I am so often begged by Realtors and business people that I meet for just a few "tips" to doing SEO because they don't have the money available to pay for someone to do the real job for them. I thought I'd make a very simplified guide that I can refer them to, and that perhaps it might help some Active-Rainers in the bargain. I've looked this over in December of 2012, and it still holds true except it's more important now than ever before that you don't spam your keyphrases. There's a filter now that will throw you to the wolves if you do. Be very, very sparing when it comes to using your main phrases on any page. And if you have pages with very little or not original content - DELETE THEM.
Again, there is so much more to it than this, but if you do the following you'll at least be half-way to having a search-engine-friendly site that you can get some links coming into. Most of these can be found everywhere on the internet, but we all have our different priorities, and this is what I start with when I do SEO on a business website:
1. Download the Google Toolbar. This is something you need to use everytime you look at another site - whether it is a competitor or someone you are going to exchange links with.
Be sure the options for "PageRank" and "Page Info Menu" are checked. The only reason for not using this tool is if you are using AOL to get on the internet. And sorry, that is too silly to even address.
2. Go to the free Wordtracker Keyword Tool. This keyword tool shows all related searches and the number of searches per day. The information is derived weekly from Dogpile and some of the other conglomerated search engines which pull Google, Yahoo, and MSN together for the results.
A. Open up your email and prepare to send yourself this one.
B. Start with typing in "Your City". Copy and paste any results that pertain to real estate that you see. Do it for the city alone, the city plus the state spelled out, and the city plus the state abbreviation. Don't bother with any that are less than 10 per day. Paste this into the email you are sending yourself along with the ones below.
C. Now type in "Your City Real Estate". Copy and paste the results that you get for any phrase didn't show up with the main search. The free keyword tool only gives you 100 results for each phrase. It may not show up with the city alone. Again, use the state abbreviation and spelled out for this one.
D. Do the same for "Your City - homes, houses, property, condos, land, lots, commercial", and anything else I've forgotten to mention. If you do it without a state, it will still pick up the ones with it, and usually there are not 100 phrases to display.
Paste all this to your email to yourself and mail it before it's lost. You've just done half of what I charge an initial consulting fee to do.
3. At this point, you could use Google's keyword tools to see which of these phrases had the highest number of searches VERSUS competing ads in Adwords. This would give you an idea of how competitive the terms were. But for simplicity, we're not going into that.
Put the phrases together in order of highest number of searches to lowest.
Here is where it gets tricky. If you have a newer website or domain name, it's going to be nearly impossible for you to rank for the most competitive search terms. Find a medium in the list and begin with that.
If your website has been around for years but just not optimized, you may be able to optimize the text, add a good number of quality incoming links and rank fairly quickly. Look at your website with the Google toolbar and see what, if any, Pagerank it has. If it doesn't show a cache and the green bar is greyed out, something is wrong and Google hasn't indexed your site. That may require a professional's advice to find the problem. If the pagerank bar is white or has any green at all, and there is a cache showing, you're in good shape. A pagerank (PR) of one is the least. PR2 is much better. PR3 is well on the way, and PR4 and above is excellent. If you've never done any link campaigns, you'll probably be a one or two.
Choose what you want to target accordingly, and then pick out the 3 most important ones.
Be realistic. If you are a new site, you are not going to rank for "Las Vegas Real Estate". However, you might be able to do it for a small town that has very few competing websites. Do a search for the good terms and look at the first 3-4 sites using your Google Toolbar. Note the pagerank. See what Google shows as a sample of the links these sites have. Can you hope to compete for these terms?
4. Apply these 2-3 most important phrases to your homepage. Put them in the title, the metatag description, and the meta keyword list. The latter is not used by Google, but is still used by other search engines. Keep that list to about 10 maximum.
5. Use these phrases in a header (H1 or H2) tag at the beginning of your homepage. Use them in the ALT tags of your photos and graphics. ALL GRAPHICS SHOULD HAVE ALT TAGS- Sitewide. This is not only important for SEO, but politically correct. It's for people using audio readers, and on some cellphones.
6. Put about 250 words of text on your homepage that reads well and describes your area and services. Use those keyword phrases sparingly in the text in different ways. If the term is "Atlanta homes for sale" then use it as "homes for sale in Atlanta, GA" and "sales of Atlanta homes and property". Vary the usage, and DO NOT SPAM the terms. Today's search engines are smart. They know spam from good content, believe it or not.
TIP: Make your homepage and all other pages' top banner link to your domain name and use the main keyword as the ALT text.
7. Put your business name and address at the bottom of every page of the website and use a link with it to the domain name with the secondary keyword phrase.
8. Be sure that all links back to your homepage use the same URL. Do NOT USE "index.html" on the end of it. If you prefer using the "www." then choose that and NEVER link to it without that.
9. Every page on your site should have its own title and metatags, and they should match that page's content. This is a priority. Try to make a page pertaining to all of the keyword phrases you sent yourself. Use the phrase with dashes as the URL if possible. (example www.yoursite.com/atlanta-condos.html or www.yoursite.com/atlanta-foreclosures.html) Again, on those pages, use that particular term in the H1 tag, the ALT tags, and the text, sparingly.
10. Keep the links on your navigation to a maximum of about 25, especially on the homepage. If you have many pages, try to create a main page for groups of them, and use those main pages as your navigation. The more links per page, the less pagerank that page is going to have. Do a sitemap ON the site and use the search terms as much as possible for the links on it.
11. Create an XML sitemap for Google. A good free site to use for this is XML-sitemaps.com. Sign up for a Google Webmaster Account and submit this sitemap. Google will tell you all kinds of details about how they see your site from this. You can get a list of all the backlinks that Google shows for your site, including broken links and other problems.
12. If you've done all these things, you're ready to start getting incoming links to the site. Do some using those three most important keyphrases...not with one phrase. One-way links are much more helpful than reciprocal ones. Do not bother getting links on pages that show nothing for pagerank with your Google toolbar. Yes, you may lose a few this way...the toolbar only updates about every 90 days. But you've got a huge job ahead of you, don't waste your efforts. Blog links are usually good. Recip links with a partner on a CONTENT page with no more than 2-3 other links is helpful. Links from pages that are nothing but links are a waste of time, especially if they are reciprocal. Try to get some of the area businesses to trade links with you. Offer to advertise for them with a banner if they will give you a text link on a good page of their site. If you link to your website from your Active Rain blog or profile, try not to link back to it from the website...keep it a ONE-WAY incoming link. Link to your site from all of your social profiles.
Learn what the "NO FOLLOW" tag is, and how to use it.
This is only the beginning of your hard work ahead. I haven't covered all the important points of SEO, but I've touched on many. Join the SEO forums like WebmasterWorld.com and READ. You can learn a lot from the forums, but be sure the information you get is up-to-date and from a reliable source. Read Google's Webmaster Rules and don't try to use any shortcuts. Build lots and lots of content, and write for your customers.
Good luck, and hopefully we'll see you at the top! :-)
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(My Stuff)
Myrtle Beach Real Estate - Myrtle Beach Kids - Florida Oceanfront Property - Condo Insurance
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