SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING

Most search engines are designed to place a higher priority on newer material while dropping older material to the bottom of the list. When you first register your Web page with search engines, you are NOT well placed in their priority scheme. You need to continuously update your site in order to remain high on the priority list of these search engines. There is no point of having a website if your site can't be found. To that end we have incorporated the search engine meta tags in the admin console so you can modify them to gain position on your competitors. Don't know how to do this? We offer our optional marketing packages.

RE-Data submits all new sites to the search engines. You can modify title tags to move your site up ahead of your competitors. You have nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain if you use your new website as a tool it was programmed to be. If you leave any tool in the box then nothing happens. If you use it then everything happens. Our sites are programmed to be used as tools. They are NOT simple brochure sites with static text and a few pictures. We have a contact management system built into all our sites that collects client data that you can import into any contact manager such as Outlook or ACT or even many of the proprietary Real Estate client managers.

Search engine submission included.

The following Search Engine Tips for Real estate websites are for the technically inclined:

There are basically 2 steps to search engine marketing, but they are done repetitively.

• Analyze
• Submit
• Analyze
• Submit

The Time Element

There will be no instant results. Getting a good search engine ranking takes time. That's one of the best ways to identify charlatans from real experts. Anybody who promises you instant search engine gratification is in the voodoo business.

Search engines do not publish their precise methods of working, but most anecdotal evidence points to the importance of time.

You need to allow six months to a year for a decent search engine strategy to work. It will then continue to work for a long time, with minimal effort. But in the first few months it might not be a star performer. If your site doesn't provide what visitors want to see then it might never perform at all, but once again, that's a different story.

You may also experience long delays between submission and actual listing. Look at the details provided by the search engine when you make your submission — often they'll tell you how long the delay will be. Allow a few weeks extra, to be on the safe side, before checking.

All your submissions should be done manually, and it's a good idea to keep a record of them so you don't bug specific engines too often. If you do, you will be penalized. Automatic submission systems ("With one keystroke register your site with 1,500 search engines!") are for suckers. The search engines quickly identify them and ignore them, or, worse still, punish the sites that use them. Please see Googles webmaster guidelines to debunk all those myths you have heard.

Spiders are Machines

Spiders (or robots) are software programs the search engine companies create to trawl the Web and index sites. They create massive databases that the engines then use to return search results.

They follow rules of logic, impeccably, and have no flexibility. They have no idea what your site really looks like, nor do they have a sense of humor. It's highly unlikely that a real human will look at your site as part of the indexing process. The exception is when you apply for a paid listing with a directory such as Yahoo!.

When designing your site, it's important to remember that it will be read by machines. This means, for example, if you turn all your major page headings into graphics of flash, the spiders won't be able to recognize where your main headings are and identify the core text areas that follow, even though this would pose no problem for a human viewer.

On the other hand, if you go all out for machine-readability, you may well get the thumbs-down from a Yahoo or DMOZ reviewer, who has no interest in how your pages appear to a machine. It's all a question of balance.

Here is some info on how that works. There are other mathematical algorithms in place that we must consider as well as popularity in gaining positioning. Remember that the web is 1's and 0's a binary state. It really does not recognize words as we know them.

Link Popularity Made Simple

There are many low cost ways to market your site on the Web. All require tiresome manual research and constant attention. However, I can assure you that they will eventually pay off if you do it right. The search engines are a wonderful resource. One of the newer, more advanced, very accurate and rapidly growing is Google. Google's proprietary PageRank © system is used to determine how relevant your site is. Here is what makes Google tick.

First, to view your sites Page ranking, simply download the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer, and visit your sites home page. Ironically, while we researched Google we stumbled upon the formula by conducting a search in Google.

The original* PageRank formula: PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

For math wizards:

PR(x) is the PageRank of x, C(x) is the number of outbound links on a page x, d is a damping factor set between 0 and 1 and is controlled by Google.

In plain english:)

Your sites PageRank is almost completely dependent upon links to your site, backward or reverse links, reduced, to some degree, by the total number of links to other sites on that page. A link to your site will have the highest amount of impact on your PageRank if:

1) The page linking to yours has a high PageRank.
2) The total number of links on that page is low, ideally, just the one link to your site. A site with a high PageRank and a large number of outbound links can nullify the impact on your PageRank.

To increase your PageRank, simply get as many links to your site from pages with a high PageRank and a low number of total links. Theoretically you can obtain a PageRank of 100% . You can also increase your PageRank by attaining many links to your site, no matter what their PageRank, as long as they are ranked. This is a good overall strategy since it will help you across the board.

Another contributing factor to your sites Google ranking is the IR score. This score relates the relevance of the search query to the actual text in the linking page and your site. One of IR factors is the anchor text, or the text in the link to your page. According to a Google's creator, "Anchors often provide more accurate descriptions of web pages." Thus, for sites that allow you to add URL's be sure to put a link title with descriptive keywords. Google also uses your page title, font sizes, formatting, keyword positions, and proximity. Remember this though: Computers determine the search results, but it's humans that will, or won't, click on the links, so be sure titles with keywords make sense.

In Summary:

Whether it is Google, other search engines or pay-per-clicks, the meticulous selection of key-phrases, and descriptions utilizing these key-phrases, are crucial to successful Web marketing campaigns. The final piece, probably the most important to determine ROI, is a tracking system to inform marketing personnel if the clicks being generated with any campaign result in sales. There are many campaign variables that even though you produced a 5% click-through rate, might still not result in sales.

This explains link popularity (specifically Google's use of link popularity) as it pertains to search engine rankings. The explanation requires some mathematics, but you don't need a strong mathematical background to understand it -- high school algebra will get you through. You won't find specific methods for improving your search engine rankings, but reading this may help you select the more productive options offered to you for improving rankings.

Ever since Yahoo! replaced Inktomi as their search engine with Google, with their link-oriented ranking algorithm, the Web has been abuzz with the importance of "link popularity". It is now "crucial" that we attend to our links. We read, over and over, sentences like, "To push your site towards the top of search results, it's important to have many web sites point or link to your site." Further, we're told that some links are better than others, that (for instance) links from .gov or .edu sites matter more than those from cousin Sally, that free-for-all link sites don't matter at all (or that they help immensely)... and on and on.