Archive for SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important part of our Web-Centric philosophy regarding real estate marketing. And, there are a number of ways you can implement an SEO strategy.
You can turn the whole thing over to an SEO firm. You can do everything yourself. Or, you can become your own “general contractor” for SEO. And, that’s what we have found to work the best in many cases.
You can take advantage of our Real Estate SEO Coaching program to get control over your SEO plans. That program requires approximately 12-15 hours of your time. We go through the basics of what needs to be done to get your sites ranking. At the end of the process, you’ve defined a strategy tailored to your needs.
Once you understand what needs to be done, and have a strategy defined, you can make decisions about whether you want to hire someone to do the entire job, or whether you want to maintain more control over the process by hiring experts that can perform various tasks defined in your strategy.
If you want more information about SEO, become a Fan on our Facebook page and obtain a free Real Estate SEO Tutorial! It’s written for regular (non-technical) folks, and will give you a good overview of the inner workings of the SEO machine.
If you’ve noticed your real estate website traffic going up or down, it could be due to changes in Google’s world. Two fairly major changes are happening with Google, and have been ongoing for the last few months. Here’s the short version explanation.
Google’s Caffeine Update
Google has announced a Caffeine update. This update is said to be making changes “under the hood”. The objective is to make their indexing capabilities much more powerful and flexible, although there is a possibility that some rankings will be affected, too. I don’t believe this update is fully completed at this point, but it may be having some impact on your rankings and therefore, your traffic.
The “Mayday” Update
This update represents a change in Google’s algorithm for ranking websites. That means that this change isn’t a manual one – it is baked into the way Google’s ranking is determined. Matt Cutts, who is one of Google’s voices to the outside world, has published a video on YouTube discussing Google’s 2010 Mayday algorithm change.
In the video, he notes that the algorithm change:
- has most impact on how websites are ranked for “long tail” search terms. Although, there are many reports around the Web about main keyword phrase ranking being drastically changed.
- is meeting Google’s objective to provide what they believe are more relevant results for the long tail terms.
- isn’t a temporary change – it is a permanent part of the algorithm.
What To Do If Your Traffic is Changing
1. Don’t Make Assumptions – Given the fact that there are any number of reasons why your traffic could be changing, don’t make any assumptions! Analyze your traffic over the last six months to identify as much about your change in traffic as possible.
Have your referrals from Google actually gone down? Are there specific terms that were generating higher Google referrals in January vs now? Is the change related to seasonality in your market?
2. Make Sure You Have Accurate Ranking Information – Remember, if you are logged in to Google, your search results won’t reflect what the rest of the world is seeing. Make sure to logout of any Google application before you do a search to determine where your site is really ranking.
In fact, the safest way to determine your rank is to use one of the many tools available for tracking your website’s SEO issues. An easy online tool can be found at Mike’s Marketing Tools. Mike’s Search Engine Ranking tool checks the first 10 pages of search results. Using a tool like Mike’s will also avoid any impact of Google’s local result orientation. That may not be active unless you’re logged in, but just to be on the safe side….
3. Analyze the Competition – If you have identified changes in your ranking for specific search terms, take a look at the sites that are now ranking above you. What can you see on the better ranking site that might make it rank higher?
Can you add relevant content? Create a separate page to address the subject of the keyword phrase if it isn’t already? Improve your internal linking structure? Raise your site’s authority on the subject in the search engine’s “eyes”. And, the list goes on.
Anyone seeing changes out there? Have you found ways to offset any negative movement in the Google results?
Real Estate SEO Exposed!!
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SEO – it’s a necessary evil. If you want to be found in the search engines, you gotta have it. Or, more accurately, do it.
And, there are a lot of folks out there just waiting to help you. And, some of them actually might do that! But, too often it’s a crap shoot. So, what’s to be done?
If you want to become your own “general contractor” for SEO on your real estate websites without the pain of a learning curve or trial and error, you can take advantage of our real estate SEO Coaching service.
I have helped out by adding an SEO and Link Building category to this blog. And, there are some pretty good posts in there, if I do say so myself!
SEO does change in its subtleties, but the basics are still the same. You can get a competitive advantage by using this blog’s 8-part series on Real Estate SEO. You can use this knowledge to better manage an SEO firm that is working for you, or to do some of your own SEO!
- Introduction to Real Estate SEO and Glossary
- Do It Yourself or Hire an Outside SEO Firm
- Think Like a Search Engine
- Selecting Keyword Phrases
- Plan Your Real Estate Website Content
- Real Estate SEO: On-Page Optimization
- Real Estate SEO: Off-Page Optimization
- Real Estate Blogging and SEO
Sign up for free updates from the BRER Blog for more tips on real estate SEO, real estate marketing, real estate brands, real estate logos, real estate websites and more.
There’s a website called Tynt that can help you, if not stop Internet theft, at least make those thieves think about what they’re doing. And, for people who just like the information you have on your website or blog, Tynt’s service will help them keep track of where they got the information, and establish incoming links to your website, too!
I heard about Tynt from Mr. Internet, Michael Russer. If you read Michael’s post, you can watch a short video explaining how Tynt works.
I tried adding the (at-least-for-now-free) Tynt code to our main site at BuildRealEstateResults.com. Then, I copied a paragraph from one of the articles on that site to this post. You can see what happened in between the 2 lines below:
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Tynt automatically added the information starting with ”Read more” to the text I copied.
Now, this service won’t stop a determined Internet thief from stealing your content. They can very easily delete the attribution that automatically appears after the content or image that has been copied.
However, for copies made by people who aren’t trying to build a website or blog by stealing the content from other places, this could be an interesting way to get some incoming links to your website or blog.
If someone copies something from you to go in an email, the email recipients may well follow the link back to your page. If someone copies something and places in a public place such as a blog or Facebook page, that incoming link could help your SEO and bring more visitors to your site.
And, I would hope that when someone who just isn’t aware of the laws against Internet theft sees the link, they will leave it in place – or decide to write their own content!
There are some Tynt options. Here are just some examples. I chose to show the Creative Commons license which applies to my copyrighted material. You can also connect Tynt to your Twitter account – anytime someone does a copy/paste from a protected site, it will show up on your Twitter account.
Tynt will also provide activity statistics. You’ll notice that the URL referenced in the Tynt attribution has some coding after the .html for the page. That coding allows Tynt to let me know things about what is being copied.
Just as an FYI, when I copied the Tynt-attributed text to this blog post, every paragraph I entered after that copy was placed in a <div> which eliminated the white space between paragraphs. So, if I hadn’t really wanted to show that example, I might have given up on copying the information. Tynt, if you’re listening, please tell your code to stop doing that! Also, it would be nice if you could set up multiple websites in one account. Right now, it looks like you need a new account for each one.
In any event, it’s an interesting capability to play with!
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Examples of Hyper-Local Real Estate Blog Success
There’s a great post on Active Rain written by Donna Harris from Austin Texas. Donna does a great job of illustrating how her blogs are ranking well for long-tail search terms. As you may know, long-tail search terms are those search phrases that are related to your website’s main search terms, but are not as popular.
For example, in Austin, the main real estate related search phrase is probably something like “Austin homes for sale”. But, Donna is having success by focusing her blog posts on less popular search phrases that relate to communities or area names around the Austin area.
Make Your Post Titles Count!
It’s worth a trip to Donna’s blog to read her post for another reason. Her post includes links to several of her blog posts that contributed to her great ranks on long tail keyword phrases. Take a good look at how her post titles are written.
For example, one title is “Real Estate Hill Country Austin TX Homes Are Selling!” I know that many real estate bloggers might have written a title like “Local Homes Are Selling!”. That title might attract readers, but you’ll be hard-pressed to get readers to find that post! Using keyword phrases in post titles has a big impact on the ability of the post to rank.
It’s always a challenge to write titles that attract both search engines and readers. Another way to write the title could be “Hill Country Real Estate: Austin TX Homes are Selling!” As Donna mentioned in her post, her new approach may seem a bit more “robotic”. But, given the progress she’s made so far, I’m sure she’ll continue to find ways to satisfy both her readers and the search engines!
