by Seo Bloke on September 5, 2009
If you are involved in real estate marketing, whether it be as an agent or broker and you have a website, you should read on…
I’m currently in the process of compiling a list of dofollow blogs for the real estate industry that can assist your website with obtaining better search engine positioning.
If you already know everything you need to about do follow attributes, then skip to the bottom of this post to preview the list. Otherwise, I recommend that you read on.
What is a DoFollow Blog & Why Is It Relevant to Me?
Blogs now come standard with a “nofollow” attribute, which essentially tells the search engines that the link from the blog to your website is not trustworthy. Therefore, taking away any benefits that the search engines may have provided your website to help it rank better.
Blogs that have removed the nofollow attribute and added the dofollow are telling the search engines that the blog trusts your site and can therefore pass on the ‘link juice’ which can help your site rank better in Google, MSN, Yahoo etc.
If you operate a real estate website, you will receive more value from the search engines by posting or receiving links from other real estate related websites. This is because the search engines will see that other reputable real estate sites are linking to your site and therefore rank your real estate related keywords better.
Words Of Warning About Posting On Blogs
Just because the blog owner has been nice enough to remove the dofollow tags from their links, this doesn’t mean you should go spamming their sites. They’ve been nice by showing the link love, so please be respectful to them and only put good quality, well thought out, insightful comment on their sites. Ask yourself, “Does my post improve the experience for the readers of the site?” If it doesn’t, don’t post it. It’s as simple as that.
Try and find blogs in the list below that you enjoy reading and that you can contribute good content on. You’ll get the the link love in return and you might learn something while making some great friends at the same time. What can be better than that?
Also, it will help you if you don’t go blog posting crazy. I wouldn’t recommend posting on hundreds of blogs to get ahead in the search engines. Just keep it simple and go after the ones you enjoy. This way it will look natural to the search engines (because it is natural) and will benefit everyone in the long run. To rank well you need a variety of quality backlinks from different types of sites (not just blog sites).
If you have a dofollow real estate blog and would like to submit it to this site, please post a response and I’ll be sure to add your site to the following list:
www.seobloke.com
www.braxtonbeyer.com
www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog
www.indyrebaterealestate.com/blog
www.newhomessection.com/blog
www.tampa-real-estate-blog.com
www.weknowurban.com
www.teamaguilar.com/blogs
www.houstonhousingmarket.org
www.realestatebloglab.com
by Seo Bloke on September 3, 2009
Welcome to the first SEO tutorial. I’ll be using this section of the blog to create an in-depth tutorial which will provide you with the fundamentals necessary to begin optimizing your website for the search engines.
Who Should Read This?
- Website owners
- Website developers
- Anyone wanting to build a new website
- Business owners and managers
- Anyone marketing real estate
How This Tutorial Is Organized
Although primarily we will be focusing on SEO, we’ll also provide you with some detailed tutorials about other functions of website optimization such as pay-per-click, conversion rate optimization and a few other tips and techniques used by professionals in the industry.
The tutorial will be a live project – meaning it will go up page-by-page which will allow you to interact with questions you may have as your work through the tutorials.
What Is SEO?
“I’m number one!”
Ah, being number one in the search engines: That’s the internet equivalent to winning the 100 metre sprint in the Olympics. In terms of SEO, if you rank number one for a high traffic keyword, it certainly can be worth gold and it is the ultimate goal of just about everyone I’ve encountered that operates a website.
So what exactly is SEO? Search engine optimization is both the art and science of raising your websites presence in the search engine results pages.
For example, if you sell a widget called XYZ, you’ll want to optimize your site to match the keyword searches that your potential clients are using to find the widget called XYZ via Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. Later I’ll show you exactly how to determine which keywords your prospects are using and precisely how many searches are being performed each month.
By optimizing your site in this manner, the search engines view your site as being a relevant site and therefore will rank you in it’s search engines accordingly.
There are two major elements that create SEO:
1. On-site Optimization
- Optimizing your site for keywords, as discussed above;
- Optimizing the architecture of your on-site links (more on this later);
- And creating effective keyword content.
2. Off-site Optimization
- Primarily concerned with obtaining quality inbound links that match or are similar to the On-site keywords you are optimizing for.
What Are The Benefits Of SEO?
I get asked this question all the time. I’ve literally seen well optimized sites do millions of dollars a month in sales through nothing else but good quality SEO alone. However, the effects of good SEO go beyond just placement and high traffic. Consider this, high rankings have also been found to increase the following:
- Perceived authority – studies have shown that web visitors perceive high ranking websites as leaders in the marketplace;
- Trust – this perception of authority generates trust amongst website visitors, particularly those that have come across the same website via multiple searches;
- Conversion rate increase – High traffic + Perceived Authority + Trust = An increase in conversion rates on your website.
How Much Of This SEO Tutorial Should I Read?
Honestly, without good SEO your site is dead in the water. If you’re serious about having a great website, I’d recommend that you read every word of the tutorial from front to back. I’ll try and keep it as interesting as possible and only supply information that is relevant to you learning good SEO.
Once this tutorial is completed – I’ll provide you with a Word document so that you can download the entire tutorial. Additionally, I’ll create a cheat sheet for you to use as a quick reference guide.
Feel free to ask and post as many questions as you see fit. There are no silly questions and you will be helping others by helping to clarify certain issues.
