TECHNOLOGY

How many times have you searched for something on the Web, only to find that you end up at a Web site that looks like your 5-year-old could have made it? While the quality of the site itself is poor, the people who own this site have learned how to market on the Internet. They know how to get you to their site. Many times they are very successful. search engine marketing (SEM) is the most important part of business on the Web. There are billions of sites out there and you can have the most fantastic site there is, but if you do not market it properly you might as well have one of the sites that looks like your cousin’s son made it in his high school computer class.

The perfect mix is to have a great site that people can find by using search engines to get there. You can market by conventional means such as print and media all you want to and it will enhance your traffic, but nothing will work better for you than a good search engine marketing strategy. The perfect mix is a blend of both paid search engine advertising and organic (or natural) listings. If you have to choose one over the other, I recommend using paid marketing for three to six months while you are using optimization and submission to build up your organic position. Google will not even list you until you have been online for six months—unless you are using their paid options—so in the beginning it is good to have a mix of both.

How It All Began
According to Wikipedia, “As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid to late 90s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly. Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay-per-click programs offered by Open Text in 1996 and then Goto.com in 1998. Goto.com later changed its name to Overture in 2001, and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program. By 2007 pay-per-click programs proved to be primary money-makers for search engines.

“Search engine optimization [SEO] consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the advertising opportunities offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged. The term “search engine marketing” was proposed by Danny Sullivan in 2001 to cover the spectrum of activities involved in performing SEO, managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals. In 2007 search engine marketing is stronger than ever with SEM Budgets up 750 percent as shown with stats dating back to 2002 vs. 2006.”

Who are the Major Players?
Obviously Google, Yahoo and MSN lead the pack. All of these search engines have pay-per-click options where you can buy your position. In the organic (or natural) listings group, there are four major search engines and about six minor ones. Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask are considered the Big 4 as they each have their own unique spiders and ranking algorithms. Following the Big 4 are AOL, Lycos, Netscape, AltaVista, FAST and Excite.

Real Estate is not one of the low-cost keywords for positioning, so to be in the top 10 will take some cash. If you are anything below the top 15, it is not worth your time or money. No one without a serious cash outlay starts in the top 10 so you do have to give yourself some time and some tweaking to get there. It is often good to pay a little more and get them to set your account up for you.

Here is the pdf form of the search engine interplay that helps to clarify how they interact. Click Here

What are Organic Listings?
Wikipedia says, “An organic search is a process by which World Wide Web users find Web sites having unpaid search engine listings, as opposed to using the pay-per-click (PPC) advertisement listings displayed among the search results.”

The field of search engine optimization, (SEO) is concerned with maximizing the visibility of a Web site by making its listings appear more frequently and more prominently in organic search results. Some businesses base their SEO strategies on the successful insertion of their Web site listing(s) into organic search results for various popular keywords.

“Organic SEO requires less ongoing maintenance and is less costly over time,” says Stacy Williams of SearchEngineWatch.com. “Optimizing content provides some control over listing content via tags and page text. More importantly, organic listings provide high levels of credibility and broad coverage on potentially every search engine worldwide.”

A balance of paid or sponsored listings and organic listings will yield the best results. Just remember that achieving the organic listing will take time and patience, as well as trial and error. But once you have achieved it and you continue to maintain the principles of good webmanship that got you there, it will be the easiest and certainly the most cost-effective way to advertise on the Net.

According to research by Wikipedia, “Organic results were viewed most often. On average, 9.2 search results were viewed before the first click. On average, consumers spent 10.4 seconds on a page to view the search results. The average viewing time for organic search result was 1.3 seconds. Searchers looking to carry out a transaction viewed more results, 9.9 on average, compared with 8.5 for information seekers. Buyers also spent more time viewing results, 11.4 seconds compared with 9.4 seconds for searchers. The goal is to be optimized to the point that you can eventually be high enough in the organic or natural listings to get the traffic you want. You cannot pay for these positions and they are the most trusted by the public. You can hire marketing firms that will help you get there. It takes some time and some patience but these are the coveted positions on the Net. It is a proven fact that anyone searching will choose a natural listing over a paid or sponsored listing, so the goal should be to be positioned there

The Bottom Line
If you have been reading this series, you know what it takes to get there. I have also been truthful with you and said that this is not a process for the faint of heart, or—in most busy Real Estate professionals’ cases—the time deprived. There are many reputable companies out there that can help you reach your goals. Your budget will dictate which one you choose. On the high end, there is OneUpWeb; on the more manageable end, Bruce Clay. There are many in-between, and although I have faith in the ones I recommend, I am not compensated in any way for that endorsement.

Real Estate is one of the top searched terms on the Net and growing. We hope that you will realize how the Internet can help you in your Real Estate business and will get on the bandwagon headed to where the New Real Estate™ is taking the industry. Now is the best time to take a look at your online presence and create a strategy to enhance it. Those who embrace technology will benefit from it; those who do not will regret it.

If you have questions, e-mail me or go to EREE Business Social Network and drop me a note. Or even better, add to the blog or forum. I will answer. And if I don’t know the answer, I will find out.

EREE Business Social Network