Search engines do not see all web links the same. In fact, it is possible for a web master to request that a search engine NOT follow certain links to keep SEO value from "leaking" from a website. Some websites, blogs, and other web tools may allow you to link as a professional without providing you with search engine credibility.
Search engines use special properties within link tags to determine whether or not they should spider the link and follow it to the next page. The property may be set to "dofollow" or "nofollow". The search engine then knows what it should do when it arrives at a link.
Professionals work diligently to promote their websites to search engines. What pros may not know is that a site they believe is providing great SEO benefits may simply be using their content for their own purposes without providing linkthrough credibility.
Many online professional services like Active Rain, ProSPOTLIGHT, and others offer the ability to make posts and submit content with "dofollow" status. Any time a pro links from that service to another website, they receive the SEO benefit.
The key is to find websites that are known for their "dofollow" practices.
How many leads did you convert from natural search engine traffic last month? how about over the last year?
Your natural search engine rank is key to your online web traffic and converted business. We're not talking here about paid search engine advertising but natural results that result from successful SEO practices.
There are 2 key concepts to successful SEO activities:
Relevance
Popularity
SEO and Website Relevance
Website relevance means that your content and tools match the keywords search engine users search on. For example, if I search for "las vegas realtors" search engines return the top results for "Las Vegas" and "Realtors", "Real estate agents", etc. They want to return results that best match the inquiry. They provide the best results for users based on relevant, well written content.
SEO and Website Popularity
Search engines give significant credibility to websites that appear to be authoritative. An authority site is one that others recognize as credible and accurate. Search engines tally the quantity and quality of inbound web links to a website.
SEO Activities
Several key activities will promote websites significantly.
Keyword analysis - search engine keyword analysis to determine which keywords should be targeted on a website.
On-page keyword optimization, including meta tag optimization - page by page keyword placement to accurately make a page relevant to an audience.
Inbound link campaigns - campaigns by which content, articles, blog posts, and other forms of content from popular websites link to a website creating popularity.
Lead Conversion
Once a visitor has found a website via search engine results, it's key to make sure the conversion tools are powerful. Compelling calls to action drive prospects to conversion elements. These prospects become converted as visitors accept special offers for service or products in return for the sale or for their contact information. Websites can be powerful conversion tools as the drives sale and lead engines.
SEO and Conversion Solutions
Find an SEO company that is expert at website optimization. Realize that SEO results don't occur overnight and they may require a significant budget of time or money depending on how strong the competition is for a particular website.
Also find a design company that can convert prospects once they arrive on a website.
The planning phase of a web site is BY FAR the most important. Few do-it-yourselfers take the right time to do it in the beginning and end up doing it after the site is launched when a lot of time and money has already been spent. They then have to redo a bunch of work when they figure out what they want and need. This step will save you a lot of time down the line.
When agents build a site it should be like writing a book. Much before words are ever written the book should be structured and outlined. Sure, a few chapters may be written out of inspiration but at some point the author has to sit down and think, "how am I going to present this?" This is a process agents can take as they start out with a site.
Site Objective - Believe it or not the first step to web design doesn't involve a computer. It involves a pen, paper, and a quiet space. Just like any successful project the planning phase is important. We are going to assume you understand the costs of building a site somewhat and you are bent on creating one yourself. Spend some time, an hour per day for several days over perhaps several weeks. Write down your web site objective and goals. What are you trying to accomplish? This is important because in web design there is a constant temptation to stray from the goal because of all of the fancy stuff you can add and write. Knowing your objective will keep the site clean, crisp and on point. I imagine most agents want to have, "an informational site that will draw traffic and convert leads." If that is like your objective then we need to design around that objective. Your objective may be different, more focused, or more broad but you do need a main goal to shoot for.
Market Analysis - Now its time to find out what to write about to accomplish your objective. A web site is like an online, interactive book, right?
Well, what are people looking for?
What can you write to draw users into your site and convince search engines you are a valuable site to display?
There are several ways to determine what content is valuable. Imagine you are a potential client looking for real estate help. Do searches for keywords you would want help on.
What results come up at the top?
What does the competition offer?
What content do they have?
Keep in mind if they don't have much content and they still come to the top of the engines they are either paying the search engine for their placement or they are paying someone to do link popularity work for them. We'll talk about this later. Keep in mind, the best converting sites are usually the ones with the best appearance, content, and tools. Just because it comes to the top doesn't mean it is converting.
Another way to find out what keywords to target is to use sites like http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/ or http://inventory.overture.com/ or others you may find. Also, download the Google toolbar and start typing in the search field. See what keywords and phrases come up as you type. They are likely listed by popularity. You won't want to miss this step. Build your site with good SEO from the beginning.
Now, write down the keywords that best fit your site's objective.
Site Theme - Once you have set in your mind what you want to accomplish determine what your scope is. What is your theme? We are writing a book, right? Books have a main title. Published articles have a main theme. Your site should have a main theme. What could the main title of your web site be? Most of your categories and articles will fit under that theme and Google will love you for it! Your theme should include your top key words and phrases.
Site Chapters - A book is typically broken up into intuitive chapters. On web sites we usually see these chapters called categories. What categories fit your theme? These categories should be broad enough that they would hold 5 to 15 articles in them. If they hold many more you may consider creating another category. If you have categories within categories you likely have a very broad scope and your site will be harder to promote within the search engines. If you have troubles here skip to step 4 and come back to this step. You may need to determine what documents you will be writing and then divide them into categories. The categories you choose will be important for search engine purposes.
Some obvious categories might be, "home buyer information," "home seller information," "[my area] information," etc. You may not have any categories. If you only plan to write 10 distinct articles and promote the site then you may only need to link to your documents with your navigation without any categories. You will certainly want to know this before designing the site or you will be dangerously backtracking later and it will cost you in redesign time and search engine popularity time. A site redesign can be disastrous for your rankings.
Notice we are talking about content only at this point. We don't care about site design, structure, colors, images, etc. yet. The content will drive the design and structure. And, if we get the design and structure wrong because we didn't plan around the content we may have to restructure our site later to keep it organized and that can kill rankings if done after the site is popular with the search engines. We want to get it right the first time so we can add more and more content and not have to restructure the site.
Content - You will be writing to draw users into clienthood. Review the keywords and phrases you have on your paper. Often you will want to write an extensive article about every major keyword you are targeting. Your articles will likely be at least 400 words each (more is often better if well written). You will want to write to convince your readers to stay put and trust in your knowledge and services.
What documents will you write (you are still planning with a pen and paper)?
What topics will you be turning into valuable content?
What do your clients want when they get to your site?
What tools do your clients expect?
What niches will you cover?
Can you write authoritatively enough about the topic that your clients believe the content?
Do these topics fit your theme and categories? If they don't consider nixing the content or reworking your theme and chapters.
This sounds like a lot of work but just imagine not planning and finding out after months of inactivity on your site that you built the wrong thing. Many of us take the "ready, fire, aim" approach. I'll assure you that building something that doesn't work and then doing it again the right way is much less effective than spending a little extra time up front to build the right thing first. Remember, you will always be adding to this thing and enhancing it. You want a site that is easy to add to so you don't have to redesign later.
Teammates - As part of your plan you will want to know who your team is.
If "I am" is the overwhelming answer then you need to plan a time frame for rolling out your site. You will need to set realistic expectations regarding the success of the site.
Time Frames - Your market, competition, skill level, among other factors will determine your time frames. If you have the resources to pay a professional your time frames will likely be shorter, if they truly know what they are doing. If you are doing all of the work yourself it could take a year and several (600-1000) hundred hours of work to compete in a competitive market for top keywords unless you use paid advertisement. It could be much less in a small market or a niche market with few competitors.
This is about as boiled down as you can get for planning a site. We'll get into system analysis next and design later. I'll keep adding and editing this post as needed based on responses I get. Please let me know what you have found in your site planning so we can help out all of the readers.
This series of articles is intended to help do-it-yourself web designing real estate agents plan, build, and implement a web site from scratch. There are many things that go into building a web site. Semester long courses are taught at many colleges just on certain aspects of the process. I'll try to keep it as simple as possible.
In business technology courses at college they teach there are 5 main phases to building a system. The size of the system affects the complexity of the phases. I am going to assume we are building a simple web site as agents. There are more articles out there for the advanced web guy and we'll write later for those using professionals to build their site. For now, we are going to see the 5 phases I would highly recommend each of us follow when making a new site.
I think a lot of us are flying by the seat of our pants and there is little direction or organization. I hope to make the process simpler. Let me know how we can accomplish that as you read the articles.
This is a fun one. All you branders out there will enjoy learning how to put that little icon next to your URL in the address bar of your browser.
Here are some examples:
The image is called an icon image. The file is a .ico image which is created from a bitmap image.
We need to create the image. Go to your image editor (Photoshop, Paintshop, Fireworks, etc.) and open up a copy of the logo you want on your site. Shrink it down to 16x16. This means the pictures dimensions are only 16 pixels wide by 16 pixels high. You may have to play with your editor to make the image look clear and not blury.
Save the image as a bitmap file (if your image editor will save the image as a .ico image then do that instead and skip step 3). The file extension will be .bmp.
Now we need to convert the image into an .ico image. I don't have a specific program to recommend but I did go to http://www.download.com/ and searched for "ico". I downloaded QTam Bitmap to Icon 3.5 just to try it and it worked great for me (little disclaimer here - I take NO responsibility for this 3rd party software). Step through the options of the conversion software to convert your bitmap into a .ico file. Be sure to select 16x16 if you are given options for file dimensions. Save the file as favicon.ico.
Move the new .ico file (favicon.ico) to your server in the images directory (or where ever you store your images).
Add the following html to your header tags: <LINK REL="shortcut icon" HREF="http://www.yoursite.com/images/favicon.ico"> You'll need to adjust the HREF= url to point to the right file on your server.
Here is a simplified view of what your html might look like:
Nathan Rogerson added a comment to one of my posts. Frequently I will venture into a commenter's profile and take a peek at their web site looking for cool ideas to post or model into my sites.
His site is http://www.goodwinnetwork.com/. It really caught my eye! Talk about a sharp looking site and memorable. The color pallet, icons/images, and layout are fabulous. I give the design a two-thumbs up.
The site must be new because it didn't show any Google PR and the advanced search link didn't work. I assume you are still working on it and adding content as well. The guy blowing in the wind can become redundant from page to page. And the flash links are not followable, which was cured by the links on the bottom of the pages. I'm sure you are working on these things.
Your designer did a great job. Overall, I think the site is awesome.
A sitemap is a flat method of presenting your web site's navigation. Flat means there is little to no structure. In other words, one (maybe two if your site is huge) page links to all other pages and tools your web site provides.
Your regular navigation should be intuitive enough for the standard user to find any content within 2, maybe 3, clicks without having to search around on the site. Some users, however, want to see all of the content at once. A sitemap allows for that. Some pages may not be very important to you but you have them on your site anyway. You can "bury" those pages by not linking to them in your standard navigation but linking to them in the sitemap. Users and search engines can find these obscure pages but often they won't get a lot of traffic.
A great reason to have a sitemap is for search engines. You can aid them in the spidering of your site and the locating of all pages by providing an easy to find sitemap. Google and Yahoo provide services where you can submit an advanced version of your sitemap using an XML file. There are tools you can use to build these advanced sitemaps. Once the sitemap is produced then submit it to the search engines. Search engines supposedly use these to fully index a site.
Any time you add a new page you can update your sitemap so users and search engines can see current content.
Agents want leads. Most agents have a web site and want leads from that site. Many agents have limited content on their web site but blog dozens to hundreds of A|R posts. While I'm not opposed to the A|R posts I believe a lot of the time spent writing can be used to move both causes. It is not recommended to duplicate content. However, changes in the content can make it reusable on your site to boost the site's value.
As much time can be spent on writing about the area you service along with real estate issues there. Post those topics to your site and then blog about the issue on A|R. You will find search engines will find your content sooner and your pages more often.
There are many discussions regarding search engine algorithms. One topic that keeps coming up over and over is regarding link exchange programs. We are all getting a feel for the importance of solid in-bound links into our sites. What may be unclear is that not all links are created equal.
Perceived web popularity is extremely important when search engines consider a site for a high rank. They want to know the site is an authority and has relevant information and one way to determine that is if other sites cite or quote (giving credit by linking) a given site. This means the link to the site is found within the content or at the foot of the content.
Search engines have wised up to the link sharing and do not value it as highly (some claim that no value is given for a simple link exchange) as content linking or citing. In other words if my site shows up in a list of other sites they all share the page rank and very little value is passed along to the site(s) being linked to. On the other hand, if a link is surrounded with great content and the page is valuable, the page receiving the inbound traffic will receive a higher value.
How should this affect agents? Spend as much time as possible trying to find sites who will cite your page or site. Be leary of link exchange requests, especially from a page that has a low page rank. It won't help much if at all, and is valuable time wasted. Write content and provide tools that other sites link to because of its valuable nature. If a tool is valuable people will link to it. If your city information is valuable people will link to it. Become the authority for great information in your area. Post on sites (ah, the blessed A|R) who already have a great page rank and will allow outbound links to your site. Spend time where your site will receive the most value.
We see stats all the time regarding the number of people finding houses and agents online. Simply put, most agent believe they need to have a web site and there are many tools and technologies out there to make your site stand out.
One thing to keep in mind as you develop your site is that technology can actually stand in your way if you don't implement it correctly. Cramming too much technology into your site can make it bulky and hard to navigate. Adding the right technology and keeping an intuitive navigation will help your users and in the end they will enjoy your site and their first experience with you.
There are several technologies I recommend every agent use. The others are there in case you are bored or have a special need.
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
;)
;)
