Everyone knows that to make money, you must spend money right? Well some of the best forms of advertising on the web is to submit your site to paid directories. There are directories that will allow you to post for free but most of those end up being spammy as they will accept any site or listing there is. So why not shell out some bucks for a listing on a site with a reasonable PageRank that will actually get you quality visitors and leads?

Although not a Real Estate website, Business.com is one of the leading directories online for anything business related. It is most likely the most popular directory on the web and is highly regarded, highly ranked and a listing will benefit you and your business greatly.

The Yahoo Business Directory is another highly ranked directory that has been around for quite sometime and has a reach of 330 million unique visitors.

" onclick="javascript:urchinTracker('/outbound/botw.org/_br_/');">Best of the Web is a popular directory that has been around since 1994 and is also great for link building purposes.

When it comes to a more targeted directory only for Real Estate, Reals.com has been around since 1997 and is said to be the largest real estate directory on the web.

If you are looking for a more affordable real estate directory, OverlyReal.com may be just for you. It is a bit smaller than Reals, but offers a more affordable listing price and may be just what you need for that extra online exposure.

Search engine optimization is a key element for everyone who will be doing at least some of the marketing for their real estate business online. One of the key elements to search engine optimization is making sure that there are links coming into the website - or, in the case of a particular property that you’re marketing, links that will help buyers to find the property online:

(source)If Google can find 1,000 links of a home’s address in its index, that means that there are 1,000 instances where prospective buyers can find your home!

Think about it for a minute: if having a thousand links back to a property means that there are a thousand chances that buyers will be able to find it, isn’t that far better than having, say, 5 links on?

To an extent, you can create links back to the property with blogs, posting virtual tours on sites like YouTube, adding photos of the property with links back to the site on photo sharing sites like Flickr. By doing so, especially given the popularity of these sites, you’re able to increase the reputation of your own website (or a web page dedicated to one seller’s home).

In addition, it’s important to know that there are others out there who can help you to build links; finding them (something that can be done in part by creating a well-optimized page) is going to be easier than you may think.

Great content, incoming links and the right keywords: all of these search engine optimization strategies will help you to help sellers sell.

Search engine optimization is about far more than just the keywords that you use to market your real estate business and your real estate website: it’s about making sure that you’re following through with getting the search engine rankings that you need to attract visitors to your website.

On one hand, that means looking toward the right information - the details that will allow you to understand search algorithms from Google and the other search engines. On another, it means choosing to work with an SEO company that will focus on getting your site ranking legitimately, not using tactics that are as likely to get your site penalized as they are to promote it.

Search engine optimization, after all, isn’t just about getting rankings and making sure that prospective site visitors make it to your website: it’s about making sure that once they are at your site they can find what they are looking for. In other words, the number one position on Google isn’t going to mean anything if once someone visits your site they don’t stick around to learn more about your services.

That’s why content is an essential component of every search engine optimization strategy: it’s the content that helps you to get the word out about what you do and what you have to offer. It’s the content that explains the difference between you and your competitors.

Does that mean that you should banish keywords from your content, your title tags, your blog posts or anything else? Of course not, it just means that you should look at more than just keywords - focus on your content, that will help you to reach your goals.

If you have taken your real estate business online, chances are good that you’ve read more and a little bit about search engine optimization because, well, you want to be sure that you’re attracting attention to your website when people are searching for real estate in your area. Of course, a big part of search engine optimization comes down to the content on your site - the photos you use, your blog, tips and articles and virtual tours.

However, the virtual tours that you create for your real estate site and the properties that you’ve listed also can be used to draw traffic to your site in another way. Those virtual tours can be used on sites like YouTube along with information about your real estate market in the notes and keywords that you use to describe the video.

That way, those who enter search terms into YouTube looking for properties - those who are looking for vacation properties and want to see videos of an area, perhaps - will be able to locate the properties that you’re representing. And then, provided you add links back to your website you will also benefit from incoming links and search traffic that might not have found your site otherwise.

In other words, optimizing your site for the search engines isn’t just about the basic techniques that you read about; SEO is about looking for all of the tools that are available to help buyers and sellers to find your site and using them to the best of your ability.

No matter where you look, when you’re getting ready to take your real estate business to the web, you’ll find all sorts of “rules” for search engine optimization. Some of these are outrageous, assuring the reader that if they use their SEO strategy they’ll leap to the front pages of Google in no time flat. On the other hand, there are some details about search engine optimization that you should pay attention to - and many of them have to do with the content that you use on your website.

After all, it’s the content on your website that makes it unique:

(source)There is no substitute for quality, original content. Frequent updating of your websites will keep them fresh. Take static pages of your website that have not been updated in a while and change them up a little bit. It doesn’t have to be much; just a small change will let the search engines know that you’ve changed the page. Then re-upload it and you’ll get crawled again. Work on building inbound links to those pages as well.

Of course, it’s not just the writing on your pages that serves as content; it’s not all about editing the text that you’ve written. Adding images, using video, or linking to a podcast that you’ve created: all of these add to your content as well.

So does a blog. When you keep a blog in connection with your real estate site, you’ll be adding fresh content daily (or at least as frequently as you add fresh content to your blog).

The key to search engine optimization is content. Well-written original content crawled by the search engine spiders will be focused around your keywords, alt tags and the title tags that you use in links. Well-written content also shows those who come into your website that you’re a professional and that you’re committed to your business.

When you’re designing your real estate website or working on creating content for your blog, it’s important to take a look at search engine optimization: specifically, it’s important to take a look at finding the balance between using strong keywords that will get the attention of the search engine spiders and using too many of those keywords - so many that you turn off the actual people (prospects and clients) who visit the site.

So how do you find the right keyword balance for your website? How can you optimize your site for both the search engines and for the readers?

Do what you can to write for the reader. When you’re creating content, focus on what those individuals who are using your site are looking for. You’ll know the key points that you are trying to make and you’ll know your central focus. When you write naturally, the keywords and focus points will rise up.

Ask yourself whether or not those keywords seem naturally placed. Look at places where you haven’t used a keyword in a while and see whether or not it seems as though you could add it without decreasing the readability of the article or post.

In some cases, you’ll find that search engine optimization will lead you to insert your keywords, in other cases, you’ll find that a synonym or a similar phrase will serve the same purpose - and still attract search engine attention.

At first, it may seem challenging to find the right balance, but in time you’ll find that it becomes natural.

As a real estate professional, you know the importance of effective communication with your clients and customers. You’ve probably got that down to a science when it comes to meeting in person or placing phone calls or sending emails - in part because it’s interactive and if you’re not communicating it’s harder to seal the deal. Unfortunately, those same abilities - well, they don’t always translate when it comes to taking your business online.

When it comes to your real estate website, communication is a bit different - and search engine optimization can help.

Search engine optimization - SEO - is a process more than it’s something that you just do. SEO is a method of targeting the keywords that your prospective clients will use when they’re looking for the services that you offer. It’s a tool that helps search engine bots understand what your site is about. It’s about creating sales copy that’s effective for both attracting clients, drawing web traffic and sealing the deal.

More importantly, search engine optimization is a strategy that involves looking at your business, looking at your competitors and setting goals - and then developing a plan to reach them. Fortunately, you don’t need to be on your own to create that strategy; you can use others’ experience to get you there - provided you check them out and they aren’t just making promises they can’t keep.

The key principle behind search engine optimization is quite simple really: by focusing on the ways that search engines find your website, you’re able to get better rankings. When you have better rankings, people in your area who are searching for the products and services that you offer are going to stand a better chance of finding themselves at your website rather than one of your competitors’ sites.

Content is almost always going to be referred to as a primary component of any search engine optimization strategy. While content can include the photos, video tours, news releases and blog posts on your website, it’s essential to look at your use of articles.

Like magazine and newspaper articles, internet articles share information. They put your by-line out there. Both the information and your by-line (along with the resource box at the end of your article which will contain links back to your real estate websites) help to establish your credibility. Perhaps more importantly, the articles that you use to market your website can be written around and optimized for keywords related to your business site.

Of course, it’s not just about the directories that you submit articles to; it’s about the number of times that your articles are reprinted as well - something that increases the number of links that there are to your website and can help to improve the ranking of your site.

While all of that is good news, you’re likely to find that there’s even better news out there: the articles that you use to market your site can be professionally written and distributed so that you get the most bang for your buck - and the most links back to your site.

Your real estate website is, in effect, your business front that is there for the world to see. Not only do you need to have a site that’s easy to navigate, but you need to make sure that the copy on your website - the content that you include - will help those site visitors to learn more about what you have to offer.

The copy that you include on your website, however, shouldn’t just be written for your site visitors; the copy that you include in your site should be optimized for the web search engines.

SEO for your website copy allows you to:

• Create content that conveys your message
• Use content that draws in your readers and gets them excited about what you have to offer
• Place your keywords and key phrases effectively

With search engine optimization content writing for your real estate website, you’re likely to find that your visitors explore more of your site, your services get noticed and more leads covert into sales - more visitors become clients of your real estate services.

Say that you’re trying to SEO your real estate website. You’ve got some keywords that you want to rank for: is getting to the top of the list as simple as stuffing your site full of those keywords?

Some people might tell you that it is, and they’ll use arguments like this one to back themselves up:

So having used “keyword spam” in the title as a form of keyword spam and then repeating this “keyword spam” phrase at every opportunity in the entry, I’m hoping that I can keyword spam this entry on keyword to the top of the keyword spam charts. What really becomes interesting is how quickly I can get Google to put my keyword spam entry at the top of the pile. If I can do it with the keyword spam of Onken, I can do it with the keyword spam of keyword spam!

Tuesday: not in the top 100, but I doubt Google has updated me yet.
Wednesday night/early hours of Thursday morning: haha! already at #12!
Thursday night, and it’s up to 8th by my latest search. Don’t know how people are finding me higher, maybe they are searching for the phrase “keyword spam” rather than two keywords keyword and spam separately. That would be cheating, and make it far easier to keyword spam!
Monday afternoon, and I return to #8. So no success for the keyword spam of keyword spam to the top of Google in a week, but I think with a bit of luck and a lot of keyword spam I can go higher.

In theory, it might look as though this search engine optimization strategy does work. But let’s take a closer look at it.

The writer’s goal was to rank for the phrase “keyword spam,” and the entire post was about that goal. The audience was, in effect, in on the ‘experiment’ and made comments that also included the phrase.

Your real estate website, on the other hand should be focused on the people who visit - your prospective clients. Do you really think that they’d be anxious to come back to your website if every ten words on your site included your keyword or key phrase? Chances are good that your content would lose value and you would lose much of your traffic.

That’s why you should be focused on search engine optimization strategies that offer the best of both worlds: value for your visitors and appropriate content for the search engine web crawlers.

Search engine optimization is something that some “experts” will tell you that they can do for your site within a few days. They promise that they’ll go through your real estate website, identify the keywords that you should be focusing on, make a few changes to your META tags and tell you that you’re all set.

Their goal isn’t to optimize your site, their goal is to boost their profits.

Genuine search engine optimization services are offered by professionals who understand that SEO is a process.

In order to optimize your site, these pros go through and talk to you about your goals and your competitors. They look at the websites that your competitors are using and what they are doing to market those sites. They look at the opportunities that are out there that will help you to get ahead, and find those areas in your business where you’re not getting as much from your sites as you could.

More importantly, though, ‘real’ SEO professionals know that their job isn’t done until your goals are being reached. Because of this, they’ll be there, working with you, making changes as necessary and ensuring that your real estate website is getting the search engine attention it deserves.

When it comes to getting your real estate business’ presence known on the web, there are a few things that can be accepted as a given:

1. You are going to want a design that looks professional.
2. Your website has to offer something to your clients - and that means that your real estate services need to be clearly defined.
3. Your site needs to inform - the content on your site needs to provide valuable info to current and prospective clients alike.
4. Each page in your website needs to be optimized for the search engines so that people can find it.

Search engine optimization is more than just choosing the right keywords for your website and choosing the right marketing strategies for your real estate site. The reality is that SEO is a process.

The process involves analysis - both or your site and your real estate business goals and of your biggest competitors. It’s a process that involves careful planning, finding the right opportunities and taking advantage of them.

Most importantly, however, search engine optimization is a customized process designed to help you achieve your business goals - a process that’s best implemented by an experienced team.