I posted recently in the Agents forum & someone suggested I post on this one. I updated my website early this year & I still don't get any leads. I have changed my keywords etc. & nothing helps. I constantly read how many agents get leads from their site & how many do work on their site on their own. I wish I would be able to hire someone to assist me but I don't know where to go. I don't want to pay $3k for year around assistance, I just would like to get to the problem & learn how to get my site out there.
Please look at my site & let me know what you suggest.

Thanks.

The "link:http://www.zmiamirealestate.com" is showing no links to your site. The greyed out Page Rank in the Google Toolbar is also suggesting that Google is not counting any of your links.

As a start I would suggest that you set up a Google Webmaster Tools account for your site at Google and see what info they really have on your site. The true number of links they are counting will show up there and also any problems they see with your site may be noted there.

Until that issue is "fixed" there is no point trying "tweak" keywords etc.

I hope that helps.

I'm with Doug in one respect, but want to suggest a different "immediate gratification" option. Before I say what it is, let me argue my case:

Getting links, and "tweaking" your SEO efforts is great, but how do you know what keywords to optimize your site for? Rather than spending another minute on SEO, I'd suggest investing in buying traffic to your site. Otherwise, you're putting the cart before the horse.

Sign up for Adwords, bid $1 per click, and get a couple hundred visitors to your site for the term [Miami FL real estate] (or whatever city you choose.

Guess what -- if you burn through $200 and don't get at least one solid lead (or a dozen solid requests for information), you'll know that you need to work on your site's conversion before you proceed any further with SEO.

Free traffic is great, but all the free traffic in the world won't help a site that doesn't convert visitors into leads.

Good luck!

Doug:

I'm not making sense of what you said. Google is indexing about 131 of her pages. She very well could have no one linking to her site, and still rank high for certain keywords in Google SERP. Here are some things she can and should do now:

1. On your home page you have massive amounts of javascripting for almost your entire content. *Currently* the major search engines aren't going to crawl that particular content, so you get no credit there.

2. Your home page title relevancy is at 65%, since very little of your content is being counted (javascript content on home page).

3. You won't reap any SEO benefits from Mydx either. Mydx is better than nothing but search engines don't crawl that content and give you credit for it because it's not your content.

4. For the listings that were physically on your site (featured listings) absolutely none of them had any alt tag info. On your home page alone you had 13 alt tags with 12 missing.

5. Saw use of Iframes on your site (your blog). You're not getting credit for the blog on your site, at least not *from* your site. With all of the free software that's out there, you could be doing your blog on your site instead of Iframing it out.

6. The only use of H1, H2, etc. tags I saw on your site were only for the price of the homes. That does absolutely no good.

7. You have waaaaaaay too many meta keywords and have bogged down your home page keyword relevancy to 13%.

If you don't know what the above things are, you're going to have to either learn, or hire someone to fix them (that's not an offer for solicitation. I simply give expert advice here and try to get you on the right track.)

Regards,
Mark

Sure, long tail keywords may not require links but also don't bring a lot of the type of traffic that become leads compared to the competitive real estate keywords. Any real estate keywords that are even remotely competitive and have some potential to drive measurable targeted traffic would require links to rank well in Google. Especially when the target market is a major center like Miami with lots of highly competition.

If Google is ignoring all of the site's links that is evidence of what most consider to be a major problem that should be a top priority.

Also, Joel's advice is excellent.Adwords should be used to determine how users react to your site.

Nowadays, even ranking #1 for competitive keywords may not bring the type of results enjoyed even a few months ago. Google has moved their adwords in from the edge of the page so they are now right beside the organic search results and these are taking clicks away from the organic results and padding Google's bottom line. Added to that the fact that a #1 position may actually be a #4 position because Google often places 3 paid results above - and the result is that the time and money spent on SEO does not yield the same return it used to. The internet is changing... Adwords and blogging for the long tail keywords may just be future so don't obsess over ranking too much. Time may better spent on other activities like contacting past clients

Yikes. There's a lot of faith in that statement. What are the competitive real estate keywords that become leads? Miami Florida Real Estate? If so, I'm going to have a differing opinion on that. I've been analyzing search criteria for real estate web sites since the web began. It's multidimensional, and contrary to popular belief, it's not about 3 or 4 keywords. But to keep it simple for those I offer help, I do speak in a one dimensional approach.



Well then, my 7 short months of no links back to my site have gotten me many closed deals, and my keywords are not what you would think.



I'm not sure what you mean by google is ignoring all of the site's links, you mean links to her site? If she's javascripting most of her content, no alt tags, no h1, h2, tags, no bolding of keywords, etc. etc. she'll be in equally as bad of a position. I wouldn't say that that is a lower priority.



True. And we'll keep up and change with it. I may even begin doing adwords although I've never had to before.

Wow, what a great thread with lots of info to digest. I certainly have a lot to learn. Thanks to the experts for their input.

Unfortunately I do not think you will ever get traffic/leads. You are competiting with 2.4 million other web pages that target your keywords "miami real estate"

Better to pick a more longwinded keyword.

I'm always wondering why so many people are so caught up in SEO verse generating business through Pay Per Click. I have been doing PPC for years and generate a predictable business every year and even in this market we have increased our transactions by 20% every year. Yes you do have to invest money, but if you are running your business as a business, then I would assume you are going to do this.

With that said, you can generate a million leads, if you don't have systems to convert those leads to sales, then it's all for not. To me it's all about lead conversion and I spend most of my waking hours improving our systems. Last year we had 311 sales by using PPC with 18 Agents. This year our goal is 425. I can predict this because knowing my numbers says that's what we should do. If you know how many leads you can capture for a certain dollar amount and you know your lead conversion rate, then you can predict your business. The best part is, once you know your numbers you only have to concentrate on two aspects to improve your business.

Let's say you spend $500 a month on PPC and it captures 100 leads. If you convert 2 sales from that 100 leads, you now know your numbers. Since you are converting at 1 out of 50 leads, you can either become better at conversion, or you can increase your monthly spend. Either way your business grows. Of course if you become better at both, your business grows quicker!

If you think it through you can figure out the answer.

This is my take on Pay Per Click. Whenever I'm searching for something I rarely click on any of the Pay Per Clicks. When I have I've found the company advertising isn't very good or isn't what I want at all. So do most people think like me? Click on the organic results before the pay per click. I don't know? I might be a weird person in my thoughts on that. This is why I don't do pay per click from google or those companies. It's also very pricey for me as a single agent. Maybe it works better if you are an agency and wants to afford the higher bill and hand out the leads to agents.

I'm am trying out a pay per click on facebook this month. I'm sometimes in awe how facebook gets ads on the side of my page having to do with something I'm thinking about. Or based on a comment I've made in the past or something like that. I think facebook can mind read sometimes.

Pay Per Click obviously may work for some but I am one of those people who research almost everything on the internet before purchasing and I never click on the Pay per Click ads.

I believe the key is a strong Internet prescence--and please use social media sites to your advantage. You can score leads on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yelp, Yahoo Answers, etc. If the local neighbor is asking a question on Yahoo Answers pertaining to a great Italian restaurant and you know one, why not offer an answer? The key is not so much to "market" through the net but to gain an Internet prescence. Type your name into Google and see how many search results come up (is your page # 1)?
If I type in my name Google hits are 23,000.

1. My personal website.

2. An Article I wrote.

3. My LinkedIn profile.

4. My Twitter page.

In my professional opinion PPC makes sense, social media makes sense, Internet marketing makes sense. They key is developing them all into strong resources.

You may want to also consider checking out real-time feed generators. I am currently using demandspot.com. THIS IS WEB 3.0 STUFF HERE! Currently it shows all Twitter posts from people in my chosen city and I can choose to communicate with them. If it searched Facebook too that would be even better, but unfortunately not out yet. But if you consider the facts people like to update status, and say what they're doing--and generally are saying I'm looking for a house or I am house hunting or what not.

Thanks CTerterian:
I will check ot demandspot.com

http://www.torontohomesjanechen.com

http://www.ilovemoneystore.com

Anytime! P.S.-I love Toronto! I have only been there once or twice to visit family in my lifetime--very clean, cool city.