Real Estate SEO and Online Marketing Blog by Jerry Mosher

Unfortunately I had to learn this the hard way.

Save your work… and save it often.

I was writing an article here about setting up a new real estate template site for SEO and just as I was about to finish it, I hit a couple wrong keys and my browser shut off.

So, I thought no problem I’m blogging with Wordpress and there is an autosave function thats always on. I opened up my browser logged back in went to the drafts folder and there it is. I clicked through to go finish the article and publish and…

Dun Dun Dunnnn

The entire article was gone. =(      T he only thing left was the title. The reason I lost the article was that I just installed a new plugin for Wordpress called FCKeditor. It’s a wysiwyg editor that had a lot more functionality but what I didn’t know  was the autosave function of Wordpress doesn’t work properly with it.

Another lesson learned. saving…

The article I was writing is about Getting a Real Estate Website Setup for SEO and you can find it at my other site reaseo.com on the blog or by following the link right above.

If you have a  new real estate website you might want to check it out. I’m sure it will be of some help.

Building links is the core of good SEO.

Real Estate link building is just like link building for any other website. Although there are some things that you might want to veer away from or at least not overdue.

A while back a real estate website provider was trying to help their clients and suggested reciprocal linking. This was a good idea until everyone went overboard. They all started linking to each other and soon had link partner pages with 100’s of reciprocal links. Their rankings went up, and then Google caught it. Penalization.

Reciprocal linking has never been the same since. If you are reciprocal linking make sure you don’t overdue it. If you have a reciprocal link page with 100’s of links you might want to go clean it up a bit. I’ve seen sites jump up in the rankings just by cleaning it up and reducing the amount of links.

Building Links

• When getting links, you want to get them from sites about the same or similar topic as possible.
• Make sure the page your link will be on is indexed. (search the exact url in Google)
• Make sure the links are not redirects. (if you hover over the link and in the bottom left of your browser a different url than your website appears, it’s probably a useless link for SEO purposes)
• Vary your anchor text. It is important not to get all links with the same anchor text.
• Build links to internal pages and NOT just the homepage. (use appropriate anchor text for other pages)
• Don’t get an abnormally large amount of links in to short a period. Try to be consistent. Get 10 links or so a day. More or less is fine just don’t go crazy.

Good Places to Build Links

• Related forums and blogs are good places to get links. Post comments and get involved in discussions. Try to provide helpful comments and don’t just spam. Forums usually allow a signature which is where your link should be. Most blogs will allow you to enter a url when posting, most are nofollow but don’t worry about it.
• Profile Pages are a great place to get links. Activerain is a good place to set up a profile. You can set up a profile at youtube and other places(think outside the box).
• Article directories are an excellent link source. Write some real estate articles and submit them to article directories like ezinearticles
• Create your own content sites like Squidoo. Create a local real estate lens with updated market info.
• Turn your listing photos into a Virtual Tour with Windows Movie Maker or Animoto and upload it to youtube.
• Start Blogging: Get a blog going either on your site or on a free blogging platform and start blogging. You can drop links in your posts.
• Create content on your own website. More pages on your site equals more pages to link with.

There’s plenty more to cover but this should help with your real estate link building efforts. Participating in a real estate related community site or local community site is something you should definitely get involved in. Just remember not to spam your link.

ActiveRain is a really good real estate network to build a profile and blog. I think they are charging to get a blog now but you can just create a profile and leave comments on other blogs if you aren’t comfortable with writing a blog yet.

If you want a line to form in your almost empty store try this one out.

This is what I had to fill out and sign to buy a mouse to feed to my snake.

I don’t think I’ll be buying my snake food from this store again.

Really though, If there is a line in your store because you created some unnecessary obstacle, your probably going to lose business.

Make it easy for your customers to BUY whether your running an online business or a Brick & Mortar store.

Another annoying thing that I see creating lines is when a store tries to sign you up for their rewards card or credit line and they have the people filling out the paperwork at the only open register. =P

I just moved to Phoenix Arizona and it is hot. It’s really not that bad, I bet it’s going to get a whole lot hotter in the coming months. =(

The move went smoothly and I’ve gotten pretty much everything set up here at the apartment. I don’t really know my way around yet but I’ll get there. =P

I’m looking for a job out here in Phoenix and hopefully I’ll get that squared away soon. I have a couple places in mind but I’m not really picky when it comes to work. I’d just like something with a little security and a good environment.

I was going to put up a picture but I cant find the camera. I’ll get some pictures up when i can. Maybe i can make my way up to the top of one of these skyscrapers and get a nice aerial photo of the city.

I was going to take this blog down and focus on my other site but i think I’m going to leave it up for while.

TTYL,

Jerry

For the past few months I’ve been working on a website for real estate agents to learn how to SEO their websites. At the moment the site is not complete but there is a good deal of information on Real Estate SEO.

The site is at reaseo.com.

There is a blog there that I will probably be posting to more often than here once I get the rest of the real estate seo guide section finished.

The blog will be used to inform you of updates and new content being added to the site. If you are an agent who is currently doing SEO to your own site you should go take a look at the SEO Guide and subscribe to the blog feed.

On the site, the SEO Guide is coming along nicely and I would appreciate any feedback you can give me to help make it even better. I’m going to be adding what I think is the last part of the on-page optimization section in the next couple of days. After that, it will be all about Link Building which I’m sure is going to be the best section of all.

Link Building is what makes it all work. Without links from other sites, it’s unlikely that your site will even get indexed by a major search engine or any search engine for that matter.  And ranking without links from other sites is… well, pretty much impossible.

My email inbox is filled with mainly junk. How about yours?

I was skimming through my feed reader the other day and it was filled with over 100 new posts from blogs I have subscribed to. This is actually quite similar to how I go through my email. I have it setup to display the blog name and post title(in email: from and subject).

So when i go through it I first glance at the name or in emails case who it is from… Now, depending on where it is coming from my brain decides how much attention to pay to the headline/subject. If I it sounds good I click through to the post and read it. If i have some input I click through to the blog and comment.

Now some emails or feeds, I don’t even need to read the subject… I see who it’s from. Click, whirr.

Now the one feed I have never skipped is Seth Godins Blog. So I clicked and read yet another amazingly insightful post titled Poisoning the well.

In real estate I know you get a whole lot of spam because I still get it to. Surprisingly, a good portion of it is coming from other real estate agents.

I received an email(spam) just the other day advertising a list of emails or a membership site where you can email thousands of other agents your new listings info.

Now do you think that those agents actually want to get your emails? Nope. They most likely follow the same method as I do. Who’s it from? dunno? Delete. or worse yet Marked as spam.

Don’t waste your time with spam. If you want people to actually read your emails or listen to what you have to say, they have to want it and it has to be amazing.

I look forward to every one of Seth’s blog posts. And that is what your customers, clients, subscribers should be saying about you.

I am just finishing up a book on negotiating called Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. And honestly I’d have to say I had no clue about negotiating before reading this book. It is a definite recommended read.

At first it was kinda slow and boring compared to most books I read. But a little farther in and it just hits you. When you read this book you will have a whole new view on negotiation. Whether your negotiating a lease, a raise in salary, a dispute or anything else this book can help you.

I’m sure there are better books on negotiating out there and now that I have some interest in the subject I might read some of them. But this is definitely a good first read on the subject. It incorporates stories to help you get what they’re saying but I think there should be few more to really drive the concepts into your brain.

Overall I think it’s a great book and worth reading. Order it from Amazon here, or I’m sure you can pick it up at your local book store.

First off, I am on Vacation in Las Vegas and it’s Great. =)

I just realized i forgot to make this post before I started my secret link building campaign for my old Office. The purpose of this is to show you the most powerful part of SEO.

Let me give you a little background on the office website. Their site is just like a lot of real estate websites as in it’s hosted on a CMS(Content Management System), that like most Real Estate CMS’s has it’s limitations and downfalls. And let me tell you, the limitations on this CMS are a bit more anti SEO than most.

First of all, there is a duplicate content issue on this site where the Home button on the homepage is passing link juice to a duplicate page(site:realtyamericagmac.com, Home link:realtyamericagmac.com/index.cfm). Second the Title tag which if given more control over could really help but it always says: “Realty America GMAC” in the beginning. If that could be moved to display after the target keyword phrase, I think they might have a shot at the #1 spot on google.

Anyway, I have done a little SEO on this site in the past and currently just started slowly building links to the homepage with anchor text. I am going to vary the anchor text a bit and build the links slowly. The reason for doing it slowly is that in a link building campaign you want to be consistent. If you go out and get 1000 new links in a day and the next day you get 0, well the search engines are probably going to think somethings up a apply a filter to devalue those likes for some time.

So far I have only gotten a couple new links.  So not much has been done.

One of the links I created for this site a while back; I created with the anchor text “Realty America GMAC” so they could rank for that in the event someone searched for it. I got to thinking and decided to go back and change the Anchor text on any link I did this on because I really doubt that any potential clients would actually search for this term.

So far I have found a couple and changed them to say “Hemet Real Estate”. This is a highly targeted term in the area and has good amount of daily searches. Now I have been checking their position in the SERPs every week or 2 and last night before bed noticed they jumped about 4-6 positions.  That’s pretty good for a couple anchor text changes.

This could be just a fluke. I am in a different state so google might just be displaying different results for me because of that. But, I don’t think that is the case because all the other sites above them are the same.

That’s it for now time to get back to Vacation =)

My brother recently went online to purchase a replacement rim for his car. He searched for BMW rims and came to a website offering the rim he was looking for. He made the purchase and a few days later received an email informing him that the rim he ordered was out of stock and that he had not been charged. Now he is pretty much never going to order anything from this site even if they have what he needs. Don’t target a keyword offering something you don’t have. If your out of stock you might want to turn off the but button or at least be very quick at letting them know.

I was thinking about this and how could it apply to online real estate marketing. So I came up with a something that I think could be useful to you.

Lets say that in the area you service there are a lot of online searches for “(your city) condos”. But you don’t personally have any condo listings. You can’t advertise competitors listing. How can you target this keyword without upsetting the searchers who come to find out you have nothing to offer them on your site?

Depending on your site there are a couple things you can do that I think might work.

First, if you have an IDX search(which you should) function on your site so your visitors can search your mls…

1) Create a new page on your site to target the keyword.

2) On this page you could have a video that you made or some screenshots of your IDX search showing exactly how to use your IDX search to do a search for condos for sale whith a link below it to take them to the IDX page.

Another idea if you don’t want to take the time to learn how to do a screencapture video or edit a screenshot…

1) Create a new page on your site to target the keyword.

2) Do some research and get information on all the condos in your area whether they are for sale or not. Don’t forget to take some nice pictures.

3) Setup the page to be all about the different condos with pictures and descriptions. Be sure to put some price range info for each area so people can get an idea of what to expect to pay. Even if there are no condos in a particular area for sale you can still put some info here. Do not say they are for sale if they in fact are not.

4) Put a contact button and contact information and let them know that they can get talk to you to get more information and go see some condos for sale.

If you do it right and a can get some targeted traffic to this page there is a good chance your going to get a lead.

Be sure to make a new page for this. You don’t want to send people to your homepage and make them have to work to find something. If you already know what someone is looking for (ie. they searched google for “(your city) condos”) give it to them.

Should you syndicate your listing information to Trulia?

Well, a while back there was a pretty big debate about Trulia and how they link back to the listing information providers website. The supposed problem was that Trulia links back to the agents site with a link that doesn’t pass Page Rank(PR).

The argument was that they are using the data from the agents or offices, so Trulia should give credit to the source by passing PR. Further more they went on to say that a no follow link was going to negatively impact the site linked to by labeling it as spam.

The truth is that Trulia, although they may not be passing PR your way through their listing pages they are passing traffic. On each of their listing pages there is a very nicely placed link back to the agents website(see image below).

Screenshot taken form a Trulia listing page.

Now I think that is a pretty good link. Trulia is advertising your listing for free and providing the opportunity for the searcher to go to your site. Sounds like a sweet deal to me.

Also in  the argument against Trulia, it was said that Trulia depends on the data of others to be of any value. And that may be true but if you look at any other form of advertising paltform and you will find that most if not all rely on the data of others. The fact is that Trulia is providing value to the agent, the home seller and the home buyer. The best part is you can get it for free.

What should you do?

Personally, I think you should definetally syndicate your listings to Trulia and many of the others especially when it is free. Some of these sites sell leads back to agents and in most cases not the agent whos listing it was that generated the lead. Trulia does not do this but some of the others do.

Read this Paragraph.

What you need to do is get your site to hold those visitors when they do click through. The problem with most real estate websites is that they don’t do a good job of pulling the visitor in and guiding them toward a desired action.  That desired action is to either call you or to fill out a contact form on your site. Your website should have calls to action. Your phone number should be visible on every single page on your website, at the top and on certain pages in a more strategic place as well.

Here’s a hint. If you have ever bought goods online from a website, can you tell me where on the product page the Price and the add to cart link usually are? They are almost always on the right hand side usually towards the lower portion of the frame you will see the price and below that “add to cart”. I wonder why? Because it works and people are used to it. It’s the same reason most navigation bars are on the left hand side of the page. Now change that Add to Cart to a Contact button and a Phone Number… Might work might not, but it’s definetally worth a test.

It’s also a good idea on a listing page to have all of this above the fold. Above the fold on the internet means: you dont have to scroll down to see it. At very least dont make them scroll down to much.

Also you need to be aware of other interests your visitor may have other than that one listing. They may want to look at more listings and that’s your opportunity. You need to make it really easy for them to click to get to your IDX search function or if your site doesn’t have IDX, to your featured listings page(which should be arranged similarly to how a search engines results page is but including pictures the way a real estate search site like Trulia does it).

As with everything you do with your website I recommend testing it all and measuring results. In most cases you can use Google Analytics to track your visitors habits on your site.

Technorati Tags: listing syndication, Real Estate Listing Syndication, Trulia