7 Days, 7 Secrets For Top Rank Search Engine Placement, eBook Preview, Installment #9, Day 6

Get the TOP right and the TOP will get you to the TOP!

The repetition in that last heading is intentional.  Said another way, Get the Page Top Right and you will see your page at the TOP of The SERP! 

When you finish your initial SEO work your web site should start moving toward the top of the page at Google and Yahoo for your targeted search phrases.  Maybe you will go straight to the top of page one?  Wouldn't that be nice? 

For larger cities, and more competitive terms, it is likely that your rank will improve more slowly due the previously described "sandbox effect". 

However, you should still see a definite improvement right away, with continuing improvement over time, both in SERP and in web site traffic.   

REMEMBER THE AUDIENCE and SPEAK THEIR LANGUAGE

Please remember that we are writing for two audiences.  First, there is a crawler robot or spider visitor and then there is the human visitor. 

In a Communications class you would learn to "Consider the audience" and "Speak in the language of your audience." 

You write differently for 3^rd graders, or high school students than for advanced  degree candidates in college.  You write differently for a consumer audience than for a professional audience. 

You would not want to use REALTOR TALK to attract buyers and sellers.  You would want to use the words that people (your niche market members) are typing into the search engines.  The spider knows which words are more popular, and it looks for them at page top.  So let's make sure we feed that spider and finish strong. 

Yes, people have to be able to read and interact with our web page.  But the first few words on the page have the most power to help our search engine rank, and thus, our web traffic.  This is why we eliminate fluff words and focus more on the spider at the top.  More importantly, don't use HUMAN grammar and style when writing for the Search Engine Spiders.  

Later in the page, using bold headlines and images, and a friendlier sentence structure, we can draw the human visitors in with language written for them.  Again, this goes to design and usability - which is not the subject of this eBook.

WHAT THE SPIDER WANTS

The search engine is the MASTER of the Searh Spider.  The master usually gives instructions as follows.

• Find NEW PAGES AND LINKS on the WWW.    
• Figure out what the NEW PAGES AND LINKS are about. 
• Come back and tell me about it.

In the business world this is called MANAGEMENT BY EXCEPTION.  The spiders do not report what is already known.  They report what is different.  You can use this to raise your rank. 

That robot is not as concerned about grammar and style as our human web site visitors are.  You can pack keywords in the first few lines of your web page,  almost as an graphic divider line or encyclopedic lead in instead of as part of your page story.  This top of page placement of keywords will aid the spider in deciding what your page is about. 

Remember, the spider will likely value the page higher if all the title and tag and body content is congruent.  We have repeated this concept often because it is so important. 

Give that spider what it wants! 

TOP SEARCH PHRASES

The most competitive keywords are the hardest ones to win placement for, but they are the most rewarding.  For this reason we want the title, page headings, paragraph headings, and alt text tags to be packed with the same 6 to 12 keywords.  

You probably had many creative inspirations as you worked.  You might have changed directions a couple times, or copied a page over and changed some words, or maybe you had to stop in the middle of a page because the phone rang. 

Just in case we lost our place along the way, today is a checkup day. 

IMPROVING ON FIRST STEPS

The longest journey begins with a single step.  You began your SEO Journey with a first step, only a few short days ago.   We wanted you to begin with the end in mind.  We also wanted our first steps should go in the same direction as the desired result.  And you probably did well - for your first steps.  The challenge is that first steps are notoriously shaky, and you now know more than you did a few days ago. 

This means it is time to revisit your work, make sure we actually accomplished what we planned to do, and make it just a bit better if possible. 

To sum, we want to do as well as we can for the top search phrases in real estate, at page top.  Then we will use the middle of the page to make sure that the Long Tail is served.   

OK... are we done with titles, tags, and content?  Make sure! 

See the homework for today and give your site a final tag and content review!

Homework for Day 6

Remember your 6 - 12 main keywords.  Review your home page and main pages.  We want the title, page headings, paragraph headings, and alt text tags to be packed with the same 6 to 12 keywords.  We want to use those words repeatedly in sensible headlines and sentences throughout the page.  Then we want to paste the keyword paragraph and description paragraphs at page bottom, and change the sentences slightly but keep the keywords in the same general order.   

For each page, make sure you have kept this discipline.  Make sure you have stuffed every paragraph heading, image tag, and link tag with the same keywords?  Check your pages. 

You might have done very well tweaking those title tags, meta description tags, meta keyword tags, page headers, opening paragraphs, closing paragraphs, alt text tags for images and links, especially on the home page. 

How about on the interior pages Your top 6 keywords won't change much from page to page.  But the words from 7 - 12 can change depending on page subject.  Each major page on your site will still be about real estate, but you may be dropping a few words from some pages, and adding a few new ones to introduce the spider to the subject of that interior page. 

For example, for buyer service pages, drop the selling words, and add some buyer words.  Throw in a few more long tail phrases that occur to you as you work on each page, and make a sentence or paragraph out of them.      

A page for sellers would have a slightly different set of keywords than a page for buyers.  A page about buying foreclosure homes or rental property would have a completely different set of keywords than a page about waterfront luxury properties.  A page targeted at income property buyers would drop the consumer  words and add some investor oriented words. 

Although the keywords may differ on each page, every page will follow the same pattern.  Are the Keywords in the exact same order in page title, keywords, description?  Do they start your page as headers?  Do they start the first paragraph?  Are they in the body copy over and over with variations on singular and plural forms? 

Try changing adding a phrase about "house" wherever you have used "houses", and talk about "homes" in various places you mention "home".  You want to hit different forms of the same word, and different phrases.  

Do you end the page with the same words placed or framed in slightly different sentences? 

Earlier, I recommended you make sure to paste your title, keywords and description tag contents at the bottom of the page and making sentences out of them all over again (different sentences than you made out of them for the first paragraph.  Did you do it ?  For every page?  This does not take long, but the repetition feeds the spider!

Tomorrow we finish by sharing some parting tips on links, link placement and link trading, site submission, timing, and tracking your progress in terms of measurable results.