Search Engine Optimisation for estate agents websites |
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| Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) focuses on helping Google and the other search engines to find your estate agent website. |
| Many estate agents and lettings agents simply rely on property portals for internet marketing.
It is certainly true that if you pay your money, your properties will be listed, but with time, effort and a little patience,
you can boost the position of your own website in the search engine listings. |
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| By improving the SEO of your estate agent website you will dramatically increase the chances
of reaching new buyers and sellers. However, if you choose to ignore search engine optimisation, it is likely that your local competition isn’t.
You may well be handing this competition a large chunk of your website traffic and the increased opportunities that this may bring to your estate agency.
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| There are two main areas of SEO that Property-Mate can help you with: On Site Search Engine Optimisation and Off Site Search Engine Optimisation. |
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On Site Search Engine Optimisation |
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| We can help you to optimise the following key areas of your website . . . |
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| Keyword selection |
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| We recommend that you spend time researching which keywords and phrases you intend to use for each page. |
| Google provides a great tool to assist in the selection of keywords, with information as to the likely amount of traffic and competition. |
| We can help with the deployment of keywords and advise on keyword prominence, proximity and density. |
| We can also offer advice on the pitfalls of keyword cramming and how to avoid penalties from Google. |
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| Page Title |
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| The most important 1 line summary of a page and essential to get right for the following reasons: |
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The title carries the highest weighting in the Google algorithm. |
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The title is the clickable link in the Search results and directory listings. |
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The title appears in the top bar of internet browser windows. |
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| The page title should be unique for each page on a website and be about 65 characters in length. |
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| Meta Description |
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| The Meta Description is used to provide a brief synopsis of the page, building on the information from the Title.
This description also appears in the search results below the page title link, so it is worth the time spent writing something that will
encourage a potential visitor to click on the link. |
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| Page Content |
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| We can advise on how to optimise and structure your page content to maximum effect. |
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| It is important to retain control and ownership of your property details.
If your estate agency has gone to the trouble in describing the properties, then it should be your estate agency
that benefits from this content. If property details are embedded into the property search pages from companies such as Vebra,
you will gain no benefit from this content. The same holds true If your estate agency links to an page on one of the portals
that holds your property details. |
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| At Property-Mate, the property search pages and property details are on the same server as the rest of the website.
This will be to your advantage. |
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Off Site Search Engine Optimisation |
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| This area of optimising your website is mostly concerned with link building.
Google in particular regards a link to your website as a vote for your website from another website.
This helps to determine the PageRank* of your pages and is one of the corner-stones of the Google algorithm. |
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| Link Building |
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| It is important to consider the relevance of the websites that link back to your estate agent website - It would help if they are property related |
| PageRank is also important, there will be little advantage in websites linking to your website that have a PageRank of 0.
Ideally, inbound links to your estate agent website should have a PageRank of 3 or more. |
| Link farms should be avoided - ie websites set up for the sole purpose of linking to other websites. |
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| Business Blogs and Press Releases |
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| Blogs can be very attractive to search engines as they are constantly refreshed with new content.
It is worth creating accounts for your estate agency with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Uploading blogs on a regular basis, with links back to your website is definitely worth the extra effort.
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It is important to treat search engines as friends, not enemies.
An initial foray into Search Engine Optimisation may feel like opening Pandora's box, unleashing the unspeakable horrors that lie within.
But before you close the box and hoof it into the long grass, bear in mind that when Pandora closed the box, she trapped hope inside.
Her website - www.cyprus-villas-4U.com is now off-line. |
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| A Property-Mate website is built the solid foundations required to launch a successful SEO campaign. |
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| * PageRank is named after one of the founders of Google - Larry Page, rather than the pages themselves. |
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