Does anyone know how to get a website to show up towards the top of a search? I have had a website for over 2 years and I have not gotten any leads from it yet. I can not afford to pay alot of money to a company that does search engine optimization.

Thanks for any help in advance.

Start by posting a link to the site if you'd like some insight along with the search terms you wish to capture for each page

The name of my website is www.edwinamaddox.com
Some search terms are homes in atlanta, homes in cobb.

I'd start by having more spiderable text on the page and then really look after getting more back links (links pointed to your site) with the anchor text matching your desired search terms.

You're in a very competitive market so it's going to take alot of time to make a dent or you may find it's worth the investment to have someone else work on that aspect. (link building).

Directory submissions will get you started but you'll need a long term commitment to the process IMO.

Your site has too many frames. Search engines does not like frames.
For example on this page:
page with frame

My suggestion is to get a new (and much better) website. Your website has foundation problems and you can't build a good SEO campaign on such a bad foundation.

Your pages are all dynamic, framed, and are missing noframes info. Get a website that allows you control over content, page names, meta tags, and NOT FRAMED.

Follw these steps to a better website:
1) Get a new website (with the same name)
2) Add unique content (with good page names and tags)
3) Build your back-links

With just these few steps, you can have a top ranking website within a few months. (the steps are simple, but the tasks to complete these steps may be very time consuming)

Learning search engine optimization on your own is not difficult, just time-consuming. Take time to Google the terms "search engine optimization" and you'll find a slew of websites all-to-happy to give sage SEO advice. Our website, The Marketing Shop.com gives free Free Realtor SEO Advice
Realtor SEO Advice, as does our blog: Web Marketing Insights

Free advice is usually worth exactly what you pay for it in most cases

Jennifer... welcome to the site... Car dealers and Real Estate companies....how'd ya come up with those 2 opposite client bases ?

like someone said... time consuming... so... what is your hourly pay and then how much time should you put into the SEO... if what you would makre is greater than the time you should spend.. hire someone..

Since i removed the frames from my website, i have gained rankings like crazy.
Get yourself listed in DMOZ and check how your rankings increase

-------------------------------
The Property Magnet

"Get yourself listed in DMOZ..."

Easier said then done. Last I heard, they were back-logged with something like 600 million submissions and growing. (but it can be done... if you're lucky enough to get an editor that doesn't have too big of a back-log)

i think i bugged my editor at least once a week, but i heard that you shouldnt do that

What is DMOZ?

www.DMOZ.org (it's a directory)

You need to get quality relevant links and you must have an unique content on your site to target any search engine.

We have just completed a free report, called

"Search Engine Optimization Basics For Real Estate-Related Websites"

http://www.domaindrivers.com/seobasics-realestate-main.htm

Plain English, and concise..

I hope it helps.

JaxLady

DMOZ is also called the Open Directory Project.

www.dmoz.org

It is "volunteer edited", which explains all the problems getting listed in popular categories like real estate.

Certainly it's worth a try submitting, but don't count on it.

There is life without it. Just get your site linked from others home/real estate sites.

very well said. Don't waste too much time worrying about DMOZ. There are many more directories you can submit to, and be just as effective, if not more.

Just try package of directory submission and your 50% is done with this only.....You get near 40% submissions accepted which means near 400 links

I'd recommend starting off by buying the Lynda.com SEO training set. It's great and will teach you a lot of what you need to know in a step by step approach.

do link building and on/off page optimization for your keywords, having a good and unique content is a big factor for SERPs..

What can I do to make this site better. The developer for it was fired for being a total nut job and now I am working with it on my own. Looking for opinions and ideas

Morristown Real Estate

Jim

I think you need to network with the right people and also use blogging to your advantage.
Social bookmarking is something I highly recommend!
Mike

Get your site situated so it does not violate NJREC advertising guidelines. About 8 weeks ago they hired a person to search for agent sites and look for violations.We basically pay the state to hire someone to fine us.

First, your name can not be more predominant than your brokers. The phone number at the top must say "Direct" and you must have your office number there as well labeled as "office".

Second, you must have your office address listed on your home page there which you don't. If you choose not to list the office address than your Keller Williams logo mus be an active link to the company website.

Third, I think you must also display the Equal Housing Opportunity logo.

Each violation is $1,500, you have about $6,000 in violations. It's not worth it so I would get that fixed first, I've seen the fines being handed down.

Adding a blog to your site, or on another site that links back to your site can greatly improve your search engine rankings. Blogs can be time-consuming, but are worth the effort. I've been working on a blog project for Real Estate Agents. It makes blogging a lot less work. You just fill out some information about yourself, and we post new, relevant content to your blog weekly. All you have to do it approve it. It fairly low-cost and will help increase your seo.

click here to learn more

I have put together 51 real estate related directories and looking to add a few more. This will help site $.50 per site dirt cheap.

Can anyone comment on my site http://www.4FrontPropertyInvestments.com I have a page rank 2 but this is purely from free directory listings, is there other ways of optimizing the website with out paying money for it.

Also can anyone comment on the design and structure of the site.

Our other sites are http://www.regal-palms.net, www.VistaCay-Orlando.net & http://www.AheloyBeachResidence.net

Nice looking site, but you have no metadata in the head tag. Google will like your site better if you add metadata AND that it matches keywords as closely as possible in the content.

Like everyone else has said - Unique, quality content. Great inbound links. Choice keywords and title pages. It goes on and on.

DMOZ.org is the "Open Source Directory" which supplies Google.com and other search engines, minus Yahoo.

On to your website. Like the other posters have said, lose the frames. I don't think you need to scrap the entire thing, but some major adjustments are needed if you want a solid seo champagne. I don't live in Atlanta, but its common sense to think the market is huge, esp with big big corps. shilling out tons of money on their site and seo. Try niche keywords instead of "Atlanta Real Estate"... you will never win that game.... try "Atlanta Real State in Yada Yada County" or something. Long tail approach.

I just have to point out something that I thought was obvious.

Posting keyword-rich links to your website within the forum area of this website won't help you with SEO. That's because the links you post in this forum will not appear to search engines. There is a "switcheroo" in place. For instance, view the source code for this page and see if you can find any of the hyperlinks listed in this forum thread. You can't do it. All you will see is spam links for artificial ranking manipulation. So all of those keyword-rich links under your signature do you little good.

I hate be the one to rain on peoples' parades ... but let the truth be known.

-Brandon

You are incorrect Brandon. The links are spidered and do count.

These forums run in a frame because it was a necessity with the previous version of the forum software. You were looking at the frame source - not the page source.

To see the page source you need to right click on the page and choose "view source" from the menu.

Exactly my point. Why does this website use frames? Out of necessity, or so they can feed search engines "invisible" content within frame areas that users do not see.

Don't get me wrong. This forum can be marginally helpful to people. But some people think their keyword-rich links are doing them some good. And I can tell you that a link from this forum provides little to no SEO value.

So use the forum because you like to exchange ideas, not because you think you're getting SEO value from it. That would simply be a waste of time.

I don't need to argue about it. People can read the various points of view and decide for themselves.

Brandon, your post is off topic and has nothing to do with this thread. Since you seem intent pursuing this I will respond before I close this thread.

The forum runs in frames because for the first 8 years of its existence the software used was a cgi script - which is not indexed by search engines. Frames were a necessity in order to have the forum listed and ranked well in search engines.

It worked - the forum has been #1 or #2 in most search engines for "real estate forums" for its entire 9 year history. Most who are knowledgeable in SEO know that when something is working you leave it alone - which is what we have done.

As for your allegation that links from this forum have no SEO value - you are incorrect once again. If you check Google - site:http://www.agentsonline.net/forums/ - you will see that over 21,000 forum pages are listed. Unlike many other forums we do not use "no follow" - all of the links count and unlike other forums who may show more forum pages listed in Google- ours are not in duplicate and triplicate.

By the way, if you search old posts you will find that you are not the first to have raised this issue - it was been flogged to death by many SEOs who do not understand that using frames does not hurt rankings if used correctly.