Once your website is online and have added unique content, many site owners begin a process known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This process is best handled by professionals but a site owner can achieve equal results by using a variety of free tools and a bit of research.

Analytics and Statistics

Learn about how visitors find your site and what they are doing. IDXnetwork recommends Google Analytics which provides enterprise class functions in a free powerful statistics tool.
Simply send your Google Analytics U-A code to the IDXnetwork support team along with any specific installation instructions.

• Google Analytics main page http://www.google.com/analytics/
• Product Features http://www.google.com/analytics/features.html
• Product Tour http://www.google.com/analytics/tour.html

Good SEO Practices

Search Engines, like Google, determine your rankings based on proprietary formulas which change frequently. It is best to learn the rules directly from the source.

• Google Basics http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=70897
• Starter Guide http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/reports/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
• Webmaster Guidelines http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

Submit Your Content and Business Details

Submitting your Business and website to various directories is essential to top search engine performance.

• Google Places http://www.google.com/places/
• Google Content Submit http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/index.html
• Yahoo Business Directory http://listings.local.yahoo.com/
• Yelp http://www.yelp.com
• Bing Business Portal http://www.bingbusinessportal.com/BusinessSearch.aspx
• DMOZ Open Directory http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

Keyword and Competition Research

Knowing your targeted Keywords and Competition is half the battle. Collect information on how your competitors have achieved top ranking in your area and then use that information to your advantage.

• Keyword Tools https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• Keyword Tool Tips https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=64886
• Choosing Keywords (video) http://services.google.com/awp/en_us/breeze/378766/index.html
• Google Sets http://labs.google.com/sets
• SEO Quake Browser Extension (Check Statistics, Backlinks, Site:, Alexa) http://www.seoquake.com/
• DNS, Whois and other Lookups http://www.dnsgoodies.com/

Social Networking

Promote your business via various websites by placing backlinks to relevant pages on your social networking sites. These will help build overall ranking.

• Namechk (Find if a name is available on multiple sites at once) http://namechk.com/

Follow Trends

Be sure to keep up on trends both in and out of your industry.

• Google Trends http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends
• Insight http://www.google.com/insights/search/#
• Realtor Research http://www.realtor.org/research
• CNN Money/Real Estate http://money.cnn.com/real_estate/

While we cannot advise on all possible SEO choices, our Support and Sales Teams will be happy to help implement any specific requests, whenever possible. Contact http://www.idxnetwork.com/support.php.

I just wanted to write a quick note of thanks to you and your team. The results of being able to filter the IDX have had a tremendous positive effect on my business, thank you! Traffic at my website has significantly increased and I am #1 on Google in my area. This increased traffic combined with the filtered IDX for my niche market is producing a better client base as they are easily finding the properties that matter most. I’d also like to thank you for your generosity in sharing your vast wisdom as to how to best build my pages thus giving me an even better understanding of SEO techniques.

Thanks very much!

Best Regards,

Beth Barbour, Realtor®
Allison James Estates & Homes
http://PrimeHorseProperty.com

Beth uses design #201006 – Paramount and a community filter builder package to draw in the horse community.  She really cares for horses, and it is clearly displayed in her homepage slideshow, text, and choice of  communities. This attention to detail has caused horse minded property owners to take note. Here are a few properties from her community page Horse Property in La Cresta, Murietta, CA.

Thank you for your kind words, Beth.

P.S. Give an extra apple to the horses from your friends at REwebCentral and IDXnetwork.

Accoriding to the Official Google Blog:

in the last few days we developed an algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience. The algorithm we incorporated into our search rankings represents an initial solution to this issue, and Google users are now getting a better experience as a result.

We can’t say for sure that no one will ever find a loophole in our ranking algorithms in the future. We know that people will keep trying: attempts to game Google’s ranking, like the ones mentioned in the article, go on 24 hours a day, every single day. That’s why we cannot reveal the details of our solution—the underlying signals, data sources, and how we combined them to improve our rankings—beyond what we’ve already said. We can say with reasonable confidence that being bad to customers is bad for business on Google. And we will continue to work hard towards a better search.

Have these changes made a change to your ranking?  Tell us about  it below.

The Result:
faster search engine indexing -> more online exposures -> more traffic to your listing pages.

Bonus Tip:
Want even more traffic? Use this technique for your Open Houses.

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Need help with your real estate website?
Let one of our Online Marketing Experts evaluate your website for its marketing strengths and weaknesses. Ask for FREE Consultation.

According to the Official Google Blog:

Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

We’ve built Caffeine with the future in mind. Not only is it fresher, it’s a robust foundation that makes it possible for us to build an even faster and comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online, and delivers even more relevant search results to you. So stay tuned, and look for more improvements in the months to come.

Google is constantly updating processes to performance, and so should every Real Estate website owner.  Here is a video update of the major improvements.

What are you doing to capitalize on faster indexing?

Not sure how search engines work? Here is a video from Google which simply explains the process in just over 3 minutes.

One of the most noteworthy features is the Ad Planner 1000 list, a list of the largest 1000 sites worldwide, based on Unique Visitors (users), as measured by Ad Planner.  This list is updated monthly as new Ad Planner datasets are released. The information is available online as a reference and as a downloadable file.

The new feature added to Google’s Ad Planner is the new Export to AdWords feature. You can export the sites and placements identified within the Google Content Network by media planners and they will be set up as a new campaign or ad group within your AdWords account.

Whether your strategy is to focus on organic search engine ranking, search engine advertising, or both, a solid strategy for meeting your visiting consumers’ expectations is critical for converting these visitors to prospective clients, and from prospective clients to closed transactions.

• Your first step to converting search engine visitors to active clients is to recognize that these consumers have an expectation. They sat down at that search engine with an objective in mind.
• The second step is to understand what this expectation is likely to be. What did he or she ask for that brought him or her to you?
• And finally, the third step is to land these consumers on a page on your website that is highly likely to meet their expectations.

Search engines reward websites that attract and retain visitors – conferring higher organic rankings upon these websites because consumers find them “relevant.”

To be effective, these landing pages almost always need to be listings-rich. And listings aren’t all you need. To make these landing pages extra attractive to the search engines, they also need keyword rich static content.

IDXnetwork is known throughout the industry for custom IDX filters which allow Realtors to automatically feature properties in their farm area or certain property types to give website visitors one-click access to exactly the properties agents want their visitors to see.

You specify the parameters in easy-to-use interface and the system will auto-populate and auto-update these pages with exactly the listings you need to brand yourself as the local expert.

Using Interactive IDX Filters you can create pages by city, subdivision/developers tract, condo buildings, zip codes, price range, bank owned, foreclosure, short sale or excluding short sale, waterfront properties, equestrian, adult communities or even hand picked selection by MLS numbers.

Visit our DemoIDX to see live samples:

By Condo Buildings

Bank Owned & Foreclosure

By City + Price Range

Each filter has an area for a custom description and a photo. The combination of your custom description with automatically updated listings makes filter pages attractive for your website visitors.

Search engines love these pages because they update daily with new, highly relevant content for your website.

For more information about improving your website experience for users,
call us at 1·800·966·4431 or click here to request a free consultation.

The display URL (the URL that appears within the ad itself) shows potential visitors to a site where they’ll land when they click on an ad. For sites that sit on shared or hosted domains (such as wordpress.com) all ads will be required to display URL “that accurately reflect their destinations.”

Going forward, ads that do not include this additional information in their display URLs will be disapproved. A suggested display URL will be provided in the disapproval email notification, but we encourage you to proactively adjust any ads that you think might be affected by this change.

If you’d like to learn about this policy in greater detail, please visit the AdWords Help Center.

Need help with Google AdWords optimization? Click here to request a Free Consultation.

The issue

In the past, NAR interpreted any use of listings beyond a Realtor’s personal website as “scraping,” defined as a third party taking data from another website. It’s considered scraping, for example, if a software program goes to a website, automatically copies all listed email addresses to create an email database. In the case of listings, NAR considered it scraping if Google or other search engines lifted the information and put it into the search engine’s database. Google commonly does that with many websites because it helps their proprietary search technology return results faster when a consumer enters search criteria.

It was unclear, however, whether a search engine’s use of listing information could correctly be interpreted as “scraping.” Opponents of NAR’s policy claimed that indexing information about listings merely helped a search engine do its job; consequently, it did not fit the traditional definition of “scraping.”

The technology

Real Estate Website developers can program a website, and home listings, in a way that deters search engines from automatically finding the info and storing it in their servers. Conversely, websites and home listings can be coded in a way that makes indexing easier. Realtors who made it easy for search engines to index their listings had an advantage over Realtors who did not, since their websites appeared higher in search engine rankings. That most likely led to more visitors and possibly more sales.

Prior to the recent board decision, IDX listings had to be programmed in a way that made indexing difficult, following NAR guidelines that called for Realtors to use “reasonable efforts” to protect MLS listings from being “scraped.”

The decision

NAR’s board reaffirmed that Realtors may “not use IDX-provided listings for purposes other than display on their websites,” but it deleted the rule demanding a reasonable effort to keep “recognized search engines” from collecting the data.

The new policy does not require websites to code listings in a way that allows search engines to index them; instead, it no longer prohibits the practice.

Need Search Engine Optimized Real Estate Website?

Click here learn about SmartLeads IDX, a turnkey product that combines lead generation, lead capture and lead management tools in one easy-to-use cost effective solution.

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