Getting your real estate website found in the search engines – it’s the goal of most real estate professionals.  The days when a real estate website is used as just an online brochure are virtually over.  Ever since it became obvious that websites are a cost-effective way to generate leads, more and more agents and brokers are working on creating lead-generating websites.

By the way, don’t forget to answer the poll in the left column of this page about leads coming from your website!  Based on the responses so far, I’m thinking a series about Do-It-Yourself-SEO might just be useful!

Use this link to see all the posts in this series: Do-It-Yourself SEO.

Getting Started with SEO

We provide SEO services to many of our clients, but some prefer to do their own.  For those clients, and anyone else who is interested, this post is the introduction to an eight-part series on Do-It-Yourself-SEO.  My goal for this series is not to cover every nuance in the world of SEO.  There are lots of books written on the subject if you want that level of detail. 

My goal for this series is to provide enough information about the basics to get you started.  I know that you can make progress with a subset of SEO information, because I’ve worked with clients who have done it.

Here’s What This Series Will Cover

1. Do-It-Yourself or Hire an Expert – We’ll discuss the issues that you should consider when you make a choice between doing your own SEO and hiring a professional.  We’ll also provide some guidelines for choosing an outside firm.
2. Thinking Like a Search Engine – If you understand how search engines think, it will be easier to understand the process for getting your site ranked in the search engines.  It’s true that search engines don’t provide a lot of detail about their ranking algorithms, and different engines use different approaches.  But, it is possible to describe the process at a very high level.
3. Selecting Keywords – The important first step is selecting the keyword phrases you want to be found for.
4. Creating a Site Map – Based on your keyword strategy, you need to identify the specific pages that you’ll create for your site.
5. On-Page Optimization – The things you need to do on your site to make it attractive to search engines.
6. Off-Page Optimization – The things you need to do away from your site to get the search engines to rank your site.
7. Blogging – How to use your blog to improve search engine ranking.

A Glossary of Selected SEO Terms

This list may be expanded, but these are definitions of some of the more commonly-used SEO terms:

Alt Text or Alt Tag – The description for an image (a graphic or photo, etc) on one of your web pages.  The Alt Text is added to the HTML code, or it can be added using your website’s editor if you can update your site yourself.  Alt tags are added to the code for your pages, and when you place your cursor on a photo on your website, the Alt tag will appear.  If you’re not familiar with that, try putting your cursor on the image on this page of the man climbing the rock – you should see the Alt Tag lettering appear.

Anchor Text – The words that are used as the link to another website or webpage.

Backlink – Also known as an Incoming Link.  A link on another website that links to a page on your website.

Contextual Link – A link to your website that is integrated into the content of the site linking to you, and vice versa.

Incoming Links – Also known as a Backlink.  A link on another website that links to a page on your website.

Keywords – The search phrases you want to be found for in the search engines.  Keywords are actually phrases (like Atlanta Real Estate), because one-word phrases aren’t usually effective for SEO.  People normally shorten “keyword phrases” down to “keywords”, but they’re still referring to the phrase(s) you are targeting.

Meta Tag – Each page on a website has certain identifiers that search engines use to identify what the page is all about.  For our purposes, we’ll refer to two types of meta tags:  the Description tag and the Keyword tag.  Meta tags are only visible in the code for your pages.

Natural Search Results -  Refers to being ranked by the search engines for specific keywords, rather than appearing on the search results in the Sponsored Links area.  Also known as Organic Search Results.

Off-Page Optimization – Activities such as obtaining links to your website to get it ranked in the search engines.

On-Page Optimization – Managing page content, page title and metatags

Organic Search Results – Refers to being ranked by the search engines for specific keywords, rather than appearing on the search results in the Sponsored Links area.  Also known as Natural Search Results.

Page Title – For our purposes, Page Title refers to the identification on each web page that can be added in the HTML code, or should be accessible to you using your website’s editor.  The page title is only visible in the code for your pages.

Reciprocal Link – A situation where you put a link to another website on one of your web pages, and the other website places a link to your website on one of their pages.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization
SEM – Search Engine Marketing
SEP   – Search Engine Placement
These three terms are often used interchangeably to refer to the process of getting a website ranked in the search engines.  Technically, though, SEO refers to the on-page work that is done to optimize a web page for the search engines.   SEM refers to the off-page activities that need to be done to get a site ranked in the search engines, including things like obtaining links to the site.  SEP actually refers to where your site is placed in the search engines.

SERPs – Search Engine Result Pages; when you do a search on any of the search engines, the list of websites found for a particular phrase are presented in the SERPs.