Australian Real Estate SEO – Part 4

Improving the SEO on the Current Pages on Your Website

This article is about how Australian Real Estate Agents can apply basic SEO principals to the existing pages on their website by changing body text, page title, page description and alt text.

There are so many different Content Management Systems used by agents to manage their websites so its impossible for me to give you specific instructions on how to implement every thing in this article but with some commonsense, logic and a sprinkling of using the help files and program support you should be able to figure everything out fairly easily.

This article is the fourth in a 6 part series to assist agents in improving the SEO of their own websites.

The first article covered getting ready to apply changes to your website.  The second article covered link and referrer building, The third article covered keyword research.

I suggest that if you have not read the first three articles that you do that first. This article will cover optimising the current pages on your website to keywords you identified in article three.

With real estate agent websites there are two different types of pages, the  property pages which are generated automatically by the system to show off your your property listings and then there is the content pages. Most systems will allow you to edit and create new content pages yourself and this article is about you editing  your current pages to inject a bit more search engine friendliness into them.  In the next article we will discuss new pages or sections you can add to your site.

The content pages are the most likely to appear in the search engine and to generate you traffic. The property pages are generally filled automatically into a template and you will probably have very little control over them and they change regularly.

Improving your property pages is certainly an option but you will normally need to update  the template and that will generally be above the skill level of most agents and their staff. If you identify that your property pages could be improved as well you should speak with your website provider to update your templates.  Any changes to the template would automatically roll out to all property pages in one hit.

You should work through each of the existing pages on your website and refresh and  improve them one by one.

First Things First!

The first step you need to do is identify the keywords for each page.  From the keywords you identified in Article 3 select between 1 and 3 keywords that each of your existing content pages are about. On a very large site you might have individual pages targeting just one keyword but for now applying 2 or sometimes three related keywords on one page should give you the widest coverage with what you have as most agents have very few content pages on their website.

Make sure the keywords are related and best explain what the page is about. Don’t worry if you don’t have enough content pages to match up with all your keywords as in Article 4 we will discuss creating new pages for your website.

For a suburb profile  on the suburb of Nerang I might select the keywords “Nerang Real Estate” and “Nerang Property”.

Key Areas to Improve on Each Page

To improve the SEO on a particular page there are a few key areas we need to look at:-

• Page Title
• Meta Description
• Meta Keywords
• Body Content
• Images

Page Title

The single most important factor that will influence your SEO is the page title. By default some CMS systems that agents use will apply the same page title for every page.  This is a huge problem and something you need to sort out asap. The quickest way to check out all of your page titles at the moment is to use Google Search.

If you search using the site: operator you will see all the pages in Google’s index for that domain. So searching site:rwm.com.au shows us that every page is unique for the Richardson and Wrench Mosman site. As a side note if anybody had any doubts that Robert had 2000 pages on his site this search confirms that Google has a touch under 1900 of those pages indexed.

If all yours page titles are the same and if you find that you cannot change the page title you really need to consider moving or upgrading your web provider.

The page title is so powerful that no matter what you search, chances are that the majority of the pages returned on the first page will have the term you searched for in the page title. Your page title should then naturally feature the keyword or keywords you are targeting for that specific page.

The other things page title’s do is attract the persons attention on the search results page. A good page title will help get you higher on the page but a great page title will  better convey that you have what the searcher is looking for and provide a call to action and get them to click on your page over the others.

The biggest problem most people make is trying to target too many subjects on one page. This just saturates the page as far as the search engines are concerned and your theme on the page does not stand out amongst all the clutter. Keep each page focussed on just one subject. Obviously on the home page you should be targeting the name of your agency above all else with references to each suburb in your primary trade.

Using the same Nerang Suburb Profile example from above I would suggest something like :

Nerang Real Estate -  View Information on all Nerang Property

Notice how I did not use the name of the agency on that page title. That is optional and in most cases I would suggest you don’t do that on the majority of your pages. Even though the search engines will look at longer titles they will only show the first 70 characters on the search engines results page. Google also seem to only include the first 12 words of the title in the intitle: site operator. This means that you should use these two figures as your limit when crafting your page titles and if you want to put your company/agency name in the title then put it at the end.’

Nerang Real Estate -  View Information on all Nerang Property – First National Real Estate Nerang

Meta Description

The meta description is also very important but not as much as it use to be. Search engines use to rely very heavily on the meta description to work out what the page was about but webmasters worked out how to abuse this so its importance has been reduced in recent years. But one thing has remained unchanged and that is the meta description is generally, but not always, selected by search engines to display on the search engine results page as a snapshot of the content on the site.

This means that on top of having SEO value crafting a good meta description is important to entice visitors to click on your website.

Different search engines will display different number of characters but since Google is the smallest and is the major player then you should be guided by their 160 character limit.

The meta description should follow these rules

• Contain your keywords
• Inform the user what they will find on the page
• Be unique

For our example a good description depending upon what you actually have on your suburb profile might be :

The Nerang suburb profile includes info on Nerang real estate including suburb details, demographics, property types and recent Nerang property prices achieved

Meta Keywords

Meta keywords use to be very important but they have lost most of their power.  Google in fact have openly declared they do not use them at any stage anymore but  since other search engines still potentially use them and it is very easy and quick to do with no downside at all it’s important to add them to each page.

This is really a simple matter of adding the keywords you have identified for that page plus I would also add in the reverse if they are valid so for our example this would be”

nerang real estate, nerang property, real estate nerang, property nerang

Body Content

The body content is just the content on what is on the page and that is really up to you but there should be a few rules you should follow.

• Use your keywords naturally in the content. The days of stuffing keywords throughout the page is really gone. It may still effect some of the smaller search engines but the ones you want to target are not fooled by this anymore and if they consider you are spamming the page with your keywords you will probably get penalised for it.
• Your page sections should be marked with Headings or a H tags.   Header tags come in different levels. If you look at this article the page title is a H1 heading tag, the section headings are H2 tags and the sub section headings are h3 tags.  Include your keywords as much as possible in the headings tags
• Many search engines are believed to look at the readability of the content. I think it is more about the maths involved than if the actual words make sense.  Good easy to read content seems to follow a similar formula.  There are a few ways they do including looking at the number of paragraphs, the number of sentences per paragraph, the number of words per sentence. They also look at the complexity of the words you use.  When the search engines do this paragraphs containing masses of keywords are quickly identified as spam.  This means its important to  use good grammar and structure to your content and refrain from using complex words. Don’t make sentences or paragraphs too big or even too small. Make it easier to read for a visitor and that will make it easier to read for a search engine. You should really be able to tell just by looking at it but to test the readability of your pages you can use one of the many online tools like http://www.read-able.com/
• You should bold keywords and other import information on the page at least once or twice when they appear in your page’s body content.  Bold works with the search engines just like it does to a reader and highlights important words as being particularly relevant. Don’t bold every instance you use your keywords or go overboard in anyway. It needs to look natural

Images

Images are something often overlooked by real estate agents. In general each page should contain at least one image. Pages with longer content should include even more.  Pages with images generally make it much easier for a visitor to read by breaking up all that text but additionally for a search engine they also add further context to the page’s content.

Rename the photos to the keywords for that page and upload them to the website and insert them on the page. You then need to set the alt text for each image on the page. The alt text describes the image and again you insert your keywords. Search engines use the name of the image files and the alt text when analysing just what your page content is about.

Other Factors You Need to Consider.

There are a range of other factors you need to consider when looking to optimise your pages. These include :

• Bounce  and Satisfaction Rates
• Page Load Time
• Internal and External Links

Bounce and Satisfaction Rates

Google has recently advised that in order to gain more relevance on their results it will be placing more emphasis on bounce and/or satisfaction rates for each page.

A bounce rate is the percentage of all users who view only that page and then leave without viewing anything else on your site. The satisfaction rate approaches the issue from the opposite end of the spectrum but in a slightly different way. The satisfaction rate is the percentage of people who find the information they were actually searching for on the page they visited.  This means that satisfaction rate will indicate how many people clicked on your link and were satisfied with the results without having to return to return to Google and perform any further searches.

In essence what Google is saying is that the higher the bounce rate for a page, the less important it must be for that term and the higher the satisfaction rate the more relevant it is for that particular keyword.

This places a high importance on making sure your visitors arriving from search engines, or at least Google, do not return to the search engine and instead they look further into your site. Increasing your site’s “stickyness” in keeping visitors on the site longer and looking at more pages will be more important than ever. Make sure in the first paragraph of your text is inviting and explains exactly what the page is about. With Google at least everyone that leaves your site unsatisfied is a potential black mark and those that continue to browse and read through your site is a tick.

Page Load Time

Google has indicated recently that page load times will play a role in determining your ranking. Selecting a high quality web host and minimising your page load time will soon play a role in just where you rank in the search engine.  In re-designing the pages the biggest way you can minimise page load times is to make sure the images you use on each page are small and optimised for the web.

There are a lot of tools out there that can check your page load time but here is one http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

Internal and External Links

You need to include links into your page body content that link to other pages on your site and to other external sites. Google uses these in there ranking plus they will make visitors burrow further increasing your satisfaction rates.  External links can be made to open in a new browser window meaning the visitor will not actually browse away from your site should they click on an external link. Using our example of  the Nerang suburb profile you might include a paragraph like this:

Nerang is very centrally located on the Gold Coast and is a popular choice for working couples and young families. Nerang real estate prices start from $220,000 for a 2 bedroom unit and $350,000 for a 3 bedroom house but quickly rise to well over $1 million for prestige executive residences and acreage properties outside of the residential area. Recognised as one of the most affordable suburbs on the Gold Coast but still within 15 minutes drive to the beaches, Nerang property is also very popular with First Home Buyers and local and out of town investors.

This content uses our keywords in the context of the page but we can also provide a range of internal and external links to the reader throughout the content such as

Nerang is very centrally located on the Gold Coast and is a popular choice for working couples and young families. Nerang real estate prices start from $220,000 for a 2 bedroom unit and $350,000 for a 3 bedroom house but quickly rise to well over $1 million for prestige executive residences and acreage properties outside of the residential area. Recognised as one of the most affordable suburbs on the Gold Coast but still within 15 minutes drive to the beaches, Nerang property is also very popular with First Home Buyers and local and out of town investors.

Peppering links to other pages on your own site and occasionally other external sites will improve your seo and will keep visitors on your site longer and enable them to engage better with your site. If you are worried about external links allowing visitors to leave your site then you easily have them open a new browser window so they dont actually navigate away from your site.

Overview

So as you work through updating your current content pages create yourself a checklist to make sure you look at every one of these factors

• Page Title
• Meta Description
• Meta Keywords
• Body Content
  • Keywords in Content
  • Header Tags
  • Readability
  • Bolding Keywords
• Images
• Bounce  and Satisfaction Rates
• Page Load Time
• Internal and External Links

If you ensure you look at and improve each of these factors on all your content pages then you are well on your way to improve your seo and getting more traffic.  If you have a quite a few pages to get through spread them out and dont try and do them all at once. Remember you only have to do that once and the benefit lasts for a very long time. Thats why SEO is one of the best investments you can do for your website.

Additional Reading

SEO Explained For Small Business Owners

SEO at Wikipedia

Google’s Webmaster Guidelines

And lastly something that I have only just found myself and if you are just learning about SEO is the most important thing you will read on the subject because it is written by Google themselves

Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

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How REA buries agents in search results

Google doesn’t like duplicate content. People suspected of using it to manipulate search results are punished, often by their site being banished from a high rank in a search.

Duplicate content is often legitimate and Google understands this. Take property listings for example. Jane Smith is a real estate agent. She uses MyDesktop to upload a new listing to her site. As part of the MyDesktop service her listing is uploaded to reiwa.com, domain.com.au and realestate.com.au, all via an XML feed.

It makes sense for Jane to pay for this service. She enters her listing details once but gets exposure on a number of sites. But that’s not the end of the story.

Jane is interested in more than selling her listing. She also wants to attract new listings. To do so she wants to be found in a Google search and this is where duplicate content becomes an issue.

When Google finds duplicate content they look for instructions from the webmaster about how they want a page indexed. These instructions are found within the page meta tags and help the search engine deliver the most relevant results to the end-user.

However, when Google finds legitimate duplicate content – a property listing on multiple sites for example – without these instructions they are faced with a choice: Which page of content do they deliver in the search results? Their response is to “… always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer.” What that means to Jane is the original content, the page she created when posting the listing on her website, may well not be what a web searcher finds. And she’s trying to build a database of subscribers to her e-newsletter that’s bad news.

Let’s look at a real-life example. I conducted a Google search using the phrase “2brm unit for sale Victoria Park”. It’s a search term that might be conducted by either a buyer or seller. The first page of the search results contained no results from real estate agents. All were from listing portals or site scrapers. Starting to see my point?

The one that caught my eye, though, was from realestate.com.au (REA), the first entry in the search results. It included a link to a listing profile page, which contained the very same information as the original listing page on the agent’s site (when these properties are marked by the agent as sold these links may stop working). In this instance Google has determined that, of the two pages of identical property description, the one from REA was the most relevant. The agent has missed out on a visitor to their website and a chance to add to their email database.

Google’s recommendation about syndicated content, and that’s what agents are doing with their listing data, is this:

Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites…it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content.

In other words Google wants to index the original content, but they need help.

Let’s look at Google’s suggestion in two parts as it pertains to the above example.

First, REA does provide a link to the agent’s website, just not from the listing page and not to the original listing page (article) as recommended by Google. There’s no way for Google to know which piece of content was the duplicate. Furthermore, when they do provide a link to the agent’s site (from within the agent’s profile page) it’s hidden by a rel=”nofollow” tag. What this means is that the link is ignored by the search engines. The agent gets no Google love from the REA link and no boost in the performance of their site in a Google search. It’s all one way traffic in favour of the portal.

Second, REA don’t add the noindex meta tag to the duplicate page. If they did the page wouldn’t be indexed and therefore wouldn’t display in the search results.

Agents who think that the reason for a web presence is just to advertise property will have no problem with the portal’s behaviour. Buyers are finding their properties and that’s all that matters. But agents who want to build a brand using the Internet will have a different viewpoint. These agents provide content to REA to advertise their listings not so the portal can dominate search results.

I concede there’s more to SEO than just dealing with duplicate content. Even if it wasn’t an issue some agents manage their websites so badly they will never be found in the first page of a search. But agents who take pride in their website and their brand are right to be peeved at REA’s ethics. And they’re also right to look to the membership organisations to which they belong to step up and help them compete.
It’s high time for agents to demand  a fair go.

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Australian Real Estate SEO – Part 3

SEO Series

This article is the third in the series. The first article introduced the concept of SEO and focussed on the initial tasks and housekeeping to prepare your website to improve its SEO and monitoring that improvement. The second article concentrated on Referral Building and how to increase the authoritative value of your website. This article will concentrate on the very important task of keyword research. Read the rest of this article »

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Should Real Estate Franchises Reward Their Agents For Generating Web Traffic?

Within each franchise network there are some real estate agents who have invested their time & money into increasing their online presence by improving the SEO of their websites, building blogs & using social media marketing, yet the franchise often receives a percentage of the traffic generated by these agents across to the franchises corporate site for Free.

Since the agents are paying franchise fees, should the traffic generated by an agent that subsequently clicks open the franchises corporate site be Free traffic to the franchise? Or should the franchise reward the agent for generating traffic to their site?

Free Traffic Means Franchises Receive Free Home Loan Leads

Most franchises now have their own home loan department & potentially the franchise can generate more revenue from their home loans than they do from franchise fees paid by their agents.

If a real estate franchise wants to increase its profile on the web they could provide a reduction in franchise fees for agents who include links to their corporate website or they could build in a monthly pay-per-click incentive for the agencies who send lots of visitors across to their corporate website.

Just think, if a franchise is prepared to use pay-per-click advertising on Google to generate traffic, then wouldn’t a click from one of their agents’ websites, blogs, twitter/facebook accounts have a similar value?

If the Real Estate Franchises adopted this concept they could reward their own agents instead of paying Google for leads.

I’m sure some franchises will frown upon this idea, but the forward thinking real estate franchises should see that this provides a real incentive for their agents to build a larger web presence, send more traffic to the franchises corporate website & build a bigger corporate brand which could help to generate more real estate offices & increase the franchises home loan revenue.

I feel that anything which reduces the running costs of an agency & helps to encourage agents to increase their web presence at the same time is a good thing. What do you think?

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Australian Real Estate SEO Part 2

This article is the second in the series to help Australian Real Estate Agents improve their traffic from optimizing their website. If you have not read the first article in the SEO series I strongly suggest you start there instead and return to reading this article after that.

Referral Building

One of the recognized methods that Search Engines use to rank websites is by placing preference on what they consider authoritative websites. One of the key methods to assess your authoritative value is by analysing your website content, but we will discuss that in a future article.

The other way they calculate a websites authoritative value is by checking what websites link to you and to a lesser extent what websites you link to. The search engines understand that if popular well visited and quality websites who cover your website’s topic link to your website then there is a very high chance that you are also a quality website on that same topic. It conversely stands to reason that links from low quality off topic websites will provide no authoritative value at all, and in fact can impact negatively on your ranking. A link from a highly ranked website is like a “vote” and the more votes you get the better. The seo value or “vote” a website passes to another with a referral link is often coined “link juice”.

PageRank

Google uses a page quality ranking system called PageRank which covers the popularity of a page or website. PageRank is only part of the whole equation but it is a useful way to determine how popular a website is with incoming weblinks. Just remember as far as google is concerned PageRank is only one of the ranking factors of why your website is top of the list. A good PageRank (abbrieviated to PR) for an agency is 3 or 4.  Anything higher is probably an unrealistic goal given the traffic and exposure an indivudal agency can generate… but there is no harm in trying.

So one of the most important parts of improving your SEO strategy is to build quality referral links back to your website. These links back to your website will create a level of traffic in their own right but their real value from an SEO perspective is the “link juice” they pass to you allowing you to rank higher and get more traffic from the search engines.

There are several ways to build referral links to your website but the easiest quickest place to get your site listed on Interent website directories. That’s what we are going to concentrate on first but I will discuss other strategies of building website links later in the article.

Website Directories – Paid or Free?

In the early days of the web very few web directories charged as they all tried to build up their website’s content. Over recent years things have changed and now a few web directories have started to charge to list your site. They built up high PageRank rankings for their websites when free and  then changed a “fee” to websites to get themselves listed on a high PR site. Google recently applied a manual override to many directories “selling” links from their websites for what they considered as an excessive charge.

Even though paying a reasonable amount to get your listed is probably not out of the question, for my mind there are very few websites that are worthwhile paying for at the end of the day.  There is one major exception for that rule though and that’s Yahoo.

Get Ready

Before you start submitting your website some thought has to be put into exactly what information you submit. Other than your website address and email you are going to require two other pieces of information for just about all directories you submit to. You should prepare these for two reasons. Firstly its very important that you use the right keywords as it will help your SEO and secondly it will speed up your submission process when you can cut and paste the information every time.

Website Title

It is important to include your primary keywords in the website title but ensure you don’t include promotion terms.

“Nerang First National Real Estate – Gold Coast Real Estate Agent” might be acceptable but

“Nerang First National, the Gold Coasts Best Real Estate Agent” would not be.

Description

It is important to cover the range of services on your website. Different sites will allow different length descriptions of your website so create one default description and change it if you have it or you can create a small and a large version.

“Specialising in residential real estate services for the suburbs of Nerang, Carrara, Highland Park, Worongary and the surrounding hinterland of the Gold Coast, Queensland Australia. Website features include property for sale, property for rent, real estate guide, free advisory guides to download, local community and business directory, email newsletters, blog and more”

might be ok for a directory submission but something like

”Nerang property for sale and rent” would be very poor utilization.

Selecting the Right Category

When you submit to a business directory it is vitally important that you submit to the right category. Submitting to the wrong category will at best slow down your acceptance but at worst will mean that your submission is not even considered at all. Some directories are sorted by suburb or city. Some are just sorted by state.

I will try and make some recommendations along the way but do some research and make sure you place your submission in the best category. Some directories will even let you submit to more than one category so when you can maximize your exposure and select as many as you can. On the directory pages look for words similar to “add your site”, “add your url”, “add your business” or something similar

The Top Tips for your submissions

1. No words in CAPITALS
2. No promotional language – ie. Sydney’s Best Real Estate Agent
3. Remember to use keywords that buyers or sellers would use.
4. Read the submission rules and follow them.
5. Submit to the right category

Major Web Directories

There are two web directories that are essential in SEO and are the single most powerful things you will do throughout this whole series.

DMOZ or Open Directory Project

This is one of the most powerful web directory and your listing in the directory will provide you an instant boost to your SEO. Why is it so powerful? “The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.”

This directory is used directly by nearly 150 other sites on the interent as their own directory. In simple terms you list once on DMOZ and if accepted you will automatically get listed on nearly 150 other high quality sites. Even Google itself rebrands the DMOZ directory data as its own Google Directory. Because of this sheer power and the fact that every single submission is checked manually by a real person, the directory is held in very high regard.

You are only allowed up to 30 words as a description so make them count. Browse to your geographic region first. Ideally submit your category into the real estate section of the business section under the locality but if one does not exist yet, just submit to the business section or even the locality category. Do not submit to state or national real estate sections as it will not be allowed unless you deal with the whole state and will just delay your submission.

Yahoo Web Directory

This is the only directory that I would suggest you pay the listing fee without question. Listing in the yahoo directory is very important SEO wise and like DMOZ every submission is manually checked. Unlike DMOZ that is a community maintained, the Yahoo directory is a business which is why there is now a listing charge.

Browse to the category of your local area and then add your listing to the real estate section if it exists or else just add it there

Other Important Directories to Submit To

Google Local Directory

For some search types (and real estate is one of them) Google includes a map section at the top of the page when you use their search engine. This information is populated directly from the Google Local Directory. The default data is now drawn from the Yellow Pages but DO NOT rely up on this. Creating your own listing is easy and will get you on the top of the list on the front page plus it puts more information in the directory listing.

ZoomInfo

This is a well regarded business directory and although US centric, most of the search engines are based in the US as well.

Other Directories to submit to include:

• Hotfrog
• International Real Estate Directory
• Property Listings Australia
• Come on Aussie
• TrueLocal
• Brownbook
• Start Local
• YourEstate.com.au
• HouseHunters
• Real Estate Guide.net
• Just Real Estate

Link Exchanges

There are many websites that will list you in their directory if you link back to them first. If it’s a good quality site and its about real estate then this may be worthwhile. Don’t bother unless it is about real estate. If you decide to exchange or swap link then you will first need to setup a links page on your website. Call this page, Links, Real Estate Links, Real Estate Resources or whatever you want but its purpose is to provide links to other real estate websites. Search “Real Estate Link Exchange” on google and you will find plenty of contenders.

Dont base your whole link building efforts on these exchanges but they are good to bolster your numbers.

Local Directories. Do a search on google to find local business directories to submit to. As an example searching for “Gold Coast Business Directory” and “Gold Coast Website Directory” identifies a number of local web directories that we can submit our agency website to.

Other Link Building Strategies

Here are some ideas for building other links back to your website, all of which will help your SEO.

• Include your link on everything off the net, especially if it is published online as when it is it becomes a link back to you. Things like job ads, print magazines, press releases and many more things end up online.
• Because Government (gov.au) and Educational (edu.au) domains are unavailable to just anybody, getting a link from them is very good for SEO and one of the best ways to get this is to sponsor your local school and get them to link to your website from the schools website.
• Get everyone from the same real estate network and the same area to all link to each other.
• Make sure you comment on blogs and forums and use your web address.
• Create your own blog. Other people will reference your blog posts either in their blog or will book mark it in many of the social bookmarking sites.
• Setup accounts on social bookmarking sites like Delicous and Stumbleupon and bookmark your own websites but don’t just stop there
• Create a Google Profile, Linked In Profile, Twitter Account for you and then a  Twitter Account for your agency, Facebook Account for you and then a Twitter Page for Your agency.  Each of these accounts allows you to link back to your website and to each other.

So Who Should You Link To

Since what sites you link to also improves your own authoritative value why dont you consider creating your own link section by linking to other websites about real estate and about your immediate area. Setting up a local business and community section on your website and a real estate guide will help find a home for these links. Government and education websites also have extra importance here so dont forget to link to those sites. Things like state industry bodies, local schools, universities, local businesses.

Dont go crazy and link to every single website you can find on the topic and dont link to everyone that links to you. Most experts agree that a link from someone that you dont reciprocate to is worth more than a link you do. Some seo experts suggest Site A links to Site B which in turn only links to Site C which links only back to Site A.

When you create your own link exchange pages you will get others contacting you to ask about exchanging links with you. Why not get a little proactive about it and set the rules on your page for how to exchange links. Something like these:-

If you wish to be considered for addition to this links page :

1. All websites are to be for sites on Real Estate, Property, Property Investment, Nerang or the Gold Coast
2. Links are not to include no follow attributes and if you remove your link so will we
3. Please create a link on your website that can be accessed through your homepage (no orphaned pages) with the following link “Nerang First National – Gold Coast Real Estate Agent – specialising in residential real estate services in the suburbs of Nerang, Carrara, Highland Park and the Gold Coast Hinterland including property for sale and property for rent”
4. Please send the location of our link on your website and the link text you require to linkexchange@nfn.com.au

WARNING ! Do not participate in a Link Farms or link building system.. ever..

A link farm is a collection of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of links to other websites through an organised link swapping. The links are not natural and each particpant has the same links page on their website with virtually the same links. This practice is frowned upon and you will probably get a negative impact on your SEO. Link farms certainly use to work when authoritative value was first introduced but now they do not.

At least one self styled Real Estate SEO expert is still pushing his link farm matrix as some magical form of SEO even though it has realy helped nobody else and all major search engines strongly warn in writing against participating or running a link farm. It is believed that a possible link farm trigger will be raised with search engines if you have any more than 100 links on page. If any page is even approaching this limit split it into multiple pages. If someone promises to give you hundreds or thousands of links for a price remember, if it sounds too good to be true… IT IS.

Link building should be done manually which is time and effort.. but you only have to do it once for the link work for you for years and even decades.

Next Article

The next article in the series will cover Keyword Research and working out exactly what sort of keywords outside of the “<<Suburb>> Real Estate” and “<<Suburb>> Property” normal ones you should be targeting.

Further Reading

The SEOmoz article Search Engine Ranking Factors is the results of a survey covering this very topic with 37 SEO Experts. It ranks common SEO strategies, how the experts rank each strategy and rates the agreement between them all.  SEOmoz also produce a fantastic “Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization” at . You can even download the guide and print it out for later reading.

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