Among all different statistics that Hittail is able to provide you with, what is listed under “suggestions” proved to be by far the most beneficial information. Working with the suggestions can help you dramatically increase the traffic from natural search results while saving you some money on PPC campaigns.

There are several things that can be done with Hittail suggestions in order to achieve the best results. For the sake of the argument I am going to presume that you have already installed Hittail code on your website or blog and there are already suggestions offered to you by Hittail. While every website will probably receive suggestions that are more relevant to your website, to make the example more vivid, I am presuming that one of your suggestions was “rentals in New York”.

Step 1: Create Content (Article) On Your Website That Will Contain The Hittail Suggestion
If your website permits to publish articles or you may even have a blog on your website, the first thing to do is to write an article about “rentals in New York”. If you are a real estate agent working New York such an article should not be that difficult to come up with. In fact you probably have enough knowledge and experience to write such an article on a monthly basis, maybe comparing the market condition specifically regarding rentals in New York. It is good idea if this suggested by Hittail keyword appears not only in the title of the article, but it is also found a few times in the body of the article as well as in the URL of the article. It would be also to your advantage if the key word is present in the title meta tag of the page containing the article.

Step 2: Write An Article For Article Directory Containing The Hittail Suggestion.
In one of the previous posts I have mentioned the importance of article marketing when working with Hittail Suggestions. In doing so I would advise to not submit an exact copy of the article you have created in the step one. Doing so will inevitable create what can be looked at as a duplicate content, which will not be into your favor as far as search engines are concerned. If you have no time for yet another article, you can consider modifying your original article from step one for the article directory of your choice. However you should be diligent enough to paraphrase your sentences so it does not appear like a duplicate of your original article.

Some article directories allow you to place links back to your website inside of the article. While others permit you to do so in so called “resource box” which generally appears at the end of your article. In either case it is an opportunity to gain an incoming link back to your website as soon as your article is accepted and published on of of the websites. When your articles are republished on other website, you will gain even additional incoming links.

When creating links that will point back to your website, it would be in your interest that those link use the suggestion offered by Hittail as the anchor text while linking back to your original article in step one. I know this may sound something like “and wheels on the bus go round and round….” But that is not necessarily a bad thing and may reinforce what Andy Beard calls a “link juice flow”. If you are new to SEO Andy’s article may be a little over the top, but I highly recommend to bookmark his article for the future. As you become more familiar with SEO, his article can help you in more than just one way.

Step 3: Increasing Number of Links pointing to Your Website Or Blog
Step number two on it’s own can increase the number of links pointing back to your website when other webmasters begin publishing your articles on their websites. However there are other ways to gain backlings to your website. Becoming active member of online forums can prove beneficial and can be used to gain some valuable links back to your website. After posting certain number of posts, some of these forums may offer you a privilege of including a signature along with your posts. I would like to underline the word privilege because it is very easy to show up at these forums begin leaving links. But doing so you will earn a reputation of a spammer. However if you earn some authority first among the members of the online forums, it may be more beneficial than an opportunity to have a link back to your website.

Afterthoughts
If you search the internet for information on how to increase incoming links to your website, you will inevitably come across websites that promote buying and selling links. While in the past this strategy worked, the search engines had become increasingly impatient with websites selling links. Personally I would discourage every real estate agent to buy links. There are other ways to increase incoming links without compromising the status of your website in the search engines.

I realize that not every real estate agent has a blog on their website nor do the agents have time to regularly write articles. However I am not stretching when I say that many real estate agents were skeptical about building e-mail lists just a few years ago. Today there are number of successful companies that help real estate agents with e-mail marketing.

Yea, right!!! – If that was your first reaction when you saw the headline for this article, do not worry you are not the first one. In fact when I recommended Hittail as must to have tool for every real estate website, I have received somewhat similar reaction by some one from SEO Web Design:

Erm… still requires money? The features work exactly the same as Google Analytics and Webmasters Tools. However, i think Google is far better because it allows us to set goals to track our landing page conversions, shows the query terms that your website appears in, search terms that get you visitors and much more. It is free and has no limits on the number of visitors. Isn’t it better? I don’t know, it is up to our friends here and i am just sharing. Cheerz

I am not going to argue that Hittail is better that Google analytics. However, it was Hittail and not Google who brought me through their “suggestions” to a point when I can say without slightest exaggeration that with Hittail I am better off by about $1,725 each month.

As they say pictures are worth more than words, so I have taken some snapshots from my Hittail Account to demonstrate to you how much Hittail really helped me. The images below are the snapshots from the “Keywords” tab. If you are using Hittail you can find that info just above the list of keywords under the “Keywords” tab. That info changes from day to day depending on the search hits to your website. As you will see from the snapshots below I am currently tracking 5 websites with Hittail. All of them are listed under the “free account”. All of the websites below, had virtually no natural traffic from the search engines wen I started to use Hittail.

It is true, the figures in the above images are calculated on $0.50 per click basis. It is also true that if you optimize your lading pages well you can maintain $0.10 per click. However there are niches, including real estate, where even well optimized PPC campaigns can cost you a $1 or $2 per click. Sometimes even more. So at the end of the day Hittail’s calculation is not that much off after all.

One very important part that Hittail users may miss is that by using Hittail suggestions it is much easier to maintain those coveted $0.10 per click campaigns. Hittail has helped me not only to increase natural search traffic. It also helped me to keep my PPC nice and clean with hundreds of keywords at $0.10 per click.

Am I saying you should abandon Google Analytics? Absolutely not! Hittail and Google Analytics can work with different data providing different analytics and you can benefit greatly from both.

In my next article I getting down and dirty with showing you how to make use of Hittail Suggestions. So please, stay tuned and subscribe to my blog.

Participating in online forum can benefit you on many levels. You can network with other real estate agents and even can bring some extra visitors to your website. I have compiled a list of five real estate forums that you can not afford to ignore. I will later explain who it can be used on occasions while working with Hittail. However there is one very important thing to remember when joining an online forum. You will benefit form online forums by contributing to them. If you join a forum only as an opportunity to leave links back to your websites, soon you will earn a reputation of a spammer and no one will take you seriously.

Many online forums reward active users by offering a signature which can accompany every post you write on the forum. Some use this signature to promote their websites. Many forums will require to write certain amount of posts before allowing you to use the signature. Some forums grant you this opportunity from the time you join the forum.

Forums in the list below are particularly focused on real estate. If you are not member of any forum on the list consider joining them. Should you be already a member of some of them feel free to leave your feedback.

Real Estate Webmasters Forum- probably my favorite forum. You can find there great webmasters tips for your real estate website.

Bigger Pockets- Real Estate Investing Forum- another great website to network not only with real estate agents but with potential clients as well. As an expert real estate agent you can really shine on this forum and earn good reputation.

Real Estate Forum- is another highly recommended forum for real estate agents. With over 13,000 members it is a busy place. You can find and/or share your expertise on anything from web design to mortgage and loans.

Agents Online- another “must join” forum for any real estate agent. This forums is more exclusively focused on real estate and everything that comes along. There are 9,333 members on this forum today. Why not to join the crowed?

The Pro Real Estate Network Forums- although this forum has only 457 members today, it deserves credit for the outstanding efforts in SEO and marketing. I will not be surprised that the forum will have few thousand members by this summer.

There are many other online forums that real estate agents can benefit from. Especially if they are looking for webmasters, SEO, PPC and other tips. I will write about those in the future. The above forums were chosen specifically because they are closely related to real estate. I hope you find the above list helpful.

To continue with the series of articles on how to use Hittail effectively to market your real estate website, I highly recommend to take a closer look at the article marketing websites and directories in the list bellow. Article marketing is an effective way to establish yourself as an “expert” in a particular niche or industry. Article marketing can also help you to gain inbound links from other websites and send your way some visitors. Out of the few dozens of really good article marketing websites and directories the directories bellow were chosen for two particular reasons:

1. Each of the website below has clearly defined category for real estate articles.
2. All four article marketing websites in the list below do very good job to market themselves which is evident by how they rank across the search engines and by the amount of traffic each websites receives.

1. EzineArticles- is probably one of the most popular article marketing websites. It is currently ranked at PR6 by Google and holds an impressive 696 position in Alexa’s ranking system.

2. Article Dashboard- is another PR6 article marketing website and currently ranked by Alexa at 11,899.

3. Go Articles- is another fast growing article marketing website. Google has ranked this website at PR3 while Alexa is ranking 8,358. Go Articles have integrated a widget from a social network called PlugIM which probably is bringing them additional amount of traffic.

4. Finally Content Spool. The founders of this website have come up with Content Spooling Network, which integrates the data from Hittail Plus account and offers very unique solutions in article marketing.

Each of the above directories have their straights and weaknesses. However if you use these websites in combination, you can achieve some impressive results. Article marketing does not cost you money (except if you decide to use Content Spooling Network) but it does require your time. Make sure to familiarize yourself with guidelines of each of the directory, it will save you a lot of time and spare you from frustration in the future.

Stay tuned for the future articles about Hittail and how it can help you to bring more visitors to your real estate website. Make sure to subscribe to this blog so you don’t miss any of the articles.

In hopes that my previous post about Hittial, has generated some curiosity on the part of the readers of this blog, today I would like to just briefly write and explain a few things about statistics that you will see in your Hittail account.

Once logged into your account you will the following tabs towards the top of the page:

Depending what statistics you would like to see you have a choice to look at: My Hittial, Search Hits, Keywords, Suggestions and To Do list. I will write briefly about each and what to make of these statistics.

1. My Hittial is designed to “graphically” illustrate the so called “long tail” of keywords. Although the info from “My Hittial” is not as important, there is some useful information to be found there. Depending on how many keywords Hittail has analyzed, it gives general idea of how the flow of traffic is generated to your website or blog. Here is what Hittial had to say about this blog- the keywords and traffic associated with them:
   
   As you can see Hittail analyzed 1300+ keywords that have generated traffic to this blog. Top ten of those keywords are responsible for only 22.9% of all traffic. While the rest of the keywords are responsible for 77.1% of all traffic. For me this information was an “eye opener”. Some of the top ten keywords are very competitive keywords for which this blog ranks quiet well in the search engines. The combined traffic from less important keywords found in the long tail is almost 4 times bigger comparing to the traffic from top 10 keywords.
2. Search Hits. If it was up to me I would name this tag “Life Hits”. Because that is exactly the kind of information you will find under that tab. It shows you the live hits to your website from both search engines as well as from other referring websites.
3. Keywords. The information in this tab is reduced only to keywords that were used across the search engines to find your website. The hits from other websites are filtered out.
4. Suggestions. Now we come to what I think is the most important info that Hittail is offering to it’s clients. Analyzing your website’s long tail, here Hittail offers your suggestions that, if acted upon, can bring your website to the top of the natural search results. For me as well as for many other bloggers and webmasters this information can be compared to a “gold mine of traffic”. However the keyword here is “acted upon”. If you just going to end up looking at these keywords and do nothing, you will be missing great opportunity to increase the traffic to your website.
5. To Do is the last tab were you can store Hittails suggestions for the future work. The To Do list is particularly useful when Hittail begins to offer several “suggestions” a day. When I initially installed the code on my website, I would act on every single suggestion. However over the time I have noticed that some suggestions from Hittail are the misspellings of the certain keywords. While a smart marketer can make use of those as well. I have become some what picky. When I have a choice to act upon a keyword or it’s misspelling, I generally chose to act on the former.

In the future articles I will be writing about using Hittail keywords in article marketing as well as press releases, so please stay tuned and subscribe to my blog.