Hello everybody-
I'm a new real estate agent and I built my web site using the Point2 Agent system. Once I get more business, I'll be upgrading to their Professional version, which has a ton of stuff to offer.

My web site is http://www.ePhiladelphiaRealEstate.com.

I'm looking forward to any advice or suggestions.

Thanks

Visualy it looks sharp. Nice clean layout. 100% width which is nice. Your picture however looks more like an Attorney ( shark like ) than a RE agent, perhaps you should have one of yourself smiling.

Viewing your source code:
Your keywords can be viewed as excessive keyword spamming by some SE's but I wouldn't worry about it much.

Try to have every word that is anywhere in your meta tag also listed on your page.

Those little links you have that say "click here" you should take advantage of them. Try to put a keyword that is prominant on your page in each link, this will help you. Like instead of "click here" you can have "xxxx" which is also mentioned in your title, meta keywords, description, and on page content.

Russell,

About the Point2 Agent system, is that on a hosting server of your choice (making it an installed application), or is it hosted on their servers?

Can you add pages as you wish, via FTP access, or do you have to go through a page generator interface?

Point2Agent site is located on their servers and you don't have to pay anything for hosting. The whole web site is free. If you want more flexibility, you can upgrade to a Professional version, where you can have up to 250 pages, plus other useful tools that help an agent with prospecting, drip emails, handshakes, etc.

The site is very cool and I'm glad I chose Point2Agent. To build something like this yourself, would take a lot of time and money. They give you everything for free.

Highly recommend.

I like the clean look. The white background makes the site stand out.
Nice reports to help generate leads.
Good luck with your site.
Constantine

Thank you all.

I have a few other ideas for the site, but once I get my first listing, I'm upgrading to Professional version and then I can create a listing brochure, a web site for the house itself, sophisticated tracking reports and more. Looking forward to it.

Thanks again.

Everything with your on page website looks good. Now about SEO i suggest you start getting quality links to your site and the best way to start out is to post in forums like these that are relevant to your website and put a signature link to your site. You should also post a bit on my forum on my signature. It will get more and more visitors to your website!

Mystic-
thanks for your reply. I will cetainly register with your forum.

I was placing my ad on various RE directories, but I just started doing that and don't see any results yet. I'm getting hits to my site, but I'm not sure where they're coming from, since I have the standard version of Point2 Agent.

I've seen services that post your ad on all kinds of directories for $500, but I'm not sure if it's worth the money.

How many sites need to link to you in order for the rankings to go up. I understand there is no definite number, but approximately, are we talking about 50 sites or 5000 sites? Also, how many keyword phrases should be placed on the page? I see some sites that rank very well with only a few phrases and others, also rank very well, with a ton of phrases.

Thanks again.

The yellow text could be preceived, by search engines, as hidden text. Get rid of it! Otherwise, the lawyer-like look is OK as long as you are looking to get people who know you...otherwise, get rid of your picture and work on what you have to offer with real estate.

theres no certain amount of websites that need to link to you to rank high in search engines. Think of it this way search engines make it in a way that when people search a certain keyword they get the best website out there most closely relating to that keyword. You have to make the search engines believe that that's your website. So to do that it takes many thousands of sites to link to you. Make sure the sites link to you have a high PR. Also it should have good keywords. Start out by posting on many forums with the signature in your link. I see you have that on right now its great. Post on my forum with your sig link. post on all real estate forums you could find!

RUssell,

Here's a multi-page document that was specifically written for real estate professionals, using real estate examples:


Search Engine Optimization Basics For Real Estate-Related Websites

I hope it helps.

Thank you all for your advice.

LinkStragedy-
thanks for the link. Very informative. I can definately follow some of those suggestions.

Mystic-
I never realized that by posting on the forum with a signature, that creates another link back to my site. I just don't understand one thing. When search engines crawl the web, they "scrape" the static or HTML pages. If a forum, like this one, has dynamic pages, ASP, ASP.NET or some other type of page, how does that work. All the information is stored in the database and upon a users request, it's pulled back from the database and displayed on the screen.

I'm just a bit confused on how the process of static vs. dynamic pages works.

One more thing, I removed the yellow text and added a list of neiborhoods and subdivisions in my county. It's a lengthy list, but I thought if search engines like text on the page, why not provide a list of subdivisions in my county. If someone lives in a subdivision of 200 homes and they would like to know how the market is doing in their subdivision, they could do a search on their community's name and hopefully, my site can come up. I hope it can work. What do you think?

Thanks again.

Russell,

Static vs dynamic, as it relates to search engines, is a bit technical. Engines can read and index most dynamic pages, with some exceptions.

To Google, a page named content.html is read the same as one named content.php. It is just that the content.html page is (usually) "static" on the server, ready to deliver upon request, as it is. The content.php is created by the server, only when requested, via the scripting, which accesses content, ususally held in a database.

The problem with dynamic pages arises when:

- Query strings with multiple pairs are used (ex. content.php?ask=2&type=45&uid=674)

- Session IDs are used (ex.content.php?sid=834a56b775)

- The page name never changes, but the content does, based on the query sent to the server.

Those kinds of things "confuse" the engines. They can't properly index the site and make any sense of it, so they don't try. The full explanations as to why would take too much time, but, in a nutshell, keeping page names simple and unique, without query strings, is best.

A lot of content management scripts do not have that kind of capability to simplify the url, and it can be expensive to get it done on a custom basis, but crafty programming can eliminate a lot of this. Manual workarounds may be necessary, creating specific static pages from dynamic ones, so that something can get indexed.

However, it looks to me like your own site is properly formatted...One way to find out is to put site:www.yourdomain.com into Google and see what they list.

As to using subdivisions names, that is the one area of optimization that is still ignored by most people. You also have neighborhod names, streets, school districts, and other locality qualifiers. Ranking well for these terms can be much easier than for the more generic term "Your City Real Estate". You might also get a more qualified lead from such a search!

All as decsribed here:

Search Engine Optimization Basics For Real Estate-Related Websites


thanks

Awsome reply LinkStrategy. I appreciate the details. Like I said before, I live in a subdivision of about 260 houses and when I did a search on my subdivisions name, I got some garbage web sites. So I thought, what if one of my neighbors does the same type of search and my site comes up, that could provide me with a quality lead. I hope it can work.

One question though, I've been exchaning links mostly with directories on the web. When I wanted to see in Google who's linking back to me, I got no results. That is not true. I'm listed on epoweredprofessionals.com, activerain.com and bunch of other diretories. But in Google it showed nothing. I looked at the cached version of my site, which was cached on October 10th and I'm 100% sure that links back to me were already established. Anyone has any idea why that happens?

Again, thanks for wealth of information.

Russell,

Forget the google back link format link:www.sitename.com. It's useless information. Google certainly sees your links (or at least the ones on the pages they have indexed), and uses them. Wy they report truncated results is anyone's guess. Don't waste your time on it. Seriously.

For a better look at your links in google, use just your domain name, or even just ePhiladelphiaRealEstate, since that's a unique string that it will find.

Also, try the marketleap.com link pop reporter.

We use LinkSurvey.com here. Then we distill it down to unique domains. That's the best way to really track your link pop, by unique domain count.