Four Ways to Succeed at SEO

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By Glenn Houck

RISMEDIA, Nov. 17, 2007-Everyone says that you should optimize your Web site for SEO (search engine optimization). You can’t argue with getting free visits to your Web site; but in the real estate vertical, it is tough to do because so many sites are competing for the same keywords. So the question is, how can you compete in SEO and get some free leads?

To succeed at SEO, you need to do several things right:

1.Target the right keywords. Focus on search terms that are specific to your business, such as city/neighborhood names in your service area, and your specialties such as “luxury homes” or “golf homes.”

2. Unique, relevant content. Your Web site must have good content that is unique (not copied from other sites) and relevant to your business. At a minimum, you should have 20-30 pages on your Web site that give information on real estate, your service area and your business. Be sure these Web pages contain your target keywords in the body text, and also put the most important keywords in the HTML title tag.

3. Good Web site structure. Each page on your Web site must contain text in HTML, and be reached by following HTML links (usually those blue underlined text links). If your Web site uses technologies such as Flash, JavaScript or redirects for navigation or content, the search engines may not be able to find your pages or read your content.

4. Link popularity. Search engines count each link to your Web site as a vote of popularity. The more “inbound” links you have, the higher your site will rank. Good content and services will attract inbound links, so focus first on building a good Web site.

By doing a few things right, you can compete in SEO. After all, there’s nothing like getting leads for free!

Glenn Houck is co-founder of LeadQual, LLC, and was previously a senior vice president at HomeGain.

For more information please visit www.leadqual.com.

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