Real Estate SEO and Technology Blog

Website Designers vs. Real Estate SEO Experts
Agents making a 6 digit income from their website understand that what makes them money are website designers who design the website and the real estate SEO experts that market the website. Each is a specialty in and of themselves. The website designer can design the website to look professional with all its graphics, text, links and databases. But without the real estate SEO expert, it is just a pretty website adrift in the ocean. The real estate SEO expert takes the website and through the manipulation of source code and keyword phrases makes it “search engine friendly” so that it pops up on the top of the major search engine.

Template Websites
Template websites are typically less expensive (but not necessarily) than custom websites. It depends on what bundle of features you end up adding on. While most template websites are less expensive (some as little as $200 up front) they can look like a “canned” website with no individual personality. If you are contemplating a template website company there are some questions you need to ask before you plunk down your money:

1. If they build your website, who ultimately owns it? (They do of course) But your question must go deeper. What about the content that you add, or the pages that you add? Do you own those? (If you decide to change website companies down the road can you take all this hard work that you’ve done)
2. Do you have access to IDX, or the ability to add my MLS directly as a link to my website?
3. Can I access my listings myself and make changes to pricing, solds, new listings or delete them myself?
4. What “dynamic page” features do they offer such as calculator page, mortgage finder page, relocation package, free reports, contact page, etc.
5. What marketing features do they offer such as auto-response forms, free newsletters and/or drip marketing campaigns?
6. What kind of content material assistance is there and/or how much does it cost?
7. What kind of technical support is there and what are the hours.

Real Estate SEO Questions
After deciding on who can design your website, let’s go back to them and ask the most important questions. Those that will either get you found by the search engines or will block you:

1. Has your company ever been or is it now blacklisted by Google or any of the major search engines?
2. Can I modify or can I have a 3^rd party modify my source code for real estate SEO purposes?
3. Can my Title Code be modified for my home page and each of my “static” pages?
4. Do you offer a Traffic Analyzer tool such as Google Analytics?
5. Do you personalize my keyword phrases to me and my specialties?
6. What Web 2.0 features do you offer (blogs, podcasts, etc.)
7. Do you provide articles and press release promotions?
8. Does the website have a “static” or a “clean” IP address?
9. Do you provide social bookmarking
10. Will your website have personalized site mapping?

What Good Is Your Website if It Can’t Be Found?
Answer these questions before you get started with your website and you can’t go wrong. Or if you already have a website it is better to fix it while you can than wait until later.