Real Estate SEO

Many people out there may have a hard time thinking of SEO as anything other than being the business of ranking. For years that was the measure by which you assessed the strength of your online marketing presence. Well, at this point you’ve probably heard it before…ranking is not the be-all and end-all it once was.

Search engine algorithms are (the formula by which search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo! qualify and display relevant search results - by the way algorithms vary from search engine to search engine - it’s like grandma’s secret sauce!) ever changing. While at one point it may have been enough to only add and occasionally update “meta data”, there are many more factors that take the stage these days. Some are more obvious than others, and then again some are debatable. (Little secret: if you are not already, you should be following Google Guru, now Head of Webspam, Matt Cutts.)

A few key items that come into play: page meta title and description, SERP friendly URLs, H1 and H2 tags, quality/relevant content, keyword usage and variation (on and off page), a good internal linking structure, proper HTML coding, your domain age (strength lies in older domains), number of quality inbound links, user data (number of visits, time spent on page etc), and overall good housekeeping aka. keeping the site alive and current (or “fresh” as I like to call it).

SEO involves ongoing work, tweaking, and sharing, and once you’ve done that - you do it again. All of this time and work, though I’m not saying it’s guess work just because search algorithms are not publicly shared, will play out and make your site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers, which means more traffic.

Measuring success…

It’s not to say that successful search marketing doesn’t help a site gain top positioning for relevant words and phrases. It does. We know that. However, rankings alone do not equal traffic. While a search engine presence is essential in order to generate user traffic, a successful SEO campaign is measured by the increase in search engine traffic and the rate at which that traffic performs the desired actions on your site (ie. sales leads, purchases, sign-ups etc). My advice to you (wether you are a do-it-yourselfer or a SEO professional) measure and track your site’s increase in traffic over time, follow where traffic is coming from and where its going, and make sure you track conversions/leads. That’s the goal!