10 SEO steps to follow
March 4, 2009 by Eric
Filed under Blogging Tips
There is no mistaking the power of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). There are millions and millions of dollars spent every month on SEO efforts. Why so much? Well because SEO pays off. The process of approaching, implementing, maintaining and monitoring an SEO effort is often a difficult task. However, if you take your approach one step at a time and keep informed of search engine guidelines, you would be smooth sailing. Just going through the motions will not get your site on that sought after first page in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). In fact if you’re not careful you can get carried away with your SEO efforts and get your site booted right off the SERPs. To avoid that make sure you study up a bit before you commit to an SEO campaign.
With that being said I have put together what I find to be the 5 most important SEO efforts. These are not necessarily in order of importance, but if you follow these 5 steps you will have taken that first step to attaining SEO stardom.
- Title – The titles of your pages should contain the keywords in which you are optimizing the page. This is the first thing that the search engine robots, crawlers and spiders look at. Your title tags (<title> </title>) should be located near the top of the page coding in between the head tags. Your titles should be no longer than 100 characters, however Google will truncate the title if it is more than 60 characters including spaces. So unless you don’t mind your title being cut off with a … then have at it.
- Keywords – A title means nothing without keywords. Keywords are what drive an SEO campaign and fuel your sites success. Keywords are a tricky business though so take your time, research your keywords and make sure you select keywords that are in your niche. Often times webmasters will not take much time in this area and just plug in the words that they would like to rate high in. For example, Joe has a website soliciting his carpet cleaning business so for lack of knowing any better, his site is geared toward the key phrase “carpet cleaner”. The problem with this is that the competition in this key phrase is very high and to reach the first page Joe will have to compete big names to be seen. Now this is not impossible but it is a bit far fetched for Joe to even attract his target market. Perhaps Joe should stick with a key phrase like ‘carpet cleaner Oakland CA’ or ‘bonnet cleaning Oakland CA’.
- Body text – The body of your text should contain your keywords. The keywords should not be over used to avoid keyword spamming, which could get your site booted from Google and other search engines. Your “keyword density” should be balanced just right, if it is too low you may not get the optimum results where if it is to high then your page might be hit with a keyword spamming charge. Google is by far has the lowest keyword density tolerance, which is right around 2%. Yahoo and MSN are considerably higher at possibly 5%. There is no magic number here but I can tell you that it is not as many times as you can get the keywords on the page.
- Heading Tags – Make sure that your heading tags contain your keywords, ideally the <h1> tag should be right up there at the beginning of the page. Ideally the first thing in the <body> tag should be an <h1> tag that has your title. But we live in a world where we need Headers and nav bars, so the idea here is get the titles up as close as possible in the page.
- URL – If at all possible get your keywords into the url. For instance if your keywords for a particular page are shopping concierge, then you may want to name the page something like shopping_concierge.html (or .php or whatever). Additionally if you have the opportunity you should consider getting a domain name that contains your keywords. To continue with the concierge example, let’s pretend the concierge company’s name is ‘Butler Concierge’ and that they are located in Fort Worth Texas. It would make sense to the average person to choose a domain name like butlerconcierge.com, however this company should consider a domain like fortworthconcierge.com. Search engines also use the domain name as an SEO qualifier so keep that in mind when choosing your domain names.
- Links – Make sure there are no broken links in your site. Often times search engine algorithms see a site with broken links as incomplete or just not worth finishing so the overall rating of the site is affected. Also stay away from the SO tempting “click here” link, for instance ‘To get a quote on auto insurance, click here’. Where “click here” is the link. Instead try ‘FREE AUTO INSURANCE QUOTE’. Where the entire sentence is a link. The reason you want to stay away from “click here” is that when Google or Yahoo’s or whoever’s robots, crawlers and spiders come through they will recognize that the ‘auto insurance quote’ page is linked to the text “click here” rather than the key words for that page. Thus making your link useless.
- Inbound links – Inbound links are paramount to the rating of your site. These links should be from sites that are of high quality. The higher the rating of the sites that link to yours, the higher search engines will rate you, in the light that quality sites think you have quality content and think your site is worth linking to. Getting inbound links are the hardest part of SEO by far and remember you can pay for quantity but quality is often compromised in this action. When getting your inbound links try to have the site Webmaster insert your links using the keywords like mentioned in number 6.
- Flow – Remember, the reason you are trying to get your website to the top is because you want people to come to the site and look at your content, buy what your selling… etc., Don’t get so involved in SEO that your web site is not legible. What I am saying is design your site (as best as possible) for the robots, spiders, crawlers and your users. You don’t want to lose your users because you are tailoring your site so strictly for the search engines. Remember the bounce rate (the time your users spend on your site) is a part of SEO as well.
- Patience is a virtue – Be patient, SEO campaigns are not for those who are instant gratification junkies. Give your site about three months to sink in. Check your analytics program to see how the site is doing and adjust accordingly. Keep your efforts simple; make a minimal amount of changes so that you can accurately see what works and what doesn’t.
- Updates – Finally, stay on top of things. Keep an eye on the search engine guidelines to ensure your SEO is always up to date. The last thing you want is for your long sought efforts to slowly wash down the drain as technology advances.
There are many other things to consider when engaging in your SEO campaign and others that even deserve to be right up here with these, however I want to give you the basics and provide a solid direction to follow. Remember, to study up on these actions before actually implementing these. I would hate to see anyone say “Well I was reading this article that said I should include my keywords in my body text, so I just repeated the words over and over, made them the same color as the background so no one would see them. I don’t know why I can’t find my site on Google any more” Guys, that’s been done and the out come is not good. I promise.
Do You Know The Power Of A Link?
January 13, 2009 by Katerina Gasset
Filed under Blogging Tips
The power of linking is underestimated by most bloggers. Google puts a lot of importance on links that are coming into your blog and those that connect one post to another post on your blog. The latter is called internal linking.
You don’t want to have a lot of outbound links. If you get too many outbound links the search engines will view you as a resource site and not a content rich site which determines where in the search you will end up.
DO NOT buy into link farms. These can be very dangerous and have you thrown into the ‘google sandbox’.
There is a lot that you can learn about SEO but the 2 most important things are writing good content with proper keywords and inbound and internal linking.
I advise that in every 2 paragraphs ideally you should have one link pointing to another page or to somewhere else on that same page.
Most of us do not fully utilize and optimize our blogs with internal linking strategies. Here are some ways in which you can more fully use internal linking in your blog posts.
In case you do not know how to add a link to your post, it is very easy to do:
Use Anchor text for all your links. This is one of the most important and easy SEO things you can do with your blog and website. Your anchor text should be keyword rich. Use the keywords you want to be found for in your anchor text.
What is anchor text? When you type in your post, ‘Click here to search all Wellington Florida Luxury Homes For Sale ‘ that is anchor text.
Now I would click on the link image on the toolbar and add my URL into the link box, ‘http://www.Wellington-luxury-homes.com.
Then when someone clicks on the text that I wrote like the above text, Click here to search all Wellington Florida Luxury Homes For Sale it will go to my website. When you add the link, the anchor text will be in blue font color. That tells people that if they click on the words they will be going to where you linked those words to go to.
Do not use the name of your website and write your whole web address in your post because then you are not fully optimizing using your keywords. I see a lot of posts where the whole address is right in the post and the URL is not keyword rich. Like for instance: http://www.anyrealtyinnowheretown.com. Those words should go in your link box but not in the post itself.
Use keywords in the text part.
Also when you are using links internally make sure you do not use shortcuts to certain pages within your site. Type out the entire URL within your page you want your visitor to go to. If you are sending them to another post use the URL of that post, don’t send them to just your profile page unless that is where you want them to go.
- For each post concentrate on only a few longtail keywords per post. Don’t try to go and rank for every keyword in one post. Target those specific keywords and learn how to use them effectively throughout your posts.
- When you are using internal linking add it throughout the body of your post rather than just listing all the links in a row. So in each paragraph add words that are a part of what you are writing about and turn those words into links. Linking within your page adds more relevance and internal value to your link.
- You can go back to some of your older posts and add internal links to some of your newer pages of relevance. This way you add some valuable link juice and give it some rank boost.
If you would like to learn more about SEO and how to implement these strategies you can click here to read about my SEO To The Top Webinar.
Ethics and your blog
January 6, 2009 by Steve Belt
Filed under Blogging Tips
I’ve never seen anyone write a blog post regarding ethics as it relates to a real estate blog. Given that REALTORS® all subscribe to a code of ethics and all all licensed, this seems a little strange, but perhaps it’s because being ethical on a blog isn’t well understood. Or perhaps it’s because those that are ethical are saving their finger pointing for a time when they might find it useful. Who knows.
At any rate, I thought I’d run down a few things that I find grossly problematic in the RE.Net, and pass along a few pointers that will hopefully keep the finger pointing away from you.
For the most part, it is pretty easy to be ethical on your blog, and in the past I’ve seen very few gross violations. The violation I’ve seen the most often, however, is when a REALTOR publicly bashes another REALTOR® during a heated blog war. The pre-amble of the Code of Ethics clearly states that:
Realizing that cooperation with other real estate professionals promotes the best interests of those who utilize their services, REALTORS® urge exclusive representation of clients; do not attempt to gain any unfair advantage over their competitors; and they refrain from making unsolicited comments about other practitioners.
Make a special note of that last important component: “they refrain from making unsolicited comments about other practitioners.” If you engage in a blog war, and start making derogatory remarks (whether they are true or not!) about your fellow REALTOR, in my opinion, you are making unsolicited comments, and you are committing an ethics violation.
The point of this was made clear to me, when I recently attended an ethics class taught by my broker (John Foltz) and Bill Gray (Arizona School of Real Estate & Business), in which they belabored this point, giving as an example: If you meet someone that is a client of John Doe REALTOR, you cannot tell this client, “Oh, I know John…did you know he was recently contacted by the police regarding …”. Even if this police contact were true, you provided this info about John Doe in an unsolicited manner, for the pure purpose of discrediting John Doe, to put yourself at an advantage. Bringing this to our blogs, I don’t think there’s any doubt that nearly 100% of our blog visitors are not soliciting specific information about a different REALTOR, when they come. Given that, if we post derogatory comments, which are now surely unsolicited, in my opinion, we are committing an ethics rules violation.
So, if there aren’t at least 100 other good reasons not to engage in a blog war, let this be #1 on the list. Personally speaking, my membership to my association, or even the fine associated with an ethics violation, is absolutely not worth whatever could possibly be gained, by getting involved in a blog war, and calling out the merits (or lack thereof) of your fellow REALTOR.
Another ethics violation that I’ve (fortunately) seen on the rarest of occasions refers to SoP 1-9 and keeping confidential client information confidential. I know that I am constantly on the lookout for good blog content, but good blog content cannot be the confidential information provided to you by your client, even if it’s critical to “tell the story”. If you need to use confidential information to tell the story, this will be a story you don’t tell on your blog (or anywhere, for that matter).
Perhaps the most common ethics violation I see is with regard to Article 10. Actually, that’s an exaggeration (something that Article 2 says to avoid), but it’s close enough to the point I want to make: Article 10 says we will not deny our “services to any person for reasons of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin.”
The consistent problem I find on the vast majority of blogs is the lack of a fair housing logo on display. The Arizona real estate commissioner believes this logo should be on every page and visible without scrolling. Let me repeat that, in case it didn’t sink it. Visible on every page without scrolling the browser. Where is your fair housing logo? Do you even have one? Is it in the footer, where you have to scroll waaaay down to the bottom to see it? Here’s an idea: move your fair housing logo to the header or the top of your sidebar.
And finally, harkening back to the preamble of the Code of Ethics:
REALTORS® can take no safer guide than that which has been handed down through the centuries, embodied in the Golden Rule, “Whatsoever ye would that others should do to you, do ye even so to them.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
dsc_1000 will get you 707 results
December 27, 2008 by Dave Smith
Filed under Blogging Tips
Any one care to guess what I’m talking about here? I mentioned this when I had the privilege to speak at the November meeting. I’m talking about taking the time to change the name of images to be keyword rich and descriptive. I did a quick Google image search of the term dsc_1000 and got 707 returned results.
There are three place to pay attention when using images in your posts.
The File Name
I’m talking about the file name of the image you upload. Change that file name to keywords which are descriptive of the post. Instead of dsc_1000.jpg use McCormickRanchGolfCourse.jpg. You can also insert hyphens between the words. The search engines will remove the hyphens.
The Title Tag
I often make the title and caption the same. (Captions if using a Wordpress blog). Here again I would title it something like “The view from the tee box at the 15th hole”.
The Alt Tag
The alt tag is the one place you don’t put keywords unless they really do fit for the image. The alt tag is what is spoken for the visually impaired if they can’t see the screen. Their browser reader will tell them it is an image and the alt tag is what is read to describe the image. This is not the place to put keywords unless they are descriptive of the image.
I would never recommend you use the Title or Alt tags to stuff keywords. I don’t believe in keyword stuffing anywhere on a blog or website. Create good content and tag your images and posts accordingly. Do this often and you will do more for the SEO of your blog than all the keyword stuffing you can think of.
Descriptive Terms Increase Your Traffic
Up to 1/3 of my traffic on any given day comes from image searches on Google. They find those images because they are searching for things related to Tucson or the desert etc. No one besides me searches for dsc_1000. Use those descriptive terms and you will increase targeted traffic to your site.
Finally, Google and other search engines are clamping down on all the keyword stuffing that has been going on in alt tags. (Abuse leads to regulation and penalties). My point. If you have been keyword stuffing your alt and title tags of your images you not only should stop it, you should go back and edit those previous posts where you abused the system, even if you didn’t know it was an abuse.
Google doesn’t look to see when you started or stopped, it will know when it finds it and it will penalize accordingly. JUST BECAUSE EVERYONE IS DOING IT DOESN’T MAKE IT OKAY. What you might “Get Away With” today could very well earn you a penalty in the future. This is why it is always best practice to follow “best practices”. It will make your life easier in the future.
An artificial high placement today is fleeting. What you want is long lasting placement and earned trust of the search engines by using best practices in all you do on the web.
Do you own your Real Estate Business?
December 5, 2008 by Steve Belt
Filed under Blogging Tips, Wordpress
This may seem like a strange question, and for some of you it will be a 100% absolutely, yes I do answer. Particularly if you are the owner/broker of a real estate company. But that isn’t actually what I’m talking about. I’m talking about your online real estate business: Do you really own it?
For example, how many of you have, as your primary email address: SuperAgent@aol.com, or SuperAgent@yahoo.com, SuperAgent@cox.net, or even SuperAgent@gmail.com? If you do, who owns that email address? It doesn’t look to me like you do. Rather, it looks to me like AOL, Yahoo, Cox, or Google own your email address, and they are simply letting you use it for a while. I wonder how long they’ll continue to do that? Forever? For a year? For a decade? What if they start charging you for their service, or impliment anti-business rules for their “free” email accounts? After all, each of those businesses can decide to do whatever they choose to, since they own the email account.
For bloggers, let’s look at another very common example of NOT owning your business. Is your blog at Blogger.com? Is it at Wordpress.com? Both of those sites allow you to create a free blog. Each has some sort of rule about blogging for business, which many people ignore, and for the most part, so do the sites. But tomorrow they could actually start enforcing their own rules, and shutting down blogs, or even just sending you a nice fat bill each month. How prepared are you to lose months or even years worth of blogging over night? Speaking from experience, when I accidentally deleted the first 100 of my own posts from my blog, and thought I had NO backup, your heart will sink to the floor, and you will think the world is crashing in around you, if that happens.
The fix for both of these problems is relatively simple and relatively inexpensive. For each, I believe you need to start by purchasing a domain name that you OWN. At GoDaddy.com a domain will cost you around $10/year, but if you are nice, I can show you how to get one for a buck or two less. So for the cost of 2 cups of coffee at Starbucks (and feel free to cut out two trips this week to pay for your domain, if cost really is an issue), you are well on your way to ownership.
For the email problem, I highly suggest you find a Microsoft Exchange hosting provider for your email. MailStreet.com is a good choice, with pricing plans starting at $13/month. For more ideas, Microsoft has this list of Exchange hosting providers. Why do I recommend an Exchange solution? Because it works. And it works well. With Exchange you’ll get integration with your email, calendar, tasks (to-do list), and contacts all in one application. Exchange will push your email, contacts, and calendar entries to your smart phone real time. And of course all of these companies provide web mail support, so you can view your email from any computer anywhere, if your laptop crashes on the day your smart phone is run over by a bus.
For me, the beauty is in the real time integration with my iPhone, although Blackberry users will benefit just the same. There’s nothing like having your phone notify you of a new email as fast or faster, than your desktop computer does.
For a good, and a bit less expensive solution, you might also consider using Google’s business apps version of Gmail to have Google host your email/calendaring, which allows integration with a smart phone. I don’t have any experience with this solution, but I have heard it works well, and the full blow business account is only $50/year.
To own your blog, there are a number of hosting providers you can choose from, which will allow you to use download the free software from WordPress and host your blog. As a side benefit to being hosted, you’ll get to pick any theme and any set of plugins you desire in WordPress, which will further make your blog truly unique, and thus truly yours. GoDaddy will host your blog for $10/month, however they are not very tolerant of blogs that get a lot of page views for that price, so while it can be a good place to start, with success, you may outgrow them. Many people believe the leading hosting provider is currently MediaTemple, however HostGator and A Small Orange are each well thought of.
At this point, you may be wondering what I use? My solution isn’t for everyone, but it works well for me. In my office, I have a Windows Server with Windows Small Business 2003 installed, which gives me remote access and a Microsoft Exchange server. Sitting right next to the Windows server is a Linux server, which hosts my blog (actually, it hosts many blogs). Because I already had a T1 line coming into the office for phones/internet, and I have the skillz to build and maintain these servers, doing it myself was a no brainer. I know a few agents across the country that self-host, but only a very few of us.
There are more choices than what I’ve given here, but hopefully I’ve given you some nuggets to think about and places to start looking if you don’t yet own your online Real Estate Business.
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TypePad Explained - The Next Generation
November 27, 2008 by Robert A. Gibbs
Filed under Blogging Tips, Wordpress
Well, wouldn’t you know it…right in the middle of some great “series content” blogging, TypePad launches it’s “Next Generation” platform. Which is actually (for the most part) an improvement over the previous format. So, what I’m going to do is take some time out to learn all about the new platform then I’m going to be doing free webinars once a week to do TypePad specific training. I’ll save the webinars and provide links to them here in the future.
In the meantime, I am teaching all four of my courses in December - Blogging for REALTORS, Search Engine Marketing, Online Social Network Marketing, and a New Course - Marketing with Video.
Check out the Calendar Online at my Website - www.BleedingEdgeTech.com.
A Note on SEO - Top 7 List
November 20, 2008 by Robert A. Gibbs
Filed under Blogging Tips
The world of Organic Search Engine Optimization is as cosmic as the heavens. Mainly because the search engine companies want it that way. If you could cheat the system (and some people try), they couldn’t give the most relevant results (which is what they are supposed to do).
Also, unless you have tons of time to spend on keyword optimization, tracking your competition, massaging your keywords every week/month it may not be the highest and best use of your time. So here is my “focus on the things that matter” tip for you in the form of a top 7 list (in no particular order):
- Title Tag - This is what displays at the top of the IE7 browser window (All the way at the top). Make this meaningful and include words that you might like to get searched for.
- Description Tag - This is not (always) displayed on your page, but is used by some search engines to catalog your site and sometimes it is used as the short description in the search results page.
- Keywords Tag - Come up with about 20 good keywords (3-5 word phrases are keywords too). Eliminate prepositional phrases like “for” and “of” as well as conjunctions like “and.”
- Large Type - The type that is the largest on the page (referred to as “<h1> Text”) is important to your users as well as search engines. Try to include things you would like to be searched for in these.
- Body Copy - The actual text on the page…oh…your site is all flash and pictures…oops…not good.
- Links - Having links to other websites is good. Don’t use “click here” to link. Try to make keyword phrases in the body copy links to good sites.
- Navigation - you should have a site map of some sort on your homepage. On a blog this is often a “categories” list, but a user (and a search engine) should be able to find every other page on your website from the first page.
Again, these are in no particular order because each search engine operates (a little) differently.
Enjoy!
TypePad Explained - Part 7 of Many
November 14, 2008 by Robert A. Gibbs
Filed under Blogging Tips, Typepad
Typepad series of tutorials offered by Rob Gibbs, blogging instructor for real estate professionals. This tutorial will cover how to add and order your content using regular templates.
TypePad Explained - Part 6 of Many
October 28, 2008 by Robert A. Gibbs
Filed under Blogging Tips, Typepad
The Basic format of a blog (posts listed in reverse chronological order) is what makes it a living website. But every now and then we need static content. You need to frame IDX or develop an About page. In typepad they call the writing “Pages.” Depending on your design they don’t always show up automatically on your homepage either. Here is short video on how to create a page, then add it to your sidebar in TypePad Advanced Templates.
Who Is Your Blogging Audience?
October 24, 2008 by Katerina Gasset
Filed under Blogging Tips
Who Is Your Blogging Audience?
I get emails often from agents asking me if I could look at their blog and tell them why they are not getting any listings from their blog. Over 90% of the time, it is because they are not speaking to an audience. There is no conversation going on. When you just post listings and market reports, well, for most readers online that is quite boring.
The most important tip I can ever give a new or veteran blogger is to know who your audience is. Who do you want to be having a conversation with? Who do you want to be contacting you?
- Do you want sellers or buyers to be contacting you?
- What age group do you want these people to be?
- What income levels are these people in?
- What do you want these people to do? Call you, email you?
Next, it is vital that you do your keyword research. You will not be getting the calls and inquiries about your services if your are not attracting the people you intend if you do not know and do not use the very keywords that they are typing into the search engine search box.
This is not about guessing or assuming that the keywords you are using are going to be typed into the search box. Go to the Google Keyword Tool and spend time there figuring out what keywords will be great for you to use because people are actually searching those terms. Many of the agents I coach are shocked to discover that the keywords they have been using which they thought were so popular are actually not even searched for.
Once you have discovered and decided on who your audience is going to be then the next action is to speak to that audience. Write on their level in their voice. Make your blog one of transparency and polarization. When the calls start coming in, you know you have done your job!
