They call it the World Wide Net, so why just concentrate your firm's search engine submissions on U.S. search engines?

The main reason to get your real estate website listed on the foreign websites is:

Good foreign search engine rankings will generate new clients!

This is especially true if your firm is located in a major metropolitan area. Here is some of the actual business created directly from our top foreign search engine rankings: Potential new immigrants, business persons considering setting up a business office, foreign nationals married to U.S. citizens considering real estate for investment, and a foreign couple whose son was going to college in San Diego and they decided to purchase a home for him as a better alternative to the dorms.

Why heed my advice? Well, let's add some real world credibility to back-up my advice. So how does our own main real estate website rank on foreign search engines? We have many number one page placements. Below are just a few of our PAGE ONE foreign search engine rankings for the very competitive phrase San Diego real estate broker on my San Diego real estate site, brokerforyou.com:

• AltaVista (Canada)

• Sympatico (Canada)

• MSN (UK)

• MSN (France)

• MSN (Germany)

• Yahoo (France)

• Yahoo (Germany)

• Yahoo (Japan)

• Google (Mexico)

• Search (UK)

• Excite (Italy)

Check today to see if your website is listed on the top foreign search engines. Perhaps the best way to obtain high foreign search engine standings is to first achieve top ranking on the major US search engines.

Before a quest for higher rankings, you should obtain a comprehensive report on your site's current page one through page three search standings. You need a base-line or starting point to see if your efforts are effective. An example of such a detailed report can be viewed here.

To enhance your report's usefulness, I would suggest that you run the same report for your biggest local real estate competitor. This report will then give you not only a benchmark but a set of goals to strive for.

The second important report you should run is a link popularity report. Good quality incoming links are vital to top search engine ranking. Here again it is imperative to run this report against your local competitors. An example of such a detailed report can be viewed here.

Investing in improving your real estate's search engines standings could become the most cost effective career investment a professional real estate agent can make.

Published: February 13, 2006

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Bob Schwartz is a Certified Residential Specialist, San Diego real estate broker & co-owner of an Internet search engine optimization firm, specializing in domain name registration and Internet domain website hosting. Bob received his BBA majoring in real estate & computer programming. Bob is an expert witness for major San Diego law firms, has served on the Consumer Affairs Community of the San Diego Association of Realtors, is past president of a local HOA and co-owner of a condominium management Co., and directs a multi-state high traffic network of legal directory sites. Visit Bob's San Diego real estate blog.