You may want to add a new link to your Navigation or promote the fact that visitors can now search for foreclosures on your website. Another strategy may be to add a page on your site specific to foreclosures and/or create a quick search form that will allow visitors to start searching from there (the latter will take some programming knowledge or you can hire us to help). Here are a couple examples: Coldwell Banker Grass Roots Realty and TopSpaces.com.

Many buyers and investors are looking to search for foreclosures and short sales due to their perception that these will offer them great deals. You may also want to look at anyone who has signed up for listing notifications of these types of properties and notify them of properties that are not necessarily foreclosures but simply well priced homes.

Basically anyone who has downloaded this free application can pull up a map, based on where they are standing (or driving) and it will display the typical information that you find on Zillow. This includes homes for sale (as well as the usual Zestimates, sold history, etc). If someone is out and about and sees a house for sale, they can simply click the app and it will automatically determine where they are standing (using GPS) and let them know what the listing price is for any homes around them, provided the agent took the time to get that information on Zillow. You can even see additonal photos that have been uploaded.

I would imagine savvy home sellers will know of this application as well and expect you to be keeping their listing data updated in Zillow so they get this additional exposure. For more information about this new application visit the following pages.

• Zillow’s New iPhone Application
• May 12th Update on Zillow’s iPhone Popularity
• Download the App

“For real estate professionals, Zillow Advice offers another free way to promote your services to local home buyers and sellers. If you read a few Discussions and Answer a few Questions you’ll get the hang of it quickly. My tip for real estate pro’s is to subscribe to e-mail or RSS alerts for topics and locations you specialize in. And be sure to fill out your profile page so people know how to reach you if they like your advice!”

Similarly, if you were not already aware, Trulia offers this service as well called “Trulia Voices.” If you have not done so already, we would strongly recommend establishing accounts with both of these services and responding to questions as often as possible. We would also recommed setting up a Google Analytics account (or similar stat tracking account) to determine how much traffic these sites are referring to you.

Article: “SEM Bootcamp: How Search Engines See Keywords“

Want to show up higher in results on search engines like Google? We can help. Zillow has a lot of “Google Juice” and we want to share it with you. By using Zillow and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you, too, can boost your Google search results.

Don’t be scared – it’s pretty easy.

Here are 3 tips:

1. Post your listings on Zillow with good links to your site – Zillow is one of very few sites where your listings actually improve your Google ranking. To enjoy this, make sure your listings on Zillow link to your Web site – preferably with links to the exact listing pages on your site.
2. Join the Zillow Professional Directory – When you create an active profile on Zillow, it will automatically load into our “Find a Pro” directory. Make sure the link to your Web site from the Zillow Directory is accurate so your ranking on Google improves. Join the Directory
3. Update and optimize your Zillow Profile – Complete or update the “About Me” section of your Zillow Profile. In your description, use keywords that you want to be recognized for in Google and link those words to your Web site or blog. By using links to your Web site within Zillow, your profile gains authority in the search engines. Update My Profile

Bottom line: The more active you are on Zillow – through your listings, profile, directory, or discussions – the better your Web site or blog performs. Learn more about how to ensure that your listings are helping you to rank in Google.

As always, thanks for using Zillow.

We want to thank Zillow for allowing us to reprint this information on our site.

In addition to helping your site possibly rank better due to the inbound links, there are several other benefits as well.  You are helping your seller get better exposure for their property and visitors who find your listing on Zillow’s site can click through to your website – increasing your traffic. In the upcoming weeks we plan to expand more on this subject so check back in the next few weeks for updates.

You may want to spend the extra money and have a professionally produced video that you can use to promote yourself. This is just one more way visitors to your site can ‘connect’ with you before actually meeting with you, helping you stand out from others. See the video below for an example.

There may be some videos on YouTube that you can embed on your site to help showcase an area. There are a few sites I know of that link to this video about Tahoe.

It may take a little time to learn how to do a ‘great job’ at posting your own videos, but this is a trend that is only going to get more popular and can more than likely benefit your overall business. There are several companies that can help you produce your video or even shoot and host it for your. One such popular full service company is Turn Here. If anyone has had a positive experience with a web video company and would like to share them with others, let us know and we will add them here.

For visitors who are not up to speed with RSS feeds, offer them an alternative to receive updates via email. There are a few different services that will allow visitors to sign up to receive your new posts by email. Two very popular and free services are Feedburner and Zookoda. Feedburner, which is owned by Google, manages your RSS feed and sends your visitors emails daily (if you have posted something new to your site). They also offer a wealth of stats on items such as who has subscribed to your feed, what articles they have clicked, etc.

Zookoda uses your blogs rss feed and gives you a little more flexibility by allowing you to choose which posts to send out, as well as when to send your ‘email newsletter’. The best option would be to have a Feedburner account to manage your feed and use Zookoda to have more control over the look and delivery of your email newsletter.

For more information on these services and what they can offer you, visit their respective ‘About’ pages:
About Feedburner
About Zookoda

For an example, just look for the ‘ShareThis’ button at the end of this article.

Most sites that rank well have a few things in common, plenty of ‘relevant’ content for the search engines to index, many other websites linking to them (the more popular the website, the more valuable the link), and to some degree ‘age’. Getting other people to link to you is a topic for another post. For now, we want to focus on letting you know what you can do on your site to improve your odds.

First, lets take a quick look at what search engines will be primarily looking at on your website.

• The official ‘Title’ of your page. Does the Title include the keyword phrase you are trying to rank for?
• The Meta Description of your page. This is found in the html code and is what shows under the Title of your website on the search engine result pages. Does your description include the phrase you are trying to rank for?
• Keywords. Although, this is thought to be of little value to search engines. Some believe it is not used at all.
• Content. Does the content support the claim that your Title makes about what can be found on this page? Is there just a brief amount of copy or does the page contain significant content about your subject?
• Links. Are links on your pages descriptive of what can be found on your site?

SEO Sreenshot Overview

The Title (50 characters or so) is what people see first when scanning the search engine result pages, so you want this to grab their attention and make them want to click through to your site. Just under the title is your meta description (140 characters or so). The meta description should be a more detailed explanation of what can be found on your page as this will be the second thing visitors look at if they are not convinced by your title or any other title they see.

SEO Results Screenshot

So, when writing a post for your site, be sure to keep these items in mind. This is by no means a complete list and if anyone wants to offer other suggestions we will gladly add them (provided we can find some supporting data).

• Determine what keyword phrases you anticipate people will use when searching for sites like yours. Keep the phrase short and specific to what you want to rank for, but not too specific so that no one ever enters that phrase. Don’t hurry through this step, take the time to pick the best phrases. Use different pages, such as Neighborhood profile pages, to target more specific keyword phrases. To help research this consider using Google Adwords Keyword Tool and / or SEO Book’s keyword suggestion tool.
• Include the keyword phrase you wish to be found for in the Title of your page / post. By default, your WordPress website will display the Title of your page / post in the Title bar of the browser.
• Include your keyword phrase in the meta description of your page. By default, WordPress doesn’t give you a way to edit the description on your site. If you are interested in manipulating your Title and Description, we suggest the All in One SEO Plugin. You can find a link to this plugin on our Top Plugins page.
• Include the keyword phrase in the body of your page. Try to write about 200-300 words in each post. Include your keywords at least 2-3 times on the page (but don’t overdo this and don’t make it look forced). For a great explanation on how this works, be sure to read this article “SEM Bootcamp: How Search Engines See Keywords“.
• When linking to other pages on your site use keyword phrases in your link text. For example, if you are writing about the real estate market in Roseville and wanted to link to an existing page on your site about Roseville Foreclosures – create a link to your foreclosure page using the keyword phrase Roseville Foreclosures rather than …. for Roseville Foreclosures click here. Don’t overdo this, keep your links to 2-3 per post.

Again, these suggestions are the basic strategy you want to keep in mind as you add content to your site. We can’t stress enough that you don’t want to obsess with this, and your primary focus should be on writing great content that visitors will find useful and informative. By providing great, relevant content, search engine rankings should improve naturally and visitors will want to keep coming back.

Resources:

• Google’s SEO Starter Guide – Google has done a nice job of explaining the basic best practices of on-site optimization. Since this is published by Google themselves, it will help give you peace of mind that these are acceptable things you should do. Be sure to download and read the “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide” found on their SEO Starter Guide page.
• SEO 101 by Website Helpers – This goes over the basics of search engine optimization then discusses in more detail. The table of contents is located on the left side of the page so you can easily jump to the section you are most interested in if you don’t want to read it all.
• Search Engine Ranking Factors – Several search engine optimization professionals discuss their opinion regarding the effectiveness of over 50 different criteria that search engines consider.