Don’t Miss Part I!

So, you want to get leads from your website, right?  You need to take care of the two sides of SEO.

Many of the real estate professionals I talk to don’t realize that there are two sides to SEO.  Often they assume that if we help them set up a real estate website or WordPress blogsite, the SEO is taken care of.  And, we do help with SEO, but it’s not all handled with the set up process.

SEO – Side One: On-Site SEO

The purists call side one on-page SEO, but that has never made as much sense to me, so I call it on-site.  On-site SEO refers to everything that you do to your website itself.  This includes, but isn’t limited to:

• the content of the meta-tags on each page (page title, description and keywords)
• the content of the pages, including the keyword phrases that are used, where they are placed, etc.
• the internal linking structure

Another thing to keep in mind is that you need original content.  And, as much of it as you can manage.

Original content refers to information on your website that doesn’t appear anywhere else on the Internet.  The search engines give the “credit’ for content to the first website that displays that information.  So, copying a lot of information from the Wikipedia isn’t going to work.

Most real estate website vendors provide content pages to get your site going.  But, don’t fool yourself.  If your entire website consists of standard pages, the search engines will ignore you, and so will your visitors!

Once you have completed step one, your website will be attractive to search engines.  Next, you need to get the search engines to rank your site.

SEO – Side Two: Off-Site SEO

You’re right.  this side is often called off-page.  It is a distressing fact, but it’s true that just setting up your website with lots of good original content and effective calls to action just isn’t enough.

The off-site part of SEO has to do mainly with establishing quality incoming links to your website.  Contemporary SEO calls for building incoming links that are content based.  Your best bet is to post original content that is optimized for your selected keyword phrases on high-authority Internet sites.  If you don’t have the time or inclination to do that, we can assist.

Just keep in mind that once we’ve put optimized original content on your website you’re not finished.

I feel bad sometimes when I talk to people about setting up a website that will produce leads.  It can be a real information overload.  By the time I discuss:

• Strategy for driving traffic
• Keyword selection
• On-site SEO
• Off-site SEO

Well, very often, I can hear their eyes glazing over through the telephone.

The good news?  If you don’t have a lead-generating website right now, but you’d like one, we can help!  Call us at 888-716-2418 or send an email below.  We specialize in Web-Centric Real Estate Marketing.