The truth is you don’t need to pay for Keyword Research tools that are being over used. There are many free keyword research tools that work very well.
Yahoo Free Keyword Research Tool:
The Overture Keyword Selector Tool was the first and best free keyword research tool on the market. It still continues to be a solid tool and if you are just looking for some ideas, then this is the tool for you. You can get access to the free Overture keyword research tool here:
Google Free Keyword Research Tool:
The Google Keyword Tool is one of the best free keyword research tools available. It works very different than the Overture tool. Overture will show you all of the major variations that contain the keyword or keyword phrase you are looking for while Google will show you all of the top related keywords and keyword phrases.
Thesaurus
Absolutely NOTHING beats a thesaurus to find synonyms. Using a thesaurus as an additional keyword research tool will allow you to grow your keyword list by leaps and bounds so don’t forget to check the thesaurus.
And last but not least check the Dictionary
By reading through all of the approved definitions of a keyword you will almost always discover additional keywords to further expand and grow your list. The dictionary is also a great source for negative keywords as your use may not imply the same thing across the board.
I almost forgot the most powerful keyword research tool available, your brain. It may be slow at times and it may freeze up on you from time to time but its very powerful at coming up with great keywords if you will just sit down and use it.
I thought putting together a short glossary might help Realtors who are new to Internet
Marketing.
301 - Moved Permanently - The file has been moved permanently to a new location. This is the preferred method of redirecting for most pages or websites. If you are going to move an entire site to a new location you may want to test moving a file or folder first, and then if that ranks well you may want to proceed with moving the entire site.
Above The Fold - A term traditionally used to describe the top portion of a newspaper. In email or web marketing it means the area of content viewable prior to scrolling.
AdCenter - Microsoft’s cost per click ad network.
AdSense - Google’s contextual advertising network. Publishers large and small may automatically publish relevant advertisements near their content and share the profits from those ad clicks with Google.
AdWords - Google’s advertisement and link auction network. Most of google’s ads are Keyword targeted and are sold on a cost per click basis in an aution that factors in click thru rate and on page factors.
AJAX - Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is a technique which allows a web page to request additional data from a server without requiring a new page to load.
Alt Attribute or Alt Tag - Blind people and most major search engines are not able to easily distinguish what is in an image. Using an image alt attribute allows you to help screen readers and search engines understand the function of an image by providing a text equivalent for the object.
Analytics - Software which allows you to track your page views, user paths, and conversion statistics based upon interpreting your log files or through including a JavaScript tracking code on your site.
Anchor Text - The text that a user would click on to follow a link. You want a variety of anchor text used. If you have a large percentage of your incoming links all the same it will appear to the engines as possible manipulation. You also want to make sure your incoming links are from relevant content related sites.
API (Application Program Interface) - a series of conventions or routines used to access software functions. Most major search products have an API program.
ASP (Active Server Pages) - a dynamic Microsoft programming language.
Ask - Ask is a search engine owned by InterActive Corp. They were originally named Ask Jeeves, but they dumped Jeeves in early 2006.
Bait and Switch - Marketing technique where you make something look overtly pure or as though it has another purpose to get people to believe in it or vote for it (by linking at it or sharing it with friends), then switch the intent or purpose of the website after you gain authority.
Black Hat SEO - Search engines set up guidelines that help them extract billions of dollars of ad revenue from the work of publishers and the attention of searchers. Within that highly profitable framework search engines consider certain marketing techniques deceptive in nature, and label them as black hat SEO. Those which are considered within their guidelines are called white hat SEO techniques. The search guidelines are not a static set of rules, and things that may be considered legitimate one day may be considered deceptive the next.
Block Level Analysis - A method used to break a page down into multiple points on the web graph by breaking its pages down into smaller blocks.
Blog - A periodically updated journal, typically formatted in reverse chronological order. Many blogs not only archive and categorize information, but also provide a feed and allow simple user interaction like leaving comments on the posts.
Blogroll - Link list on a blog, usually linking to other blogs owned by the same company or friends of that blogger.
Branded Keywords - Keywords or keyword phrases associated with a brand. Typically branded keywords occur late in the buying cycle and are often some of the best converting keywords to have.
Breadcrumb Navigation - Navigational technique used to help search engines and website users understand the relationship between pages.
Broken Link - A hyperlink which is not functioning.
Buying Cycle - Before making large purchases consumers typically research what brands and products fit their needs and wants.
The buying cycle may consist of the following stages
- Problem Discovery: prospect discovers a need or want.
- Search: after discovering a problem look for ways to solve the need or want. These searches may contain words which revolve around the core problem the prospect is trying to solve or words associated with their identity.
- Evaluate: may do comparison searches to compare different models, and also search for negative information like product sucks, etc.
- Decide: look for information which reinforces your view of product or service you decided upon
- Purchase: may search for shipping related information or other price related searches. purchases may also occur offline
- Reevaluate: some people leave feedback on their purchases . If a person is enthusiastic about your brand they may cut your marketing costs by providing free highly trusted word of mouth marketing.
Cache - Copy of a web page stored by a search engine. When you search the web you are not actively searching the whole web, but are searching files in the search engine index.
CGI (Common Gateway Interface) - interface software between a web server and other machines or software running on that server. Many cgi programs are used to add interactivity to a web site.
CMS (Content Management System) Tool used to help make it easy to update and add information to a website.
Contextual Advertising - Advertising programs which generate relevant advertisements based on the content of a webpage.
Conversion - Many forms of online advertising are easy to track. A conversion is reached when a desired goal is completed.
Cookie - Small data file written to a user’s local machine to track them.
CPA (Cost per action) The effectiveness of many other forms of online advertising have their effectiveness measured on a cost per action basis.
CPC (Cost per click) Many search ads and contextually targeted ads are sold in auctions where the advertiser is charged a certain price per click.
CPM - Cost per thousand ad impressions.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a method for adding styles to web documents.
CTR (Clickthrough rate) - the percentage of people who view click on an advertisement they viewed, which is a way to measure how relevant a traffic source or keyword is. Search ads typically have a higher clickthrough rate than traditional banner ads due to being highly relevant to implied searcher demand.
Dedicated Server - Server which is limited to serving one website or a small collection of websites owned by a single person.
Directory - A categorized catalog of websites, typically manually organized by topical editorial experts.
DMOZ (The Open Directory Project) is the largest human edited directory of websites. DMOZ is owned by AOL, and is primarily ran by volunteer editors.
DNS (Domain Name Server or Domain Name System) A naming scheme mechanism used to help resolve a domain name / host name to a specific TCP/IP Address
Feed - Many content management, systems such as blogs, allow readers to subscribe to content update notifications via RSS or XML.
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a protocol for transferring data between computers.
Google - The world’s leading search engine in terms of reach and market cap.
Google Bot - Google’s search engine spider
Headings - The heading element briefly describes the subject of the section it introduces. Heading elements go from H1 to H6 with the lower numbered headings being most important. You should only use a single H1 element on each page, and may want to use multiple other heading elements to structure a document.
Hidden Text - SEO technique used to show search engine spiders text that human visitors do not see. While some sites may get away with it for a while, generally the risk to reward ratio is inadequate for most legitimate sites to consider using hidden text.
Home Page - The main page on your website, which is largely responsible for helping develop your brand and setting up the navigational schemes that will be used to help users and search engines navigate your website.
HTML - (HyperText Markup Language) is the language in which pages on the World Wide Web are created.
HTTP - (HyperText Transfer Protocol) is the foremost used protocol to communicate between servers and web browsers.
Inbound Link - Link pointing to one website from another website.
Index - Collection of data used as bank to search through to find a match to a user fed query. The larger search engines have billions of documents in their catalogs.
Internal Link - Link from one page on a site to another page on the same site.
IP Address (Internet Protocol Address) - Every computer connected to the internet has an IP address. Some websites and servers have unique IP addresses, but most web hosts host multiple websites on a single host.
Keyword - A word or phrase which implies a certain mindset or demand that targeted prospects are likely to search for.
Keyword Density - An old measure of search engine relevancy based on how prominent keywords appeared within the content of a page. Keyword density is no longer a valid measure of relevancy over a broad open search index though.
Keyword Stuffing - Writing copy that uses excessive amounts of the core keyword. This technique is not effective currently at improving rank under a keyword.
Landing Page - The page on which a visitor arrives after clicking on a link or advertisement.
Link Popularity - The number of links pointing at a website.
Meta Keywords - The meta keywords tag is a tag which can be used to highlight keywords keyword phrases which the page is targeting.
Meta Tags - People generally refer to meta descriptions and meta keywords as meta tags.
MSN search - Search engine built by Microsoft.
Navigation - Scheme to help website users understand where they are, where they have been, and how that relates to the rest of your website.
Niche - A topic or subject which a website is focused on.
Organic Search Results - Most major search engines have results that consist of paid ads and unpaid listings. The unpaid / algorithmic listings are called the organic search results. Organic search results are organized by relevancy, which is largely determined based on linkage data, page content, usage data, and historical domain and trust related data.
Outbound Link - A link from one website pointing at another external website.
Page Rank - A logarithmic scale based on link equity which estimates the importance of web documents.
PPC (Pay Per Click) - is a pricing model which most search ads and many contextual ad programs are sold through. PPC ads only charge advertisers if a potential customer clicks on an ad.
Redirect - A method of alerting browsers and search engines that a page location moved.
Referrer - The source from which a website visitor came from.
Relevancy - A measure of how useful searchers find search results.
ROI - Return on Investment is a measure of how much return you receive from each marketing dollar.
RSS - Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication is a method of syndicating information to a feed reader or other software which allows people to subscribe to a channel they are interested in.
Search Engine - A tool or device used to find relevant information.
SEO - Search engine optimization is the art and science of publishing information and marketing it in a manner that helps search engines understand your information is relevant to relevant search queries.
SERP - Search Engine Results Page is the page on which the search engines show the results for a search query.
Server Logs - Files hosted on servers which display website traffic trends and sources.
Viral Marketing - Self propagating marketing techniques. Common modes of transmission are email, blogging, and word of mouth marketing channels.
Wiki - Software which allows information to be published using collaborative editing.
Yahoo - The second largest search engine and directory.
Getting started with SEO (search engine optimization)
Many SEO firms try to make search engine optimization or high search engine ranking an obscure lofty goal that only they can achieve. Granted, it can be very time consuming it’s still very easy to do yourself with a little time and knowledge. Below I will outline some strategic tips to optimize your real estate website that will hopefully get you up to the first page and the three biggies Google, Yahoo, & MSN.
SEO Success Ingredients
The biggest secret to getting top search engine placement is… Hard work. Other key factors to get you there are:
- Good content
- Good inbound links
Yep, that’s it. Sounds easy right…wrong. There’s no special tricks that you need to use or special programs that you need to buy. If you continue on, you’ll see why good companies charge big dollars for their services. Let’s start with some definitions…
What’s Good Content
If you’re talking about heaven and hell, “good” has to be absolute. When talking about search engines, good is very relative. What is it relative to? Well, it seems to be just about everything. The quality of your content is ranked based on a ton of different factors that vary from engine to engine. Google has their own algorithm and so does Yahoo and MSN. The quality of your site and content are valued based on both on and off page factors listed below:
Good content is unique, authoritative, frequent, and relevant
Make it unique
Unique means don’t go cut and paste text from other sites. If you don’t have any, at least use your own words to recreate the article with your own unique twist.
Make it authoritative
Who knows your market better than you do? You need to position yourself as an authority in your area. If you have the only information and the best information for your market, your readers will appreciate you and the search engines will move you up.
Having authoritative content isnt what moves you up but will result in more voluntary inbound links which will postion your site as an authority in the mind of most search engines algorithms.
Make Frequent Additions
Search engines love fresh content. This doesn’t mean just changing a title or adding a picture here and there. Change means adding new pages or articles as often as you can. These pages will let search engines robots know that your site is growing and will in turn visit more often.
The Google bot will visit much more frequently if you add new content daily. If you slow down, they slow down. This has played a role in search engine placement as well. The more frequent the changes, the higher the site moves in placement for certain keywords.
Make it relevant
Keep your content relevant to the theme of your website. If your site is about Cincinnati real estate your article should be closely related to this topic. For example, a properly themed article could discuss such things as market conditions, buyer tips, or seller tips.
What’s a Good Inbound Link
A good inbound link follows the same guidelines as above. It should be related to your sites content or theme. A link for a baby clothes site will not help your site very much. In short good inbound links are natural and highly related to your theme.
Change up your links
Sometimes you have to encourage people to link to your site. In doing so you may provide them with some HTML code with your keyword-laden anchor text with a great description that properly contextualizes your link. Unfortunately, if everyone uses that same link, search engines may mark it as link spam and likely devalue the link. Providing multiple linking options is the best idea.
Avoid Link Farms
Link farms are typically worthless when it comes to building links. They’re considered worthless by search engines and can often cause you penalties. So save yourself the time and dont get involved with any of these.
Make it plentiful
The more quality incoming links you have the better you will do and you can never have too many. Over time as you build youself into an authority in your market links will begin to occur naturally but until then you need to constantly work on getting more and more theme related incoming links.
Is that it?
Im afraid thats just the basics there are many more complicated and more technical details of search engine optimization and ranking. So for now work with the basics from above and then continue to learn and improve. Or if you have no interest in doing this yourself you will at least know enough to talk to an SEO firm and understand the basics of the strategy they should be putting in place.
