Search engines are currently the most cost effective form of Real Estate advertising. With over 40% of all buyers using the Internet to look for their next home and to find someone to sell their current property having a good position in the Index to the Internet (Search Engines) must not be ignored.

In practical terms it is very difficult to prospect nationally or globally using any other means of advertising. The popularity of using Search Engines is increasing daily, over 10 million real estate related search terms are typed into search engines each month. Getting your share of those prospects will largely determine the success of your web site.

Getting registered with search engines is not enough in such a competitive market. A Google search for "Real Estate" returns over 5 million web pages, getting found amongst all of those is no simple task. Most prospects quickly learn that they need to use a geographically based search term to find sites that are selling real estate in their chosen area. Even so the number of real estate web pages indexed by search engines for one city is on average equivalent to 50% of the population for that city. Within a few years there will be more real estate related web pages than the number of people living in most areas.

To be selected from these huge databases of information requires that you appear close to the top of the list. If you are not on the first page of search results the level of visitors to your web site will be only a tiny fraction of the total market.

How do you achieve maximum exposure?

There are several routes offered by various companies to help you promote your site in search engines. The first is the "submission" of the site, although this is important it doesn't actually help your position in the search results. Search engines are mathematically based, if you put the same web site through the same mathematical equation every day of the week it will always come out with the same results. Therefore submitting to search engines more often than once per month is a waste of time and resources - it achieves nothing.

Because search engines are mathematically based the results can be manipulated. This process is called "Search Engine Optimization" or SEO. Think of it along the lines of the Yellow Pages. Companies in the Yellow Pages are listed alphabetically, some smaller companies try to take advantage by adding "AAA" or "A1" in front of their names to get to the top of the list. Search Engine Optimization is a very similar process, except the rules for sorting web sites is not simply alphabetic but based upon a set of complicated mathematical equations that attempt to deliver the most relevant web sites.

By modifying a web site, often by only tiny amounts, the position it has in search engines can be altered. Of course unless you know what effect making any change to a web site will have this can be a very dangerous thing to do.

Some SEO specialists will provide this service on a one time basis for a fixed fee. The problem is that search engines change their ranking algorithms on a regular basis. A one time optimization is unlikely to be of any value a few months after it has been performed, those that have paid to have it done end up having to pay again. Typically good SEO analysts will charge $3,000 to $4,000 per evaluation of your web site, this can get very expensive if it needs doing every few months.

To ensure your site is continually performing at its best it needs to be constantly monitored and "tweaked" when necessary to take advantage of changes in Search Engine algorithms. The rewards for being at the top of search engines are considerable, but the amount of effort it requires is no small issue.

We offer search engine optimization on a results driven basis. The more visitors that search engines deliver to your site the better job we have performed and therefore the more you pay. We call this Pay-Per-Visitor promotion (PPV). Services such as Overture and Google offer Pay-Per-Click promotion (PPC) on most major search engines. The primary problem with PPC promotion is that it is based upon competitive bidding, this often leads to excessive costs being incurred that outweigh any potential returns. Our PPV promotion is charged at a fixed rate giving our clients fixed costs proportional to the number of prospect inquiries they receive.

Our Pay-Per-Visitor promotion is available to any Realtor or Realty Company in most parts of the USA regardless of whether we originally designed the web site. Because we charge based upon results we only take on a small number of clients in each marketing area. If you are interested in this service you should first contact us to find out if we have places available in your marketing area.







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