Real Estate SEO

Writing Your Own Blogs or Pay For Them?

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Johnson) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:39:04 PDT

It always seems that there is never enough time to write blogs for your website. There comes the question, could I pay some one to write them for me, hmmmm?

The key to make blog writing lucrative is to spend as little time to write the blog and sell it to as many people as possible. Of course, your job is to pay as little as possible for as many blogs as you can get. Now the game is set, it is time to play "Buy it or write it", the game where the only thing to lose is leads.

Write them yourself

advantages:

Usually you will get better quality when you write your own blogs, especially when talking about neighborhoods in your area. You can put your own personal touch in the blogs, good or bad. You can put passion in your writings and it will show in the blog. It will cost you a little time rather than money.

disadvantages:

It will take more time than buying them.

Buy Blogs Written by Someone else

advantages:

Save you time than having to write them yourself.

disadvantages:

Depending on who you get them from, the blog may sold to every client they have. The writer may copy and paste the material from other blogs and/or sites, rather then taking the time to write them himself/herself. Google will catch duplicate content on your site even if you do not, while they are spending the milliseconds spidering your site. The writer may not have any passion about the subject, it can reflect it in the tone of the blog. The less you pay, expect less quality of a blog.

Conclusion

I have had clients wondering if we will write blogs and/or content for them, especially for their neighborhoods, to beef up their content on their site. We always tell them it needs to come from someone that lives in the area. Agents that live there will know details that someone in other areas will not. Some things just need that personal touch that the owner can only give to it. If you do buy blogs, there are duplicate content sites to check your site and/or blogs out. It is only a Google search away. The game for outside content writers is to resell the content over and over. Also, spend least amount of time writing the content. They are in the business of making a profit just as we are.

To Link on Not To Link, That is the Question?

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Johnson) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:51:39 PDT

There has been many discussions on whether links will hurt your site or help it. If you do it right it will help the site, but done wrong it will hurt the site. Of course I have heard horror stories that people claim the links is what caused their site to fall from Google grace or people that link must be flying under the Google radar and one day they will get caught. The thought that pops up in my head is what did they do wrong. Maybe I am used to doing it right that I do not fear linking.

Google

For Google to find a site, either someone has to submit the site to Google or Google finds a link on another site to that site and indexes the site. Hmmmm, but isn't linking suppose to be bad??? In the beginning of Google, it relied on links from one site to another to fill its database with sites to present to the user of the search engine. Even blogs like this one rely on links to give some Google juice to a site. Blog is useless for positioning a site without a link. A link is a link is a link.

Relevant sites

What is a relevant site? In my definition, it is either a site that is local to your area or industry related.

Local sites are excellent to trade links with. Make sure both sites have the local address on the sites for Google to pick up.
Industry related sites, like real estate, are great as well. I will stick with US and Canada. Going out to UK or Bulgaria will lose its relevance because of the distance.

How many and how fast

This is an important part. If a thousand links are pointed to your site overnight, Google will know it is not natural and you can be penalized or all the links will be useless. If you have a one page site and a thousand links pointed to the site, even if over a period of time, that will be obvious as well. Nice thing about using links in blogs is that you have to write content to go along with the link. The ratio of content to links is always in check. If you write them yourself then there is no way you will write a thousand blogs, for a thousand links, overnight. The idea is to build links over a period of time and if you have link pages then make sure to add a description to the site to add content to the page as the links build up. The ratio of links to content is important. Building up content on the site while building up links is important as well. I do not have an exact ratio to quote, use best judgment.

Why does not every SEO company offer it?

It is time consuming
It is expensive to collect potential link partners
They do not have a clue on the proper way to conduct linking
It is easier and lucrative to conduct blog coaching. They can regurgitate the same thing over and over and over.

There are some SEO firms out there that will try to convince as many people that it does not work simply because they cannot sell it themselves. Think about it, if you knew it worked you would ask for it and they would not be able to sell it to you, lost business. Don't drink the cool-aid (Jamestown).

Conclusion

When in doubt, take your time in link building. Build up some nice content first. Neighborhood page are a great way to build up content. Blog as well, both are a great combo for a one two punch. Finally, do not drink the cool-aid.

Will Bing or Wolfram Alpha take over Google?

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Johnson) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:31:48 PDT

There has been a lot of hype over Bing and Wolfram Alpha taking over Google. I even had a client ask me if this was possible for Wolfram Alpha to take over Google and how do we position his Real Estate website for it.

Wolfram Alpha

The developer also created mathematica software, which I did use while taking upper level math classes in college. Both the Search Engine and the software is more for academics than it is for most users. It will never be competition to Google for what most people use the search engines for; unless you want to know how many protons are in the human body or some other science oriented question. I tried to look up search terms like "seattle real estate" and nothing came up at the time.

Bing

Another clone and attempt by Microsoft to gain search engine market share with a few upgrades. Problem with Microsoft gaining market share with anything is that they might charge a hefty price for something that would crash and not be compatible with your older printer and force you to upgrade, or down grade depending on how you look at it, while you are kicking and screaming for he older version to come back. IT personnal would be screaming at the top of their lungs, why me. I am having flashbacks about Vista right now. I think some out of curiosity will try it out to see if it is really all that different and then go back to their normal routine.

Overall

It will be hard to oust Google from being the number one search engine. From my experience with switching over agents to new software, even though once they use it they would never go back, is that people do not like change for the most part. Their routine is comfortable. I still wonder why people are still using Internet Explorer when Firefox and Chrome are far supperior browsers. It is part of their routine. If you're freaking out wondering if everyone will start to switch over to another search engine and what will it do to your sites position; do not start to worry yet, it will not happen over night.

Short vs. Long Tail Keywords, A Strategy To Dominate Your Local Market

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Hoggarth) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:38:39 PDT

There’s a correlation between search phrases, search volume and conversion rates that anyone interested in dominating their local market should understand. The graph below illustrates this relationship between short tail (highly searched, low converting) keywords and long tail (low searched, high converting) keywords.

The balance that needs to be implemented in any search engine marketing plan is that of quality AND quantity. Dominating an online market involves a strategy of achieving top search engine placement for all relevant search terms and driving lots of targeted visitors who will ultimately convert into quality leads. So how do we accomplish this?

The Problem With Targeting Short Tail Keywords

The search phrase “Real Estate” is entered into Google 45,500,000 times/month and is highly competitive. For an example let’s think about this from the perspective of a someone looking to dominate the Seattle Washington market. Only a fraction of those 45,500,000 searches for “Real Estate” would find a Seattle real estate related website useful.

Would a Seattle website ranking at the top of this search term generate leads? Sure! But with such a general “Real Estate” term some of these leads may be looking at Seattle, Denver, Miami or other cities. The extra effort targeting such a generic search term would have been better used targeting other highly search Seattle related terms.

The Problem With Targeting Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords by definition are very specific search phrases with low competition. An example of a long tail keyword is “Queen Anne 2 Bedroom Home For Sale” (Note: Queen Anne is a popular view neighborhood in Seattle, WA) and ranking well for this phrase is relatively easy.

Unfortunately, taking a quick glance at the search volume for “Queen Anne 2 Bedroom Home For Sale” using the Google Keyword Tool there is “Not Enough Data” to report the search volume meaning this phrase is hardly searched. Despite the fact that very specific search phrases enjoy higher conversion rates into leads, even #1 ranking for this term will generate little business. So, how do we capture many of these long tails and optimize and rank for high volume related search phrases?

Finding The Balance – Quality AND Quantity

Initially keyword research and then a long-term strategy, balancing what will produce the quantity and quality of search results, are invaluable in dominating a local market. Accomplishing this takes a two-fold approach.

1. BUILD AUTHORITY FOR THE MID TAIL:

First this involves selecting a ‘mid tail’ keyword phrase, something that is highly search and relevant to the website. Based on these factors for the Seattle market the keyword phrase “Seattle Real Estate” fits wells with 8,100 searches/month, enough volume to support lots of lead generation if ranked well and the visitors will be specific enough that they will convert at a decent percentage. Optimize the main page of the website for this keyword phrase by building links and Google authority.

(Disclosure: Working The Magic manages the #1 ranked website for “Seattle Real Estate” in Google with 10,000 visitors/month that converts roughly 5% of all visitors into leads)

2. CREATE CONTENT FOR THE LONG TAIL:

Once authority is built into the website, the second part of balancing quality and quantity is to then generate content for the long tail. This involves blogging, neighborhood and community information and additional commentary on the website. Using the long tail example from above it would make sense to add content to a Seattle website about Queen Anne 2 bedroom homes that would likely rank well for that search term. The additional content will add relevancy to the website as a whole and those pages will show up in results for all types of long tail keywords.

If you would like to learn more about our Real Estate SEO services please email me at GabeHoggarth@WorkingTheMagic.com or call me direct at 888-442-5115 ext. 104.

Stealth Site or Common Sense?

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Johnson) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:51:45 PDT

I never thought that a site with agents pictures and info only on an internal page (Not the home page) would be considered a stealth site. I thought is was keeping up with the times. What users are expecting have changed over a period of time and so we must fulfill expectations.

Understanding that out of state clients, which is most of the internet leads, find homes in this order:

Want to find out about the area and/or neighborhoods
Look for homes
Find an agent

Finding the agent is last on the list, so it makes sense to put the agents pictures on an internal page. Believe me, no one wants the see the agent and their dog on the front page. That is web 1.0 stuff that should be left in the museum. It really makes me wonder if agents that want to paste their picture on the front page are creating an e-commerce site or just feeding their egos. I know that web designers will feed their egos to get the contract. We design our sites with the end user in mind and the search engines, not the agents egos.

Find a web designer that knows how to create an e-commerce site, not just a website. The difference is that a website can suck all it wants, nobody will ever care to see it anyways. E-commerce site is intended to make money. That high school kid that can design a website for $20 will not work. Drop the emotions and think of cold hard cash you can make off a great SEO and user friendly site.

The Website Actually Has To Be Usable

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Johnson) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:43:40 PDT

This is not such a problem as in the past, but every so often I run across a website that makes no sense. Why is this important? Users cannot find what they want then they will click some where else to find it. People usually search in a z pattern and scan the sites, not read it, until they find what they want. An error is only a click away and a different site is only a click away as well. People go to websites to find things faster from their home. Lets make the navigation fast for them to find what they want. It is tough once you get more than 10 pages on your site and you want to link to them all from the home page.

4 Tips to start with:
1) Keep all link text as simple as possible, do not get fancy.
2) Watch the clutter, confusion may follow. Trying to fit too much on the home page will confuse and aggravate users.
3) Most important pages, to the user, always above the fold (top part of the site).
4) Keep the header no bigger than 100 pixels.

A great reference site is webpagesthatsuck.com The top 10 2008 worst sites are always amusing. The site has a list of many things to avoid.

Why Would I Want to Move Here?

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Johnson) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:49:39 PDT

I have looked over thousands of web sites. The main problem with most of them for the potential clients that do come through is that there is no info on the area the agents serve. The thought may be to send it to them in a relo packet to get their contact info. It may work, if they stick around long enough on the site to request it.

Internet leads start with:
1) Finding out if they want to move to the area or which part of the area.
2) Look for homes
3) Find an agent

In that order.

Google loves content. It tells the search engine what you are about. Does not hurt to have the proper keyword density as well for the city/neighborhood and using the proper title and meta tags for the city/neighborhood. Blog style works just fine. Most amazing of all, they do not list the area they serve on the front page for the potential clients. You would think putting the city you serve on the front page is a "no dunno?", but there are hundreds of sites out there that do not. When in doubt, clients will go to another site they know it is the right area. Another site is just a click away, always.

Paying To Submit Your Site

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Johnson) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:51:53 PDT

I am having a hard time with the concept of paying to submit your site to the search engines. Really, there is only a few search engines that have any amount of traffic to them. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are the only ones that really matters. Bing is too new to be much of a concern at this point. Since people do not like change, I doubt that many people will switch to it anytime soon. Nothing like entrenching habits with everyday software that people use, like Google.

I run into agents here and there that pay hundreds per month to submit their sites to the search engines, what a waste of money. Once you submit your site or the search engines find your site, they will come back to index it again. I have serious doubts that if you submit the site every month the search engines will come back sooner than they already will or it will make your site any more desirable than it already is.

It makes me wonder if the SEO companies that charges monthly fees to submit your sites every month, actually submit the sites or do they just collect the money since they know the search engine spider software will come back through like clock work.

Here are some FREE ways to submit your sites to the search engines.

FREE submission to google
Use this as many times as you want. Unless your site has changed drastically, once is usually enough.
Submit to Google

Yahoo submission.
Submit to Yahoo

Here is MSN/Live/Bing submission.
Submit to MSN/Live/Bing

Vlogging & Video Publishing

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Hoggarth) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:09:44 PDT

It's important to understand that the ways consumers now digest their news and information is much different than years ago and I consider real estate professionals to be the best poised to benefit from the type of citizen journalism we see a lot of today.

Here are some slides I used recently for a Vlogging and Video Publishing presentation covering some of the basics from recording to sharing.

Leverage the POWER of Social Media

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Hoggarth) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:14:10 PDT

You have heard about them: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn tomorrow's next big thing and diving into the world of Social Media is a daunting task when you don't know where to start, what to focus your valuable time and energy on and ultimately what provides a real return on investment.

The Real Estate industry is unique. Social networks thrive on user interaction, sharing quality content, business transparency, building connections and networking. Constantly PUSHING products, listings, marketing ploys to these networks are generally met with negative feedback and few results.

The SOLUTION is two part:

Spend time on the right social networks and evaluate the You Brand you are representing on these networks. Know what to share and how to engage the communities using all of the available tools to your advantage.

Integrate social networks into your website and blog. Some visitors to your site may just be browsing content and not in the stage to become a solid lead yet. Give these visitors a way to view your social profiles: Facebook, Twitter, ActiveRain, etc and potentially befriend you, follow you or interact on those platforms. Social networks provide a great opportunity to stay connected to and interact with visitors over time.

We have created a Hybrid Social Media Package that tackles the technical aspects of setting up a successful community presence combined with our popular coaching services to ensure long term benefit. We want you to stop worrying if you are doing the right thing and to focus on what you do best, closing deals.

If you're interested in our Social Media Services please contact us today!

10 Sites or One Good One

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Johnson) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:35:58 PDT

If anyone has seen those infomercials that will give you ten template sites to sell their products as part of their package. Sounds great? Well, my thoughts is, who cares. Ten sites that will not be seen is just as useless as one site that will not be seen. Now, if you have ten sites that are positioned on Google well; that is a different story. Just having ten brand new sites will not sell your products or services even if they are linked together.

I always give the advice to Real Estate professionals and other people, focus on one site first. One site positioned well will bring in more leads than ten sites that will not be seen by anyone who cares or may have a few long tail search terms. Keep driving traffic to that one site with linking, blogs, linkedin, twitter, and any other social media you use. Trying to get ten sites off the ground will consume your time and will give you mediocre results than spending your time one site.

One thing to avoid with multiple sites is having duplicate content, basically one site ten times. Advanced access got hit hard with this some years back with their template sites when Google started checking for duplicate content. It was one site 30,000+ times. It should be a commandment "thou shalt be unique onto itself". Only one site will gain any page rank and the rest will fall in the shadows.

Moral of the story: focus on one site at a time to maximize your blood, sweat, and tears that you put into your site.

New Team Member Joins Working The Magic!

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Hoggarth) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:32:58 PDT

Welcome to our newest team member Eddi Hughes who recently joined the Working The Magic group!

Eddi brings to our team a strong background in web, graphic design and multimedia communication. Eddi stood out from a number of qualified applicants for his use of social networks to connect with consumers through local niches in the real estate and automotive industries and his technical understanding of content management systems including WordPress.

As our client base continues to grow Eddi is an intergrate part of our team understanding that search engine visibility is an increasingly important investment for real estate professionals hungry to create ongoing relationships with their clients and we are excited to have him on-board!

We continue to provide great results for real estate professionals interested in succeeding in the online marketplace. Contact us to find out how we can bring more traffic to your website!

The Website Trap: Do You Lease or Own?

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Hoggarth) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:52:55 PDT

On a daily basis I am evaluating websites for search friendliness, researching effective keywords, title tags, content, lead capture and many other contributing factors to Google success. I do this for websites big and small, new and old with varying marketing budgets. My job is to create an effective personal strategy to move a website to the top of the search ranks for competitive keywords, ultimately driving traffic and generating leads. I want everyone to be successful but unfortunately I can’t help everyone and it’s not because I don’t have time (Our SEO system is scaled well and we have employed the talent to perform).

The biggest problem I see day-to-day are websites owners with little to no control of their websites.

This has happened for a couple reasons.

Template websites are priced right and consumers don’t necessarily know what they are buying. I’m not going to say every template website is bad, only the ones that restrict access to the website so much that even small changes are an added charge, a week delay, or impossible. For me as an owner of multiple websites myself, that is unacceptable. If there is one thing I have learned it is that Speed of Implementation is essential to success and survival in a changing Internet world.
Many web design companies have built a subscription based service into their revenue model. The client pays the monthly and the company evolves the platform. This can work if the design company is as enthused about change and the future as the client and they consistently evolve their services. The problem here comes when the company stops evolving and the site grows outdated while the client is stuck paying monthly. Now if the client wants to move away from the companies services (and monthly payment) their website is so entrenched, and possibly under design ownership rights of the company, that to really get away involves the client paying someone to build an entirely new site to making the switch.

TIP: Find a company that gives you FTP access to your website. It’s your own website and you deserve to have control. If a company insists that they can’t let you have FTP access, there are plenty of other companies that will.

An evolution of design and control.

With new open source publishing platforms like WordPress designers can now offer clients a customized website built on a framework that allows for complete ownership and control. No more monthly maintenance fees. Open source means that community based collaboration has developed and will continue to evolve the platform, at no cost. As the web evolves, search engines evolve and design evolves the community as a whole participates in the growth for the benefit of everyone.

Here are a couple examples of sites I built on the WordPress platform:

SeattlePowerSearch.com - #1 on Google for Seattle Real Estate

PhoenixPowerSearch.com - #3 on Google for Phoenix Real Estate

If you would like to know more about WordPress or optimizing an existing website, please contact me at GabeHoggarth@WorkingTheMagic.com or at 1-888-442-5115 ext. 104.

How To Use Twitter For Real Estate Lead Generation

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Hoggarth) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:03:01 PST

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Twitter. What is it? How should you use it? Is it a waste of time? These are good questions that I want to address. I’ve been a part of the Twitter community for a few weeks now learning as much as I can about the audience, reach (current and potential) and usefulness of this network as it relates to personal branding and real estate lead generation.

For those who don’t know, Twitter is one of several emerging micro blogging platforms that lets users interact with other members of the network. Twitter’s power grows as the network grows and last month (Dec. 2008) the company saw 27% growth and logged 4.5 million unique visitors to it’s website. Those are big numbers and it’s my bet that the tipping point has been reached as we are entering into 2009 and what will be the complete adoption of a very interactive and social web… the masses are coming.

So, how to use Twitter for real estate lead generation.

Most notably, Twitter has eliminated agent-to-buyer and buyer-to-buyer separation. Because Twitter is a place where people post about the things going on in their life someone who has purchased a product or used a service can share that experience with their Twitter following. Think word of mouth marketing on steroids. The clients of yours using Twitter will naturally post about the ups and downs of their transaction. Their Tweets (Individual Twitter posts) become living and breathing testimonials for your service to anyone in their social sphere. The potential arises in the ability to leverage the social sphere of happy clients during this social feedback cycle.

“It (The social feedback cycle) is the post-purchase conversation – built up and validated through the collective wisdom of the crowd – that ultimately drives word-of-mouth-based evangelism” - Dave Evans, Social Media Marketing

3 steps to leveraging your clients Twitter social sphere.

Join Twitter if you haven't already and familiarize yourself with the community. Take note of the kind of conversations happening on Twitter.
Find past and current clients that are using Twitter. I also recommend installing a service like Tweetdeck to organize the people you are following into groups. A group of “Past/Current Clients” makes sense.
When it is relevant, and especially when there is good news, communicate with your clients through Twitter. When your happy clients respond back to you then their following (Friends, family, co-workers) will be able read about the favorable experience they are having with you as their agent. Even better their following may even join in on the conversation. The fact is that a lot of people will be reading a positive testimonial about your quality service from someone in their social circle.

Twitter is just another piece to your online toolbox as a tech savvy agent. As these types of micro blogging platforms become the norm, stay ahead of the curve and ahead of the competition. I already see agents using Twitter successfully and am interested in some more success stories as we move forward!

Additional resources:

Twitter.com – Getting Started

10 Twitter Etiquette Rules

Video: Gary Vaynerchuk – Building Personal Brand within the Social Media Landscape

The Ins and Outs of Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Hoggarth) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:24:28 PST

Lately I’ve been discussing the role of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) strategies in an effective SEO campaign. For those new to this, PPC generally uses an auction based pricing system for purchasing visits to a website based on specific keywords. Prices for keywords go up as the number of advertisers goes up because the space available for advertisers is limited. Paid for links are then shown as “Sponsored Links” along with the organic results in Google searches and advertisers are charged a market price when someone clicks and visits their site.

To make some sense of this the average cost per visit for the keyword “Seattle real estate” is $5.03 or an amazing $100 for 20 visits. Wow, seems expensive to me but if a website is converting visitors into leads and closings at a rate that produces a positive return on investment, even though that site is probably not maximizing profit, it can make sense especially if work is being done to improve organic rankings in the interim.

Thinking about it, here are the reasons PPC is appealing…

Immediate results. Start a PPC campaign right now and you can be sending visitors to your site for a specific search term by the end of the day.
Easy to calculate return on investment. At the end of the day marketers and site owners want to be able to crunch the numbers and report their return on investment. I can understand this and believe this is the biggest reason there is such a large disconnect between PPC vs. search engine optimization (SEO) spending despite the real opportunity that “SEO drives 75%+ of all search traffic, yet garners less than 15% of marketing budgets for SEM campaigns. PPC receives less than 25% of all search traffic, yet earns 80%+ of SEM campaign budgets”. What effective marketers need to do is weigh the daily ROI decisions against the yearly and long term ROI to make a clear decision. If it is any indicator, the #1 organically ranked website for “Seattle real estate” has traffic valued at $37,400/month.
Keyword testing for SEO. PPC allows sites to bid and drive traffic for specific keywords and then analyze the conversion rates based of those keywords. Keyword testing is useful to examine if “Seattle real estate” or “Seattle homes for sale” converts visitors into leads and at what percentage. This can be useful to give direction as to how the best use of resources for managing an SEO campaign can be spent.

And the downside of PPC…

Lower conversion rates. The overall conversion rate or the rate at which searchers take a desired action on a site is higher for unpaid search results than the rate for paid (4.2% vs. 3.6%). On Google, 72.3 percent of users surveyed felt that organic results were more relevant, while only 27.7 percent rated paid results as more relevant.
Not as many visits for a given keyword. 30 percent of search engine users click on paid listings, leaving 70 percent who are clicking the organic listings or refining their search.
Infinite investment required. Immediate results are a double edged sword, site traffic stops just as abruptly as it starts. There is a constant infusion of PPC spend needed to maintain traffic levels.

I specialize in finding the very best online marketing strategy for real estate professionals and am very interested in hearing your success and struggles for the benefit of everyone, please share! Until next time.

How To Make Searchers Click – The Meta Description Tag

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Hoggarth) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:25:50 PDT

I was recently asked how to control the text that gets displayed along with each link in the search results. This is a good question, this text is your chance to tell searchers exactly what to expect from your site and entice them to click on the link and visit your page. The highlighted yellow text in the image below is an example of this text at work:

So how does Google generate this text? One of two ways.

1: Most often, Google grabs this text from the meta description of the page. The meta description is a snippet of code placed in the <head> of your website. You will have the best results from writing a clear sentence or two that accurately describes your page or article. Keep the length of your meta description short since there will be a limited number of characters displayed in the search results and adding additional keywords to the meta description wont give you any extra value. Each page of your website should also have its own unique meta description. Here's a snapshot of the highlighted code showing the meta description of this Phoenix page:

To add a meta description to your website, insert the following code into the <HEAD></HEAD> section of your website:

<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Your descriptive sentence or two goes here.">

2: Google will sometimes display 1 or 2 sentences directly from the content of the website. This will happen when a website either does not have a meta description OR if the keywords of the search phrase are in the content but not the meta description. At that point Google will grab the text from the sentences surrounding the keywords in the body of the website to display.

Search Rankings vs Click %

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Hoggarth) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:05:12 PDT

The behavior of users as they fly around the internet with the use search engines is an interesting topic that reveals the importance of SEO and ranking for top positions. It is fairly intuitive that ranking number 1 or 2 for a highly searched term is good, but the question is how good?

Here are some numbers that shed light on the real benefits of rank position by taking a look at the number of clicks (aka visits to a website) determined by where those sites show up in the search results. Notice search results 1-3 account for over 62% of the visits for any search term, and being on the second page eliminates a website from nearly 90% of the search traffic.

The Importance of Top Rankings

Search Results (Top 10)	% of Clicks
1	42.1
2	11.9
3	8.5
4	6.1
5	4.9
6	4.1
7	3.4
8	3.0
9	2.8
10	3.0

11 - 1000

11.3

Search Results by Page	% of Clicks
Page 1	88.40
Page 2	6.43
Page 3	2.21
Page 4	.92
Page 5	.58

Search Market Share
Google	60.2%
Yahoo	22.5%
MSN	11.8%
Other	5.5%

Data sourced from Enquisite Search Analytics - http://www.enquisite.com/

SEO Tool – Instant Content Visualization

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Hoggarth) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:54:21 PDT

Every once in a while I come across a new SEO tool that works exactly how I want it to and it opens the door for a lot of great ideas. This is one of those tools. The people over at TagCrowd.com have put together a simple way to convert any webpage, copied text, or document into a visualized tag cloud. Tag clouds are really just a visual depiction of the word content of a site, the more times a word is repeated the larger the word appears.

What this allows you to do is take a large body of text, or an entire website at a time, and instantly generate a visual representation of all the content. Generate a tag cloud of your own website to analyze. When optimizing for a specific search term it’s important that those words show up prominently in your tag cloud. Notice in the tag cloud to the right of our website the most prominent words are “real”, “estate” and “SEO”, we are actively optimizing for the search term “real estate SEO”. If your desired keywords aren’t showing up prominently, reworking your content for a higher keyword density (Using your keywords in your content more often) makes sense.

Generate a tag cloud for your top ranked competitors websites. Are there prominent words showing up that you haven’t thought about optimizing for? Hope you have fun with this tool like I have, the usefulness of it extends even beyond SEO.

Related posts:

SEO Market Reports by City

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Hoggarth) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:49:12 PDT

I'm a big believer of "raising the free line". This is the idea of creating as much value loaded information as possible and then just giving it away for free. Why? The Internet has dramatically changed consumers expectation of a valuable product and we're ahead of the game; and maybe a little bit crazy.

All cards on the table, my goal is to create enough trust to build strong working relationships with visitors who will ultimately see the value of the services we offer, or at least have a glowing recommendation to pass along to their professional friends about all the great information I'm just giving away.

With these thoughts in mind I am eager to give the first look at some of the free market reports we have started compiling for very specific online real estate markets. Some of our competitors are charging $100-200 and more for the same information. It's my goal to provide the most comprehensive and detailed competitive marketing report available to real estate professionals, period.

Take a look at the Chicago Illinois market report.

To request a free custom market report for your area, use the form below.

Linking for SEO - Tips and Secrets

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Hoggarth) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:13:09 PDT

Some Google History

Google began in January 1996, as a research project by Larry Page, who was soon joined by Sergey Brin, two Ph.D. students at Stanford University in California. They hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better ranking of results than existing techniques, which ranked results according to the number of times the search term appeared on a page. Their search engine was originally nicknamed "BackRub" because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site.

Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine.

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Links are the highways that Google and other search engines travel in an effort to determine the popularity, relationship and relevancy of every page and website they come across.

Very generally speaking if a website has a large amount of links pointing to it search engines can assume that others will also find that resource to be valuable. Search engines have evolved from simply counting the number of links (They now look at quality of links, originality of content and other trust factors) but this basic idea still exists.

There are two types of links; "external" and "internal"
An internal link is a hyperlink that links to another page on the SAME website.
An external link is a hyperlink that links to another page on a DIFFERENT website.

Internal links will generally make up your navigation, links to your articles and blog posts, and all the pages on your website. An optimized internal link structure helps search engines efficiently index your content and check for updates, along with ranking your pages for the best keywords.

Optimizing your internal link structure includes having proper categories and search friendly content, featuring your best pages by linking to them more, and taking a look at the anchor text of each link.

Anchor text is the visible text that you click in a link. In this example link: Real Estate SEO, the words "Real Estate SEO" are the anchor text. Search engines associate the anchor text of a link with the page the link leads to (In this example our SEO website WorkingTheMagic.com) and will begin ranking our site for those keywords.

External links on your website send visitors to other websites. External links on other people's websites to yours are called "backlinks" for you, also called incoming links, inward links and inlinks.

To improve rankings in the search engines the key is to get relevant, quality links from respected websites to yours. The more relevant backlinks the better, especially if those backlinks contain the keywords you are trying to rank for in the anchor text like "Seattle real estate" or "Phoenix homes for sale".

I'll cover some effective linking strategies in future posts and for now subscribe to this blog.

Related Posts:
Evaluate Your Google Competition
8 Tips: Online Lead Capture
SEO to Capture a Major Metro

Blidget Your Blog in 2 minutes

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Hoggarth) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:24:53 PDT

A Blidget is a widget that displays your blog (Example below to the left). As ridiculous as that is to say Blidgets are a simple - and free - way to drive additional readers to your blog and make it more 'sticky'.

You can make a custom Blidget for your blog in minutes and then share or embed your Blidget on as many websites as you want. Once it's setup your Blidget's views, clicks and subscriptions are all tracked for your use.


	5 steps to making a Blidget for your blog Step 1 of 5: Visit the Make Blidget page at Widgetbox. I've taken a screenshot of the page shown below. Once there, enter in your Blog URL (aka your blog web address) and click "Continue".



	Step 2 of 5: Customize the size, color, style, title and caption for your Blidget as much or as little as you like. Don't worry too much about making it prefect if you can't decide, you can easily change these features at any time in the future.

	Step 3 of 5: Chose an image that will appear at the top of your Blidget or enter in the address of an image already on the web. Add relevant tags and description for your blidget for others to find. Other visitors may want to embed your Blidget on their website, always good! Click "Publish Blidget" when done.

	Step 4 of 5: Almost there. If your Blidget looks good click the big green "Get Widget" button.



	Step 5 of 5: Chose from Flash or Javascript code, or from one of the optimized selections for all different types of blogging platforms. Flash seems to work best for ActiveRain posts. Click "Copy". Now paste the code in blog posts, along your blog navigation bar, on your other blogs or websites, wherever you want your new Blidget to show up!

Free SEO Coaching Offer

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Hoggarth) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:34:52 PDT

Starting today we're offering one FREE month - no strings attached - of our Silver Level SEO Coaching ($500 value) to any real estate professional who completes our SEO Questionnaire. If you are interested in finding out what it takes to effectively compete online in your market and begin implementing our proven strategies then this is an offer you can't pass up. Limited spots available so sign up now.

About The Coaching Program

1-on-1 Consultations
Competitive Analysis
Keyword Research and Recommendations
Site Audit & Analysis
Ranking Report for Relevant Keywords
SEO Strategies Updates
Design and Content Recommendations
Take the Questionnaire

Evaluate Your Google Competition

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Hoggarth) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:07:36 PDT

After selecting the right search phrase (Generally "City"+"Real Estate" for the sites we work with) it is useful to be able to evaluate the competition already showing up in the results for that term. Use these tips to evaluate the competitive landscape for any given search term. These two factors, and having a solid SEO strategy, will determine the time and effort it takes to obtain top search engine rankings:

Factor #1: Age and Authority of the Domain
Aged websites will enjoy results from SEO efforts faster than new websites. New websites tend to take a little longer to get traction in Google, especially for highly competitive search terms.

Factor #2: Search Term Competition
The most accurate way to gauge the competition for a specific search term is to evaluate the sites currently ranking in the top 10 for that search term. Here are some things to look for.

Number of backlinks for the top sites
Backlinks, also called incoming links, are all the links from other websites to a particular site. Some search engines, including AlltheWeb, Google and Yahoo!, allow users to get a list of backlinks to a specific page by typing "link:http://www.WEBSITE.com" into their search boxes, replacing WEBSITE with the domain in question. From experience, AlltheWeb and Yahoo provide the most accurate counts of backlinks while Google only displays a fraction of the backlinks it recognizes.
PageRank for the top sites
PageRank is Google's proprietary measure of link popularity for Web pages. Here's what Google says "PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results". Typically the higher the PageRank the better they are at competing online, but does not necessarily mean a site is optimized for a specific search term. PageRank figures are updated quarterly and should be taken as a historical figure rather than up-to-date. PageRank is built into the Google Toolbar that you will need to install in order to view.
Search terms in title tag
When viewing the search result page for a specific search term take a look at how many of the results contain that exact search phrase in their title. For example in the Google results for "Denver Real Estate" nine out of the ten results contain the exact phrase "Denver Real Estate" in the title. Compare these results with the search result page for "Denver Property For Sale" that only has one result (#9) with the exact search phrase in the title. These results show that fewer websites are optimizing for the search phrase "Denver Property For Sale" making it less competitive of a term than "Denver Real Estate". More competition for the term "Denver Real Estate" makes sense because it is searched much more often.
Number of national sites in top 10 (Trulia, Yahoo!, Realtor.com)
The more national sites in the top 10 the less the competition. Trulia, Yahoo!, Realtor.com and a handful of other national sites work hard to achieve fairly good results for a lot of state and city real estate search terms. That said, these sites have a tough time competing against and out ranking well crafted area specific agent websites. If national real estate sites are dominating the search page for a specific search term this generally means there are not a lot of individual agents competing for that term. By implementing a good SEO strategy an agent website should always be able outrank the national sites in their specific area.
Number of non real estate related sites in top 10
Non real estate related sites showing up in search results are a sign of weak competition. Examples of this are when area newspapers and other websites with a strong web presence unrelated to real estate show up for real estate search terms.

We are now offering free custom market reports by city, request yours today!

8 Tips: Online Lead Capture

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Hoggarth) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:14:06 PDT

What are you doing to capture leads with your website right now?
Your website should be using 3, 4, 5+ ways to capture leads and convert traffic into contacts and ultimately closes. Assuming you are generating some traffic through your site, these are some of the best practices in online real estate lead generation that your competitor is already using.

1. Solid IDX Solution - IDX stands for Internet Data Exchange and is a property search site which allows the public to conduct searches of approved Multiple Listing Service properties in a certain area. For every client I have worked with their IDX platform is their #1 lead generating resource. There are quite a few IDX options out there and not every product is available in every city so finding the right solution for the right price may take some time. What I look for besides availability and price is a usable intuitive map search and the ability to integrate the product seemlessly into a site. Here are a few platforms I have had good experiences with:

2. Property Request Forms - Not every visitor has the time or desire to browse all the listings and search the map. Some people just want to tell you what they want and have you get back to them with the details; property request forms are great for this. You, or your web guy/gal, should create a simple website form asking for their desired type of property, time frame for purchasing and current state in the buying process along with contact information. Put some links on your site to this "Property Request Form". You know what types of property area desirable in your area, create multiple similar forms for "Waterfront Property Request Form", "Condo Request Form", "Commercial Request Form", etc.

3. Visible Phone Number and Email on Every Page - This is self-explanatory but I am always surprised when I have to click around to find contact information for an agent on their website. Don't make it hard for your visitors to contact you. I'm not saying to put your photo on every page, but a phone number and email should be easy to find.

4. Contact Form's' - There should be some sort of lead capture on every page. On your content pages make it easy for visitors to get in touch with you about questions or comments. Contact forms (short ones asking for only a name, email, phone and question/comment) can easily be added to your side navigation or at the end of articles.

5. Relocation Packets and Baited Content - Relocation packets, neighborhood resources, in-depth school reports, and useful area information like maps and tourist information area great offers to entice visitors to fill out a contact form.

6. Available Online Agent - We have experimented with this in the past with mixed results but it is another avenue to explore. A Google search for "live chat software" brings up a mix of different options that allow your visitors to engage in a live chat or click to call features directly from your site.

7. Newsletter Email Capture - If you are an expert in your area on something it may make sense to begin building your email list for a weekly/monthly newsletter. This can be a great way to reconnect with past visitors and bring them back to your site month after month which can be helpful to increase your site traffic and search rankings. If you are blogging already, the blog posts you are already writing make a good base for your newsletter without the need for much additional content.

8. Social Media Subscriptions - Some visitors to your site may just be browsing content and not in the stage to become a solid lead yet. Give these visitors a way to view your social profiles: Facebook, Twitter, ActiveRain, etc and potentially befriend you, follow you or interact on those platforms. Social networks provide a great opportunity to stay connected to and interact with visitors over time.

For more information on driving substantial amounts of traffic to your website by ranking at the top of the search engines visit WorkingTheMagic.com, a Real Estate SEO company.

Questions to Ask an SEO Company

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Hoggarth) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:35:36 PDT

A few days ago Google updated the "What's an SEO?" page of their Webmaster Help Center. They have done a good job to outline the benefits professional SEO companies provide while giving advice on how to spot and avoid unethical SEO companies.

Here are the six questions - and our answers - that Google recommends you ask a prospective SEO company:

1. Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?
We have several examples of our #1 search rankings for highly competitive search terms in our SEO Portfolio. Because of client confidentiality we don't display every success story but we are happy to provide more examples if you contact us.

2. Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
Yes, we follow the technical and quality guidelines including:

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don't send automated queries to Google.
Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords.
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Don't create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

3. Do you offer any online marketing services to complement your organic search business?
We provide competitive analysis, keyword research, SEO strategy updates, technical assistance, webinars, monthly analytic reports; a full range of SEO Services and Real Estate Coaching.

4. What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe?
With our system we will give most anyone in the real estate profession top rankings (#1-5) in the organic search listings for their most relevant and highly searched term. We constantly track the climb in rankings and generally achieve our goal results 4-12 months from implementation with the factors being:

Age of the domain (Brand new websites take longer)
Search term competition

5. What's your experience in my industry?
We ONLY position websites related to the Real Estate industry.

6. How long have you been in business?
We have positioned Real Estate websites in highly competitive markets across the county since early 2002. Here is a bit of our Real Estate Business History.

To get in touch with one of our SEO Professionals or to learn more please contact us.