" meaning that you are taking your possible VISITOR into consideration. Think about it, when you're doing a search online do you search for "Houses for sale in and around Orange County" or do you search "Orange County Houses for Sale"? My guess is the latter. Remember when you are writing your keywords that pluralizing is a good idea on words where it would make sense to do so, such as "Realtor" and "Realtors," "Home" and "Homes," etc.

Again, we mentioned earlier that your information was set up when you first purchased your site. Go exploring through your Design Center > Keyword Manager to make sure you are still on target for the neighborhood you want to be targeting.

2. Write a Compelling Search Engine Title for all Pages

When you search on Google (or any other engine) a list of Internet web pages will come up for your review. When deciding on what link to click, you are presented with a title and a description, or small snippet of information. The title that appears is usually taken from the meta title of your website. You have 100% control over the meta title so it is important to have a compelling title that resonates with people to click on your link but at the same time is short and concise to let the search engines know what your site is about.

Don't get fancy when creating custom meta titles or tags for your interior pages. (This can be done in your Design Center > Header Manager for each page you have created!) It may be tempting to write in your phone number, name, and company but it would be best for you and your website to be short and sweet in describing what your page is about. Many site owners think that using special characters like a comma (",") or pipe ("|") will help to set your words and title apart. Although this may be true, it would be more beneficial for you to separate keyword phrases with a hyphen ("-"). Also, when writing your Meta title, get your most important information within 60 characters as that is the character limit of what Google displays to consumers searching. The Meta title is for telling the search engines POINT BLANK what the page is about so be descriptive but be short! If you want to cover a wide variety of subjects, use the meta description, meta keywords, and actual content on the page.

            3. I'm Talking to YOU!

Since the home page is the most important landing page of your website both to visitors and search engines, this page should be the top priority on your list to make as presentable and content-rich as possible. This is where we force the visitor to go where we want them to on our website by using "Calls to Action." Calls to action are a marketing term for convincing a visitor to commit to a certain action on the website, thus enhancing their overall experience and allowing you, the site owner, to direct your visitors to the most important sections of your site. They are fairly simple to implement and can be as easy as creating a text link followed by descriptive text that SELLS what you have to offer. This text link would then lead to a page which describes the service you are offering in detail and offers the visitor some way of contacting you about that service.

            4. Looking for a GPS System for your Website?

Are you starting to get lost with all the new pages of content you've created? If you are, your visitors may be wandering around and even the search engines might need a clue in the right way to go! Help them out by creating a sitemap. It is important to have the pages of your site be easy to find from any point/page on your website, which is why creating a sitemap is so beneficial. If you have a link to each important page of your site in your site map, search engines will be able to quickly and efficiently navigate amongst the pages of your website, giving each proper attention and credit.

If you have hundreds of pages on your website and would not like to have all of those tiny links appear at the bottom of every page, you can take Matt Cutts advice and "break the sitemap up on your pages. Instead of hundreds of links all on one page, you could organize your articles chronologically (each year could be a page), alphabetically, or by topic."

            5. On-Page Factors

On-page factors are anything that affect the way things on the page are displayed to your visitors or the search engines such as the content, H1 heading tags, meta tags, image attributes (i.e. alt tags), text attributes (i.e. bolding, italicizing, etc.), anchor text and more. We recently posted on our blog about the basics of HTML and the proper way of using it to enhance your web pages. Using simple HTML to create on-page factors will help your visitors to know exactly which words and areas on the page that you would like them to focus on, while letting the search engines know which areas are the most important to you.

The main goal here is to be descriptive and take a second review at what your page is focusing on. If you created a page on the real estate market in Yorba Linda, you would want to run through your page to make sure you have appropriately added the items mentioned above to give your page a good start in the search engines.

            6. Mixing the chemicals right with Organic and Paid Linking

Although paid linking is a somewhat frowned upon practice, it is deemed acceptable by the search engines so long as you are being appropriate about it. Paying for inclusion on a directory that deals with the subject matter of your website can be a good thing for you (traffic and leads are a big factor here!), so long as you are making sure to only pay for inclusion on sites that are of value. If the directory you are intending to purchase a link on is not indexed in Google, that would be a good indication that Google themselves does not find much value in that particular directory site.

Organic linking is always the best way to go, because it establishes true authority and confidence in your website naturally. Many different speakers from the main search engines have made direct mention of the fact that Realtor to Realtor links are no longer appropriate and that reciprocal linking needs to be based on the particular subject matter of a page and not necessarily on the site as a whole. For instance, if you have a Real Estate related website that also includes a page about Skiing in the area, it would be more beneficial to you to receive incoming links to that Skiing page from websites that sell things like Skis, skiing attire, skiing lessons, etc than it would be if you were to get a link from a Skiing company in your state straight to your homepage.

            7. Local Links = Focal Links!

Realtor websites are special because they must be geographically targeted while being convenient/informative for people across the country. When looking at the numbers, it would appear that the majority of people go to websites like the Chamber of Commerce, Community Information sites, etc when trying to find information about a particular city. If these are the websites that people trust to give them the correct information, then these are the websites you should be targeting to try and get an inbound link from. Even if you have to join an association to be given such a privilege, we highly recommend it.

            8. Create an Original Work of Art

Duplicate content is always an issue on the Internet and off. While it may be easy to use Control+C to copy some brilliant piece of work and have a vision of changing it to suit your own personality in the future, it is completely illegal to do so. Also, the search engines have their own methods of controlling duplicate content on the web. If they find multiple versions of same page they will decide which version is the correct one themselves which is why it's important for you to make sure your website is an original (and to keep track of all the other people who may be stealing your work!). Create new pages of content on a regular basis and review #5 on on-page factors to attract attention and rankings to your website.

            9. Blog Here, Blog There, Blog Everywhere!

Blogs are everywhere and they are used for all types of things. Some people keep them private and use them as a diary; some people set them up to keep correspondence with friends and loved ones about their day-to-day lives when they are too busy to pick up the phone. Mostly though, blogs are used for everyday people to write and share their knowledge with the world about the things that they are passionate about. Not only is blogging an excellent way to increase your general online presence, it is an excellent way to get visitors into your site and then compelling them to return on a regular basis. Adding a simple blog to your website about the market in your area, local interests and facts, recent listings and/or sales, and more can increase your websites overall worth while enticing return visits.

            10. Don't Over-Do SEO/Do Everything Possible

Common sense tells us that there is such a thing as SEO overkill, while the same can be said about SEO underachieving. But where do we draw the line? A few of the smaller points that were brought up at the various search engine conventions in regards to this were excellent, although the discussion about them did not get very detailed. Here are a few good pointers as our last piece of advice:

1. Multiple domains doesn't mean more search engine traffic. Don't go out and purchase different domain names for your website. If you have one website, you should have one domain name to go with it. If you do have multiple domains associated with your website they should be using a 301 redirect to your primary site.
2. Make a mantra - Stick with it. If you decide on a way of running your business, or your life for that matter, stick with it. Remember, you want a Mantra, not a Mission Statement.
3. When making changes to your website keep the following factors in mind:

                                    i. Depth
ii. Intelligence
iii. Completeness
iv. Elegance
v. Emotion

4. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if the leads you are attracting are not the ones you intended, leads are leads. Instead if trying to fix it, try to duplicate it in other areas of the website!
5. Learning to capitalize on the newest trends. (Hint: We've talked about Social Media quite a bit lately!)

Search engine optimization can seem like rocket science to some but in reality it is comprised of simple common sense practices. Overall, the above top ten subjects today are similar to what they were a couple of years ago with small updates and new ways of thinking on the old classics. Like any SEO practice, everything takes time and effort. Just as it is in baseball, in SEO we want to try to cover all of the bases while not spending too much time at any specific one.

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