Search engine optimisation strategies that work

 

 

Understanding the world of search engine optimisation, or SEO, can be hard if you are new to the field.

However, Katie Gatto, writing for SEO Chat, has a number of strategies which can help to increase web rankings and avoid the pitfalls of dropping down the list of results.

First off, be discerning about what links are included on your site, says Ms Gatto.

While creating outbound links from your site to another is generally a good thing in the world of SEO, the quality of the sites that you link to can make a big difference in the effect that it has.

Sites that have been penalised for over-linking or which contain adult content are bad news in terms of SEO, as search engines will often recognise them as a dodgy area.

Using a paid link or link trade service to get links for your site can create a similar situation, as most owners of decent and reputable sites prefer to get their links in other ways.

Secondly, Ms Gatto recommends using a few highly relevant keywords naturally in your site, rather than inserting all the slightly-related keywords you can think of as many times possible.

As a rule of thumb, it is best to choose two to three keywords to use in a 300-word piece or five in a longer, 700-word or above piece, she says, adding that keeping keywords extremely relevant increases the likelihood of using words that probably would appear naturally in the piece anyway. Finally, creating original content for your site will pay for itself in terms of SEO, Ms Gatto advises.

Search engines place a high premium on sites having unique content, and using duplicate content, or letting yours be reprinted, reduces the value of your site.

“Letting a site reprint a section with your permission (and a link back) is one thing,” reiterates Ms Gatto, “but reprinting whole pieces is not OK for any reason.”

Ron Jones, board member at Search Engine Marketing Professional Organisation (SEMPO), has also warned against the risks of using duplicate content.

Writing for the blog Search Engine Watch, he notes that search engines tend to filter out any duplicate content and choose one based on certain criteria. And the one that gets picked might not be yours.

To deal with the situation, Mr Jones recommends using a canonical tag, otherwise known as an authoritative page, among a group of pages that have similar content.

A Real Estate Agents Guide To Blogging- What You Should Blog About

 

 

Copyright (c) 2010 Michael Volkin

Are you using your web site and blog posts properly to improve your search engine ranking? It’s really not that hard to do, you just need to get started. When creating web sites or posting a blog today we write title tags, key words/phrases, content and formatting with search engines in mind. And if we do it right, the results are nothing less than amazing.

With a little practice you could learn how to blog with SEO in mind, but that’s not the real problem. The real problem seems to be “what do I blog about?” That should be the easiest part, right? To rectify this let’s tackle the root of the problem, “what do I blog about?” I’ve included a few topics to help get you started.

Why blog?

If you blog at least once a week you’ll see a positive SEO effect on your web site and blog, which in turn delivers internet leads. Once you get comfortable blogging you may find yourself doing it more often. It’s like any exercise, the more you do it, the easier it gets. Think of blogging as just another marketing necessity that takes a certain amount time and effort every week. Schedule 1 hour per week so it gets done. Do you expend effort, time and money creating and sending farm mailers? Blogging is no different, it’s marketing and it also takes time and effort, but little to no money, that’s a bonus! Keep it simple in the beginning so you don’t get overwhelmed or discouraged. Start with these suggested topics, repeat each topic the following month until you come up with your own topics. Just make sure to change the content so it’s current. I’ll mention a few things at the end of this post to be careful about to keep you out of trouble with the search engines.

1. WEEK 1 MARKET CONDITIONS: REPEAT THIS TOPIC THE FIRST WEEK OF THE MONTH. Market conditions are interesting subjects for buyers and sellers and if they know they can depend that your web site/blog provides a regular market update they’ll get in the habit of visiting your site to get that information. This could be as simple as stating the number of active, pending and sold properties in your area. Or, you could provide “months of inventory”. Simply divide the number of currently active listings in your market area by the number of pending sales in the last 30 days.

2. WEEK 2 LISTINGS: REPEAT THIS TOPIC THE SECOND WEEK OF THE MONTH. Blog about listings. This will help your blog SEO and in addition provide greater exposure for the listing. If you don’t have a listing, ask another agent in your office if they would be willing to let you provide additional exposure for their listing. They should not have a problem with it as they can inform their seller, “I’m providing additional exposure for your property”. No one should have a problem with that.

3. WEEK 3 LOCALISM: REPEAT THIS TOPIC THE THIRD WEEK OF THE MONTH. Blog about your town or an interesting neighborhood activity. It may be related to church, soccer, baseball, tennis, PTA, block party BBQ, you get the idea. If you can’t think of anything, take a walk through the neighborhood and I guarantee you’ll come up with an idea. Take digital photos of streets or other points of interest to post in your blog. The worst thing that could happen is you might actually meet the neighbors and have an opportunity to discuss real estate. Don’t depend solely on one of those purchased online neighborhood websites you can link into your web site. First hand reporting will get more attention from the neighbors and the search engines (original content, search engines love it). A big PLUS; I’m a firm believer that face to face with the neighbors is one of the best ways to get business. If they know you they won’t be afraid to call you with real estate related questions or when it’s time to buy or sell. If you or another agent in your office has a listing, bring some flyers to handout. Leave flyers on doorsteps if appropriate. If it’s Saturday during spring/summer lots of folks are working in their yard. Great opportunity to introduce yourself and hand deliver those flyers. In my old neighborhood, every Saturday morning an agent would trudge up the hill and deliver flyers to those of us working in the yard. This is how he got started in real estate and today he is a top producer.

4. WEEK 4 THE BUSINESS: REPEAT THIS TOPIC THE FOURTH WEEK OF THE MONTH. This subject is a little more difficult for some as it is open to interpretation. Think about week four as your “open discussion forum”. You can talk about the real estate business in general or what’s happening on a national level. What is the fed doing that might affect interest rates, home prices, or the housing market in general? There are many places where information can be found for this subject. But please, it’s very important to use your own words, DO NOT PLAGIARIZE. Did you take a short trip, or go on a nice vacation, tell your readers what you did and provide photos if appropriate. Did you attend a real estate seminar, take a continuing education course, whatever you did to further your education, let your readers know? General Guidelines; Use keywords and key phrase in your rich content. Think of search engines like hungry little robots crawling around websites saying, “more data, more data, more data”. Bots never get enough data and the more they get the smarter they become. Use good rich content plying your key phrases and key words. Before long your blog posts and web site pages will be listed near or at the top of the search engine’s organic results. The more web pages and blog posts you have the better chance of being found by search engines. Think of it this way. If you have a web site with 10 pages and no blog you have ten chances of being found by the search engines. If you have a web site with 30 pages and your blog has hundreds of posts, you have hundreds of chances to be found and ranked. There is one caveat for keywords and key phrases usage. DO NOT OVERUSE KEYWORDS or KEYPHRASES. Do not repeat the same word or phrase more than necessary to try and fool the bots. If your content is readable by a human without being redundant it’s probably OK for the bots. Write good content and gracefully slip in your keywords and phrases. Don’t think you can outsmart good search bots. These bots use algorithms that most regular folks can’t fathom. Try to outsmart them and you’ll end up in the sandbox. The sandbox is where they will put your URL as a punishment for trying to trick them. You won’t show up in the search results until you’ve seen the light and changed your ways. There is so much more to discuss about blogging and SEO but I try to keep my blog posts a little shorter than this.