How to get to the top of Google

Links and Spiders and Indexes ... Oh My!

Let's face it, there are millions of real estate professionals competing for similar keywords. Not only just REALTORS®, but Title insurance companies, lenders and anybody related to the real estate industry. So we are talking about a lot of people that are after the exact same thing you are after. The Websites that are included on the first 3-4 pages of a good keyword are almost bound to succeed. Of course the trick is getting there and you can bet they want to stay.

So what do you do? Shell out the big bucks to a professional SEO company? They can't really guarantee anything. In fact they don't have any more power over your rankings then you do. Before you resign yourself to page ranking #234,567th there is a lot you can do to come out on top. First thing you should know are the basics of how a search engine works.
Search engines at the simplest level are nothing more than a large database (OK, a really, really large database). A database is simply a container for information. Think of a craft organizer, or a tackle box ... Each compartment stores something. The different compartments make it simple to sort things. As far as databases are concerned we are storing and sorting data.

Simple right?

Well, Google, Yahoo, MSN etc... are more or less, massive databases. The web page that you see (or the search field in your toolbar if you like) are what is known as a Front End.

The part you see = The Front EndThe massive, scary database that you don't see = The Back End

OK, so when a user enters a search, they are asking the search engine to look into its' database and return the proper information.

Still with me? Good. Once the search is entered the search engine will return the results sorted by the websites page ranking. In a nutshell; the search engine attempts to return the results in order of relevance to the user. It is a relatively complicated process and it uses many parameters (known as algorithms) to accomplish this. However, to keep things simple let's look at the following guidelines. SEO is a complicated thing and the following guidelines probably aren't going to pole vault you to the top, but it is a good start...
Use as much text as possible.
Search Engines index all text on a website excluding common words like: the, that, then, at, a, I, when etc...
Search Engines don't care how pretty your site is. They can not index pictures or images and can not make a distinction between a picture of a flower and a picture of a fire breathing goat... Therefore, do not skimp on text!
The number of times a word or phrase appears in the text compared to the number of words in total is known as keyword density. For instance, if the phrase "Real Estate" appears 15 times out of a total of 135 words then your keyword density ratio is 15:135
In the early days of search engines this was the primary factor to determine page rank. It wasn't long before unscrupulous webmasters figured this out and began to use "spider-lines"... Text in the smallest point size in a color to match the background. This rendered the text invisible to the user, but the search engine would still index it. Techniques such as this to artificially raise page rank became known as search engine spamming.
Most search engines will either penalize or delist a Website using spamming techniques.
The keyword density should high, but not too high. If it goes past an undisclosed threshold then your site could be penalized
Link popularity is currently the largest factor in determining page rank. Link popularity is based on the number of external Websites that link TO your site.
Try exchanging links with other Websites in similar, but non competing industries. For example: Title Companies, Insurance Companies, Home Warranty Companies etc...


These are just a few of the techniques commonly employed to boost page rank. If you are interested in more advanced techniques