OnTheAvenues.com
Title
SEO Professional- Search Engine Optimization Consultant. Achieve Search Engine Rankings. Phoenix, Arizona SEO Company
Description
Providing SEO Consults, DIY SEO Services, Full SEO development Company
Search engine optimization, and search engine marketing in general, can serve a number of different purposes. It can generate sales, both online and offline. It can generate leads. It can convince search engine users to take the actions you desire, such as signing up for your newsletter, downloading white papers from your site, registering for a seminar, and so on. And while it is doing all this, your website’s prominent position on the search engine results pages (SERPs) contributes to branding and name recognition.
When done correctly, search engine optimization can bring people to your site that are actually looking for what you are offering. You know they’re looking for it because they typed in a key word or phrase that is directly related to your content. Most consumers are really tired of being inundated with marketing everywhere they look, but are still receptive to the kind of “just-in-time” marketing represented by a high placement in search engine results.
On The Avenues has developed a unique optimization process for web site promotion, through proper source coding and web page optimization. With over 12 years experience in SEO (search engine optimization), we can help you achieve top placements. Given this, investing in OnTheAvenues SEO spending time doing it yourself with our SEO Consulting services, or SEO Training, can provide an exceptional rate of return.
Languages
English
Address
- 18410 N 85th Avenue
- Peoria AZ 85382 US
Contact
- Bonnie
- email:
- www.ontheavenues.com
- +1 623-242-8437
Additional Information
OnTheAvenues real estate web sites.
There are many real estate web designers, and many real estate companies that offer free web sites to their agents, or those that provide you a template web site for a "few' bucks a month...but far and few ever achieve top rankings for their web sites. Developing a web site for real estate should be more then a url on your business card, but must be part of your full marketing campaign. When people are searching for a new home, they do not begin with your name, as you are an unknown realtor to them. They consumer begins with a simple search...such as new homes in Phoenix Arizona, or free Dallas mls search, or homes for sale in Atlanta. We develop new sites, or work on your existing site so that you are found by keyword phrases used by the consumer search.
A Real Estate Vertical Search
How do you ensure that your Real Estate Web site—now an essential marketing tool—is as effective as it can be at drawing home buyers and sellers and keeping them interested in all you have to offer? It’s how well a Real Estate Web site can draw repeat visitors that determines its “stickiness” in Internet-speak, and, ultimately, its success. It also depends on how SEO ready your Real Estate Web Site is designed to so that you secure top rankings on the major search engines for your keyword phrases
Having a Web site has evolved from great idea to absolute necessity for real estate practitioners who want to serve today’s net-savvy buyers and sellers. If you doubt the power of Web marketing, consider these statistics from the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers:
74 percent of home buyers reported using the Internet during their home search. 15 percent of home buyers found their home on the Internet during 2004, up from just 4 percent five years earlier. 81 percent of home buyers who searched the Internet purchased their home with the help of a real estate practitioner, compared with 66 percent of those who don't search the Internet. Home buyers rank property information as the most important tool for a real estate Web site to have, followed by photos, virtual tours, interactive maps, neighborhood information, and your contact information. My focus is on results. I can deliver the traffic and use Analytics; to get that traffic to take the action you want – whether it is more sales, more people opting in to your site, or calling you. Whatever “results” means to you.
Case Study: One of our sites has:
·Top rankings for the phrases “phoenix homes” (generic phrase) and “historical homes in phoenix” (specific phrase)
Analytics tells us:
·”phoenix homes” brings traffic but has only a 0.82% conversion rate.
·”historical homes in phoenix” brings less traffic but has a 6.67% conversion rate.
The Lesson Learned:
Add up the traffic from all your “minor” specific phrases — all with high conversions and compare it to the major traffic and low conversions from your generic phrases - you can learn where to focus your attention — on the phrases that convert! (Note: We wouldn’t even know about the specific phrase without Analytics)
Location, location, location: The old adage in real estate has taken on a new meaning and a new urgency in the age of the Internet. It's no longer just a property's physical location that matters but also the placement of a broker's ad on the major search engines. The top of the first page a Web surfer using a search engine sees is the new Holy Grail, and a whole sub-industry has sprung up to help agents and brokers get there.
"Search engine optimization is a specific kind of art, a kind of science by itself," says Jeff Smith, chief technologist for Big Band Idea Engineering, a San Diego firm that aims to do just that.
To that end, Google recently introduced Google Base, allowing real estate brokers, among others, to load-for free–their information into the mega-search engine's database in a way that makes it most accessible to consumers.
"The real estate industry has embraced it and been aggressive in using it," reports Justin McCarthy, Google's strategic partner development manager for real estate and formerly the associate editor of the New York Times Information Group, from 1993 to 1996, before the newspaper went on-line.
And with the market shifting from sellers to buyers, experts agree, a dominant search engine presence is more important than ever.
It's a cyberspace version of the tough competition for front page real estate in print journalism. Just as newspaper reporters like to see their stories played on the front above the fold - the first place most readers look - so do brokers seek the most prominent placement on brand name search engines such as Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN.
Ways to win the golden placement include outright purchase of the front page space and designing a web site with phrases or "tags" that search engines most frequently find. The latter strategy requires sophisticated knowledge of search engine "algorithms" or formulas, also known as "recipes," which, like cherished dishes at fancy restaurants, are often closely held. "It's not something you want to place in the hands of someone who doesn't understand it," says Smith.
Indeed, this brave new world has its own language: SEO stands for search engine optimization, not to be confused with CEO, which means, well, you know. Then, there are link farms, indiscriminate linking to other sites, a no-no with major search engines; and landing page or splash page, where you want searchers to land first on your Web page, so you can track who and how many are visiting your site, also known as hits.
Those in the industry speak of "organic" links, which means not sponsored or paid for by the click of a mouse (known as pay per click), or otherwise "enhanced" with logos, which cost extra. Not that there's anything organically wrong with paid advertising; it draws customers to your web site and it's a search engine's largest revenue source. "To have any sort of presence-such as a logo or picture-you pay for that," said Google's McCarthy. "Our model is 99.9 percent of our business comes from advertising." At Google, it's called "Ad Word," with brokers bidding up the price of pay-per-click top placement.
Three or four years ago, McCarthy says, the very term pay-per-click evoked quizzical looks. But no more. "The cat is out of the bag," he said.
In the SEO business, "Trust is a big thing," says Smith. Thus, the website of Discover San Diego, which contains a real estate link, is being updated to boost its "trust" quotient among users, according to Smith, whose firm has taken on the job.
Adds Big Bang CEO Glenn Bourgeois: "It's been a huge effort to optimize a large number of templates for San Diego real estate-related phrases. We will be aggressively pursuing a dominant position in the San Diego real estate search rankings." Translation: Make sure the website contains phrases search engine "robots" find, or, in SEO lingo, "spiderize."
"The site ranking right now is not amazing," acknowledges its owner, Nadiv Wilf. "When the new site comes out, it will be optimized a lot better with the right key words and crawlability." Spiders, you need to know, crawl all over your site. For the real estate industry, it's a new-and essential-language.
Even as search engine companies, such as behemoth Google, market products to capture more information on their sites, and thus more advertising revenue, smart brokers are evaluating which ones are most deserving of their advertising dollars.
Prudential California Realty is going through just such a process, assessing Yahoo, Google, and Trulia, which is real estate-only or "vertical" search engine. "We're monitoring everything closely and we'll continue to enhance the relationships that are working best for us," said Sherry A. Chris, PruCal Chief Operating Officer.
Yahoo generates so many clicks, Chris said, "it is best to qualify them." Thus they go to a live call center for further vetting before they are referred to specific PruCal agents. With Google and Trulia, leads click through directly to the agents.
"Yahoo is one of the most highly trafficked sites, period, and it has been involved in the business of real estate longer than both Google and Trulia," Chris says. "Google has been selling key words for some time, but this (Google Base) is their entrance into the real estate business of putting listing inventory onto their site."
With Google and Trulia, she said, "we know how many click throughs we're getting but not how many actual sales. We're in the process of building landing pages that will allow us to capture more information and track the number of sales."
Chris said Google isn't charging her company for this service, while Yahoo and Trulia are. In the case of Yahoo, she said, the agent pays a referral fee on a closed transaction, with part going to Yahoo and part to PruCal, to fund its call center.
"Right now, it's too early to tell which is best," she said. "My advice to brokers is that testing different products and services for nine to twelve months is the best way to determine where you end up putting your advertising dollars."
Jamie Glenn was director of product-real estate and classified at Yahoo before moving to San Francisco-based Trulia as vice-president for product management. The firm launched a year ago in California and nationally this September.
"We're focused on real estate, tailored to that market, so we can really focus on information that is relevant in the buying and selling process," says Glenn. "We provide comprehensive information about the local market place, what the neighborhood's like."
If Trulia is not yet a household word among Web surfers or real estate brokers, the firm expects to grow by "word of mouth," says Glenn. "Once people find us, they use us and tell their friends. We've also worked on relationships with brokerages across the country, the Prudentials, the Weicherts. They promote us as well."
At Trulia, real estate firms pay for featured listings, based on the pay-per-click model that Google also uses. But both search engine firms say relevance also counts. Top ranking only occurs, Glenn said, "if they match our search criteria." Trulia will also add a firm's logo, for an additional fee. The basic "organic" listing is free but doesn't guarantee prime placement.
The market slowdown is helping Trulia along with other search engines. "What we're seeing," says Glenn, "is that brokers and agents being are more conservative in their return on investment" spending. "There's a shift from off-line to on-line because it's more cost effective. So it's actually a good time for sites like Trulia."
Then there's the e-mail browser route to that cherished placement on the search engine front page. Mike Parker is senior vice-president and director of sales and marketing for the newly-formed Compass Internet Systems, which seeks to maximize search engine placement, for a modest monthly fee of $239.
"Google is so powerful and so ubiquitous, everyone assumes that's where all the business is in the real estate field, and that's not the case," Parker says, asserting that "a vast majority of e-mail users use Yahoo and MSN, not g-mail." More often, he says, that means that persons tend to use the search engines already on their e-mail screens.
Parker thinks real estate firms can rise to the top of search engines organically, that is, without paying for placement, by including in their sites the most search engine-friendly "title tags" and the more descriptive "meta tags." "You're trying to synchronize with as many searches as possible," Parker says.
"Then you do the somewhat labor intensive search engine placement, a complicated, proprietary process that brings in links and content and is submitted to the search engines regularly," he adds. "Webmasters, the people who build web sites, often know very little about search engine placement."
Parker's firm's monthly fee includes what it calls its "Web Reporting Tool," a daily e-mailed report on everyone who comes to your site, where they are from, what search engine sent them to you, what link referred them, what pages and listings they looked at on your site. "You can tell what part of your marketing is working," he says, "once you get your arms around this reporting system."
Sherry Chris would certainly agree, but she's not yet ready to abandon all print advertising for the Internet. "The proper positioning of your listings on line is the way to go, but there needs to be a balance, too," she says. "Some companies have pulled out completely from traditional print. We're not going to do that, because we realize there is value in both."
The Role of an SEO CONSULTANT
According to a GVU Users Survey, 84.8% of Internet users use Search Engines to find websites.
In today's competitive marketplace, the Search Engine Optimization is the most effective, results-oriented online marketing strategy available. With over 400 million searches performed daily - everyone wants a piece of the action. But just "wanting" top rankings, and knowing what to do and not do to get them is where you can separate yourself from the crowd.
Hard as it may be to believe, there are site owners who are not convinced that they need to use search engine optimization. If you know someone who needs their eyes opened a bit, this article just might help.
Most of the professionals reading this article will need very little convincing that search engine optimization is a necessary part of any website trying to make money or attract attention online. But there’s a good chance that you work for, or with, people who either haven’t heard of SEO, or don’t understand why they need to optimize their website. Maybe they’ve invested money in all of the more conventional advertising methods, and even placed banner ads or other paid ads online. Why do they need to spend more time and money to achieve a high ranking in the search engines?
You might start by asking them where they think the traffic for their website is coming from. Despite what they might think, the majority of web traffic is driven by the major commercial search engines: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask. (As of this writing, AOL’s search engine uses Google for its search results). According to various studies, most people prefer to click on organic search results rather than sponsored results, by a very wide margin.
This doesn’t mean that ads placed with search engine programs (like Google’s AdSense) are worthless, but it does mean that they shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all of a company’s website marketing campaign. Search engine users tend to trust organic results more than paid ads, which means that they’re more likely to click on them – and more likely to convert. There is a catch, though: they have to see you in the results to click on you. A good position in the search engines can’t be bought in the same way as a banner ad or a sponsored listing.
Studies have shown that most search engine users don’t click past the first three pages of search results; many don’t even click past the first page if they find what they’re looking for. Your own experience using search engines probably confirms this. What does this mean? It doesn’t matter how many search engines spider your site; if it isn’t listed in the first three pages, it might as well be invisible. Indeed, getting on the first page, among the top three results, is even better.
Here is a thought that should really give them something to chew on. They might not be doing SEO for their website, but it’s an even bet that their competitors are. In that case, their rivals are getting all that lovely website traffic that they should be getting for themselves. That should make them sit up and take notice if nothing else will.
Organic Search Engine Placement vs. Paid Search Engine Placement
The latest search engine survey conducted by iProspect shows that 60.5% of Internet users identified natural search results as most relevant to their query as compared to the 39.5% who selected paid search advertisements.
Across the top four search engines -- Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL -- which hold over 90% of the market share, more than 60% of users chose a natural search result over a paid search advertisement as most relevant to a sample query.
"This illustrates that even though online marketers focus the majority of their energy and budget on paid search advertising, natural search results are at least equally if not more important to reaching their entire searching audience," said Fredrick Marckini, CEO of iProspect. "Marketers who are not investing in natural search engine optimization and paid inclusion programs such as Yahoo!’s Site Match Xchange program are missing a large percentage of potential traffic. However, the same is true for the reverse; marketers who are only investing in natural optimization and paid inclusion miss nearly 40% of search engine users. The clear finding here is that smart marketers must invest in both," Marckini added.
Search engine marketing firms that offer both natural search engine optimization and management of paid search advertising campaigns can ensure their clients' Web pages are consistently found prominently in both types of results in all major search engines, which will lead to the most significant return on investment.
During the survey, respondents were first asked if they use one search engine more than any other. Those who answered yes were asked which search engine they use most often. Those answering Google, Yahoo!, MSN or AOL were provided with a sample search result screen from their preferred search engine, displaying the results of a search for "used cars" and were asked to click on the result, on that page, which they found to be most relevant had they been in the market for a used car.
According to iProspect Director of Business Analytics, Dr. Naga Krothapalli, "This methodology ensured that these users were allowed to select a search result from the search engine with which they were most familiar. It ensured the greatest degree of accuracy by guaranteeing that a Yahoo! user was not asked to select a search result from AOL search results or a Google user was not asked to select a search result from an MSN search. In theory, each searcher who indicated a ‘preferred’ search engine, would be familiar with the layout of the search results from their engine of choice."
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- Alexa: OnTheAvenues.com
SEO Blog: SEO Blog
