Optimizing and Registering Your Website With Search Engines Will Boost Your Rankings
Over half of today’s real estate consumers start their buy or sell transactions on the Internet, more often than not by logging on to their favorite search engine and typing in key words like “real estate and [city name].” In fact, Google expects to launch over half a billion realty-related search results next year. Where will your website fall in these results?
Making sure that your website comes up at or near the top of search engine results requires a process called search engine optimization and registration, and its value has soared as the number of websites has climbed into the billions. Standing out in the crowd is critical. A high ranking in the right search engines is one marketing tool that can increase traffic on your website as much as 90 percent, according to BrandWeek Online Magazine. The more traffic a website gets, the more sales that result, improving the return on investment for money spent on Internet marketing.
What is search engine optimization?
Choose the right keywords.
Use meta tags.
Check out your competition.
Improve relevancy with links.
Deceptive practices are death.
Is optimization enough?
Search engine vendors.
Beware the guarantees!
What is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is the process of configuring your website to be attractive to search engines. Search engine optimization is not the process of deciding what you personally might think is attractive or even what you think your prospects will find attractive. It’s the process of choosing and improving criteria that the search engines think is important, and the process is part art and part science. The engines seek relevancy and their relevancy algorithms are a closely guarded secret. An experienced search engine expert can be invaluable in helping you maximize your search engine optimization efforts.
Choose the right keywords. Think about the words that will come to your prospects’ minds when they think about your business. These are the terms that you want to maximize on your site. If, for example, you represent buyers or sellers in Los Angeles, you will have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of competing sites that list “Los Angeles real estate.” You, therefore, will want to also add more specific phrases such as “Los Angeles beach properties” or “Bel Air real estate.”
Use meta tags. Websites are written in html code and use meta tags to identify various parts of a page. Each page has a different “meta tag title” of 50 to 80 characters, which is arguably the most significant component of search engine optimization. Your best keywords should be in the titles of each page.
Each page also has a meta description tag, which most search engines will display in their search engine results to tell the viewer what the page contains. Think about what a compelling call to action for your prospects would be and make sure this is what will appear in the search engine results. Sellers’ agents, for example, might want to use “free comparative analysis for your home on my website.” Buyers’ agents might want to use “search the MLS on my website.”
Each page also has a meta keyword tag that should include a string of all terms and phrases relevant to your business. Limit this tag to 250 characters and include common misspellings for words to match misspelled search requests. Absolutely do not use words that are popular, but unrelated to the content of your site, in a bid to attract the search engines. Engines that discover such words when they “crawl” your site will blacklist your site.
Check out your competition. Visit your competitors’ websites to see what key words they are using. This step will help you refine your own keywords by identifying ideas you didn’t think of.
Improve relevancy with links. Increasingly, search engines are factoring into their rankings the number of other websites that provide a hyperlink to your site. When other sites on the Internet point to your site, search engines attach a higher importance to your site and your ranking goes up accordingly. It is important, however, that you link only with sites related to your business. Excessive links to irrelevant sites are read as “spam” by the search engines and will adversely affect your ranking.
Deceptive practices are death. If search engines believe a website is using deceptive practices to boost its ranking, they will blacklist the site and it will not turn up in search results at all.
Is optimization enough? In a word, “no.” With their increasing popularity with web surfers, search engines have become big business. While a search engine might eventually “crawl” to your site and discover you, you need to “motivate” the engine to find and recognize you sooner with paid registration. Once you register, your work is still not done. Each search engine will randomly assign you a position after registration and it is up to you to analyze the position and strategize ways to improve it, if indicated. It is important to keep in mind that search engine rankings are extremely fluid. You must vigilantly monitor your ranking and take frequent steps to protect and improve it.
Search engine vendors. An experienced search engine registration vendor is worth its weight in gold. Such a vendor can economically bulk register your site with all the important search engines and analyze the resulting positioning and recommend valuable strategies, both free and paid, for improving your position(s). And don’t forget, rankings are fluid. A good vendor will help you monitor and protect your rankings.
Beware the guarantees! Do not believe the search engine optimization and registration vendor who guarantees you the top slot or two in the search engines. Only one result and be number one and rankings change constantly. Don’t pay extra for a guarantee and be particularly wary of any vendor who makes such a guarantee.