One of the unfortunate things about the web is all of those companies that prey upon unsuspecting real estate agents with promises of getting to the top of Google and other search engines. Today we’re going to provide you with the information you need to succeed in building your search engine rankings and tell you about some common scams.

Before we begin you need to know one key piece of information:

To achieve top organic search engine rankings you need a dedicated search engine optimization and link building program. It typically takes 10-14 months for web sites to crack the top 10 on Google for competitive keyword phrases. In competitive markets it could take significantly longer to achieve those rankings.

Terms You Need to Know

• SEO – short for Search Engine Optimization. These are on page and off page techniques and strategies that help your site get to the top of the search engine rankings for specific keywords
• PPC – short for Pay Per Click advertisements that are generally shown above the organic search results and to the right of the organic search results when you search for a phrase. You are charged every time someone clicks on your PPC ad
• Keywords – search phrases that web surfers use to find products, services, or information

Fraud Alert!

There are some companies that claim to be partners with Google, Yahoo, and Bing and offer you a special deal to put your link or banner above the paid ads and search results. They say that all you need to do is sign up with them and download their special Internet Explorer (or other web browser) plugin. THIS IS A SCAM! Search engines do not have special ads above their other ads and search results. What these companies are doing is having you download malware (similar to spyware) that displays this “special ad” on your browser and any other browser infected with this malware.

Important Keywords vs. “Junk” Keywords

While there are many keywords that people can use to find real estate in your area, there are only two phrases that drive any significant volume of traffic to real estate web sites:

• city name real estate (i.e. Hilton Head real estate or Hilton Head Island real estate)
• city name MLS (i.e. Hilton Head MLS)

While phrases like “Hilton Head homes for sale” or “Hilton Head oceanfront homes” might seem like good phrases, over the course of the month very few people actually use those search phrases. There are companies that charge big money to agents to “guarantee” them top search engine or pay per click placement for phrases like that. Stay away! If you really think those phrases are important then start your own PPC campaign. You’ll find that you can buy those keywords on your own for a LOT less than these companies charge.

For example, let’s take the phrase “Hilton Head oceanfront homes” and run it through the Google Traffic Estimator. If you play around with the numbers you can see that offering $2.50 – $3.50 per click will get you in the top 3 positions. BUT WAIT! Look at the estimated traffic – ZERO clicks per day!

Don’t be scammed by people offering you junk keywords. Do your homework using the traffic estimator tool above and run your own ad campaigns.

Getting To The Top Of Organic Search

So, just how do you get to the top of the organic search rankings? We’re not going into the nitty gritty details of SEO, but we’ll give you the basics. The first thing you need is a good search engine friendly web platform like the CORE360 Agent web sites. A search engine friendly site means that it has a good navigation structure and that search engines can easily crawl and index the content pages. A search engine friendly site DOES NOT guarantee the site will have good search engine rankings, but it is an important start to achieving that goal.

The next step is to have a site rich with unique content. Unfortunately, many real estate agents want a quick solution to content and purchase web sites that have canned content shared by thousands of other sites or they simply copy content from other web sites. That’s a bad move. Search engines either ignore or devalue duplicate content. So it stands that if they ignore your content, they have no way to classify your web site. And if they can’t classify your web site then there is now way it will rank for your important real estate phrases.

Links, Links, and More Links

The most important factor in ranking well on Google is developing a good link campaign. In a way, Google considers a link to your site to be a “vote” for your site. So it stands to reason the more “votes” you have the better. Unfortunately it’s not quite that simple. Yes, you need links (thousands of links)pointing to your web site. But not just any link will do. Google places emphasis on the quality of the link based upon the authority of the site providing the link to your web site. So you can’t just hire someone to build thousands of junk links to your site and expect to get to the top. Not only is the quality of the link important, but the age of the link also holds some importance. That’s why you can’t build a few thousand links in a month and expect to see results. And forget about automated link building programs. Google can pick those out in a heartbeat and devalue all of those links. There are times when you might be able to game the
Google system in the short term, but they are very good at catching and penalizing people who don’t play by the rules. It may take a while, but they always catch the black hat tactics.

Proper link building is a tedious and time consuming task, and that’s one of the reasons the good SEO companies charge so much money each month for these services. It also takes time to build quality links. That’s why you might be paying an SEO company for a year or more before you even begin to see results. One thing you can do to help your site along is to blog two or three times a week and make sure that your blog posts are syndicated to the major blog feeds. Other sites may pick up your blog posts and that can turn in to more links for your site. Another tactic you can utilize is social networking using sites like Digg, facebook, del.icio.us, Stumble Upon, and others. Again, the CORE360 Agent sites have all of these tools and features already built in to their architecture.

The biggest question you may have is, “How much will all of this cost?”. Prices for search engine optimization services are all of the board. You might be able to find some overseas companies to do it very cheap, but in most cases the quality of their work is suspect. A top notch SEO firm will cost you in the neighborhood of $1,000 – $2,000 a month depending upon the scope of your project and the competitiveness of your market. Your best bet is to shop around, and above all verify references and verify results.