Web sites and search engines

There is a lot of reference pages on this site, try the search feature.

I have found Lonn Dugan's blog to be very helpful.  He is writing an ebook that is really helpful.

Ken, see my blog regarding this. I am no techie so I ask questions here. There are so many helpful people and when I get answers, I pass them on to the Advanced Access people.

http://activerain.com/blogsview/59738/The-Whole-Google-Placement

Since I've been on AR, my website actually ranks, (alexa.com), my page went from 7,397,062 to 2,323,315 within two weeks. My website comes up 2nd or 3rd on a google search. I had nothing to do with it, it's all the AR advice. Good luck!

 

Ken, Check out some of the posts in the SEO & Blogging group.  I find several people that post in there regularly to be extremely helpful. 

In the past, I spent a small fortune on pay per click, and although it was ok - I sure did pay for many clicks of solicitors getting my phone number trying to sell me all kinds of services & real estate gadgets...I am enjoying learning to do it myself.

I get a few thousand visits a week and 5 to 10 good leads per week through a web site and a blog.  People find we through google and I don't pay for any pay per click,  Blogs with content that consumers are looking for will get traffic.  In infact if you google real estate blogs my business blogs shows up a couple of notches above active rain's.  Don't tell Jonathan. :)

Hi Ken, you should check out Mary Mcknight's posts.  Here is a link to some of her collection Welcome Wagon - A newbie manual to Active Rain

Ken,

In addition to all the great info above - advertise your site - wherever you can think off - i.e. on your cell phone via your voice message reply. You already pay for it, you'll have to say something, might as well add your website info.

I improved mine with Search Engine optimization for Dummies.  I love all the Dummies books.  They are easy to use and have great results.

The pay-per-click is worht the expense, even if you only budget $50 a month or something. Just male sure you target your searches for your area and don't target highly competitive search terms like "real estate". There are lots of ways to drive traffic to your site. Put you web address on all ads/marketing materials you produce. Add you web site to your email signature. Network with other realtors and exchange links (although this won't help you rank higher in search engines). Make sure your web site has lots of keywords that let search engines know what you do and where you are located. Also getting other web sites to add one way links to your web site is a good way to rank higher in search engines, but they need to be natural links.