I was doing a little research on my own, both here in Active Rain and in the outside world. Figured I could post some links to the sites I found that actually made sense to me:
Using the Competition to Boost your SEO Performance A step by step, short article on using your competitions keywords to begin really improving your own keywords, links, and SEO.
Looking a little closer at our local real estate site for Porter County (Northwest Indiana region) Synergy Thoughts, I don't think we have competitors as much as possible collaborators.
How to protect your search engine rankings This article is a little less useful than the first, but has a couple ideas for making sure you don't get in trouble with search engines. I particularly found the "page rank" idea very useful.
"The Fifth Estate Marketing Strategy: How to Get a Top 10 Google News Search Ranking for Free" http://passingwisdom.com/fifthestate.htm Free always scares me, but I think the point of this link is to sell a report or service that places press releases on news sites that google news searches regularly.
Can a site search high without cheating? Google page rank dominates the SEO world, and cracking their code and algorithms is key. But can a site really hold a high search result without using "black hat" techniques? I think so but it takes work and diligence. Like any other get rich quick scheme, SEO improvement for long term gain will take hard work, SEO for quick pops will be eventually eliminated by the google-ites.
So, similar to the other aptly qualified experts here within our AR community, I have landed on a couple key action steps:
- Use white hat techniques only, black hat could get me eliminated all too quickly
- I need to know my customers' keywords, I really haven't spent enough time with my sales team making sure we know these keywords.
- We need to use our competition to improve and expand our reach
- News releases, if actually real news, should be added as another tool in our marketing online toolbox
- Diligent and patient work, like in so many other parts of life, will be rewarded with increased search ranks and thus traffic.
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There are a lot of good keyword tools out there but I got my best results by using pay per click. I set up campaigns with every keyword and keyword phrase that I could think of or find. Then I let the consumers tell me what they were searching for by studying the results.
Keyword phrases that I thought would do good and was told would do good didn't and phrases that I never dreamed of pulled in a good number of results. It let me optimise for a variety of simple terms like buy, sell, sales, homes, etc. with confidence.