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What Would You Do? (SEO Advice)

by Rich Stevens
11 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have been learning SEO for a couple of months now and I realize that it constantly changes... things that worked in the past do not work as well today. I have a good friend that is a real estate agent and he wants me to help him rank on keywords that are related to our local real estate market.

The keywords we are focusing on are not very competitive (we have about 30,000 in our town), but there is some competition from other real estate agents. Where would you focus your efforts for something like this? We have been focusing on the on-page factors lately (keyword density, title tags, meta tags... etc), but our rankings are not increasing. So what would you do? What would be your next step to get a local professional to rank?

Is there a certain process you use? For instance: on-page factors -> submit to search engines -> article marketing -> social media/ bookmarks -> etc...

What is worth my time? Any advice would be much appreciated.
#advice #seo
  • Profile picture of the author BoiseMarketer
    You say you "have been focusing" on certain keyword phrases. How much time has elapsed that you have been focusing on them?

    Are we talking hours, days, weeks, or months?
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    • Profile picture of the author Rich Stevens
      Originally Posted by JordanBills View Post

      You say you "have been focusing" on certain keyword phrases. How much time has elapsed that you have been focusing on them?

      Are we talking hours, days, weeks, or months?

      We are talking weeks.

      The site has plenty of content as compared to everyone else in the market, so I believe it has something to do with off-page factors. I just wander where my time would be most wisely spent.
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      • Profile picture of the author johnsamuels
        offsite factors are 85% of the game, onsite just makes offsite work a little easier.

        SEO changes, but some things don't. Frequently updated relevant unique content, and content relevant inbound links, get those two right and you will win. Google will always value the above two factors.

        Oh and SEO is a game played over months and years, not days and weeks.
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        • Profile picture of the author Rendix
          Rich,

          Has your client considered/written a press release?

          Sounds like you need more time if it's only been a few weeks, and perhaps more quality backlinks?

          In my experience, Google updates my pages on a bi-weekly basis.

          Being in real estate I am sure this site has a ton of images. Are all of the images atrributes properly tagged?
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  • Profile picture of the author Mickm
    How often is Google checking your page?

    The Google cache tool is great for checking previous versions of your site (or how Google currently thinks it looks).

    It is possible to over-engineer a site, for example if you suddently have the same keyphrase plastered in your title, meta, headings and copy then Google may think you're trying to influence the SERPs.

    You can get away with doing this and reap the rewards, but do it slowly.. very slowly.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sebulba
    Wow! there is a lot to this, thanks for all of the info.

    Seb
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    • Profile picture of the author goldon
      I would like to know, is it advisable to submit my domain name to the search engines if I have setup it up to redirect to another domain name?

      regards
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      • Profile picture of the author goldon
        Maybe I should have said "Forwarded".
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      • Profile picture of the author askloz
        no need to submit your site to search engines, they'll crawl it any way

        Originally Posted by goldon View Post

        I would like to know, is it advisable to submit my domain name to the search engines if I have setup it up to redirect to another domain name?

        regards
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        • Profile picture of the author dotslash
          It is possible to over-engineer a site, for example if you suddently have the same keyphrase plastered in your title, meta, headings and copy then Google may think you're trying to influence the SERPs.
          I'd echo this advice - if you over optimise your site/page it won't rank anywhere - I've done a lot of testing on this. The best method I have found is too gradually tweak a site and make on-page changes slowly - try to use related keywords instead of stuffing your targeted one in too much.

          But off site link building is essential and can have dramatic results. I have squeeze pages where I have completely ignored the on page stuff but linked with anchor text - they nearly always achieve decent rankings on the anchor text keywords, of course when they do tweaking some on page gives more of a boost.

          The amount you need to do of course varies enormously on the niche words you are targeting. It helps to keep a check on your competition - use something like seoquake snap-in for firefox to see the PR, IB links etc of your competition - you'll often find you can replicate their success and overtake

          I don't think there is a set SEO plan you can apply to any specific area - all seem to vary in my experience but the general principles apply across the board - good content, natural targeting and backlinks.

          Neil
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  • Profile picture of the author CTABUK
    What a great deal of site owners forget is to also link out to relative sites within your niche. Linking out is a fundamental aspect of SEO/SEM and it will increase your 'cache' results too.
    Take it steady though, you cannot rush Google. Once a month add a decent link out, especially to government related sites dealing with real estate.
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