Feb
27
How Do I Optimize My Site for the Search Engines?
Posted by Dustin Luther under For Realty Professionals, From the Inbox
I’m working as quickly as possible to get through my inbox… Here’s another question:
hey Dustin! I’m hard at work on www.CometRealtors.com - have any SEO insight
for db-driven sites? links online?
cheers man - thx for the talk in glendale!
The low hanging fruit with database driven websites is to make sure that the site is optimized for the search engines (SEO) so that they can send you the traffic you deserve! 
A little aside before I get into the details. Almost all blog platforms are “database-driven” in that the content for the blogs is stored in a database and output into HTML based on some server calls (no need for the detail). The good news is that if you are using an established blog platform (like Top Producers, Blogger or Wordpress.com), then they will have figured out all the SEO stuff for you. The rest of this post only applies to people with home-grown solutions…
The big picture is that you want to make sure that your URL structure is “human writable”, which just means that it isn’t filled up with a bunch of code (as in “….com?=sear…”). Using redirects built into the “.htaccess” file, it is not too difficult for someone who knows what they are doing to substantially improve the URL structure. In reality, the coding of this is WAY too advanced for this blog, but the concept is very important. By the way, a good “page title” is also important and can really help the search engines to know where to send people on your site. Again, this stuff is not too complicated for coders, but way beyond the scope of this blog.
Beyond that, a great place to start is to make sure the title of your pages are filled with good keywords. However, don’t overdo it. If you write for the search engines, it will show and will scare away readers (the very people you want to link to you!). The reality is that if you are writing about your topic of interest, then the good keywords will flow naturally.
There’s volumes more information available on the SEO blogs, the best of which can be found here: http://www.technorati.com/blogs/seo. In particular, Matt Cutts is a Google employee who writes a top-notch blog on SEO.
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COMMENTS (4)
I think the key is to just post, and post, and post. Writing lots of worthwhile content will get you linked. Then writing about anything will automatically get you ranked for the subject you write on. I remember when I did a quick post on another mortgage professional named Roger Schlesinger. He has a daily, national radio campaign, and goes by the title "Mortgage Minute Guy". After I wrote about him, I was number one in Google search results for that term, for almost a year. Above Roger himself! :-) It was among the top three search terms for how people found my blog for six months. His site is top ranked now, but I'm still on the first page of results for one of the most well known characters in the industry. Instead of banging your head, trying to be ranked #1 for "California Real Estate", posting every day on information that you think people will find important will get you search engine traffic you never knew existed. February 28, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Todd, your advice is spot-on! Nothing feeds the hungry search engines better than content. February 28, 2007 at 5:22 pm
I have been adding content to my website on a weekly bases and I have noticed better placement on the search engines. May 25, 2007 at 10:18 am
Sheri, Content definitely helps... although mainly because good content can attracts better links! :) May 25, 2007 at 1:50 pm