"Your area + real estate"

**Real Estate Forum** · 01-29-2005, 06:45 PM

is what you guys want to rank for, right?

The more local web sites add you on their pages and the more real estate webmasters feature you somewhere where the content is predominantly real estate, the better are your chances to move up.

**HHI Golf Guy** · 01-30-2005, 02:16 PM

I would say that in 99.9% of the markets, "your city" + "real estate" is the most popular search term. Other popular. common phrases are:

your city + state abbreviation + real estate
your city + full state name + real estate
your city + mls
your city + homes
your city + realtor
your city + real estate agent

In most markets, phrases like your city + homes for sale and your city + relocation yield much fewer searches.

Of course, you can verify the most popular with Wordtracker.

Once we optimize for the real estate terms, we work on optimizing for the city itself. It's a lot more work, but can lead to conversions.

We also optimize pages for each of the residential community names in the markets of our clients, as well as local weather conditions and annual average temperatures. These usually bring nice bonus visitors, especially in our home market - a prime resort area.

By now we have built 100-200 local content pages. We strengthen this local theme with additional local information including attractions, arts, golf, government, schools, recreation, etc.

Optimizing for your city is very tough and time consuming because you need to develop original content. Sure, it's easy to copy content from another web site or magazine, but that can get you in trouble with copyright laws and duplicate content penalties. That's why we also ask our realtors to provide 1-2 new articles every few weeks.

Of course, all of the SEO and great rankings in the world are useless unless you develop a solid plan to convert web surfers into prospective clients. That's the part that most people leave out - then they wonder why they have no leads

**apascu** · 02-25-2005, 09:58 AM

I've found the conversion for "mls" searches to be poor - at least I wouldn't pay PPC for them anymore because people are either a realtor if they know what mls means or they are too smart to be a legitimate lead.

'houses (for sale)' also gets some hits. In some areas, don't forget the word "condos (for sale)" and for popular areas, you can also get traffic for 'property' or 'properties (for sale)'

**STVP** · 02-25-2005, 12:16 PM

doesn't mls mean "multi leg spider"

real estate property, homes,houses, ect... i think that is what people are looking for and please no guest books.

STVP

**HHI Golf Guy** · 02-25-2005, 12:46 PM

Originally Posted by apascu

I've found the conversion for "mls" searches to be poor - at least I wouldn't pay PPC for them anymore because people are either a realtor if they know what mls means or they are too smart to be a legitimate lead.

PPC for MLS is usually a waste of money. It's much easier to optimize for your city + MLS. Besides, even with only 1 conversion a year it's "free income". In other words, you didn't have to work to get that listing or market it.

If you have the right sales and marketing strategy you can live off of MLS sales.

**Las Vegas Homes** · 02-25-2005, 02:51 PM

Yes your city plus real estate is what every agent that has a site wants to be ranked for. There are also a few others such as city plus homes, city plus condos and if you work for like Century 21 that plus your city. You also want to include in all those for sale as well.

**HMiller** · 02-25-2005, 03:48 PM

Wouldn't optimizing for city + real estate, city + homes,... already optimize for just the city? Or is there more optimizing that can be done? I've found that on my pages whether i'm optimizing for city + real estate, city + homes or city + any other term I'm also having just the city mentioned numerous times.

**HHI Golf Guy** · 02-25-2005, 08:10 PM

Originally Posted by HMiller

Wouldn't optimizing for city + real estate, city + homes,... already optimize for just the city? Or is there more optimizing that can be done?

Ay, there's the rub. Optimizing for a city is much tougher. Depending upon how many competing web sites there are, you need a lot more information and a lot more pages as well as more inbound links with the city name.

Then again, I'm just picky. I don't consider a key phrase optimized unless it actually drives traffic to a web site.

**HMiller** · 02-25-2005, 08:20 PM

Originally Posted by HHI Golf Guy

you need a lot more information and a lot more pages as well as more inbound links with the city name.

So would having more information and pages be to add weight/authority to your site, thereby helping with the serps?

**Las Vegas Homes** · 02-25-2005, 10:17 PM

Yes content is king, but content alone does not guarantee you serps. When you create a site it is always best to write the content with the consumer in mind and not the SEs. Real estate however is a little different, most consumers only care about pictures and being able to view homes.

Content does however help with your keywords. The more content you have the more keywords you can target. That is the problem with real estate sites. Yoiu can write a ton of content and have thousands of pages, but most consumers wont even look at those pages. That is what drives me nuts. We spend hours and hours writing content on communities and offering advice, but consumers never even look at those pages at least according to our logs anyway..lol.