subject: How To Attract Leads For Real Estate Investing Through Search Engines [print this page] When most people want to sell their house or are looking to buy a house, they start their search on the internet. They usually start their search on the search engines.
When your website ranks higher than your competition, you get more leads and business than your competition.
This can be accomplished by optimizing your website to rank high in the search engines. This article covers how to accomplish this.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process where you optimize your website to rank in the search engines. It involves making sure your website ranks highly for selected search terms or keywords that people looking for your services are likely to search for on the internet.
The higher your keywords rank, the higher your website ranks in search results and the more leads and business you receive.
Search engine optimization involves two aspects:
1)On-Site search engine optimization
This means modifying your website to improve search engine rankings. For better ranking in the search engines, the content must be relevant to the search keywords.
You need to make sure your keywords appear in the following areas:
Title tag - the title in the meta tags must include the relevant keywords. In the search engine results, this is the part that appears in bold.
Meta description - this should be a short phrase in the meta tags, that usually appears below the bold title in search engine results. It must be friendly to read, describe your services and contain relevant keywords.
Content - Your content must contain the relevant keywords. Be careful not to stuff keywords on your website or search engines could penalize you.
Domain name - Whenever possible, having your keywords in your domain name will give you a better ranking.
2)Off-site search engine optimization
This is the second step to effective SEO. It involves building links on third party websites to your website.
The more links to your website, the more popular you are in the search engines and the higher you rank.
Building links involves writing relevant content such as
Articles - whenever you post relevant content in article directories, they allow you to put a link back to your website. Effective articles also need to have the right keywords.
Blogs - similarly, blogs and web 2.0 properties allow you to put your link when you post. Remember to submit all your blogs to RSS directories.
Directories - some classified directories are very popular with SEO.
Social bookmarks - there are hundreds of social bookmarking and article site and blogs. Search engines can index your content i=on these sites in a matter of minutes.
Press releases - press releases get your name out there and they are also important in SEO. You can get a lot of business if you do this right.
Advantages of search engine optimization
1)Little competition
Once most real estate investors get a website, they just stop there. The great majority do not even know about search engine ranking.
A one time effort can sustain you at the top of search results for years.
2)Long-term benefits
Once your website is optimized, you can continue getting visitors and business for years. Whenever people need your services, they can easily find you.
3)Low cost
The fact that search engine optimization has long term benefits makes it very affordable. Just a few hundred dollars can bring you a lot of business for years to come.
