Search Engine Optimization

SEO - Content, Meta Tags, and Backlinks: What Really Matters for Real Estate Agents

Last week we gave an overview of search engine marketing (SEM) and told you why it's a crucial strategy for real estate agents to use in their online marketing efforts. This week we're looking at search engine optimization (SEO) and why it's also important for achieving online visibility (though perhaps less so than SEM).

What SEO can do...and what it can't

We hear a lot these days about how SEO can improve your website's rankings and bring your real estate business unprecedented visibility in the crowded online marketplace. While it's true that SEO can do those things, it's important to keep in mind that the results of an SEO campaign can often be untargeted - and take months to achieve.

Generally, an SEO campaign produces results for a certain chosen keyword or keyword phrase, but not for ALL of the keywords and keyword phrases that a real estate agent would want. So while SEO is helpful for generating traffic, an SEM campaign gives you far more control and visibility over a much shorter period (mere hours instead of months).

While SEO makes up important part of any web marketing strategy, SEM produces results faster (within hours of launching a campaign on Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN you will see traffic). Not only is it faster, but you can be more specific about where you want your links to show up. With all that said, let's take a look at how SEO works.

Content

Content is key to successful search engine optimization. Effective, optimized website content serves two purposes: it draws potential buyers to your site through keyword-rich layering and it keeps them coming back with relevant, targeted information. Your content should fulfill a need for the visitor -whether this need is for information about local market conditions, specific listings, or your unique services.

Targeting your audience with the content they are looking for is critical for attracting both potential customers and search engine spiders. Keyword-rich content also determines how highly you are ranked in the search engines.

When determining how much content to use on your site, a good rule of thumb to follow is to insert about 250 - 300 words of keyword-rich content on each of your site pages. Of those words, make keywords about 3% of the copy. So in a 300 word block of content, try to use your keywords or keyword phrases about eight or nine times. Of course, it's fine to use more than that if you have more to say, but do try to break it up into skimmable, easy to digest chunks.

Keywords are your friends

Keywords determine which category your site will be listed under in search engines and directories. One of the main factors search engines use when determining the relevance of an individual web page are the keywords and keyword phrases that appear within the content.

Search engines look at your site as a series of points. Points are added or subtracted based on how many times the keyword is repeated, where the keywords appear, between what tags the keywords are used, and how the keywords are positioned in relation to one another. If you want to score a lot of points, you have to figure out what words and phrases potential homebuyers might use to find you, and then insert them in your site tags and actual site copy.

To determine your best keyword selection, write every single imaginable word that someone might use to find your site. A good rule of thumb would be to come up with 40-50 keywords and phrases, and then narrow them down to the top 20. If you can't come up with 20 keywords (let alone 40), try Wordtracker.com - it's a great resource for determining the most effective keywords for your website.

The importance of Meta Tags

When search engines were first developed, they were reliant on meta tag data to correctly classify a web page. As search engine traffic became more important to marketing plans, website builders used a variety of techniques (legitimate and otherwise) to improve ranking for their clients, such as deliberately misspelling keywords in the meta tags (Los Angeles rael estate instead of Los Angeles real estate). You can see any website's meta tags by viewing the source code.

There are two types of meta tags, meta description tags and meta keyword tags. You won't want to neglect these when optimizing your website - here's why:

The Meta description tag allows you, the website owners to describe what each of your web pages is about. Search engines use this to display the description of a web site in the search results.
The Meta keyword tag allows you to put keywords in it to help search engines decide what a web site is about.

By the early 2000s, search engines caught on to the illegitimate uses of meta tags and placed less importance on them. Many websites that use meta tag "stuffing" and other unethical methods are penalized by sites like Google, who drops the website completely form its rankings. Some search engines, however, still take meta tags into some consideration when delivering results.

Backlinks - a great way to improve rankings and exposure

Backlinks (also called "linking back") are simply incoming links to your website from other sites. The number and quality of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of your website, and therefore a leading factor in getting high rankings.

Search engines will use the number of backlinks that your website has as one of the factors for determining its search engine ranking. One way to see backlinks in action is to Google "link:URL." This is handy for seeing how well your competition is doing. If they don't have any backlinks, they won't show up.

So how does one get these wonderfully useful backlinks? It's simple: you earn them or you buy them. You can earn backlinks by having useful, relevant content on your site that other websites, such as blogs, will want to link to. This is a great incentive for creating great website content that will serve a dual purpose - being keyword-rich and backlink worthy. For example, if your website has a blog with up-to-date information on the Chicago real estate market, other websites and blogs will want to link to yours. But there's a catch - the sites have to be of a certain quality to high rankings for linking to you. So a link from Inman News to your site is going to be worth more than one from a mom and pop realtor in South Dakota.

If you do not have any "organic" backlinks, there are companies that will sell you backlinks. But keep in mind that this practice is generally frowned upon by those in the SEO industry and won't cause your rankings to skyrocket as well as the organic ones. Really, it all comes back to your website content. Relevant, keyword-rich site content (backed up by well-thought out meta tags and site architecture) will give you higher rankings in the long run.

And if you don't have the luxury of waiting for the long run? Remember that Fidelity Assets offers a range of effective search engine marketing solutions designed to give your site high rankings and visibility in a fraction of the time it would take for an SEO campaign.

Next week we'll be looking at Affiliate Marketing.

See you then!

Other Real Estate Marketing Articles: