#1 in Commercial Real Estate Online

Online marketing, particularly Search Engine Optimization (SEO), has been a hot topic of conversation in recent years. As one of the most cost effective marketing strategies, SEO can be a particularly effective way for commercial real estate professionals to drive traffic to their web sites.

Search Engine Optimization involves improving the amount of “free” traffic to a web site from the organic, or natural, search engine results. These results appear in the main, left hand column of the search engine results page (see screen shot at right).

Web sites that appear in the search results are ordered based on what the search engines deem to be the most relevant to the keywords that a user typed in when searching. Each search engine has its own specific algorithm to determine relevancy. These algorithms are notoriously black box in that their methods are not openly known, but a few factors that are known include using keywords in web site text, links to the web site, the frequency of web site updates, etc.

While SEO does not involve any direct marketing costs, it does take time to optimize your web site to appear for relevant results. In the first of this two part series, we will give you some basic tips for how you can get started optimizing your web site to drive targeted traffic to your business and property listings.

Tip #1: Choose the right keywords
The first step to a successful SEO strategy is to choose the right keywords to target. The trick to this is to focus on the keywords that your target audience is using when searching for the products and services you offer. For example, a commercial real estate brokerage in San Francisco would want to target keywords such as “commercial broker,” “san francisco commercial broker”, and “california commercial broker".

First, start by building a list of keywords that you think are the most relevant for your business. After all, no one knows your business better then you. Then, plug these words into one of the various keyword suggestion tools, such as the Google Keyword Tool. This will help you build out your list even more.

When creating your list, remember to only pick the keywords most relevant for your business. Also, be sure to include targeted keywords that contain the names of markets you would like to focus on (i.e. “san francisco commercial broker”).

Tip #2: Avoid targeting too many words per page
While it may be tempting to target all the keywords for your site on one page, search engines need clear direction on what each page is about and which keywords the page should appear for. Before you begin optimizing your web site, it is important to determine which keywords you will be targeting for each page. Make each page as targeted as possible and limit it to a small, targeted list of keywords.

Tip #3: Add targeted keywords to your web site text
Once you have decided what terms to focus on for each page, the next step is to add those words to your web site. One of the main elements that search engines look at is the actual text on your web site. Look at the targeted keyword list that you created and sprinkle these words throughout your text to tell the search engines what your site focuses on. Remember, search engines can’t read images so it is important these words are put into the actual text.

Tip #4: Write optimized & catchy titles for each page
When your site appears in search results, the text used for the link at the top of your result is pulled from the “page title tag” of the specific page it is linking to. This title appears at the top of your browser when you are viewing a web page(see example). When writing these title tags, it is important to use your most relevant, targeted keywords and to remember that this text is what entices people to click on your link. Make sure it is catchy and “clickable” copy.

It’s also important to make sure that you write different title tags for each page, depending on each page’s content. If you are not familiar with where to find this code in your page’s HTML, here is an example of what it should look like.

Tip #5: Write an optimized and catchy description for each page
Below the link in your search engine result is the description for your web page. This is pulled from the “meta description tag” in your page HTML (click here for an example of what this tag looks like). Search engines pull the text that you put in your meta description tag and use it for the description shown in search results. This means that you need to make sure that this text contains your targeted keywords and is also made up of enticing copy that will make searchers want to click on your link.

These tips should give you a good base to use when optimizing your site for the search engines. Next Friday, we will be exploring some more tips on how to use SEO to improve your traffic for search engines. Look for our next post on Friday to learn more.