I/E Speaks

One of the first steps in SEO is to design your website to target a particular audience, in this case those who are interested in buying or selling real estate in your region. Search Engine Optimization employs three basic concepts, those being text, links and increasing the popularity of your web site, all of which will be discussed in much further detail other blog posts.

1) Text
 
When search engines look to retrieve information, their biggest consideration is the text on the web site. This includes text that is both visible and invisible.

Although your web site may be filled with text, if it is not properly instituted, the engines won’t recognize it so your 10,000 word web site, might as well be virtually blank.

Even if you have a visually stunning site that includes audio, videos and cool graphics, the engines won’t see all of your hard work and instead may skip your site and return with one of your competitor’s sites to display at the top of the search results page.

Text in this sense means more than the letters used when designing your copy. In order for the search engines to see your site, it needs to be in HTML coding.

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and this is what the search engine spiders see when they crawl around the net, indexing pages.

Using HTML means adding tags to the title and body of your website so that the engines can find it. For example, if the title of your page is Any Realtor in Any State, in HTML the search engines would see, <title>Any Realtor in Any State<title>.

Without those tags, the page title is invisible to the search engines. This is why it’s imperative that you include these tags so that the search engines will recognize the title of your page. The same holds true for the content.

You’re competitor’s site may seem plain compared to yours but if it has utilized the proper type of text, then in the virtual “eyes” of the search engines it is lit up in neon and chosen for the coveted first page of search results.     

2) Links

Links to your web site are another important aspect of SEO. Links increase your exposure to the search engines, leading to them to your web site and also giving them more information about the type of business your web site reflects.

Because of that the inbound links to your site need to be related to real estate. For example, property appraisers who you do business with can add a link to your site on their web page.

Both categories have to do with real estate values and real estate in general. This adds another layer of exposure to your site and more visibility that the search engines will notice.

3) Popularity
    
The popularity of a website is a key focus of SEO. Naturally you want your web site to be a popular tool for your clients. While this is important to please the people who view your web site, it’s more important to please the search engines that bring your site to the attention of the viewer.

Search engines use algorithms to rank pages. Those pages with the highest ranking appear at the top of the search result page, while those with the lowest end up at the back of the line.

The algorithms are based on a number of factors such as links, keywords, page titles and age of the website and its popularity, not necessarily in that order.

Each search engine has its own system of page rankings and the defining algorithms used are top secret. If you are not well versed in SEO, you are virtually just rolling the dice when it comes to getting exposure for your web site.

Taking the time to employ SEO can substantially increase your odds of better exposure, not just to your clients but to the search engines where it really counts.

posted by Kim Hadley

As the year comes to a close, we are proud to showcase some of the sites we launched in 2007:

Realtors

• www.jonathanshelton.com - This site is based on one of our semi custom designs. LA realtor Jonathan Shelton wanted a site to be able to present to his market in Los Angeles. We were looking for something that brought a high visual impact, and gave him a good foot in the door, as he’s a new agent.
• www.scottsdalerealestateteam.com – Custom site created for a well established Scottsdale real estate team. This site melds a great call to action, with search engine optimization all the while targeting the Luxury Scottsdale Real Estate market.
• www.soldbyspeed.com – Another well established real estate agent came to us for a custom site. He had previously had a templated site, and wasn’t happy with marketing it, as it came across as such. We gave him a site with great call to action, a solid visual impact. As do 90% of our realtor sites we’ve installed a Real Estate Marketing Garage Listing Tool as well as a blog.
• www.lareosolutions.com  - Long time client, Coco Clayman Cook commissioned us to do a site for her new direction in selling REO properties. (other sites we’ve done for her are www.lacondolifestyles.com and www.westsidelifestyles.com). Again, a huge effort made on the site to get her google recognition, as well as a strong call to action, and blog.
• www.geoff-bobbie.com – Top producing Ottawa based team Geoff and Bobbie McGowan hired us to create a custom designed site that reflected their long standing business in the area.

Other

• www.palamanui.com  - This site is a custom designed site, with a big focus on the opening intro to set the stage for this new development in Hawaii. The site will evolve as the development does. A great effort was made to make sure the site is found on the search engines, but at the same time retains a visual impact.
• www.monaco.ca - A new look for this long time doberman breeder. She breeds quality dobermann’s, with solid European bloodlines, and we wanted to give her a site that speaks to the quality she strives for. One of the unique features is giving her an image gallery that she can easily update herself, as well as a blog.
• www.kristinteriors.com – A Los Angeles based interior designer hired us to create a custom site to showcase her business. Our aim was to produce a site that spoke clearly to her business, which is strongly visual. We also gave her a photo gallery, that she’s able to upkeep herself.
• www.dremory.com – Los Angeles based doctor, Hamlin Emory needed a site that highlighted the innovative work he does with the brain. A site that enabled patients and potential patients to understand the work, as well as download documents needed to work with Dr. Emory. Dr Emory has an associate in Seattle area, so we took the same look, and created a site for him as well www.drshatsky.com.
• Last but certianly not least, we re-vamped our own www.imaginationseverything.com site!

posted by Kim Hadley

SEO works by driving targeted traffic to your business website. If you are an independent broker and are the company’s only employee, then you are mainly just competing with other companies in your area, which is a difficult task in itself.  If you are an agent working for a large firm, you are not just dealing with competition from other brokerages in your area. You are also competing with the other licensees at your company.

It’s more than likely that your particular firm already has a comprehensive web page that allows users to search for listings and look for an agent.

You have to find a way to stand out in the crowd so that people will specifically seek you out for assistance rather than your having to rely on the luck of the draw.

One such way for you to do that is to have your own web page that is linked to your firm’s site but also is searchable in the search engines. This means that when people are researching real estate in your area, your personal web page will come up and you get the opportunity to convert them to clients. You might work for a large firm that is so well known that you get what you feel is more than enough leads. The company’s web site might even have allotted a page for you, so you feel this is enough.

After all, why should you go through the time and expense for something that you already have and is working for you in a satisfactory manner? While this all may be true, consider this; what if you decide to go to another firm or open your own brokerage?

Don’t assume that your clients will remember your phone number or email address. Even if you send out an announcement, people may have moved or changed their email address. Although you may have done a memorable job for them, if they call the real estate office that you formerly worked for and you are no longer there, they will be redirected to another agent at that firm.

If they remember your name and try to search for you on the Internet and can’t locate you, then they will have no choice but to use another realtor. Having your own searchable web site will enable those clients that you have lost contact with to find you easily. Even if you already have a web site and you carefully included your name in your URL, just because someone types your name into a search engine doesn’t mean your page will come up.

This is especially true if you have a common name such as John Smith. Many clients aren’t big on patience and will not be willing to sift through multiple sites just to find you. It’s up to you to make sure that you are easily accessible if you want to keep your client base in tact.

Utilizing Search Engine Optimization will ensure that your old clients can find you and new clients will be able to view your site and ask for your help. This makes it worth the effort to take the time to create and optimize your web site so that you will be accessible to those who wish to do business with you.

posted by Kim Hadley

Working hard to drive traffic to your site is a goal we all try to achieve. Once that traffic is there, the second biggest effort we need to make is to get that traffic to stay on the site and eventually engage with you. Fill in a form, send an email or pick up the phone is the ultimate goal of any site. The start page is the entry point to your site, it needs to work the hardest for you to engage the viewer.

Take a good look at your start page? Does it have impact? Does it draw you in, make you want to move into the site? Does it have strong “call to action”? All things you need to look at, evaluate and evolve. When we get it right, we call it a sticky page, meaning a viewer coming onto that page will move forward into the site.

As a graphic artist, I’d like to seen a front page visually stunning, a lovely first impression. I also know from years of working on websites, that we sometimes have to compromise design to get that stickyness. A challenge to meld the two! Not all audiences are alike, and often we work a front page several times before we get it right.

One such client was Tamara Inzunza, www.movingtonova.com. We had a fairly lengthy beautiful flash intro when we first started. Some keyword rich content, and some call to action. Several versions later, her site ended up with larger boxes, which hold links to informative and well trafficed parts of her site. Other clients we’ve worked with have managed to have streamlined index pages that don’t have any of those ingrediants, yet somehow they still work. www. soldbyspeed.com is one such site. Simple text navigation under a flash intro seems to work for his target audience.

Point is we evolve post launching a site to get the formula working for our own brand of audience. Point also being that a well thought out start page can make or break the site, and coming to a good start page can be more of an evolution than something that’s created in an instant.

posted by Kim Hadley

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is exactly what the term sounds like. It’s a series of techniques designed to help move your web site off the 50th search result page to the top of the first page where it belongs. You’ve heard the term, “first come, first served”.

If your web site is at the top of the search result page, you can change that to, “first result, first opportunity to gain a new client”.

The way SEO achieves this is by increasing the flow of traffic to your web site. Just about every business has a web site these days. The reason that they developed them was not only with the hopes of getting more business, but because it was felt that in today’s high tech society, you simply had to have one.

While it’s true that you have to keep up with modern trends, many felt that as long as their web site was in place, then certainly they would be listed in the search engines and people would be able to easily access it. Alas, this is not the case at all.

If your site was posted on the web without the proper coding and content, then the search engines may not even know that it exists. Even if your web site might be listed in the search engines, it probably does not come up on the first result page of a search, which is essential to the site’s success.

It’s not enough to have a website; it has to be a searchable one. This is because unless your web site was designed in such a way that the search engines give it a high ranking, it’s likely that it does not come to the attention of those who are searching for just what you are offering.

This is particularly true for real estate professionals. Much of real estate is based on referrals, but technology has introduced even more ways to get new clients, not just locally but on a national level as well.

People in other states who are planning to relocate to yours will need a qualified realtor to help them find a new place to live. These people go on the Internet to look at properties and query the real estate professionals in the area that they are interested in.  When they begin their search for real estate in your area, if your web site comes up on the first page, you have an excellent chance of converting them into clients.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that competition in the real estate industry is fierce and while the Internet enables a realtor to get more business, it has also caused the competition to multiply. This is why utilizing Search Engine Optimization is imperative to getting a substantial amount of business from the Internet.

It might seem virtually impossible to achieve this, since there is so much competition out there, but by employing techniques used for SEO, you will find yourself at the top much sooner than you think.

I don’t mean to make it sound as if this will be an easy task. Your success depends on how much effort you put into this.

The good news is that unlike previous generations who rolled the dice with mailing lists and cold calling, your odds for gaining new clients this way will be much greater.

Over the next few months I will post articles that will help you understand how to play the SEO game.

posted by Kim Hadley