SEO - What the heck is that?

So as I told you, www.cometoclearwater.com is doing well on Yahoo.com (see current ranking).

That the site does well is not an accident. There are a number of things that make the site interesting to the search engine spiders - which is what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) attempts to do.

1. First it is written in HTML and is NOT a dynamic/template site. Many of you use a template site for your main site (a la mode, agent access, etc.) - this is not a bad thing but it will limit how high your site can rank. I think that having a main site is great - BUT to get good rankings you may want to have a mini site for each specialization that you might have. For example I have my main site and then www.tampabayunder200K.com and www.clearwater4salebyowner.com. These are VERY specific and made to attract a certain kind of user.

2. Decide EXACTLY what kind of user you are trying to attract. CTC is made to attract out of town buyers and also to serve as a marketing site for potential sellers. I have a free relocation guide offer on every page - last night I got three requests and wrote a contract on a CTC buyer lead. You may be looking for sellers or for 55+ buyers or for people who park their RVs at home - no matter what type of client you want, you must be very specific in your content and your metatags to make sure that you position yourself well.

3. Last for today is metatags. These confuse many people, BUT basically they are the source code that computers use to help catagorize pages and describe your site to the search engines.

1. Title Tag - This is the bar across the top of browser window. It should include words that coincide with the content of your site. CTC's title is "Come to Clearwater - Real Estate and More for Clearwater and the surrounding communities!"

2. Description - This in my estimation is the MOST important tag of all as it is what shows up as the blub on the search engine page when users are trying to decide what link to click on! CTC's description is "Clearwater information and real estate news! Tara Jacobsen is the leading residential real estate specialist for Clearwater and the surrounding communities of Dunedin, Seminole, Safety Harbor, Palm Harbor, Largo, and Tarpon Springs. She is dedicated to helping you find you dream home. Search for the perfect home on www.cometoclearwater.com."

3. Keywords - Not as important as they once were but still helpful! These are words that you recommend that will help the search engines catagorize your site.

If you have not fallen completely asleep yet and would like to learn more, I am teaching an advanced internet marketing class this month at Keller Williams Palm Harbor. It is Friday the 23rd of February at 1pm!

Internet - SEO

Many of you may not know what SEO is or why it is important to you. SEO is "Search Engine Optimization" and it is important to you because it makes your site visable and desirable to search engines. It may seem scary but in fact is mostly just common sense.

To give you an example of SEO and how it works, please visit www.tampabayunder200k.com. You will notice a couple of new things:

1. I traded out the graphic banners for html links to the request more info pages - this is because search engines cannot "read" graphics but they CAN read text AND they think that html text is the most important kind! (Tampa Bay Real Estate Experts...)

2. I also added some text at the bottom that talks about being a Clearwater, Tampa, etc. realtor which was not on the site before this. This will help the search engines index the page.

3. I also added some additonal text about affordable housing - again just to make it easier for the search engines to know what the site is about.

4. Lastly I added some new metatags (view>source) that include clearwater realtor, tampa realtor, etc.)

I then resubmitted my site to the search engines - we will see if there is any increase in leads!

Internet - Small Sites

I thought that I would talk a little bit more about the difference between having a subpage for your site and having a mini site (1-3) pages.

Some SEO companies recommend using doorway pages to increase your rank. These are subpages of your site that have very little graphics but a lot of html and links that the search engines can index. Here is a subpage that looks like this www.realestateexpress.com/prelicense/FL/prelicense_info.asp. It is a subpage of the www.realestateexpress.com site. They have a ton of information that is specific to prelicensing in florida. They come up number 34 on a search for "real estate real estate real estate clearwater fl".

The problem with that is that number 34 is not a great place to be AND NO human will ever do a search for "real estate real estate real estate clearwater fl" even though the SEO company will use that as one of their keywords to show you how high they got your ranking.

In my opinion site promotion is best when you have a specific site that is dedicated to one topic and the title, keywords, URL and content all match. The search engines know that you are sincerely trying to provide specific information and the paid search results seem to be a little better also.

A mini site that seems to be ranking very well is "tampa bay 55 plus communities" http://www.active55adult.com/. This is a mini site rich with hyperlinks and text AND a link on the left hand side to "visit our main site". They are doing everything right! And since they come up as #2 they have made the search engines happy also.

Promoting Like It's 1999

So I was working with one of the agents in my office one-on-one to see what we could do to increase her free search placement. Since I hadn't done paid promotions for about 5 years I thought that I would do a quick search to find out how and what to do currently to make the search engines happy.

Well come to find out the exact same things that I was doing in 1999 work today (and are much cheaper than paying hundreds of dollars for SEO - search engine optimization). I will give you my top 5 list of things you can do to make a difference in your placement.

1. Your URL - make sure that your site has a good www.yourname.com. Take a few minutes to pick something that the search engines can understand. In less than three minutes I came up with www.TampaBaysBestRealtor.com, www.TampaBaysAgent.com, and www.AOneAgent.com.

2. Little Sites - having one main site is a good thing, use it for all your marketing BUT make little sites that focus on only one aspect of your business. www.TampaBay55Plus.com could be a 2 page site that had a BUNCH of information about the Tampa Bay area and specifically communities that featured 55+ living on the front page, links to all your other sites and a link to a contact us page that would "feed" into Top Producer. For an example of this kind of site see TampaBayUnder200K.com. These are comparable to "doorway pages" which are a keyword packed page that search engines can index but that are part of your big site. I think you get way more bang for your buck by have several small sites that the engines can index separately - especially since they feel top level sites are better than subpages of your main site.

3. Content - have great keyword rich content that matches your title, keywords and description. Make sure that your links are hyperlinks that describe what you are sending people to - in other words make your link say "On Top Of The World - 55+ Community" instead of "click here".

4. Submit your site to many different search engines. There are two free tools that I can recommend - Site Submission Beta and SEO Studio . They are both a little hard to get set up, but once they are ready to go regular submissions are a breeze.

5. Adwords or Overture - OKAY you got me - they did not have these two paid submission opportunities in 1999! BUT that having been said, paying just a couple of bucks a day can help to jump start your search submissions and hopefully you can pay less and have more "real" results fast!

Search Engines - Organic -vs- Paid

So I was preparing for my marketing class today and I noticed that www.cometoclearwater.com was listed on Yahoo at #6 for Clearwater Relocation. How did that happen you ask?

1. I designed the site to attract out of town visitors - it is loaded with information about Clearwater and the surrounding communities
2. There are links that say "Free Relocation Guide" on EVERY Page of the site. What is so unique about that? Most links say "click here".
3. I have spent some money (not a lot) on AdWords to get some traffic to the site in the first place.
   
4. My site description in the metatags is good and compels Yahoo search engine users to click through.
   

There are numerous other reasons that www.cometoclearwater.com has moved up the search engine from its lowly start at 200 millionth. I read all the current theories about how to fool the engines, how to upgrage your site and how pay per click is the future, but this was just plain old 1999 good content, good keywords and time!