Social Media Marketing may be the hot new way to market, but search is still king.  And if your website isn’t ranking,  you are loosing out on the opportunity to drive traffic to your site and be discovered by potential new clients. Let’s look at some simple things can you do to make your website search-optimized. I’ve created a list of tips on how to optimize your Real Estate website for SEO. If you can’t do these things yourself, simply ask your webmaster to give you a hand.

1. Submit your website to all the major search engine directories.  There are many many sites beyond the obvious ones like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Aol, MSN, etc.  This process can get time consuming, so I recommend a free tool for this called Free Web Submission.
2. Choose a URL that includes keywords.  Many realtors purchase short URLs, but longer URLs that include keywords are great for SEO.
3. Every page of your site should have a unique title, keywords, and a meta description. The meta description should include keywords and phrases, but should NOT duplicate the page title.  If you don’t know how to do this, check with your webmaster.
4. Write a lot of text content for your site.  Include lots of keywords and phrases in your writing, but write for your audience, not for SEO. You could write a page for each neighborhood or community you do business in.  Write a page for buyers, a page for sellers, a page for short sales, a page for foreclosures, a page for the first time home buyer, a page for relocation, etc etc etc.
5. Write about HOT topics!  Google gives priority to fresh/hot content. So if there is something big going on in your community, be sure to write a page or post on your site about it.  You could even write a review of a new best selling book or movie.  Or write about a the big storm that just hit your area.
6. Create pages with lots of  Formatting – headings, bullet points, lists, bolded text.  Google loves formatting!
7. Optimize all of your website images for the web (72 dpi).  Google gives priority to images that load quickly.  If you upload super high resolution images, you could be hurting your SEO.   Add an ‘alt’ tag with your keywords to every photo on your site. Read more about optimizing real estate photography here.
8. Use lots of Outbound links. Outbound links are links that you create within your text. The text that you highlight is called “Anchor Text”. The Anchor Text is given LOTS of priority by search engines, so choose your anchor text carefully, using lots of great keywords and phrases. There are 2 types of outbound links: Outbound links that go to your own site: In this post, you will find that I have included several outbound links that go to other blog posts I have written on SEO. These help increase the seo of not only THIS post, but also the posts I am linking to. A double whammy! Outbound Links that go to other sites: Linking to other high-ranking sites is a great way to increase your SEO. The search engines give your site extra SEO juice when you link it to other high-ranking sites. When you add the link, be sure to add it so that the link opens in a new window. That way, visitors will not be leaving your site.
9. Incorporate your blog into your website.  Your blog should live on the same URL as your website. That way, your website benefits from the SEO your blog posts create.
10. Add a social sharing plug-in to every page of your site.  Include the Facebook Like button, Facebook share, Google+ share, and Twitter share  buttons on each of your website pages. You may want to include Linkedin and Pinterest as well. Each time a page is shared, it creates a backlink which increases your SEO. Plus it’s really fun to see your site being shared by visitors!
11. Create a Google Analytics account and place it’s tracking code on every page of your website. This is very easy to do in WordPress, by simply adding the Google Analytics Plug-in. Study the analytics on a regular basis and change your techniques based on what’s working and what’s not working. You should see your site steadily rising in search engine rank.
12. Consider adding a good quality SEO plugin to your site.If you have a WordPress site, some great plug-ins include  All in One SEO,  Platinum SEO, and SEO by Yoast.

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