Web sites Helping Newly Licensed Agents Outsell Veteran Brokers

RISMEDIA, Dec. 7 — The years 2003-2005 were banner years for real estate sales. Record-low interest rates combined with moderate to strong job markets created a supply/demand balance resulting in the fair market value of homes nearly doubling in many regions across the United States.

Add to this the exceptional number of active Realtors and you have got a story reminiscent of the mid 1980s. But two decades later, there is a new twist in the form of Web sites that help newly licensed agents outsell 10-year veteran brokers.

Based on information gleaned from top industry associations it appears one thing will remain consistent regardless of market conditions: Those Realtors with the greatest Internet visibility will be in the best position to prosper. For example:

* Homebuyers used the Internet more than other media to search for homes; Internet usage for searching was 71%, which is more then used newspapers (41%), home book or magazines (24%), Television (17%). (NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers 2003)

* Homebuyers who search for homes online are more likely than other buyers to use a real estate professional to buy their home. (NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers 2003)

* Homebuyers, who found an agent online, were more satisfied with their agents than traditional buyers in all aspects of the home buying process. (CAR Internet Versus Traditional Buyers Study 2003)

With over half of all Web traffic coming from search engines the problem becomes the solution – at least for those with the money to hire search engine optimization (SEO) consultants. Unfortunately this can be an expensive undertaking and finding SEO experts who specialize in real estate Web optimization is a rarity. It was for this reason ‘SEO Answer Book; Special Edition – Website Optimization for Real Estate Professionals’ was created.

Researched and written as a joint effort between real estate professionals and SEO experts with minimum five years specializing in real estate web optimization, SEO Answer Book; Special Edition tackles scores of challenging issues facing real estate Website owners everyday, such as…

* How to get the fastest results without compromise

* Why most people fail at SEO and how to avoid these pitfalls

* How to quickly find the best SEO strategy for any Website

With hardcover and soft cover editions available in bookstores beginning February 2006, advance copies of this 162-page soft cover edition ($19.99) are available now on Amazon.com and at the publisher’s expedited order site; www.SEOAnswerBook.com.

To facilitate the need for fast delivery, SEO Answer Book offers five shipping methods and is available for immediate download as a limited edition electronic book ($12.21). Both editions are available at www.SEOAnswerBook.com.

As a regular author on a leading SEO specialty blog (SEOPartner.com), I have the unique opportunity of corresponding with some of the greatest search engine optimization minds on the planet. Many of them provide outstanding tips. Recently I came across ten that could make or break your ranking. I’ve been given permission to share them in this article, so here we go…

Buyer Beware! Choose your web hosting company carefully. Be aware of the following:
1. Avoid free hosting, since search engines don’t like it.
2. Make sure the IP address of your future server is static, meaning that it doesn’t change over time. Some top engines don’t like changing IP’s due to numerous technical problems that often result.
3. Don’t host with companies that host banned websites, such as spammers or pornography. Search engines might penalize, or ban you for being associated with such sites.
4. If you are seriously considering getting good search engine rankings, you need to have a private static IP address.

Linker Beware! Watch for the following scams and pitfalls when reciprocal linking (a.k.a. doing a link exchange):
5. A site might link back to you, but then get rid of the link, or move it to a different part on their site, that isn’t ranked as highly.
6. A Webmaster might place a “rel=nofollow” attribute in his ling to you, which makes a spider ignore the link when crawling the page.
7. Your link might be placed on a link page that exists on the site’s server, but doesn’t have a link from the actual site to it. That way a spider is highly unlikely to reach it. And if it does, due to manual submitting for example, it will not give it a high rank, no matter how popular the main page is.
8. Some webmasters will point the link to a script on their page that will redirect to your site. Since spiders don’t read scripts, this link is useless SEO-wise.
9. When purchasing links, some sites will place the link on every page of their site. Google has recently begun ignoring such schemes.

Think Before You Link…Most current search engines analyze your inbound links before considering them. Many will give links that contain a string after "?" only a fraction of their normal importance, since these are often used in commercial affiliate linking. URLs with longer strings may even be ignored entirely.

Search engines work hard to ensure people cannot buy link popularity through offering affiliate promotions, or purchase advertising on other sites.

10. If your website is dynamic, it might make sense to create a separate page for each logical section of your site, rather than using URL string identifiers.

These tips came from some of the best SEO pros I have ever dealt with. For any of them who may be reading this I offer my sincere thanks for sharing this incredible information.