Second Self Virtual Assistance

SERPs are the Search Engine Results Pages that are created after you enter your keywords in the search field of any search engine: Yahoo!, Google or Bing. How can the new SERPs drive more traffic to your website?

Right now, Google allows you to refine your search even further than a generic term by giving you the option to search according to shopping, news, images, videos, maps, books, blogs, updates or discussions of the search term you entered. You’ll see your options on the left hand side of the SERP. It even gives you the chance to look at sites based on the time of entry, nearby results, related searches, sites with images and even searches based on similar terms. Real-time updates have become huge on all search engines, which is what makes social networking such an important factor in marketing your business. Yahoo has also started offering these options and Bing pioneered the idea when they began.

What does this mean for driving traffic to your site? It means that you need to think more diversely about what things you place emphasis on when doing your search engine optimization. There are five main Google search engines that you need to insert yourself into to increase your rankings in Google overall. These include:

You Tube – Pay attention to your title and tags when posting videos on You Tube.

Google Image Search – Add images to your blogs that include keywords.

Google News – They only index news articles that are three days old or less and only index it once. This one can be a little trickier than the others.

Google Maps/Local Search – Add your name, business name, contact info and areas you cover as well as keywords, when possible, to Google Maps and Google Local Search.

Google Blog Search – Blog often, with varying lengths and link to more than one source.

Since the search engines are constantly evolving, it is important that your business model is constantly evolving to keep up. The new SERPs can help drive more traffic to your website if you know how to work it. If you’re at a loss on where to begin, let your Real Estate Virtual Assistant help you out.

Pamela Cendejas, Real Estate Virtual Assistant – Second Self Virtual Assistance: When There Isn’t Enough of You to Go Around!

Like waistlines, websites can get soft if you don’t keep working on them.  Here are a few tips on how to whip your website into shape for the new year and beyond:

1. Control Your Movements – You need to have a website that has a user-friendly back office.  This means that you can add pages, videos, customize forms and feel comfortable working with it.  You don’t need to have a total knowledge of exactly how a website works.  But, you need to feel comfortable knowing that you have the ability to “get your hands dirty” if you need to instead of relying completely on an I.T. person to get the job done.  Virtual assistants are great in helping with these things as well.  Another thing to look for is that the company you are getting your website from has a real live person you can speak to about any customer service-related issues.
2. Pump up the SEO – Make sure your meta tags, keywords and descriptions for all your pages are optimized to their fullest effect so that search engines and, in turn, potential clients will be able to find your site when looking for their real estate professional.
3. Create the Image You Want and Work It – You can work traditional advertising to fit in with your online marketing by creating a consistent look and brand to both.
4. Become a Social Butterfly – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and even Trulia are just a few of the great social media outlets that you should become a member of.  They also allow you to add links to your website and blogs.  You should also add links from your website to your different social media profiles to help create “stickiness” (capturing a reader’s attention and keeping them interested).
5. Just Breathe – As you and your business evolve, so should your website.  At least every six months or so, you should go through your site and look at it from a fresh perspective.  The real estate market can change dramatically in six months.  What was the focus then may have shifted to something else now.  Make sure all links work properly and that your images still appear correctly.  Add new information and delete outdated stuff.

Why wait until the new year to start working on your site’s image?  Contact me now to see how I can help you get your website in the best shape it can be so you can hit the ground running in 2010.

Pamela Cendejas, Real Estate Virtual Assistant – Second Self Virtual Assistance: When There Isn’t Enough of You to Go Around!

Since search engines are the driving force behind 84% of internet traffic, getting your site seen by the search engines is important.  You want to make sure you show up on at least the top two pages of searches for your keywords and, preferably, the first page.  Google has the lion’s share of all searches (55-65%), while Yahoo and Bing get around 10-15% each. 

But, how are search engines reading your sites?  There are two ways: spiders (automatically “crawl” websites on the internet) and directories (human-edited).  The search engine spiders automatically go through website pages and determine your “expertise” based on the text both on the page and in the meta tags.  Adding your keywords a few times sprinkled throughout the text on your page will increase your chances of a higher ranking.  However, don’t think that just jamming your page with keywords will guarantee you a spot at the top.  You need to focus on a couple of keywords and sprinkle them as often as is naturally possible throughout the page.  Anything extra or forced will make your site appear “spammy” and get penalized as such.  Also, you don’t want to lose the attention of your website visitor by making the text hard to read.

There are many human-edited directories on the internet, but they are becoming more and more scarce.  If you think about the fact that these directories actually have people that go through every site on the internet to make sure it is valid, you can see why more and more are going the automated route.  DMOZ and Yahoo are just a couple of the free ones left.  But, it can take months to get your site edited and added to their directory.  And Yahoo Directory has started charging a fee for a business site to be included in their directory.

Once you have your pages streamlined to a few natural uses of the keywords you want to focus on and have added these keywords into your meta tags, you are going to want to submit your site to directories to be considered for inclusion.  There are tons of directories out there that still do this for free.  You just have to be patient with their turnaround time.  The three most important directories to submit your site to are:

Google - http://www.google.com/addurl/
Yahoo! – http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
Bing – http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx

This should get you pointed in the right direction to start your search engine optimization.  If you have any questions, please contact me and I’ll be happy to help you out.

Pamela Cendejas, Real Estate Virtual Assistance – Second Self Virtual Assistance: When There Isn’t Enough of You to Go Around!

My Thoughts:

• Be sure to take advantage of multiple categories.  I searched real estate in my city and got one group of matches.  Then I searched homes for sale and got a different set of hits.
• Forms were easy to fill out and submission only took a few minutes.
• No keywords to manage.
• Edits are easy and available 24/7.
• Testimonials are good, but reviews are considered more trustworthy by users.
• Reviews cannot be spammed; there are safeguards.
• Reviews can be positive or negative.  The good side of that is, it will keep you on your toes.
• Most sites are free, but some do charge a monthly fee.
• SEO advantage – links point to your site.

Become a Local Yokel and get your name out there for all the world to see.  You will be all over the map and all over the web in your locale.

Pamela Cendejas – Second Self Virtual Assistance: When There Isn’t Enough of You to Go Around!