Ultimate SEO Resource for Real Estate Agents

Ultimate SEO Resource for Real Estate Agents

Note: OnTheAvenues Blog achieves top recognition for real estate SEO

SEO, as a rule, isn’t easy. Of course, this goes double if you’re a real estate agent with hundreds of competitors in your area–all targetting the same keywords. The real estate industry is large, it’s competitive, and the average realtor has a million other things to worry about besides their SEO strategy. But that doesn’t mean you should give up–leveraged successfully, the Internet has the potential to be the largest and most profitable sales channel in an agent’s marketing mix.

The following list is filled with tools and resources that will help any real estate agent achieve their SEO goals. You can choose to learn from blogs, tutorials, or forums, and we’ve also pointed you to specific blog entries and forum threads that will get you started. You can study search engines to learn what they require from you, and you can choose among some professionals to help you refine your Web site or to take over completely. The choice is yours. The links to each tool are listed alphabetically within the categories listed immediately below. The numbering does not indicate that we favor one site over another or that they are listed in order of value. Finally, all the sites listed below are targeted specifically to real estate professionals.

The following blogs are written by individuals who are in the real estate field, yet who also have become experts in the SEO realm. While some blogs focus specifically on SEO, other blogs contain a category that holds their SEO articles.

OnTheAvenues: Bonnie Burns provides web site analysis and search engine optimization services specifically for real estate web sites and shows her expertise through her blog.

See the complete list of Real Estate SEO resources here

Optimizing for Secondary Supporting Keywords

Optimizing for Secondary Supporting Keywords

Optimizing for secondary supporting keywords can be a golden mine because when everybody else is optimizing for the most popular keywords, there will be far less competition (and probably more hits) for pages that are focused on the minor words or synonyms.

For example, "real estate in Mississippi" might have much less action than "real estate" by itself, but if you are operating in Mississippi, you could get less volume in traffic but considerably more refined traffic. Also do not under estimate the value of working with acronyms. For example "real estate MS" or for example "Victorian homes in NJ" short for New Jersey

We see real estate sites that achieve top rankings in a few shport weeks by using secondary supporting keywords. For example, a site we did for a realtor in Phoenix AZ that receives over 400 page view a day for such terms as:

modern camelback corridor lofts
westgate az living
biltmore court phoenix
price per square foot for a condo in phoenix
44 monroe
encanto district homes phoenix
chateux on central
urban mansion arizona
chateaux on central
44 monroe phoenix
biltmore phoenix homes
biltmore arizona new upscale high rise for lease
modern camelback corridor lofts
zips codes of historic districts in pheonix
condos on central in phoenix
paradise valley mls search
downtown phoenix, az zip code fq story
encanto historic district arizona zip code
summit condos phoenix
real estate for sale f.q. story
historic phoenix
biltmore townhouses phoenix
palmcroft in phoenix arizona
az mls free
phoenix mls
arizona new homes/cave creek
free arizona mls
central phoenix home search

In short, generic terms are not always the best. Look outside the box when selecting keywords

If you need your real estate site optimized to achieve better rankings, be sure to contact OnTheAvenues

Top 50 Real Estate Marketing Bloggers

OnTheAvenues Makes Top 50 Real Estate Marketing Bloggers

Click here to see the top 50 real estate marketing bloggers

Every real estate agent and developer is different, and each one believes one form of marketing works better than another. Word of mouth, or viral marketing, represents just one method of marketing. Others include print, radio, television, Web sites, and blogs. This marketing “to-do” list can grow, and it would take a ’superperson’ to take advantage of every marketing situation - let alone to use each one to its peak performance.

This is where marketing bloggers can come to the rescue. The list includes bloggers who focus on general and online marketing, including blogs. More specifically, the list focuses only on real estate marketing, a necessity that can prove both very expensive and time-consuming unless you learn how to get around those obstacles. Click here to see the top 50 real estate marketing bloggers

Please note that the blog numbering is not meant to be a ranking, as each blog topic is listed in alphabetical under five different categories.

You will find that OnTheAvenues has been selected as one of the top 50. Find us under Marketing Tools

If you want to know how to get high search engine rankings without offending search engines, take a look at OnTheAvenues.

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The vast majority of websites may never generate millions or billions of dollars in revenue each year, but the dream of personal fortunes, greater awareness for causes and, of course, fun is still possible by understanding popular Web trends and maximizing the online tools and resources available to each and every website owner.

Until now, there has not been a magazine that caters exclusively to the business of running a website. Sure, there are many publications focusing on the affiliate industry, technology at large or the advertising and marketing community – but those periodicals focus primarily on news and act as an industry who’s who instead of offering practical advice for their audience.

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100,000,000 Ways To Invest In SEO

100,000,000 Ways To Invest In SEO

There are over 200 signals analyzed by search engines, creating an endless combination of tactics and strategies that can be employed to achieve exposure, rankings, and—by far the most important—conversions.

To successfully deploy these tactics and strategies, however, requires a tremendous investment of time. To say that SEO is a full time job is a vast understatement. One can spend weeks or months dedicated to learning and employing just the more common aspects of SEO. Add to that quality copywriting, link building, usability testing, data analysis, and the myriad of social networking opportunities that seem to spring up over night, and you can see why today's SEO is not just one, but several, full time jobs!

Deciding how, when and where to invest

Because of this, search engine optimization can seem to be a daunting task for many small business owners. On the one hand, to hire a good consultant or firm can cost more than a small business owner has budgeted for marketing for the year. On the other hand, to attempt to perform optimization in house, one finds that there is often an insufficient amount of time available to do that and run the business while being effective at both. There are only so many hours in the day!

What options are available to the small business owner in the vast landscape of online marketing? The way I see it, there are only two real choices. You either do it yourself, or you pay someone to do it for you. Either way, you have an investment to make, and you must ask yourself, what makes the most sense for your current situation.

What many small business owners fail to understand is that in order to succeed online a significant investment must be made. Gone are the days when you could throw up a website and expect to become an overnight success. Most of today's overnight business success are back by investments in time, money, resources or any combination of those. While starting and running a business online is easier than off-line, the investment considerations should be no less. And with that, you must decide how, when and where to invest your resources, whether those be financial, personal time, or whatever else you have available to you.

Setting goals to achieve the desired result

What can an SEO firm accomplish for you? If one chooses to hire a consultant or firm, you must consider what that firm will ultimately provide you. Making such a choice on budget considerations alone is a decision based on faulty logic. You must choose a firm based on the tasks you want accomplished. If "top rankings" are your desire, then you can probably hire relatively cheaply. But if you are looking for a more solid marketing plan that considers reputation and conversions as a measure of success, you'll likely shell out a lot more.

What can you expect to accomplish yourself? Conversely, if a small business owner chooses to optimize the site themselves, I suggest taking baby steps through the process. Set aside a specific amount of time each day dedicated to the education and implementation of SEO strategies. Don't worry about the "big picture" but instead start by focusing on the on-page aspects of search engine optimization.

As you learn, don't take a single source as gospel. Find multiple sources that can confirm each other and also take in contrary opinions. These can only serve to confirm what you believe is the right approach. But most importantly, learn by doing, testing, and analyzing what you have done. Don't expect big immediate payoffs, but be patient as you work through the SEO process and its implementation of your site.

Depending on the size of your site and the amount of time you can dedicate to it each day, it may take several months to a year to "perfect" the on-page optimization. At that point, its time to start learning more about the off-page factors. Again, baby steps are required here lest you become overwhelmed. SEO is literally a sea and if you try to take it all in you'll likely drown in it. Instead, just take a small area to learn and master as best you can before moving on.

The decision you make in how best to invest your optimization campaign is of great consequence to the long-term success of your business. It doesn't matter if its in-sourced or out-sourced, either way, realistic expectations must be in place and your decision must be based on the ability to meet those expectations.

As a small business owner, you have to move forward in a way that is best for you, not just today, but a year from now, and five years from now as well. In any case, never be afraid to step beyond your boundaries if you believe the yield will be beyond your expectations. There may be over 100,000,000 ways to invest in SEO, but you only need to find one that works for you.

Source: Stoney deGeyter is CEO of Pole Position Marketing. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

http://www.ontheavenues.com/
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

SEO Theory for Beginners

SEO Theory for Beginners

Michael Martinez gives a wonderful recap on the therory of SEO. Below is from the Blog: Source: SEO Theory - SEO Theory and Analysis Blog

The SEO Theory site appears to be building its audience, and given how many articles I’ve written over the past few months maybe it would be helpful to the new readers if I recap the basic points of SEO Theory.

The definition of Search Engine OptimizationSearch Engine Optimization is the art of designing or modifying Web pages so that they achieve high rankings in search results and pass converting traffic. The folks at work asked me to add that last part and it does seem reasonable.

The SEO Method

The SEO Method is experiment, evaluate, adjust. That does not mean in any way, “When in
doubt, go read SEO blogs and forums.” Read the blogs and forums when you’re bored, and maybe to be randomly inspired to try something new.

The Spammy Method Test

You know it will get you penalized if
you find yourself asking, “Is there anything wrong with [insert SEO trick here]?” Trust your gut instinct. If you read about a great technique in an SEO forum or blog, and you really really really want to try it out, ask yourself, “Can I live without this domain?”

Experiment, evaluate, adjust doesn’t mean, “Try every lame trick you read about on blogs and forums with your most precious domain.” It means be reasonable, be sensible, be prudent, be moderate, and definitely be
conservative. Leave the sneaky nonsense to the black hats who burn through 10,000 domains a month.

The Four Reasons Your Rankings Change

Your rankings in search results change because:

1. Of what you do with your pages

2. Of what other people do with their pages

3. Of what search engines do with their data

4. Of what people search for
   

We Need Links For Three Reasons

We need links to:

1. Get crawled (and indexed)
   

2. Be validated (earn trust)
   

3. Compete in highly optimized queries
   
   We don’t need links just because some idiot in a
   forum says we need them.
   
   Links pass 6 types of value
   

1. Traffic

2. Visibility

3. Crawling
   

4. Trust
   

5. Anchor Text
   

6. PageRank
   

How To Get Out Of Google’s Supplemental Index

Get value-passing links from pages in the Main Web Index.

Third-party analytics software sucks because

Third-party analytics packages like Google Analytics under-report your data by as much as 24-30%. It’s true. One reason this is so is that between 12% and 15% of surfers usually browse with Javascript turned off (they are so not into AJAX). Other reasons include: failure to connect to remote server, incomplete page loading, and ISP timeouts.

The Good, The Bad, and The Spammy

The Good -
Link baiting is cool if you can create the content and spam the social media sites, but for long-term traffic give real value to other sites.

The Bad -
SEO blogs and forums are great places to learn what not to do, as most experienced SEOs spend a lot of time saying, “Don’t do that! Don’t do that, either! You’ll be sorry!” Corollary: The first post in any SEO discussion is
almost always wrong.

The Spammy
- Every linking technique you pick up from blogs and forums is virtually worthless because it will be abused and spammed to death. The less specific the advice, the more it makes you think and be creative, the better.

No Such Things
There is no such thing as a “quality link”
There is no such thing as an “irrelevant link”
There is no such thing as a “duplicate content penalty”
There is no such thing as “an authority Web site”
There is no such thing as “an authority link”

And the most important fact you should take away from this blog: There is another search engine
update coming. Are you ready for it?

www.ontheavenues.com
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
http://bonnieburns.wordpress.com/

50 Questions You Need Answered Before Starting Your SEO Campaign

50 Questions You Need Answered Before Starting Your SEO Campaign

An online business owner basically has two choices when it comes to their website marketing efforts. They can outsource it or they can do it in-house. Both of these options bring a number of secondary options to choose from and its up to the business owner to do what is best for his or her situation. Here is a rundown of the possible choices:

Questions I need answered if I insource my search marketing:

• Do I do it myself?
  
• Do I have the time?
  
• What is my time worth?


• Do I have the knowledge and skills?
  
  
  
  • Do I have the time to get the knowledge and skills?


• Is this something I really want to do along with my regular work?


• Will this take me away from my family?
  
  
  
  • Is this worth the cost of not hiring or outsourcing


• Will I be able to be effective


• What if I screw up my site or get thrown out of the search engines?
  
  
• Do I hire someone to do it?
  
  
  
  • Do I pay someone to learn search marketing on the job?
    
    
    
    • Do I have the resources to teach or pay someone to learn the craft?
    
    
    • Will I have to pay for additional resources such as converences, books, etc.?
    
    
    • What if somone learns it and leaves?
    
    
    • What if I can't find someone capable of learning the craft?
    
    
    • What if they screw up my site or get me thrown out of the search engines?
  
  
  • Do I hire someone with experience?
    
    
    
    • How much is that going to cost me?
    
    
    • How do I know they can do what they claim?
    
    
    • Will they have all the skills necessary?
      
      
      
      • Will I have to pay additional dollars as they sub-contract out specialty work?
    
    
    • Will they expect to attend all the major SEO trade shows?
    
    
    • How much will I have to pay to keep their knowledge current?
    
    
    • What if they engage in "black hat" activities that screw up my site or get me thrown out of the search engines?


• Do I sub out part of it and do the rest myself?
  
• What parts do I do myself?


• How do I ensure that all the sub-contractors are working in unison together?
  
• How do I know who to blame if my search marketing or optimization doesn't work
• 
  Questions I need answered if I outsource my search marketing
  
• Do I hire a firm or a consultant?
  
  
  
  • If I hire a search marketing consultant:
    
    
    
    • Can a consultant do everything I need or do I have to do it myself?
    
    
    • Will a consultant have all the skills necessary to complete the job?
      
      
      
      • Will the consultant sub work out to other consultants?
      
      
      • Will I be forced to pay additional fees sub-contractors?
    
    
    • Will a consultant spend enough quality time on my account?
    
    
    • Will I be able to get a hold of a consultant when I need them during business hours?
  
  
  • If I hire a search marketing firm
    
    
    
    • Will a firm have qualified people working on my account?
    
    
    • Will a firm have too many clients to give me quality time?
    
    
    • Is the firm a "ranking factory" or will be sure to pay attention to the needs of my audience?
    
    
    • How responsive will my search marketing firm be with my concerns?
    
    
    • Will my calls get answered?
    
    
    • Will my emails be returned?


• How much should search marketing cost?
  


• What should be included and what shouldn't be?


• Will I get the return on my investment?
  
• What kind of results should I expect?


• How soon should I expect to see those results?
  
  
• Will I have to give up too much control of my site?
  
• Am I willing to give out sensitive site access information?


• Will I implement recommendations as they are provided?


• Can I veto recommendations and still expect results?
  
• Will I be expected to do anything?
  
  
  
  • How much will I have to be involved?
  
  
  • How much will I be allowed to be involved?

Finding some of these answers might take time, but each is essential before moving forward. Only after you have answered each of these questions will you really know which route is best for you.

Source: Stoney deGeyter is CEO of Pole Position Marketing. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

www.ontheavenues.com
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
http://bonnieburns.wordpress.com/

SEO Tip: The Top SEO Concerns You Need To Have

SEO Tip: The Top SEO Concerns You Need To Have

This isn’t reverse engineering, says SEOMoz’s Rand Fishkin, who called a virtual quorum of the top 37 minds in the SEO business. It’s a list of 35 factors that make up, in Fishkin’s estimation, 90-95 percent of what Google’s algorithm is looking for when determining rankings.

Fishkin and SEOMoz have been refining this list since 2005, whittling it down from over 200 important factors. This year’s guide received input, through voting and commenting, of search aficionados from Danny Sullivan to Jill Whalen to Eric Ward, all names you should recognize if you’ve been following this trade for any length of time.

The SEO report is divided into three sections: Top 10 Positive Factors; Most Controversial Factors; and Top 5 Negative Factors. If you don’t read it, in it’s entirety, then you aren’t very serious about SEO.

Sullivan’s not so sure about how they’re divided up, so he devised his own organized list, arranged by amount of control the webmaster has and the difficulty level. That post is also worth a look.

Google Algorithm’s Top 10 (Assumed) Positive Factors

1. Keyword Use In Title Tags – “Notice number one – that you have HTML title tags that reflect the key terms you want your page to be found for. That’s been the advice since I first starting writing about SEO back in 1996. Eleven years later – and even in the age of it’s all about links — it remains the top ranked tip by so many experts. – Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land.

2. Global Link Popularity of Site (The overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web – both link quality and quantity) – “Think of a web page as a town. If a city has freeways, airports, train stations, bus shelters and a port, that’s a good indicator that it is an important hub. That orphaned web page with no links pointing to it? It may as well be a hidden tribe of Amazons that no one has discovered.” – Lucas Ng (a.k.a. shor), Fairfax Digital online marketing analyst.

3. Anchor Text of Inbound Link – “Anchor text of the inbound link is one of the most concise assessments another person can make about what your site/page is ‘about’.” – Mike McDonald, WebProNews

4. Link Popularity within Site’s Internal Link Structure (Refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page) – “As mentioned on my blog, you can pulse a page’s rankings by including and excluding links to it from your home page.” – Russ Jones, Virante CTO.

5. Age of Site (Not the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines) – “We have seen new sites flourish as long as they have a clear connection to the ‘parent’ site that has already gained trust.” – Chris Boggs, Search Engine Land Associate Editor.

6. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links To Site (The subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword) – “We seem to have moved from analysis of simply anchor text, to including surrounding text and probably even page theme.” – Caveman, SEO/SEM Consultant.

7. Link Popularity of Site In Topical Community (The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world) – ” I’ve seen one of my sites goes from #39 to #1 right after I got 1 link… from the #1 spot on the keyword I was trying to get” – Guillaume Bouchard, CEO NVI Solutions.

8. Keyword Use in Body Text (Using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page) – “If you are writing about ‘dogs’ then you should naturally use keywords related to ‘dogs’ within your content. If you don’t have keywords within your content it can become hard to rank for those terms.” – Neil Patel, Pronet Advertising.

9. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site – “This is why people bought PageRank 7 site links for lots more than PageRank 6 links. The links were very valuable, and the information on how strong they were was very valuable (this is why it’s also very hard to GET an accurate read on anymore without an SEO shaman). – Todd Malicoat, Stuntdubl SEO Consulting.

10. Rate of New Inbound Links to Site (The frequency and timing of external sites linking to given domain) – “I don’t think getting fifty links overnight will kill you. Especially if those links are bringing traffic and from quality sites. Getting 100K links overnight and having no visitors or search queries as a result smells abit fishy no matter how you look at it.” – Rae Hoffman, Principal, Sugarrae SEO Consulting.

This isn’t reverse engineering, says SEOMoz’s Rand Fishkin, who called a virtual quorum of the top 37 minds in the SEO business. It’s a list of 35 factors that make up, in Fishkin’s estimation, 90-95 percent of what Google’s algorithm is looking for when determining rankings.

www.ontheavenues.com
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
http://bonnieburns.wordpress.com/

SEO Tip: Optimizing for Google Local Search

SEO Tip: Optimizing for Google Local

Google Local tracks down local stores and businesses by searching billions of pages across the Web, and then cross-checking these findings with Yellow Pages information to locate the local resources Web users wish to access. In addition to local business listings and related Web links, Google Local also provides maps of the desired region and directions made available by MapQuest. This makes Google Local convenient for Web searchers and extremely useful for local businesses, if their sites are optimized for local-searches. If not, some businesses could be missing out on a tremendous increase in local site visibility and traffic.

Users are modifying their searches to include local terms, and having acknowledged that optimizing your website for these local terms will dramatically reduce the number of competing sites, where do you begin?

There are several ways to optimize your search marketing efforts for local search.
Organically optimize your site. All too often, websites will only place contact information on one page, or behind internal search functionality. This severely limits the opportunity to be visible on a search for product and location. Ideally pages will have contact or geographic information on the same pages as their targeted keyword phrases, allowing search engines to find all words in a search query on one page. If adding this information to existing pages is too cumbersome, unique pages can be created that contain targeted keywords and locations. Additionally, optimization of meta data to incorporate local terms will help your site rank on local searches.

Feed Google with details important to users. Data can be fed to Google with set parameters using the Local Business Center, or from the Froogle Merchant Center for businesses with more than ten locations. Feeding this information to Google allows the engine to populate these fields with information important to potential customers. Users are beginning to adopt new programs such as Google Earth, which combines satellite and map imagery with listings for local businesses. It follows that the more details available in these listings, the more likely a potential customer chooses your site over your online competition.

Target local keywords in your pay per click advertising campaign. Google Adwords detects users unique IP addresses to identify a location and will feed different results based on that location. For regional companies, spends are not wasted on markets that aren’t serviced. For larger companies, specific markets can be targeted.

Optimizing a site for local search can provide quick returns in terms of traffic and conversions. Users will continue to qualify their searches with local terms. By considering this while optimizing your website, you will be capturing the audience at home.

One of the most important parts of the optimization process for Google's local search feature, is the inclusion of your address on your web site pages. The address plays a very important role in this equation. Let's assume you have your address on your 'contact us' page. Fine, but can you prove that Google's (or any other) indexing spider or bot, is reaching that particular page?

Your best bet is to incorporate your address on every single page of your site to ensure it has been absorbed.

The address component has now become critical, because Google is cross referencing this information with the Keywords you have selected for your web site's main focus. Combine this fact with other key factors, namely, Meta Tags, your linking structures, and relevant textual content, and a large part of the visibility puzzle comes into view. All factors need to be considered for good SEO, but for the new 'Local' feature, the physical address and zip code have moved to a very prominent position.

www.ontheavenues.com

8 Basic Ways to Optimize Your Website

8 Basic Ways to Optimize Your Website

Traffïc from search engines is widely considered the best (and cheapest) way to generate traffïc to your site. The increasing popularity of search engines has led to the development of a whole industry that revolves around ways to "optimize" websites.

The end result is that many people think that only "professionals" can help their website rank high within search engines. But, the truth is that anyone can structure their site so they rank high for many keyword phrases.

Below, are 8 simple steps that you can take to optimize your web pages. By following these, you will improve your chances of increasing your rankings:

1) Target 1-3 keyword phrases for each page: A huge mistake that many beginners make is cramming numerous keywords onto every page. Instead of doing this, you should focus on one specific keyword phrases for each page. That way, you can make sure that the page is focusing on that one word without any distractions.

2) List your major keywords in the links back to your site: Many search engines, Google being the most famous, have started to take into account the words that are mentioned in the title tag of the links that point to your site. So, a great way to improve your rankings for your keywords is to place it in the title tag.

3) Make your first 100 words on the page keyword rich: Another mistake that most webmasters make is to have a menu on the left-hand side of a website. Since search engines primarily focus on the first 100 words of a website, a left side menu is a misuse of valuable space.

Instead of doing this, you should have your title, description and web copy within the first 100 words of your site. An easy way to do this is to have your menu on the right instead of the standard left-hand side

But, since the left-handed menu is commonplace, you can also choose to put your first 100 words above the left-handed menu, so this text will be the first thing read on your website.

4) Insert the keyword into your title tag: In the source code of most pages are "header tags" (also known as Meta tags), which help search engines understand the content of the page. Each page should have different Title tags and the keywords used should match the page it is on

To fully optimize your website, you can tweak the source code of the page. The first step is to insert the keyword in the title tag. (This is what is shown in the results of a search engine when your site is listed)

5) Insert your keywords in the description tag: The description Meta tag is almost as valuable as the title tag. The information in this tag is listed directly below the title tag in search engine results. As a result, a good description can make your website stand out from other listings. To get the prospect to clïck on your site, it is important to write a snappy description while using your keyword.

6) Insert them into your keywords tag: Like the title and description tags, keyword tags are used to help search engines understand the content of your web page. Although this Meta tag has become less popular, it doesn’t hurt to put your keywords hëre.

7) Place your keyword in the header: When writing the actual text of your site, the first part should be the headline. Whenever a search engine scans your site, it rates all words in the headline as being more important then the rest of the web copy. To take advantage of this, you should have your keyword in the page headline. But, since the header tag (h1) is quite large, you should format it so that it is smaller.

8) Write your keyword enriched web copy: Once you have set up the structure of your page, you can write your web copy. While creating the text, you want to include the majority of the keywords at the top and the bottom of the page. In addition, the keyword should be included a few times in the middle. Basically, the common saying is that the keyword density should resemble an hour glass shape.

The total web copy of your page should be about 300-1200 words. Also, the keyword should be about 5-12% of the total words of the page. The percentage varies according to each search engine, so you might want to play around till you find the best results.

OnTheAvenues SEO Expert

How to Spend Your SEO Budget

How to Spend Your SEO Budget

These days, if you would like to have a quality, professional-looking site, you can't neglect the SEO factor. Being friendly to the search engines has become a must. But how do you properly distribute your SEO budget to make sure it won't be wasted?

Time has made its corrections to the problem. Advice on spending an SEO budget in 2007 is very different from what the SEO experts might have told you in 2003 or even in 2005.

Invest in design
In the past, the search engines had to work on what was available to them. In search of web pages relevant to a query they often had to rank poorly coded and unfriendly sites highly in the SERPs, and invent different ways to bypass unfriendly design. They can still do it, but on the other hand they can afford to be much pickier now. Unless the query is really very obscure, the chances are there will be a lot of sites available to match it, and the engines can put the highest quality sites at the top.

That brings forward the importance of good quality design. I don't claim to know for sure that the engines already give a boost to the sites with valid HTML code or table-free layouts, and if they do, there is no way to tell how big that boost is. But it's obvious that sites with friendly, static URLs are much easier to get ranked highly than are those with obscure URLs having several parameters in the query. Also, Google shows sites with dynamic URLs as mostly Supplemental Results more often, which is not a good thing, either.

So, here goes the first SEO advice of the year 2007: invest in design. It's worth the money to hire a good web designer who knows how to build search engine friendly sites and can provide a search engine friendly CMS. It might be worth spending a little money in advance to hire an independent SEO consultant to make an assessment of the previous work of the designer you are about to hire. Or, hire and SEO who can also design a search engine ready site from the start. In the long run this investment will pay for itself.

Invest in content
No matter how the rules of the SEO game change, one thing remains: the engines love good content. In most niches (except the most competitive ones) adding a page of properly optimised text with a matching title and meta tags, and incorporating it properly into the structure of a search engine friendly site brings new good rankings fairly soon. Besides, adding good educational content on a regular basis is the only way to build real natural links.

There are a lot of methods of link building, some of them appropriate, others questionable, and many others totally unethical. But the point is that regardless of the method, all links that are built cannot by definition be natural. They can look natural in some cases, but that does not make them natural.

All methods of link building that are known to search engine optimisers are known to search engine engineers as well. And no matter how closely those links resemble natural links, they will sooner or later show a detectable pattern and will be recognised as built links. What to do with this knowledge is for the engines to decide. Lately, they have been known to give a lot more authority to natural links than to links that have been built, which is only logical. Natural links are those that have been earned by a site through its being appreciated by users, and that is what the engines look for.

I'm not saying that it is necessarily a bad thing to build links - it depends entirely on the method. There are a lot of legitimate methods of promoting websites such as press releases and directory submissions. These links bring us visitors, and to some of them the engines still give certain weight. But they are not natural links.

Frankly, I can't see any webmaster giving a natural link from a content page to a page that has purely business-related information (unless it is a review of a business). It's a lot more logical to expect a link from within one article to another that was used as a source or has helped the writer to reinforce a point. But if it is a link to a business site, it seems more logical to place it on a resource page. But...

We all know that resource pages have been utterly devalued by both web surfers and the engines due to heavy abuse over the years with what is known as a "reciprocal link exchange". As a result, Google de-listed most resource pages during 2006, and devalued links coming from most of the remaining pages of this type. Links from content pages are a lot more likely to get clicked and to pass link value to the destination page. This gives us another reason to invest our SEO money in good educational content. Thus we genuinely benefit from giving.

Invest in self-education
If you learn the basics of SEO, you won't have to pay to a consultant for developing titles and meta tags for every page of content you are about to upload. You will be able to do it yourself, along with proper internal linking, validating the code of the new page and other aspects.

You will be able to do directory submissions for your site, which is the best solution anyway because nobody knows all about your site better than you do. You will be able to establish contacts with other practitioners in your field that might bring you fresh opportunities for quality link building that an SEO would surely miss.

However, you need to know how to avoid bad neighbourhoods, and this requires special SEO knowledge that goes far beyond SEO basics. If you invest in developing this knowledge, your self-confidence will grow, and you will feel much better on the web.

Still have some money left?
Submit your site to Yahoo! Directory. Launch a small PPC campaign. If you have time, join one or more paid Business Networking sites, e.g. Ecademy, LinkedIn or Xing. They will give you still more opportunities to publicise your services, as well as some link building opportunities - but paid management teams will make sure you won't be able to abuse them. Free networks too often get abused by spammers, scammers and other weird people.

Still have more? Invest in more content!

Source: ISEDB
www.ontheavenues.com

Improve Website Rankings: Check Your Rivals Website To Improve Your Own

Improve your page rankings by researching your rivals with this detailed guide

When it comes to getting higher rankings in Google, the competition can seem fierce. This is true--unless you're in a niche market where it may be easier to predict or manage the outcome of specific search terms

If you're in the competitive real estate, health and beauty, or general medical supplies markets, you probably wonder how a company can get and then stay on the first page of Google's search results year after year. Top listings in search engine results pages--also known as SERPs--are considered the mother-load for search terms with significant amounts of traffic. The results are free, and if done right, you could become very successful online.

Competition is both a challenge and an opportunity in business. In SEO, your competitors can be the most valued source of data. When performing competitive research, the goals are to discover:

*How entrenched a competitor is and how hard it is to unseat them;
*The competition's SEO skills; and
*Link prospects, so you can trade links, host articles and do reviews.

Let's go through the steps for analyzing where you stand compared to the competition, using "mortgage loans," a very competitive search term, as an example. We refer to this as a tier 1 keyword, since it's the top search term within this category.

1. Determine link popularity. Go to Google, type in the tier 1 keyword and pick the top three ranked sites. Then go to marketleap.com and use the link popularity checker to see how your site compares in terms of incoming links to the top three sites from Google. Look for sites with the highest Google rankings and lowest amount of incoming links. Keep in mind that MSN records the highest number of back links--incoming links from one website to another--but also pay attention to the Yahoo! results, since it's the best linking engine to use for link review. Also, Google recently updated its Google webmaster tools and has enhanced its link tracking system. Make sure to get an account and compare the results with the others in this step. Write down all the numbers.

2. Find sites to target. Next, go back to Google and enter "allinanchor: mortgage loans." This restricts the results depending on the number of links coming into a site based on that key word phrase. This will help determine which site to target links from.

3. Review link counts. Go back to Yahoo! and enter "link:www.yourbusinessdomain.com" and review the number of results with the numbers from Marketleap in the first step. Note that Yahoo! orders the list by power, or the sites with the most links coming to them. Those sites are the most important to target and are likely to have a good page rank. At this point, you'll know how much work you have ahead of you. If it seems impossible, start by looking at the fifth step about keyword research to narrow down keyword selections and start again.

4. View source and "on page" SEO factors. Once you've found the top list to target, go to each of the sites and review the source code. That's done by selecting menu choice "View: Source" in Internet Explorer browsers and "View: Pagesource" in Firefox browsers. Make sure to review the title, description, meta and H1 tags on the sites. They should be programmed as discussed in my previous column, "10 Steps for Increasing Visibility Online." Some handy SEO tools can help you validate your work, including SearchStatus, a toolbar extension for Firefox and Mozilla, and SEO for Firefox. They can help you indicate quickly whether the competition is doing things right.

5. Perform keyword research. Use the search term suggestion tool at inventory.overture.com, which is one month behind in data results, and look for keywords and their permutations with a good search volume. Any number more than 20,000 to 30,000 is a good average. Continue looking at the tier 1-type terms until you spot an opportunity to build on. Use other tools like Google keyword tools, keyworddiscovery.com. Use the keywords you select in this step by adding pages to your site, a common SEO practice.

6. Consider conversion rates. Finally, visit the competitive sites and compare them with your own. Do they have content, flow and site structure that encourage conversion? Are the sites easy to navigate? Do they emphasize call-to-action statements like "download a white paper," "sign up for this newsletter" or "buy this product now"? Look to see if they are using long tail keywords, such as "mortgage loans for police officers in Los Angeles." If they are, then you should consider doing so, too. Misspellings in text on your page also can work, but be careful not to confuse your visitors. A little trick is to include them in a PDF or Word document. Search engines, specifically Google, spider PDF and Office documents.

Competitive research is a serious SEO exercise for gaining advantage online. Having the tools, capabilities and expertise are not enough; you also need to look at traditional media--print, radio and television--to learn what the competition is up to. Fight back with more pages, more content, improved design and source code, and more incoming links with diverse descriptions. Use tools like UrlTrends to track your progress and SpyFu to look at advertising costs, giving you an indicator of your competition's activity, spending and strategy.

Don't forget to open their spam e-mail marketing messages that you receive. You may learn something by studying that material, however painful. Also review what they send you through the regular mail and discover ways to improve your own campaigns, both offline and online.

Only an alert internet marketer with a keen eye toward the competition will win in today's online business space. Remember to use patience in the most competitive marketplaces and continue using what you've learned here.

Source: Entrepreneur.com, Inc. Jon Rognerud

OnTheAvenues

OnTheAvenues Takes REALTORS Web SItes To Top Search Engine Rankings

OnTheAvenues Takes REALTORS Web Sites To Top Search Engine Rankings

PR Release: If you are a Realtor and your web site cannot be found…you are losing out on potential business! According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the number of Americans who have looked online for information about a place to live has doubled since 2000. Now, nearly two in five adult internet users in the U.S. (39%) have done this, up from 34% in 2004 and 27%

92% of Internet buyers found their agent on a web site; 63% found them through an Internet search engine; 0% of Internet buyers found their agent through brochures, flyers, yard signs or mailers to their home

Often, REALTORS choose free web site templates, or companies offering real estate templates for a few dollars a month. These sites, in most cases perform badly when trying to achieve top rankings. OnTheAvenues has developed SEO practices that have allowed their SEO real estate web sites to achieve top rankings.

OnTheAvenues client Bette Zerba, of Century 21 Metro Alliance in Phoenix states “As a REALTOR, I understood that a web site was imperative and tried templates site to no avail. I signed on with OnTheAvenues and my web sites now net me 95% of my business"

OnTheAvenues works with REALTORS in the US to help them gain better top rankings and thus improve their business. "Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a specific kind of technique that makes adjustments to original web sites, or designs new web sites that are search engine friendly and can achieve top ranking based on a number of parameters used in SEO. " says Bonnie Burns, SEO Professional of OnTheAvenues, a Phoenix AZ based firm that aims to help REALTORS get top rankings.

It's no longer just a property's physical location that matters but also the placement of a REALTORS web site on the major search engines. With proper SEO techniques, such as those provided by OnTheAvenues, help for the REALTORS web site to achieve the much needed ‘search engine real estate placement’ is now available.

About OnTheAvenues: OnTheAvenues provides SEO and search engine marketing web services, as well as SEO consulting for REALTORS. Based in Peoria, Arizona, OnTheAvenues combines SEO techniques and technology with extraordinary customer service. For more information, please call 623-242-8437 or visit www.ontheavenues.com/real-estate-websites-seo.html

Google Your Dream Home

Google Your Dream Home

More than 500,000 property listings that currently reside on the Century 21, Coldwell Banker, and ERA brand Web sites will appear on Google and Trulia.com search engines making it easier for buyers to access, under a marketing agreement announced today by Parsippany-based Realogy (NYSE:H). Shares traded at $29.56, $0.05, this afternoon.

Realogy, a franchising network that serves estate brokerages and relocation and title services, said the more accessible online listings will help 320,000 real estate sales professionals who belong to its network. This serves as a milestone in our strategy to maximize the advantages of the Web for the benefit of our franchisees, our operating company and our customers," says Richard A. Smith, president of Realogy.

Bonnie Burns Real Estate Web Site SEO Expert

Why Bother with SEO?

Why Bother with SEO?

So you want people to find your website? First page placement can be as simple as investing a few dollars into paid search advertising. Within minutes your advertisement can be listed at the top of the pack among other PPC listings. When it is this easy to push your site to the top why would anyone bother with traditional SEO?

Paid advertising may be a quick and easy way to get your site to the top, but for many industries it can also be incredibly expensive over the long term. After factoring in the click costs, it is still possible to make a decent profit however if the visitors were to find you in the organic listings, the profit would be much higher.

The search engine optimization industry as a whole is still very young. New firms are springing up all over the place, and many design houses seem to think they have the skills and knowledge it takes to provide these services. While some are good at what they do, they are no substitute for the real thing. It is important to work with an SEO company that is established and well recognized in their industry.

At the front end, having a professional optimize your site may seem like an expensive undertaking, but when compared to the ongoing expense of PPC, SEO is much more affordable in the long run. Typically SEO campaigns start off with a one time fee, and may lead to monthly maintenance to keep your site ranking - in most cases this is much less expensive than the paid alternative.

A properly optimized site achieving top rankings on their own will almost always outperform in terms of conversions when compared to those competing sites placed with AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture), or other PPC services. Typically 80% of searchers will click on the organic listings as apposed to the paid!

While PPC can bring you increased profile and (hopefully) additional profits, one of the biggest downfalls is that when you stop paying, the rankings and traffic are gone. If you take on a professional SEO for a one time website optimization and in the event that your rankings slip for your target phrase, you may retain a number of secondary keyword rankings, and your traffic will not entirely disappear. Remember that in most cases, the initial rankings can be maintained through the use of a monthly maintenance program.

While hands-on SEO is often the best solution to achieve top rankings for the do-it-yourself webmaster, chances are tapping into the brains of a professional SEO through a consulting service can give them the edge they need to compete while reducing costs considerably.

There is no substitute to a properly optimized website when it comes to performance and overall conversions. Sites ranking in the natural listings tend to convert at a higher rate and draw higher numbers of targeted traffic. As the Internet continues to increase in popularity, it will only become more and more difficult to be found, which places more weight on optimization. For anyone thinking of placing their business online, they should strongly consider hiring the services of a professional SEO to get things off to a positive start. OnTheAvenues is an SEO Company offering expert seo services as well as DIY SEO services support line.

Source: WebProNews - Scott Van Achte

www.ontheavenues.com

Internet Users In Search of a Home

Internet Users In Search of a Home

If you are a Realtor and your web site cannot be found…you are losing out on potential business!!! According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the number of Americans who have looked online for information about a place to live has doubled since 2000. Now, nearly two in five adult internet users in the U.S. (39%) have done this, up from 34% in 2004 and 27%

The number of Americans who have looked online for information about a place to live has doubled since 2000

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project

The number of internet users who go online to look for information about a place to live has grown steadily over the past six years. Now, nearly two in five adult internet users in the U.S. (39%) have done this, up from 34% in 2004 and 27% in 2000.

This means that overall, more than a quarter of all adults in the U.S. (27%) have looked online for information about housing, double the overall number of Americans who had done so in 2000 (13%).

Also, more than half (51%) of the youngest adult internet users, 18 to 29 years old, have searched online for housing information. This compares with 43% of internet users 30-to-49 years old; 27% of internet users ages 50 to 64; and 15% of internet users ages 65 and older.
Perhaps reflecting their transient stage of life as well as their remarkably intensive use of the internet, 9% of online Americans ages 18 to 29 reported in August that they looked for housing information on a typical day, more than double the percentage (4%) in this age group who said the same thing two years earlier.

Two other characteristics of internet users are associated with the likelihood of looking online for information about places to live: the number of years they have been internet users and the type of internet connection they have at home. Those who have been online six years or more are significantly more likely than shorter-time users to have done this: 45% of these veteran users have looked online for housing information; compared with 30% of those who have been online 4-5 years; 24% of those online for 2-3 years; and 22% of those online one year or less. In addition, 45% of those with broadband connections at home have looked online for housing information, compared with 30% of those with home dial-up connections.

Among the factors related to the likelihood of looking online for a place to live, youth is a stronger predictor than connection speed or years of online experience.

Source: Deborah FallowsPew Internet & American Life Project
Bonnie Burns http://www.ontheavenues.com/real-estate-websites-seo.html