The Great Estate Agent Website Race

Last weekend was the first F1 race of the 2010 season. As I sat watching the race, my mind was clearly still thinking about work as I was struck by the similarities of the real world F1 battle for pole position and those of the virtual, with the battle for page one ranking on Google for our estate agent clients. I am always trying to find ways of making the most complex subjects, easier to understand, so using my analogy I'm trying to show how important position one placement is for an estate agents website.

You may have seen from the race that Alonso's Ferrari started in third position but with some tactical driving on the first bend saw him pass his team mate Massa followed by Vettel's mechanical issues saw him take the lead and finish in first place. Showing you don't always have to be in pole position to win the race.

Think about it like this, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) uses a similar strategy, our aim, when building any website for one of our estate agent clients, is to ensure that the website is ranked on page one for its given search term. This is within the first 10 positions, sound familiar? F1 qualifying determines the top 10 drivers... As Google does when the user searches for a give search term, and the higher you are up the grid the better your chances are of finishing first and being clicked on by a potential customers.

So here is where we start, in the pits, preparing your website to have the tactical strategies built in to ensure your website performs well in Google. This part of it isn't really relevant to you as "the driver", as the technical engineering is up to your pit crew team (Resource Techniques).

Once we have finished with the engineering (architecturally structuring your website), changing the tyres (indexing your website) and filling the petrol tank (filling the website up with relevant content) it is now for you to shift into first gear and put your foot down as the race is on.

Even though some of your competition may be older and wiser which inevitably gives them the edge as they are better known for good performance and already have lots of fans, this doesn't mean you can't catch up with them and steal their fans away...

So good luck with the race, remember "new relevant content" is a very important part in the race, refilling your tank full of content will ensure your website keeps improving in position, getting you ever closer to the position one spot!

By Luke Stanley
SEO Consultant.