Tech Tips - WEB-BIZ

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WEB BIZ - Tech Tips
Getting the Hits
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There is an awful lot of talk these days about the need to be first on the search engine lists (or at least in the top 10 that are displayed).And there are an awful lot of peopleout there, who are willing to give you the secret - for a fee of course.
The e-mail spam generally starts out with, "I did a search on the words real estate, and your site did not show in the first 200 (1000, 10,000, or a million) .... let me share my secret with you ...." And these individuals are getting a lot of customers it seems.

Uh ... "which list" do these people want to get to the top of? The one where they type in the words real estate? If I were an agent/broker, I wouldn't want to be at the top of this list. I'd want to be near the top of the list that specifieswhere I sell real estate.

As a consumer, I do not want to buy "real estate [somewhere in the world]", ... nor "real estate [somewhere in the] US", ...or even
"real estate [somewhere in] Ohio".If I'm buying a house, I want "real estate [in] Cincinnati".

Did you know, many search engines do not use META tags, and some do not use Keywords, but ALL of them use the page title?

There is only 1 clear way to get near the top of the search engine lists ... and that is with a page title that clearly states:
Your Company Name - Your City/State/Province/Country Real Estate.

REMEMBER: Page titles can be no longer than 64 characters, including spaces

Example:I did a search on Cincinnati Real Estate and Real Estate Cincinnati.

The first 20 that appeared on the list used the words Cincinnati Real Estate in their page titles (none were brokers/agents).
The next 330 on the list, used the words real estate and Cincinnati in their keywords.These includedsites that are located in California, Canada, Alaska, Hawaii, and other places located outside of Ohio
The largest real estate broker in Cincinnati came up #350because NOWHERE in their page title was the word Cincinnati.(I guess the search engine found it somewhere in the page text).Interestingly enough, this page was titled Community Profile.

You don't need a master plan to gain a decent position on the search engines, just common sense.And speaking of common sense ... if your city has 1000 real estate related WEB sites, you'll be ranked based on the individual search engine's criteria.

By the way ... the search engines are beginning to redefine the way they display their listings. The spammers may end up losing big time.

If you have a comment or would like to express your views on this subject, we invite you to join us inthe on-going discussion in theForum - Business on the WEB Section, under the title: Getting the Hits .