SEO

3 Tips to Effectively Market Your Real Estate Website

October 7, 2012 by Basil Puglisi 1 Comment

The key to marketing a real estate website is in knowing what your prospects are searching for, what sites they frequent, and how they use the web to communicate and gather information. Consider the following 3 tips to effectively market your real estate website:

Proper Domain Selection

The first step is choosing a domain name that will either capitalize on your brand name or target web searchers based on keywords. If you already have an established brand that is locally recognized you’ll want to make it easier for existing clients and prospects to find your site by registering a domain name that contains the name of your agency.
On the other hand, if you’re able to get your hands on a rare, yet highly valuable geo-targeted domain name (i.e. – FloridaRealEstate.com) then this option should be considered over all. Some firms choose to register multiple domains in order to maximise search traffic.

Competitive Analysis and Keyword Optimization

A great way to figure out what keywords you should be targeting in your site content and marketing efforts is to utilize keyword research tools and services like:

Google Adwords Keyword Suggestion Tool
Keyword Discovery
Wordtracker
Spyfu
Compete.com Analytics

All of the above resources will help you determine which keywords your competitors are using to generate the most traffic. Once you’ve built a list of keywords you can focus on outdoing the competition by publishing more content and contributing genuinely useful information. In addition to filling your real estate website with quality content, you should also start focusing on becoming a thought leader in your industry by spreading your outreach around the web through…

Blogging and Networking

Investors, property buyers, and other agents use the web to build their contacts and educate themselves on a regular basis. Research the leading real estate blogs and attempt to establish your own authoritative presence by becoming a reputable guest author.
As a real estate professional you’ve probably heard the phrase “It’s not what you know, it’s WHO you know that matters.” With the ability to quickly contact ideal buyers and accommodate the needs of a large network of sellers you can maximise your yearly commissions by increasing the volume of transactions you facilitate.
Start by joining Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Learn the ins and outs of social networking, and consider the advantages of outsourcing the management of your campaigns to professionals that can optimize your output.
Joseph Tollett is a real estate professional and experienced blogger who currently conducts research for IronMonk Solutions, a well-known SEO firm with headquarters in New York. Click here to read their blog.
Image Source

How Exact Match Domains Have Weathered the Penguin Storm

September 25, 2012 by Basil Puglisi 3 Comments

Exact match domains have always had the added advantage of direct-type in traffic, giving them certain immunity to algorithm updates. Once an EMD is linked to a website, the webmaster’s behavior has more to do with rankings. Penguin sought out sites with too many exact match anchor text links, but the outcome had more to do with who can get away with it and to what extent. For EMDs, exact anchor text makes up part of the natural link profile.
Brand based anchor text is natural, i.e. www.brandname.com, brandname.com and brand name. When your brand is your exact match domain name, your website is not going to set off those same red flags for your exact match keywords. But, what you’ve done with your link profile beyond that is what does come in to play with Penguin. Is the rest of your link profile diversified with partial anchor text, long tail, and a nice mix of click here, visit this site and straight http: links? That’s most likely what sets apart the ones who were impacted by Penguin and those that were not.

Tier 2 pages

What have the exact match sites done with their tier 2 pages? Chances are, most have targeted different keywords for those pages and not focused on as many brand anchor text links. Natural links to tier 2 pages often contain the title tag. Take a look at your back link profile and look how others linked to those pages. That’s a good indicator of what natural linking to those pages looks like.

Meta Data

Another issue any site could run in to is over-optimized title tags. So, if you repeated your keywords in your title tag in a spammy way, i.e. red shoes, cheap red shoes, not only does that page come across as spammy because of the title tag existing on it, but if a user linked to your site with the title tag, that appears spammy, too.
Keep in mind, if you keep on playing with your title tags, you set off a spam alert. If your title tag is webmaster tools compliant, don’t tweak it. Spammers will often watch if their title tag adjustments results in higher or lower rankings and if they drop, they will go back and revert the changes. This is when you get in to trouble. Your server records the file date every time you make a change and Google uses that data to make an evaluation.
Many exact match domains do continue to rank well in Google post Penguin, but no site is immune to future updates. Moving forward, don’t assume that because your website was not affected that it won’t be. We’ll always be left guessing what the next problematic issue will be.

Source:

Image

Theresa Happe works with Buy Domains, a leading source of domains for sale, including available and exact match domains.

How to Avoid the Google Sandbox in a New Blog

July 23, 2012 by Basil Puglisi 1 Comment

If you run a web site, which you want to be visible on the search engines, you should know about the Google sandbox and how to avoid it. The search engine giant, Google, implements measures to keep violators at bay.
What happens if you committed errors using Google’s applications and services? Well, if you incurred violations, Google may remove your web site from its search engine result pages. This is called deindexing. To find out if your web site is not indexed, visit Google and key in your web site domain in this pattern:site:yoururl.com
What Is Google Sandbox?

If you can see your web site moving from the first pages to the 10^thpage or more of the SERPs, then, you are not yet deindexed. But

this is a possible sandbox effect. The sandbox is a place where web sites, especially the new ones, are placed until they have proven their worth in ranking. Sometimes, your web site is thrown into a sandbox if for an instance, your web site ranks for a certain keyword today, and gone from the ranking tomorrow.
What Causes Google Sandbox?

The sandbox happens if you have done something that agitates Google in matters such as SEO and backlinking. Common instances where inviting a sandbox is imminent are when you create myriads of backlinks to your web site in a very short time or create backlinks within poor quality content.
In a way, sandboxing a web site is a punishment done by Google by putting your web site down below the ranking where there is no traffic. But being in a sandbox is not permanent. It can last from a few days to a few months.
How to Avoid Google Sandbox?

Having diverse backlinks is important. If you use hundreds of backlinks by employing ScrapeBox or XRunner, then being sandboxed is very likely. New web sites are more vulnerable to being thrown in a sandbox than older web sites especially iftheir SEOis not well diversified.
For example, if you are running a new web site on diet, and have created two thousand backlinks in its first week of launching into the media buzz, you must ensure that those backlinks are from various sources like comments, articles, blog posts, forums, news releases, to mention a few. For Google, those backlinks could have been generated naturally.
How Should You Plan Your Backlinks?

One sure way to avert Google sandbox is to diversify your backlinks by creating them gradually over time. Rather than rushing in to create many backlinks in a short time, concentrate on creating several backlinks from different sources. While Bing and Yahoo give more value to quantity, Google is giving more weigh to quality of pagerank that each created backlink has.
So, the next time you begin with your SEO campaign for your weight loss web site, ensure that your backlinks are well diversified to avoid the penalty of being sandboxed.
Author:
Richie Richardson is passionate about SEO and SM. He occasionally writes on topics related to weight loss, Bistro MD diet and other diet programs like Medifast and Nutrisystem. Click here to know more about him and his blog. You can also follow him on Twitter @zarrylyms.

Understand the Basics of SEO: Why Geo and Subject Domain Names Rock!

January 5, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Search Engines are in the business of helping a user find the content they are looking for! If you keep this in mind you’ll start off with a great relationship with the Search Engines and the Visitors to your site.

Websites have three main areas you’ll want to really pay attention to:

Structure
Content
References

[slideshare id=7181167&doc=seo101-110307150053-phpapp01]

As a website owner you’ll want this to be how you operate your lead generation through the search engines. Unless you’re an adult site, gambling or daily deal, people will not generally respond to a website about Plumbing when they were searching for Pizza.

Time and Money are important, you’ll get alot further if you concentrate your resources were they should be and where they will produce the highest rate of conversion. If you’re going to chase down multiple areas and categories do it in a way that provides unique, useful and provides a genuine experience for the user.

SEO Tip: Geo & Subject Domains > Brand Domains

An example of how this has been done is through domain masking and forwarding. Take the Domain PapaJohns.com, now that’s a great domain because people looking for “papa john’s” will find exactly what they are looking for, but will they still find it if they put in “MyTown Pizza” like “Brooklyn Pizza”, “Chicago Pizza”?

Here is an example of how we use forwarding on Digital Brand Marketing Education, the publically promoted domain is dbmei.com and that makes sense because it is short and simple. It makes for easy emails and sharing in social media without having to shorten the domain. However When you land on the site, you notice the actual domain changes to digitalbrandmarketing.com

Search Engines give a lot of value to domains, after all if you’re naming the site that, then those words must be relevant. In our case we want people looking for “Digital, Brand and/or Marketing” to find our publication and those keywords fit perfectly with our content.

If you own Jerry’s Seafood.com, and your restaurant is in the town or geographic location of East Hampton, you might want to think about masking or forwarding the domain to easthamptonseafood.com or easthamptonseafoodrestaurant.com.

This is just one tip to help with your sites SEO, obviously you want the title tags, content, etc to all also fit this search term.

Sources:

Google+ Pages Open the Doors for Brands and Businesses

November 16, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

This past June, immediately after Google launched it’s highly anticipated Google+ social network, internet savvy businesses like Ford, Dell and Mashable.com rushed to create pages for their brands. Only to have them removed a few days later. Google’s announcement soon followed: “In the meantime, we ask you not to create a business profile using regular profiles on Google+. The platform at the moment is not built for the business use case, and we want to help you build long-term relationships with your customers. Doing it right is worth the wait. We will continue to disable business profiles using regular profiles. (Christian Oestlien Ads project manager on Google+)

One hundred days later Google delivered on its promise. On November 7, 2011 Google+ announced the grand opening of Google+ Pages worldwide.

Google+ Pages allows businesses, brands, and organizations create their own page and establish a circle of like-minded people who enjoy the brand and want to talk about it. Not only does the page allow having a conversation with brand representatives in a way of personalized customer service, it also allows the group of followers to have a conversation with each other.

As Google+ puts it, when it talks about the customers: “…we want to make sure you can build relationships with all the things you care about—from local businesses to global brands… this means we can now hang out live with the local bike shop, or discuss our wardrobe with a favorite clothing line, or follow a band on tour. Google+ pages give life to everything we find in the real world. And by adding them to circles, we can create lasting bonds with the pages (and people) that matter most.” (Google’s blog)

Not only brands and businesses are involved. Google+ wants to enlarge the circle of users to local business, products, corporations, institutions, organizations, arts and entertainment, sports teams and more. They have been working with businesses since the launch in June to understand the needs and requirements of brand names. You can see the pages of these businesses already active:

Dallas Cowboys
Macy’s
Pepsi
Toyota
Anderson Copper 360
X games
Zen Bikes
The Muppets

Having pages for brands and businesses is nothing new, but Google+ has a few advantages over the competition:

People can recommend the brand easily by pressing the +1 button, and start sharing immediately.
A brand can have more than one page. A car manufacturer, for example, can have a page for each of its models.
Although Facebook has over 500 million users, and Google+ has, so far, about 50 million, the biggest advantage of Google+ has to do with the billions of queries made every day on the search engine, most of them looking for businesses or services. Google will include Google+ pages in its search results.
Direct connect – The easiest way to find a band you like to follow or a product has been amended as well. Typing the sign + before the query will take the searcher straight to the brand page. (Try it with + Angry Birds)

The official announcement on Google’s blog ends with these words: “With Google+, we strive to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software. Today’s initial launch of Google+ Pages brings us a little bit closer, but we’ve still got lots of improvements planned, and miles to go before we sleep. So stay tuned.

Sources:

Google Webmaster Tools Offers Custom Search Engine Creation

October 25, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Google logo ™

Webmaster tools. The focus of the update is to provide marketers with the option to run their own trials of custom search engines.

The custom search engines created by Google’s Webmaster Tools can be used on business domains and their subdomains making search queries for any content on the business’s site easier to locate. Users can search over one or more sites, tweak the look and feel of the business’s site, and even earn money with it using Adsense for Search.

Creating your Custom Search Engine

You do not have to be a coding expert to create your own custom search engine. To create your own search engine with Google’s Webmaster Tools simply click on the Custom Search link under the Google Labs section. Webmaster tools will then create a default custom search engine that will search only your chosen site. Set up your configuration options or grab the code snippet, as is, to add to your new CSE site.

Users can then continue on to a full custom search engine dashboard to apply settings that are more advanced. Once your CSE is up and running, you can click the Custom Search link inside of Google Labs to manage the settings without leaving Google Webmaster tools.

Benefits to Your Business

For those business that use content marketing, the utilization of Google-powered search engines on their home page can be as important as any other efforts that go into expanding their sites reach. Users who frequent your site will be able to easily find topics or archives articles and information that is relevant to current topics, or even if they just want to find and share older stories with their own networks.

Content marketing is a highly useful instrument in the toolbox of internet marketers. Brafton News reports that up to 82% of businesses are currently using content marketing as part of their internet marketing campaigns.

Sources:

Traditional vs Social Media Networking with Wa.ag

September 19, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

The one thing that your business can likely never get enough of is networking. Why do we tend to let this vital aspect of business growth fall to the wayside? Traditional offline networking can be slightly awkward. Those who have never conversed are tossed together with nothing more than nametags to designate themselves from a mass, and possibly intimidating crowd. Usually participants come away with much confusion and many business cards, most of which are tossed aside.

Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn also offer fabulous possibilities for businesses that take advantage of the connections possible through them. However, even though someone has been in ‘contact’ with others in relevant networks and niches, they may still be hesitant to refer those businesses to a friend or relation looking for a similar service. After all, they really still only know their online presence, and not likely their actual business practices.

Wa.ag Opportunities

Wa.ag members need only sign up to their site. There is no need to fill in a detailed profile or waste your valuable time here immediately. Once an offline event is scheduled in your area, Wa.ag will send you an email with a link to the event. Visiting the link will display the event and its vital details. Users are also given swag, or a benefit, for using their system. The GUI will allow the user to then RSVP on that event.

Once you have accepted an event, you are given a list of the attendees, so you can be free to start the conversation before the meeting. This can help to eliminate those awkward moments of old school networking where individuals have to strike up conversations without knowing a person’s interest or industry.

The Networking Opportunity Engine

Wa.ag helps business owners connect offline with professionals in their local area. This method of business networking can provide users with the opportunity to experience new venues around town, while helping to promote businesses and further networking opportunities.

The Business Opportunity Engine

Create your own special experiences to help attract new and loyal consumers. Hosting your own networking opportunity events through your business will allow owners to take advantage of slow periods without out-of-pocket costs.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/29151962]

Sources:

SMX East: Search Engine Expo, First Impressions

September 14, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

DBMEi was granted Press Access to the SMX East taking place in NYC this week. While we will follow up with a summary of the event, we wanted to share some first impressions.

If you have not been here yet, make time! With one day left on September 15, 2011 at the Jacob Javits Center we hope this post find you in time to get into the event and see some great vendors and try to access an event.

The event is very well organized and the speakers are prepared to share data and facts! This has been one of the biggest critiquesfacing many conferences, most have speakers that participate seem to be self or company promoting with little if any actionable information to share. One of the other concerns, often expressed by people like us here at DBMEi, “where is your data, your sources” because sometimes we wonder if they are just pulling this stuff from the sky…. “where is the credibility”. The SMX East has had an impressive impact quick and early.

As you can see in the photos I have attached the speakers are sharing their actual trade practices, unlike many others events the SMX seems to have set a standard where the goal is to make sure each presenter has something tangible and actionable. The presentations are supported by a ton of quantitative data that the presenters are using to show, not tell the attendees what they are doing and why.

So far the SMX East has been an event worth attending, I have been very excited to see speakers talking about the process by which they take action and sharing the quantitative data to support their processes and theories.

Sources:

Digital Brand Experience: Google shares it’s thoughts on Brand

July 29, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Digital Brand Marketing is about taking traditional concepts and rethinking how those practices can be streamlined and transformed into digital practices. I have repeatedly published on how so many businesses have taken the extreme approach to digital and social marketing. This has resulted in lost opportunities and negative impact on their brand.

If you do not claim your brand, someone else will!

Social Media is but a tool or advancement in what people have done throughout all time, if your product is wonderful people talk, if your product is terrible people talk. The big change is how they talk, and how many people they can reach.

In traditional marketing it was found that November, December, July and August are the big word of mouth months. These are the times of year that people congregated the most for Holidays and/or Vacations. This is when word of mouth could really be capitalized on. Did you see what I bought, where we went, the quality of work the installer did, the product I would never buy again.

As Erik Qualman pointed out, “word of mouth” is now “world of mouth”. Social Media is about having the ability to interact at any given moment and beyond the limitations of physical presence. Social Media thoughts, comments, reviews, posts, blogs, etc are almost all sustainable. The comment does not go away like a traditional conversation, the review, thought or post continues on to reach others, shared and searchable forever!

This has created three major issues in modern marketing.

The Company is not participating or facilitating their “brand”. Others are welcome to lay claim to it and control the information about it.
The Company rushed to execute and participate and did not consider the “brand” experience. How they facilitate and deliver a consistent experience across the different digital medias was lost. The worst continue to rush along making half measures to recover sections or parts of campaigns and services instead of rethinking the “brand” experience.
The Company has not learned how to use free resources to respond to the market. By not participating in Social Media the company cannot address issues and opportunities in real time. Surveys, Customer Complaint numbers are traditional, websites are 1.0, social media is engaging and seeking out the customers in their space. If you don’t seize information for your benefit, perhaps your competitor will!

An Anonymous Case Study for point 2:

A company decides that they wish to use twitter, they know its popular for news and marketing. The company creates accounts for 800 locations. The first mistake is made when they leave a default image in the service. A few months later they start to fill the profile image with the company logo. As a young marketing assistant learns about the personal interaction that twitter thrives from, the company starts to take “brand” accounts @GeoCompany and tie the individual name and a personal photo to the profile image. At this point the @GeoCompany John Doe has a picture of just a head shot with news updating from the company site. The profile area talks about the company and links to the company’s local site.

At each stage the half measure reviews have cost the company brand awareness. Something as simple as taking the time to think out the strategy would have saved the company’s social image as their claim to be social has struggled from day one. To date this company still has personal photos without proper branding on them. If the company takes the time to rethink the brand experience, they might decide to use something like this. @MorichesNews John Doe, with a Picture of John Doe accompanied by the Moriches News Logo in the corner or part of the frame, perhaps the background of the headshot. Provide a profile statement that looked like “John Doe is a reporter for Moriches News, a local source for issues and events. MorichesNews.com. An additional option, they could go one step further and develop a brand background to upload to the twitter accounts so that each twitter account looks consistent.

If you avoid your digital brand, or don’t invest quality time into the digital brand then you’re hindering your success. If you’re not listening to digital media you will not be able to learn about product opportunities in real time.

Here are two important videos from Google that talk about brand.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q71uXKEBXrw&feature=player_embedded]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJuAvrHd3DU]

Sources:

Google Throws Down the Gauntlet at Facebook in Social Network Struggle

June 29, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Google’s last two shots at storming the social networks, Google Buzz and Google Wave, met an early, and not entirely unexpected, demise. However, +1 may contain a few vital elements that make it far less likely to go unnoticed.

Custom Filtering

Being able to filter your contacts into groups and determine who can and cannot see your specific +1 preferences provides users with a bit more privacy than a Facebook ‘Like’ since Facebook currently only offers very basic privacy options, Friends or Everyone.

Huddles and Hangouts

Group instant messaging and multi-users video conferencing could make Google quite the competitor in more than just the social network industry. Users who have long bemoaned some of Skype’s capabilities, or lack of, may find themselves fans of Google Hangouts soon. Huddle can also be used on mobile devices via an app for the Android platform.

Google +1 Limited

The current version of the Google +1 system has only been released to a limited number of users but Google reps have stated that it hopes to make the entire scale of social network options available to the millions of consumers who use many of their other features every day.

Google denies that plus is a competitor with Facebook and emphasizes in so many words that they are not ‘out to get’ Zuckerberg’s social network, but rather focusing on what their users need to ease any element of their digital requirements, one of which has definitely become social networking.