A Word on Internet Search Engine Ranking

I thought I’d shout out my two cents on Internet search engines such as Yahoo, Google, AOL, Etc। and fill you in on some of the quirks of getting your name out there (primarily Google). Now, I’m no expert but I was in the Information Technology business for about 17 years so I can speak with some clarity of thought on a really good day.

There three places your website address can appear on a search engine when someone does a search, Right smack in the middles of the search results, on the right or at the highlighted area at the top. Ideally you want your website to come up in the main body of the search results near the top because everyone seas it and its FREE! The results to the right and at the very top are Pay Per Click results. That is someone is paying Google or yahoo money EVERYTIME someone clicks on one of those links (great way to get back at your local Mega Agent aye! Not really because they can tell when you are just trying to run up someone’s bill and have safeguards in place thank goodness).

So on the subject of Pay Per Click advertising। Seems in Google’s case it was great there for a while. I could almost always guaranty to get my ad placed on the first page on the right every time if not at the top pay spot. Then Google went and changed up the way they select your ad for display when someone searches on one of your predefined search terms called key words. In an attempt (they say) to make the ads they present more meaningful to the searcher, they basically implemented some twisted unfathomable criteria between the words you specify as your key words and the relevancy of your site to those key words.

So for instance under the old way I would specify “Lake Wylie Waterfront” as a keyword term that when someone searches that term my ad appears on the first page to the right or on top. Well that worked just great with a bid of say $1 a click. Now under the new criteria they actually disable that search term for me because they say it isn’t relevant. Ok so why? Good question and they will tell you conflicting answers as to why. One, either shorten the search term (I did “LakeWylie”) or make it more specific “Lake Wylie Real Estate Agent” so that your web page is more relevant. OK number one didn’t work. They still disabled that one in a few moments after I created the new shorter term. As for “Lake Wylie Real Estate Agent” they disabled that one and told be that was better but still not relevant. As for the relevancy of my site, well hell I’m a realtor and there isn’t anything on Lake Wylie BUT homes. So how could my site NOT be relevant? So I tried “Lake Wylie Real Estate Agent who lives at 555 some street and has brown hair and blue eyes and goes by the name of Kevin J. Graham” and again no dice. I called them and got the run around and re-read all the hints and tricks they had posted which make no sense to the average bit head. Now the good news is you CAN get your site right up there at the top with just about any key words you specify as long as you pledge $5 per click. Chump change right!

Yahoo on the other hand works splendidly on a cost per click basis for some reason except that only something like less than 22% of the folks in theUnitedState us it।

So how else do you get your website to come up on search engines like Google right in the meat of the search results on the first page? Beware of the myriad of sites out there that will “List” your site with all of the search engines and make all sorts of promises to get your site at the top of the search engine results। Most are just a scam or just don’t work as advertised. A better use of your time and money is to get there yourself. It will take some time no doubt but what have you got to lose and you may even meet some great people in the process that can help you with leads.

How do you do that? You have to understand a little about web crawlers or spiders (not the real life variety but the virtual critters in cyberspace). These are programs the search engines use to scan the Internet for websites and content. They will do this several different ways. When a domain name like http://www.abetterhomebroker.com/ is created the search engine will go to that page and do a scan of it’s content and linked pages। Here they will find all of the neat keywords on your page as well as some that are hidden from your view (known as Meta Tags) and stick that in a huge database. That’s grand and all but unfortunately there is probably a thousand other sites that contain the exact keywords your site does. Think how many sites have the word “Real Estate” on them or in them! Well so you’re in their database but then how does the search engine decide who to pick to come up on a search of Real Estate Professionals in your area? That’s a secret that no search engine company is going to give up because it’s their bread and butter. The best way you can get your site to become more relevant to the various search engines is to be popular on the internet as well as relevent.

Well darn it, how do you become popular (get run over by Britney Spears maybe)? Try this, type in a search term for your area like “Lake Wylie Real Estate” or “Long Island Homes”. Who do you see on the first page? Probably the larger brokerages or the mega-agents in your area. Why did they show up at the top of the search results? For the most part, they are really popular because they have many links from other sites to theirs. So when one of these web spider crawlers hits some site like yellowpages.com or somemortagecompany.com that has a link to mega-agent.com, one of the spider follows the link and counts up the number of times it finds a reference to mega-agent.com on the Internet. Add to that some other mysterious criteria like cross referencing those hidden site words (Meta Tags) of all the related sites with links to mega-agent.com and wha-la mega-agent.com is a relevant website to present to the searcher that searched on “Lake Wylie Real Estate”. So you obviously want to have a link to your site in as many places as possible that are relevant to your business. Having the World Wide Wrestling Federation link to your page might not carry much weight with the search engines though a lot of funny country speaking people may call you wanting a single wide with a view (no offense to anyone that thinks wrestling is real). But when you advertise in the local paper or Homaramma weekly they usually have a web site with a link to yours because that’s the big thing now. On a side note, pretty soon a lot of these hard copy periodicals will probably go by the wayside or jump to being purely virtual advertisers. So since these folks are very relevant to your business the search engine will score that relationship higher.
So then you have to advertise with the hard copy guys to get the Internet to recognize your value. Well yes and no. It’s a good idea to have some local advertising because it does generate leads and occasionally sells one of your listing. The problem is, it’s really really expensive so mega-agent is kinda crowding you out and they have more links just by virtue of having more paid advertising than you do. But that’s ok because this is where you will even up the score a little bit. You have a bit more time on your hands anyway so try a couple of these:

1. Put your site on Craigslist.org in the relevant category or categories. Definitely list your homes for sale there.
2. Create a blog on every free blog site you can find and reference your site http://www.abetterhomebroker.com/ in every article you write.
3. Post comments on relevant sites that list your website address.
4. Get some of your local small businesses to buy into the idea of putting links to your page and vice versa so that a little web ring of cozy goodness is created in your area.
5. Reciprocate with Mortgage Brokers for links to your page.
6. Do what ever you can to get your site address on as many places as possible.

It will take some time but I bet it helps. You can find a few free web ranking sites out there that will search for keywords you specify in order to determine how many spots down on a search page you will appear. I’m currently trying Web Ceo. Some people say using these programs can actually hurt your site ranking but then again what have you got to lose right? Web Ceo says it won’t because the search engine will never know you asked for your site ranking information. Anyway it’s one way to gauge how your website is performing in terms of popularity.
Do try the pay-per-click advertising and see how it works for you because your area may be different and everyone’s web page is different। My guess is that the better your web page performs in a search the better your pay-per-clicks will result in valuable leads and the less you will have to pay per click.

Kevin Graham
http://www.ABetterHomeBroker.com