31
Mar
7 Deadly Sins (of SEO)
SEO for Estate Agents can be a nightmare. Trying
to get your website to the top of Google can seem long and tedious
journey but once you start to understand the principles of a Search
Engine you may start to realise what an exciting journey it really
is making it ever easier to reach your goals.
Search Engine Optimisation isn’t about
tricking the Search Engines; you have to work with them to ensure
they collect all the data they need to rank you well. On the other
hand if you miss treat your Search Engine you will be penalised for
it and get ranked badly.
These are the seven SEO mistakes you should know to ensure you
don't get penalised -
With SEO you have to understand that it isn’t a short term
process, when a new website goes live it is unknown and unranked.
First the Google crawler's have to find your page and index it,
verify it as a reliable source and once all that has been
accomplished your battle to gain page one on Google begins.
This process can take months, a realistic time line being
between 2 - 6 months before having a strong position within
Google.
Everyone wants to get to the top of Google fast but no one can
control this, not even the Google employees themselves. The only
way to get to the top is by having a better website design and SEO
team than your competitors. Who give the crawlers everything they
need to rank you well.
This may be due to laziness or you being too busy but it is a
very important factor to your website and you should make time for
this. Look at it like this Google indexes your website every time
anything new is added which shows Google that you are actually
trying to give a good service, if nothing new is added Google will
simply ignore you and only craw your site on the odd occasion. This
will bring your ranking on Google down.
Stuffing keywords means packing in as many Keywords as possible
into your content. Back in the 90's this was very popular, these
days it's just called spamming.
What you should try to do is provide good content for the user
as well as for the crawler’s. Make it clear and user friendly
and Google will reward you for this. If you get picked up on
stuffing keywords you will be penalised. Your keywords should only
be 3% - 7% of your overall content
It's understandable to want the coolest website with a lot of
flash but if you want your website to succeed you need your website
to be visible to crawler’s not just users. Web pages full of
flash will just be blank pages to all crawlers.
An estate agency in London has a very very long shot at ranking
for the phrase "Estate Agents in London", it just has too much
competition and too many big names. You need to optimize for
relevant, specific keywords that will bring targeted traffic.
Don't get jealous about your competition being ahead of you.
Your position in Google isn't going to change over night and its
going to go up and down whether you look at it or not. It is better
to spend time working on your website instead of worrying about
your ranking. Uploading new feature properties and thinking about
beneficial content will be better use of your time. And you will
move up the ranking a lot quicker this way.
Estate Agents, it’s time to repent your website design and SEO sins. Only through pure
and angelic SEO can Estate Agents reach that nirvana that is page
one position one of Google.
Not all Estate Agent websites get into heaven, will
yours?
By Luke Stanley
SEO Consultant
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