Just a bit about search engine optimization.

Real Estate SEO Pros have assisted Real Estate Agents with learning how to do critical SEO on their sites for many years. After some discussion we decided that it was time to unveil our SEO training for the general public and consent to all Agents access to our free video series.

Most Real Estate Agents working in todays market appreciate that SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is central to both off line as well as on line success. More and more buyers and sellers (80% according to USA Today 2007) are going on line to investigate their market and pricing before they even pick up the phone to call an agent.

You can see SEO as fundamentally two applications when it comes to working on a web presence. There is onsite and then there is offsite optimization. It is important to learn both onsite and offsite SEO in order to be well received by the search engine spiders.

You can not separate these two aspects of SEO and achieve long term success with your on line marketing campaign.. We are offering these free SEO videos to Real Estate Agents so that you can learn both aspects of this critical process. Lets talk about our onsite Optimization video at this juncture.

Our onsite optimization video will be by and large primarily concerned with showing you what are the crucial factors to your onsite optimization. Our free videos offer anyone with a basic level of website understanding with a way to manipulate and improve your site so that you can build up your sites standings in the search engines and show that your site is worth visiting.

The number one step to onsite or On page optimization is applied to your sites, page titles. This is an often disregarded but significant onsite factor in search engine algorithms. Individuals repeatedly have the identical titles on every page but page titles are seen by search engines as a indicator to a pages subject matter. A good quality title should be key phrase rich and be specific to the content of the page. This is the start of good information architecture (a sites layout). It is ideal for every topic within your website to have its own page.

If you promote beach front land, have a page for that. If you promote in Miami have a page for that, if you promote Lofts have a page for that. This enables you to optimize a page for a very specific set of key phrases. The Search engines key job is to deliver web pages to users that are directly related to the terms that they are typing in to hunt for. This means that the more specific your web pages are to a search term, the more likely you will achieve good rankings. More importantly, Real Estate is local, so don’t just use the term “real estate’ as a keyword. use “Miami Beach Front Property Real Estate” in the title and content of your page and you will get way more hungry buyers that are specifically seeking just that information out.

Next comes the key page content and this should also be defined and clarified by the surrounding subject matter. Writing good quality and distinctive content is a talent and as with anything it takes practice to get good at it. You know your region better than most, so you can really communicate your views in a unique way that can draw prospects to you. It is vital that you remain professional and be sure that your subject matter reads well. You don’t need to over do the mentions of the key phrases you are optimizing for but do have it at the beginning and end of your contentIf you seek to use your key work phrases over and over the search engines can detect it as they look at the density of your keywords. This approach will only lead to reducing the quality of your website visitors experience and therefore the search engines will likely penalize your website with a lower quality score. This activity will normally lead to your visitors leaving your page quickly..

If you are careful to pick a domain name that is keyword specific to your target keyword or has your target word this will assist you with ranking higher on the page.. But if you have a site name by now don’t be bothered as your content and page headers will make up for this over time. If you decide to build a number of sites, as many top sellers do then next go round bring in key phrases relating to page content. It is helpful if your site names can be both short and memorable. Have your core phrase at the beginning of your site URL, MiamiBeachFrontRealty.com means you will show up for clients that are searching for Miami beach front property not San Diego beach front property.

One ignored item of onsite optimization is using image ALT text. The search engines index your images so using keyword rich names here can be to your advantage. They are also used by the visually impaired to aid navigation and are therefore read out loud by accessabiliy programs as people search. Once again, more is not better so do not go the path of ALT tag stuffing, which would not only impede usability for the visually impaired but would hurt your rank in the search engines as much as keyword stuffing does.

As the spiders come along from the search engines they come by and look at your header tags, that are behind the scenes on your page. These are called Meta Tags and should consist of key phrase variations such as pluralizations along with a keyword rich explanation of your site that prospects will read on the search engine page results. Because these specify the subject of your page it is seen by search engines as an indicator to the key phrases being targeted for that page and that page only.

It is important to be aware of that each of these onsite SEO factors are helpful. So as you construct your page, or have your web master attend to it, or the kid down the block, start at the top with the URL purchase then move to your header tags and the page titles. These are weighted the most by the search engine algorithms. Then focus on your content as in the end all factors need to be considered if top rankings on the search engines are to be achieved for the most competitive key phrases.

Always wanted to hear more about SEO? Visit our free training at Real Estate SEO Training blog.