Real Estate SEO

Real Estate SEO – Are You Googling Yourself Again?
By Brandon Cornett

Advanced Summary:
This article pertains to real estate search engine optimization (SEO). In this article’s usage, real estate SEO is the act of improving a real estate agent’s website for better search engine visibility.

I know a lot of real estate agents who are fixated on how they rank in Google, Yahoo and MSN for their company name and/or their own name.

From an SEO standpoint, this is usually a waste of time. These agents could spend their time better doing any number of things — publishing articles, writing new web content, posting to a blog, acquiring inbound links.

“Don’t sweat it,” I say to them. “Don’t bother Googling yourself.”

Here’s why:

Don’t Sweat It – Reason #1
You will almost always rank #1 for your company name, because (A) it’s probably unique and (B) it’s probably all over your website. For instance, if you Google my company name (“Arming Your Farming”), you’ll see I’m #1 for the phrase. Why? Because I’m the only “Arming Your Farming” company around, so it’s easy to rank first.

Don’t Sweat It – Reason #2
You should focus your real estate SEO efforts on those people who don’t already know who you are. If somebody knows you, they’ll find your website easily enough. But there are plenty of strangers out there looking for an agent like you by searching generic phrases such as “Dallas real estate agent” or “Tallahassee real estate.” Use your search engine optimization program to get in front of those folks. There are a lot of them!

Your Real Estate SEO Toolkit
Once you’ve kicked the self-Googling habit, you’ll have more time for the kinds of SEO efforts that are worthwhile — like key phrase research, link building, and learning. Here are some tools to help you in each of those departments.

Research Tools – WordTracker
The key to search engine optimization is finding out how your target audience is using the search engines. When you discover the kinds of phrases people are using to find the real estate services you provide, you can incorporate those phrases into your SEO program.

On the flip side of that coin, if you optimize your website for phrases people aren’t using, your SEO program will be a wasted effort.

There are a lot of keyword research tools online. WordTracker.com is one of the most popular and trusted of these tools. I use it every day as part of my SEO job. It costs about $200 per year to subscribe, but if you’re serious about optimizing your real estate website for the search engines, it’s well worth the price.

* Learn more at: www.wordtracker.com

Link Building Tools – Yahoo Site Explorer
Inbound links (from other websites to yours) contribute to your overall ranking. So you’ll need a way to track your link-building success. With Yahoo Site Explorer, you can quickly and easily find out which websites are linking to yours. You can also export this information into a spreadsheet for further use.

* Learn more at: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
* Notice there’s no “www” on the above address.

Educational Tools – SEO Books & Websites
Search engine optimization is an ever-evolving practice that requires constant education. Fortunately, there are a number of online resources to help you stay up to speed. Some of the resources below cover general SEO topics. The last resource covers real estate SEO specifically.

* SEO Chat: www.seochat.com
* Search Engine Watch: www.searchenginewatch.com
* High Rankings Advisor: www.highrankings.com/articles.htm
* Real Estate SEO Guide: www.armingyourfarming.com/search

I hope this information helps you improve your website’s visibility. If you’d like to learn even more on this topic, refer to the resource below.

* Copyright 2006, Brandon Cornett. You may republish this article online provided you keep the byline, the author’s note, and the active hyperlinks.

Additional Resources
Brandon Cornett is the author of the “Agent’s Guide to Search Engine Visibility,” available for immediate download at ArmingYourFarming.com. Learn to practice real estate search engine optimization the right way. Download your guide today at: http://www.armingyourfarming.com/search.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brandon_Cornett

For Sale By Owner- FSBO.com

FSBO.comFSBO.com is well known website that assists people to sell their property on their own. FSBO.com was established in 1994, while Alexa indicates that website went live in 1998. One of the biggest selling point of FSBO.com is the fact that many people may consider choosing their services in order to avoid paying commissions to real estate agents.

It is quiet easy to locate “for sale” properties using FSBO.com. All you need to do is to select City and State, and the website will bring back properties in that City and surrounding area. The down side of this search is that results are limited only the properties listed by FSBO.com and would not reflect market conditions in that particular area.

If you are planing to advertise your property with FSBO.com you should expect to be charged for their services some where from $70 to $500 depends on what “package” you chose. In order to have you listing features in MLS systems, your bottom line can be $500+commission to selling broker (2.5-3.5%).

There are currently only two reviews about this website available at Amazon.com. If you feel that above information about this website is incorrect please send us your comments and we will gleadly correct all errors.

EzineArticles and Real Estate Website

EzineArticles is well known in the web masters community. As described on their web-site EzineArticles is:

article marketing, publicity generating, traffic building, and article distribution service designed to get your expert articles in front of our content-hungry ezine publisher audience.

So how can a Realtor benefit from EzineArticles?

By writing and submitting a high quality article to EzineArticles, you have a wonderful publicity tool. If you provide good and relevant content, there is a good chance that your article will be picked up by hundreds if not thousands of publishers who would like to feature your article on their website. This in turn can result in surges of traffic to your website. EzineArticles will also help you to increase high quality links to your website.

Zillow: Home owners can update data on their homes.

Zillow Blog:

Real Estate ValuationsJust now the Zillow engineering and operations teams “propped” a new version of Zillow.com that allows homeowners to save and publish personal additions and edits to Zillow’s data on their homes.

Homeowners can now add remodel information, update or change facts (like beds/baths, square footage, etc), or add more specific stuff like a waterfront view, finished basement, or type of parking.  This is a milestone release for the company as it represents our first step in opening Zillow up to our customers, inviting them to add to and improve Zillow for everyone. 

Yahoo! Real Estate.

Yahoo! Real EstateThere is no doubt that Yahoo! Has taken Real Estate business to yet another level altogether. Combining the power of search industry with map technology can be very powerful for real estate.

If you never visited Yahoo! Real Estate before we recommend you to do so now. The amount of information you will find researching real estate properties is unmatched so far. After you submit a query for a particular property the results come back in a form of a map so you can see exact location of the property your are interested in. It is very easy with Yahoo! Real Estate to check out the local market conditions, where you can find other valuable information.

Yahoo! Real Estate is revolutionizing the Real Estate business. Internet changes the way Realtors generate leads and even sales.