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Black Hat SEO or White Hat SEO, What's the Difference?

Whilst researching your search engine optimisation and online marketing techniques for your real estate website you may come across the terms “White Hat” and “Black Hat” SEO. What do they mean and what happens if you employ both strategies?

Let’s start by defining them both in simple English.

White Hat SEO - means following the guidelines set out by the search engines. Basically, search engine spiders crawl through the internet and read website content. White Hat SEO techniques ensure that what the spiders read will be the same as what real visitors to your site will read and see.

Black Hat SEO - means trying to trick these search engine spiders by hiding content in the coding of websites. For example using text colour the same as the background colour of a webpage.

If you outsource SEO for your Real Estate website then ask the question. Do you use Black Hat SEO? If you’re not convinced then look elsewhere. Google does punish.

The most infamous case of Google punishing a website was that of the BMW site in 2006. They were removed from the index for employing Black Hat SEO. Click here to read the article. German BMW Banned From Google

Online Real Estate Marketing Tip - Backlink Suggestion

Relevant back links are vital to a successful online real estate marketing campaign.

Add a back link to your real estate office here for free – Property and Business Directory

Beating the Social Media Drum for Real Estate

Another Socialnomics video demonstrating the undeniable power of the ROI using Social Media. Regardless of whether you are an enterprise business or a small local real estate office. Through Social Media you connect to an engaged audience. Enjoy.

Is Your Real Estate Office Excited About Social Media?

If your not convinced that social media can be a powerfull tool for your real estate office then take look at this video.

SEO & SEM What's The Difference?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing). What is the difference and which of the two is the best strategy to employ for your Real Estate Office? In this article we will look at the pros of
both strategies.

SEO is best described as the process of generating traffic to your real estate web site by increasing the ranking in the free (organic) results of search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. It involves On-Site Optimisation and Off-Site Optimisation. Let’s take a quick look at both of these:

• On-Site Optimization
  
  Making changes to the HTML code on the pages of your web site to:
• Improve Keyword relevancy
• Increase Page loading times – How long does it take for your site to open up in a browser?
• Basically, making your website easy to read for the search engines
  
  
• Off-Site Optimization.
  
  Getting back-links from other relevant sites, using key words (anchor text) in the links. Relevancy is of major importance here. Back links should come from sites that are relevant to Real Estate, Your local area or your business.

SEM is best described as the process of generating traffic to your site through paid advertising spots on Search Engines. This could be through paid inclusion in relevant directories or PPC (Pay per Click) campaigns on search engines like Google Adwords.

Both strategies can offer value and ROI however, SEO is generally looked at as a long term strategy to increase ranking where as SEM can have an immediate impact.

Benefits of Google Caffeine to Real Estate

Once I click publish on this article through my BlogSpot blog, Google Caffeine will index it to the Google search results within minutes. Would your agency benefit from your real estate related content being available to people searching Google almost instantaneously? Definitely.

The new Google algorithm launched mid last year to replace the ageing Google algorithm was designed to keep the Google index up to date in very close to real time.

By incorporating a blog on your real estate website you give Google a reason to keep coming back to your site and crawling your real estate content, be it listings, articles, testimonials and success stories. They can be available to an audience of Billions within minutes.

Do you want to try out blogging? Why not create your own blog. Read my article on how to set up a blog at absolutely no cost to you (except a little of your valuable time)

Online Real Estate Listing Technique - Headlines

To successfully market real estate online it is vital to use descriptive copy. So often I read real estate listing headlines such as “Location Location Location”. Instead of this, an alternate example could be “Located in Ardross close to the Swan River Foreshore”

The alternative is not only more descriptive to read but is also more descriptive for search engines such as Google to index in their rankings. Once Google has crawled your listing on Domain (or other portal) chances are that it will also be found in the search results for people who search for properties located in Ardross or close to the swan river.

Using real estate headlines like “Location Location Location” in the printed media is fine. Generally people reading these papers will already have opened up to the Ardross section of the real estate lift out but with online these people generally start with a blank canvas and will use keywords to refine their search until they have found what they are looking for.

Online Real Estate Listing Technique - Images

The primary purpose of real estate images is to present the features of the property. This can be best achieved by:

1. Using a wide angle lense for interiour shots
2. Removing Clutter
3. Vertical and Horizontal lines are photographed straight
4. Capturing the property in it's best light

Most agencies actually do really well, with most these days employing professional real estate photographers. Still though we often see bad examples of real estate images being loaded to the site. These images are often distant shots of the house from 100m down the road, the front elevation of a property hidden behind a wall or a bedroom with dirty linen covering the floors.

It is the images that will determine whether a property buyer will click through to read the rest of the property details or perhaps proceed to making an enquiry.

Here is a link is to a very usefull guide to photography of real estate. Even if your agency does not use a professional real estate photographer there are a few easy steps you can follow to producing quality images that will make property searchers want to click through and read more.

SEO Mistake 5 - Keyword Research

Every real estate office would like to rank high on Google for the search term "real estate (your suburb)" yet, so does every other agency, portal and other real estate industry related businesses. This makes it nearly impossible for you to rank on the first page for this phrase.

By researching your keywords and phrases extensively you will probably find that search phrases like "property for sale (your suburb" or "homes for sale (your suburb)" also attract a lot of searchers.

A great tool to use for researching keywords is the Google adwords keyword tool. It is free and it functions by you entering a search term and pressing enter. The tool will then return alternative suggestions and will also display how often these search terms are actualy typed in to Google.

Good Luck