Can someone check to see if my meta tags are good to go on the following homepage? http://www.valeriebechelli.com Any suggestions?

I created this website for my wife's business. I am also doing some weekend Google PPC, which has yielded some nice leads. I would like to eventually float to the first page of a Google search on various search terms like "Costa Mesa Real Estate" or Irvine Homes for Sale", and such.

Google (and Yahoo) PPC click does have it's rewards but it does cost money. Some of the competition's websites are really convoluted and confusing with many links, and animated graphics. Maybe this is a subject for another thread but I think the massive about of link exchanges that you need to get posted on page 1 of google creates for confusing websites from agents. Is this in the best interest of the consumer looking for a clean, well designed website, where they would get good value? Some of the competitor's websites here are mess. But they hold top 4-5 positions on the first page. How do I get up there without the link exchange clutter on the website and without having to go the PPC route.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. I am new at this.

Mike

Mike,

I would remove the "Search MLS" and "her name" from the title. If I remember correctly the SE only read the first 64 characters of the title. The only way your going to get to the first page (atleast with Google) is to get some good quality links pointing to your site. I like the site though.

Also, when you get links use a few different anchor text.

Thanks Matt,

As you can see at the bottom of the page, I have already started the process of exchanging some links. I use RealEstateABC.com for some articles and they have some links to the major providers that are ranked high (quality) links http://www.realestateabc.com/propages/linksites.htm and I am starting to build some links. However, I had hoped to not clutter my page(s) with extra links and icons/graphics and present a really clean design. I am somewhat disturbed that Google will rank you high on the quality of the clutter you have on your site rather than on the information you would be providing potential clients.

Unless somewhere in their boardroom they have decided that if you want a clean site you will have to pay for it with PPC. How long does it generally take before you start seeing some results?

Mike

Hi Mike,

You don't have to link to other sites off of your homepage if you don't want - you can create a link exchange directory - that's probably best for your SEO. You should try to limit outgoing links to less than 50 per page so Google doesn't mistake your site as a 'link farm' or a free for all.

Keep your exchanges to industry related sites and like Matt mentioned, vary your anchor text when you request other sites to link to you. Your anchor text should be one of your keyword phrases. What is anchor text? Well, rather than having folks link to your site by clicking on 'click here' or 'visit Mike's website' use anchor text like 'Costa Mesa Real Estate.'

Good luck!

Meta tags look good. Don't forget that they're pretty useless nowadays so don't spend too much time on them.

The title of the meta tags is still important but the rest not, I think it is much more important to have an H1 tag (headline) on the site itself.

The title element :
Is very important.

I do have the H1 tag with the keywords Newport Beach Real Estate, Costa Mesa Real Estate, and Irvine Real Estate.

How long does it take for a site to be crawled, where you can start tracking the movement of your page ranking? Is there any rule of thumb as to # of links exchanged to the time it takes to show on the 1st page? Again, some of the top ranks when I do a link:www.competitor.com, I find that the top 4-5 have in excess of 150 links to their websites.

Also, is it important to use the same keywords and descriptions on all pages or keywords and descriptions (meta info) that relates to the exact content of each page.

As I dig deeper into this link exchange for better page rank results, I find it completely distrubing that many of the sites that have a high page ranking due to the multitude of links exchanged, will advertise "we have won many web design awards, check them out here" and you go the page and you find more links. When you click on any of the links you find nothing about winning an award, or it was a trumped up award supplied by the template design company (which I won't mention).

Many of the link exchange pages will be titled, "check out our preferred links here" or "check out my REALTOR friends here" and I am sure that many of these links have never been checked out by owner of the site. Some links don't even work.

So, why would google reward such a site holder for such a bunch of nonsense that has nothing to do with servicing a customer. One website had so many links on it I had a headache from trying to sort through the clutter to get at the real information.

If google rewarded internet content providers on a clean, well designed, easily navigated, non cluttered website, wouldn't it force content providers to design better websites, which better serves the consumer?

Just an intitial take on the situation as this is all new to me.

Mike

Be careful who you link with, many of those who are too "outgoing" will exchange links with anyone and some of them get themselves penalized for linking to "bad neighborhoods" and guess what - once they are considered a bad neighborhood and YOU are linking to them ... "Tag, it's you!"

There is no set time after which a site is crawled, it just depends. You can use a site like www.marketleap.com to track your rank and saturation in search engines. There really isn't any direct coorelation between links exchanged and top 10 ranking.

Again, META tags are really not worth the time to make them unique to each page.

Hi Mike,

Yes some of the top ranking sites are just plain ugly, messy and certainly wouldn't attract me if I were a potential customer.

It's certainly an attainable goal, beating those ugly sites if you spend some time and energy building up your inbound links.

You can have a link exchange directory on your site. You can place a link to it towards the bottom of your site so it's discreet - then make sure you break out the pages by state or something similar so that each page has no more than 50 outgoing links each. I'd suggest running some searches on top phrases like 'atlanta real estate,' 'seattle real estate,' 'miami real estate' and pick some nice ranking, well done websites to request links from.

Check any potential link partner out well - make sure they don't have a robots.txt file hiding their links pages (type in www.linkpartnersite.com/robots.txt and hit enter, if they're trying to hide those pages from the search engines, the folder or page will be listed)
You can also check to see if their links are 'spiderable' by the search engines with a search engine simulator like http://tools.summitmedia.co.uk/spider/ If you run the spider check and their link partner URLs don't show up, then they're hiding them.

An interesting side note, I recently spidered a Homes.com site and found that Homes.com had placed some invisible outgoing links to other HOmes.com sites on this persons website - he knew nothing about it. Yikes!

Check to see the difference in PR or Page Rank between their homepage and their link page - you can check the PR with the Google Toolbar. If their homepage is a PR 4 and their link page is a zero - there might be trouble.

If the site itself has a zero page rank, it's either a brand new site or it's been penalized.

As you can imagine, this whole process can get downright tedious after awhile as you also have to regularly check to make sure your link partners are being honest and keeping their links up - not taking them down after a month or two, hoping you won't notice.

If you keep an excel file with all the details on each link partner, it gets a little easier to check for reciprocation. There are some websites that let you check - or you can copy/paste out of your excel file for each one. Some LinkPartners.com sites move the links around - so there may be some hunting.

Good luck! If you build up your inbound links faster than the competition - you'll beat them. This might be a great job for a teen neice or nephiew whose good with computers...over the summer, rather than mowing lawns.

You might want to try mixing in some H2 header tags as well. Also, instead of cluttering your site with reciprocal links all over the place, try purchasing some PR6-PR7 text links that will DEFINITELY impact not only your placement, but your PR as well. The only downside is that they are a little pricey

Thanks to all for the feedback. How do you find out what sites are a PR#? Also, some of the competitors that show up in the top 1-5 positions have so many links (hundreds) that I can't believe they stay on top of all of them. Or do they have so many links coming in that the few that maybe get penalized don't even matter because of the volume?