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