1. Page Rank Link: - Also referred to as PR links these links are often used as parameters to check the efficiency of links. They are generally used to increase the PR ranking of web pages. However, there are few professionals who believe it to be an outdated concept to increase the rankings and traffic to a site. All said and done, links from ever popular PR sites continue to help generate good traffic to websites that rely on them. This is largely due to the fact that these sites generally contain top quality content and some domain age. If you are running a new online business then these PR links can be a good choice to get higher search engine rankings and classified traffic. Using thematically relevant sites these links can be formed. As such these links are either bought or swapped with other links. Though these tactics doesn’t sound great legally, they can be pretty useful to your website in one way or other.

2. Trust Rank Link: - These links are made use of under the assumption that a trusted site will pass trust scores to the sites that are linked with it. These links are hardly recognized by Google to define sites in their database. In any case, these trust scores tend to vary from one site to another. Among different factors that can affect a website’s trust rank are website content, domain ages, and page optimization and so on. Backlinks from those sites that are already well established also fall into this category. Links from these sites are highly appreciated by search engines like Google and helps your website rank higher in them. Once the website gets the recognition of being an authoritative site in its sphere of expertise, it gets instant recognition in Google’s search engine. Their authoritativeness is gauged based on the features and quality content displayed in them. Hence a link coming from such a site is always welcome.

One of best ways to get quality links is to make use of authority blog sites. You can make use of these blog sites either to post new blogs or to pass comments on existing blogs. However, be extra careful not to post any irrelevant or vulgar blogs or comments here as these sites get very high traffic. Posting wrong things can easily harm your cause and will do no good to your site’s reputation.

3. Keyword focused link: - Blogs are generally a good reservoir for information of all kinds. Referring contextual links are those that are placed within the body of a blog or an article. People who read these blogs or articles would be undoubtedly interested in either gathering extra information or reading useful content present in them. As such there is every possibility of them clicking on those links that would redirect them to your website. This in turn would be good to your site in getting higher rankings in search engines. It is lot easier to get text links from articles and blogs and than other types of links. One way of achieving it would be to write useful content and get them published in blog submission sites or article directories with links placed in them. No matter what type of website you have, you need backlinks to support it. Different types of links support it differently.

Last but not the least; you need to understand that collecting vital information rather than buying services would be of interest to people who would love to know more about link building techniques. In this context, text links can be pretty useful.

For readers interested in starting a real estate website, you could start with general niche research. Use real estate keyword research tools to make your task simpler. In case you are real estate website owner and are looking for ways to optimize your website, start by self-analysis. Internal analytics provide you with leads to push your website up the high traffic list. You could also analyze search referrals of a website, which attracts a hefty traffic. It can be quite a handful to derive results from the long tail but with the help of Google or other advanced analytics, you could majorly simplify the task at hand. Always top referrals should be your top priority. You should be patient here as if there is a likelihood of missing valuable keywords, which widely attracted traffic. The importance of keeping your real estate keyword research results well organized could not be over stressed upon. Tabulate them under different headers as per your preference and this will add momentum to your real estate SEO. I would recommend Excel as the tool for tabulation and organization. Once you are done with strategic placement of keywords, your job is not yet complete. You have to undertake a retrospective study of the keywords and make your present day keyword ranking list. By doing so you will be able to pick out words which are in the subsequent pages. If you detect frequently searched words in those pages, you must shift them to your introductory page and even better in the first 250 words. This will surely up your rank in the search list and optimize the existent website to generate more traffic. After all, the soul searching, you could optimize your site by analyzing your competitor’s research.

With all the real estate keyword research details in place even, it will be difficult in the current days of dry spell to attract buyers and sellers. Target the information your website contains towards educating the potential buyers about the incentives, which are out there. The media definitely hypes every leaking tap into a potential flood and makes your job difficult. With the economy on the run, everyone is happy and business will flourish without you having to put forth much effort. However, with the recession, we really need solid real estate internet marketing to make people buy what they would have, had it not been for the negative aura surrounding the industry. For starters, project yourself not as the best real estate agent around but as a humble one out there for their service. The client should get the impression that he is of prime importance in the interaction and not the money minded estate agent. Your getting business is not your concern, but your client getting the best deal is the end-all and be-all of your job. This key point is overlooked by many agents in their ads and is a big no in real estate internet marketing. Hence, it is wise to not overplay your accomplishments. Create special reports addressing issues of concern during these tough times and focus on how to solve these problems. You also need to address the varied worries and concerns of your potential customers. Have an interactive session, have a newsletter they can sign up to or run a service through which they can mail you their grievances. Active interest in the individual client will help you broaden your horizons as your publicity can be achieved by word of mouth also. In order to further push up your business you could opt for a real estate marketing consultant and seek his/her expert advice on real estate SEO and marketing.

Here are two of the biggest social media markets where you can get the most out of your “social” marketing efforts.

YouTube

YouTube offers one of the easiest ways to add video content to the web. With a small video camera and a little editing you can upload short videos of your new listings with a full walk-through and a voiceover discussing the livability of the home. You can even hire a professional video company to produce your short videos that can look just like it came straight out of the Travel Channel.

Posting to YouTube is easy and setting up an account is free. Remember, web users have little patience so keep your videos short and attractive. YouTube also allows you to copy a code to imbed your YouTube video into other web postings such as blogs or comments on other sites.

Facebook

Facebook has become the new MySpace with even more and better features for the average user who isn’t “twenty-something”. Facebook users grow by the thousands everyday and consist of regular people who just want to keep in touch with friends, family, and other important events and groups. That “other” category is where you can shine. Open a free Facebook account and create a profile. Then you can start gaining “friends” which can be anyone who is interested in what you have to offer. You can invite your clients to join your Facebook network. Then post videos and photos of your listings on your Facebook profile. You can even update your profile “status” to let your contacts know about a new and exciting listing.

There are many social media sites available to use as a marketing tool for your real estate website. Explore some of the others and find ways you can utilize them for creative social marketing efforts

In order to help us protect our reputation, today we can find many Reputation Management companies. How do these reputation management companies operate? Most of the companies offer pretty basic services; they try to find your online reputation status using your name and your website domain name. If there are negative reviews that are associated with your name or with your website, the reputation management companies try to minimize the effects of the negative reviews and feedbacks by using positive feedbacks across the internet and thus trying to project you as a reliable service provider. However, this is not good enough. Before hiring your reputation management company, you must make sure to understand their services. You should find out whether they will actively engage in getting your negative reviews removed from the review sites.

Interestingly, it is our normal tendency to take on to negative feedback more than the positive ones. It can be your competitor who can be posting such reviews or one of your customers who feels that he has not received a satisfactory service from you can be posting such damaging reviews. Most of the reviews are of revengeful in nature. Unfortunately, such customers will not stop with posting their negative reviews in a single website. They will try to create maximum damage by posting in multiple websites. When people search for your services or your name, they might find all these negative reviews lined up one after another in the search results. People often will not take the trouble to find out who has posted the feedback so they will think that all of them are from different people and they disqualify you straightaway.

You need to be highly cautious about your online reputation so that you achieve your business objectives without too much of a struggle. Therefore, hiring a reputation management company would certainly be a useful investment considering the amount of money that it will bring to your company in the form of new business.

If you want to keep track of your online reputation, you can also make use of Google alerts. You can set alerts for your name and for your domain name. Whenever Google picks up something relating to your name or domain name, you will receive an alert and this will help you in acting quickly. The longer you delay to act the greater the damage. So making use of such online tools and reputation management companies will help you manage your online reputation and combat effectively the revengeful reviews

For instance, if you are a St. Louis real estate broker specializing in condos you can determine keywords such as, “St. Louis Condos”, or “St. Louis Condos for sale”. The ad sponsor, such as Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing, then uses sophisticated algorithm technology that analyzes a search page result, blog post, or other similar websites that may have Adwords set up. If the criterion matches your specifications, your ad will appear to a very niche and targeted audience.

The wonderful thing about PPC is that you pay only when someone clicks on your ad. With this in mind, there are two main methods of setting up a price you pay for each click: flat-rate PPC and bid-based PPC.

Flat Rate PPC

With flat rate PPC the ad publisher lets you know upfront what your cost will be for every click depending on where the ad appears. Some keywords are more popular than others, thus publishers rates will vary greatly depending upon keywords selected.

Bid Based PPC

In a bid based PPC ad you make a bid on the amount you are willing to pay for each successful click on your ad. You compete with other advertisers who want to use the same keywords or phrases; therefore, you have a choice to outbid other advertisers to have your ad placed in prime locations. Bid based PPC can become expensive, however, if you are willing to pay higher per-click rates the results and conversions are often better through the bid based system.

PPC marketing offers a robust ROI due to its targeted customer marketing strategy. The results can be excellent and worth the advertising dollar to obtain a visitor to your real estate website.

It would be great if individuals in the world would be considerate and posting your link to their website without even asking you. Does this seem like a dream to you? If you take the time to submit a press release, then your dream may just come true. Yes, submitting a press release could very well cause individuals to post your link to their website without even asking you.

When you use a press release, you will be looking to build you links, but what many do not realize is this can actually make their search engine rankings go up. You will be able to put links in your press release that go to your site and this is one of the major factors that individuals over look. When we used the press release method in order to promote our site, we actually got high rankings in Google and got more traffic to our site than we have ever gotten before.

When making a press release, you can put links that go to your home page and you will also be able to do the process of deep linking and link to your other pages, not just your homepage. While deep linking may be hard to do, it is well worth it

Should you upgrade to a custom real estate IDX ? Yes!!!

Since we upgraded to a custom REW IDX our leads have increased significantly. The search engine friendly pages are spiderable and have increased long tail traffic to our website.

Previously the only company who provided custom IDX solutions was REW, however there are some new players emerging.

There are only a few custom IDX providers, below are the only three that I’m aware of.

1. REW Custom IDX ( we use this product and recommend it )

2. Real Geeks Custom IDX ( never used this product, but seems strong and will launch in a few months )

3. AMPS211 ( never used this product, but Mike is a great guy and is very honest and ethical . I’m sure once it’s 100% complete it will rock )

We have new sites in the process of going some major redesigns and we’ll most likely incorporate one of the new IDX vendors to test them out Nothing like playing with a new toy.

I’ll update and compare the major differences between the products soon. If you know of any other custom IDXs please comment below and I’ll update the list.

Real estate social media sites are communities where Realtors meet-up and share real estate related information.

So how can Realtors use these platforms and benefit from them?

• social sites generate traffic to your site
• extra visibility and branding
• one-way links

I know if your reading this blog you mainly want to know about the one-way links :). Below are a few real estate social media sites what are great for building 1st relationships with other Realtors and 2nd building some nice one-way links back to your website.

1. ActiveRain

2. WannaNetwork

3. RealTown

4. Zillow

5. Property Hogs

6. FlippingPad

7. Townizen

People previously used to express their feeling, thoughts, daily ramblings via a blog, but not so anymore. Blogs are now widely used for everything from niche sites, news, journals to a standard online corporate media.  Having a blog together with your regular Real Estate Business website gives you a lot of benefits. We will be looking at some of them below:

1.    Blogs allow you to build relationship with your customer: A regular website is no different than your daily newspaper - Its static, you give out information to your customer and you hope that they will ‘take’ action. But on the other hand blogs are by default very ‘interactive’ in nature and allows you to have a ‘two-way conversation’. Thus, when you put up something in your company blog, your customer can come and read it and also respond to your message via a comment. So basically blogs gives you a platform to have a direct conversation with your customers and the customer gets a feel of a real ‘human-being’ behind your shiny corporate logo.

2.    Blogs helps you to build your reputation: Customers always prefer to do business with companies they feel they know. Your Real Estate business may have a shiny new website, but does it send the right message about your company to your customers? Does your real estate site makes your visitors think that you are out of their leash? You may be helping hundreds of people to find their dream home, but does your new customers know that by seeing your website? Even though you may have a couple of testimonials up, sometimes its just not enough to convince a new customer. Because unless you are a big brand, you simply have no reputation when it comes to your new prospective clients. Your blog can help you to build that reputation. For example, you can probably blog about some of the issues & problems that every new home owner faces during their buying cycle (you may also refer to some of your ‘real’ past clients) and then you can give away your expert tips to solve some of the issues. So by blogging about things that new customers can benefit  from - you are not only just helping them for free but at the same time you are discreetly building a reputation for yourself and your business.

3.    Blogs gives you free Publicity: Blogs are a great way to gain free publicity for your business. When you write a blog post that has useful information, you will notice that, often people will send it to their friends via different social networking & bookmarking sites.  Thus your reach automatically broadens and your content goes viral to a more diversified group of people without any serious effort from your part. So your business automatically gets some free publicity and you can also expect a decent number of traffic from there.

4.    Blogs has obvious Search Engine Ranking Advantage: Search engines love Fresh content because they want to provide users a better search experience. Blogs are usually more frequently updated compared to a traditional website. So a search engine like Google & Yahoo gives a lot of importance to content that are hosted in a blog. A small business website won’t consist of more than 30 pages or so, however when you add a blog in your website - it practically opens up a huge opportunity. You can quickly add in new information, news, articles, reviews, promotions etc and constantly keep on adding more and more content to your site via the blog. Thus your site is always up-to-date as far as the search engines are concerned and because of the frequent addition of new content your whole site will be crawled by the engines more frequently, and your blog will naturally generate links from other blogs & sites that will help you in your organic search engine ranking.

5.    Blogs help you to drive traffic to your Business Website: Ultimately every business owner wants to have more visitors to their website. But ask yourself - Do you ever randomly go to a business site and ‘read’ their marketing massage? I bet you don’t! So how can you expect to get visitors when your website has nothing that a normal visitor might be interested in? Unless a person is really interested to buy/sell a house for instance, he won’t be interested in what your business does and so on. However, if your traditional website has a blog attached to it with lots of interesting posts that are somehow related to your industry, it will naturally attract a lot of traffic via the search engines, social media etc. If you are lucky, some of them might even go to your main business website to see what your business does. So blogs are a great way to get indirect traffic & leads to your business site.

So does your real estate business have a blog? What do you blog about? Share in comments!

Many Real Estate webmasters are new to the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). So they often visit different webmaster forums & groups to gain knowledge on SEO. But sadly not all forums/groups provide the accurate information about Search Engine Optimization. There have been cases where Real Estate Webmasters were misled by the members of these forums & groups.

There are lots of myths regarding SEO that are completely bizarre and false. So today we will be listing the Top 5 Organic SEO Myths that you may hear from people in the public forums & groups.

Myth 1: Guaranteed Top 10 Results

I’m sure you have heard this first myth many times from wanna-be “SEOs”. Some SEO firms will also advertise a “guarantee” to have you listed in the top ten rankings. But the hard truth is, No one can guarantee you any ranking. So don’t believe what they say. If you really want to judge their performance, you can look at some of their own results or results for other clients and then you will get a pretty clear idea how effective their strategies are. Always make your decision from actual client successes and not just from empty promises and guarantees.

Myth 2: Anyone can become a SEO. It’s just playing with Title Tag & Keywords anyway.

This is another misconception that many people have in the back of their head. Well it’s true that anyone can become anything provided that he/she goes through the appropriate training. Some professions require you to obtain more skills and have top notch academic background (e.g. Doctor, engineer) whereas for some professions you just need to be gifted with certain skills (E.g. Music, Art).

SEO is not all about playing with title tag & keywords, it sort of evolved there but has traveled in more depth. So now “Search Marketing” has become a huge part of any organization’s marketing effort and organic SEO deals more than just search ranking. If you are really serious about making a big stance online, you should hire a professional rather than saving cost by trying to do it yourself. If you at least get the initial steps right, you can slowly start learning and eventually develop your own team in-house.

Myth 3: Search engine traffic is useless and not as good as other kinds of targeted traffic

You will often hear ignorant business owners saying “Does people really use search engines? I don’t think people will search for my product & service in the search engine. I’d rather spend more money in display advertising, where I can show everyone the nice flashy advertisement”.

Display advertising is often called “Push marketing”, because you are pushing your marketing message to the general population without much targeting. Thus, a person can choose to ‘see’ your advert or can ignore it completely. You actually have to live on the visitor’s mercy. However, for search traffic the whole this is “Pull Marketing”. The searcher is looking for a specific thing, and when they see your site ranking for that term in the top of Google, they come to you. And they also know that it’s not an advertisement, thus your credibility also increases substantially. Search engine traffic is probably the most qualified traffic, because it comes from people searching for the exact products and services which the search engines have you indexed.

Myth 4: Adding the same keyword numerous times will help me with my search ranking

This is just not true! The keyword density factor doesn’t really make a major difference in your ranking these days. Your keyword should be placed on the right places to have the most positive effect, however if you over-do it and start writing pages for the search engines and not your visitors then you might even get penalized.

Myth 5: I rank No #1 for xyz, and its going to stay there forever!

Search engines keep changing their algorithm very frequently in-order to give their users more relevant search results and a better user experience. Even if you rank for a certain term today, you can’t be sure that you will be ranking for it tomorrow! So you will have to continue to work on your website so that you can sort of build a good trust with your users and the search engines. When you get a desired ranking for a term, check the other 9 sites that are with you in the SERP, and figure out how you can improve your site and help your user so that you can continue to be the ‘best’ among the rest of the sites. Keeping your content fresh & updated at all time is a must, don’t just put up some content and walk away from your site. You have to make sure that new content are added to your site on a regular basis and most accurate information is passed on to your visitors.

Can you think of any other SEO myths? Share them in comments!