As you already know, it's of critical importance to allow visitors to your Web
site the ability to view the houses you currently have to offer.
Did you know that in some cases, you can also use these house postings to
increase your overall visibility?
Think about it. Every single page that is viewable on the Internet might be
indexable by search engines!
In other words, you can structure your individual house postings pages to
include keywords, title tags, and other important criteria that will help bring
your site higher rankings when folks search for REALTORS® in your area.
I learned this myself when I was trying to sell my own home. More on that
later.
Many REALTORS® are taking advantage of this trick to enhance their visibility
on the Web. For example, go to Infoseek and search on:
MA
Houses for Sale
One of the top ten pages returned is http://www.patfenton.com/Page29.asp.
Visit there now - see how often the words "Salem", "MA", "Massachusetts" are
used in different combinations? It's a very effective way to improve your
visibility.
It's also a very easy thing to do! For each house that you post,think of
several keywords that describe it. For example, it might be
"PA,home,ranch,Allentown." Add to the keywords "house for sale, for sale,
Allentown Realtors".
Next, ensure you've included on your page those keywords, repeated three or
four times (no, three is not a magic number) , some with capitals, some without.
Add descriptive text to your title tag. Instead of "MLS #4920584", put
something like "Home for Sale in Allentown, PA - Ranch, hot tub and more."
Vary the home postings. Put "Homes for sale" in the title (i.e. plural), in
others, use "Houses," etc.
The key to improving your rankings in search engines is to view each page on your site as one more opportunity for people to find you. Varying the keywords, the title tags, the content, etc., will all contribute towards bringing qualified customers to your site.
Does it work? Yes. My house postings were done last July. Although the home has
been sold, I left it alone just to see what would happen. The results are
surprising.
If you go to Altavista and search on:
warren nj home
You'll see many different pages that all point to my main house site.
And you can still see their rankings today.
Published: March 3, 1999
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