Are You Making the Right Search Engine Happy?

Do you put extra effort into your website articles, pages and blog posts to try to improve your free search engine positioning?  Most of us do.  Some have the money to pay SEO people to help, but most of us are struggling along on our own.

I have been closely tracking traffic to my websites with Google Analytics for years now.  I have ceased to worry about any other search engines than Google.  Here's one image of search engine generated page views:

Notice that it isn't just a big difference between Google and Bing and Yahoo.  It's a whopper!  In this period of time, Google brought this site more than ten times the page views of either of the next two search engines.  And, it was five times both of them added together.  

How many search engine optimizers does it take to change a light bulb?
Just one, but it’s gonna take about 3-6 months to start to see the light bulb change. And that light bulb’s pretty high up there- are you sure you wouldn’t rather change 10 easier light bulbs?

Thanks to searchenginejournal.com for that little joke.  Sure, it's not a quick thing to see results from your search engine optimization efforts.  However, you can do the normal tried and true use of keywords and phrases in your Meta information and your titles and text.  The point is that you really shouldn't in my opinion spend any time trying to see what will make any other search engine happy.  Google is the big player.  Here's another image proving it for a larger real estate related site with more traffic:

Bing and Yahoo are there...barely!  Look at EVERY other result in the top 15!  OK, so we can agree that Google is a pretty important search engine to please.  Looking back up to the other image, notice that Google is bringing some pretty good traffic from image searches as well.  So don't forget that "alt text" with your images.

RealtySoft Makes It Easier & Brings It Together

RealtySoft automatically optimizes all pages, and it lets you individually optimize pages through the editing of Meta Tags, Title Tags, and Page Descriptions.  The Syndication of listings to other major sites creates links back, also a major piece of the SEO puzzle.  Wit an XML sitemap and search engine friendly URL link structures, you're off to the races with RealtySoft's SEO features.

And, let's not forget the Integrated IDX.  This is something few sites have, and it's a major SEO feature.  The IDX on most sites is a "framed" solution.  This means that the actual search and all of the images and text of the listings is stored on the IDX provider's site, and it's just framed into the real estate website.  Since none of that text is on the site, there is no search engine credit for it.  RealtySoft's Integrated IDX actually places all of that text on your website.  Google loves it.  And, now we know that we really should care what Google loves!

About Jim Kimmons: Jim Kimmons, with more than 16 years experience as a licensed real estate agent and broker in 3 states, is a consultant to Realtors in how to use technology to market and manage their businesses. He has also written books and eBooks on Internet marketing and real estate. Jim is RealtySoft's chief evangelist and is a compensated regular contributor to the RealtySoft.com blog.

 

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