In this chapter you learned the following:

• Search Engine Optimization is required to get your website recognized by the search engine and onto the first page of search results.
• SEO works by using text, links and increasing the popularity of your website rather… keeping the web site fresh.
• It is beneficial for individual agents to create there own website to gain recognition, new customers and to be able to stay in contact with their previous clientele. – make a note on controlling your own destiny.
• Pay Per Click ads are a great tool but not for everyone. They can be costly and not guaranteed to yield the desired amount of leads.
• The difference between onpage optimization and offpage optimization.

Pay Per Click ads, or PPC, are those in which you pay a search engine a per click fee to recognize your ad which is then placed under the sponsored listings section of a search results page.

Each time a person clicks on the ad, you pay a fee to that engine. As previously discussed, popular key words are important in the search process.

Advertisers craft their ads using these key words and bid on how much they will pay to the search engine each time the ad is accessed by those searching the web.

Using Pay Per Click ads may seem a whole lot easier than learning and applying the other various SEO techniques. There are a lot of benefits to using PPC ads, including placement at a highly visual area on the search results page.

Another great benefit is that you can also exclude keywords and phrases. For example if your company does not handle apartment or house rentals, you can exclude the keyword “rental” when you submit your ad under “houses”. This will help to further target your specific audience.

On the same token, if your company does handle rentals, you can also use what’s known as broad matching that will allow renters to access your site as well as those looking to buy and sell homes.

While the benefits of PPC can’t be denied, this type of service may not be for you. A big reason for this is because some Internet users accidentally click on the ads.

That means you get to pay for their mistake. Another reason to not use it is because there is no guarantee that they will be converted to a client even if they purposefully click on your ad. Remember that Internet searchers are looking to compare.

They can click on your ad and then compare it to a competitor’s and decide to go with them. That means your competitor gets the business and you still get the bill.

If your company’s advertising budget is small, then PPC ads should be considered carefully prior to enlisting their use. It’s not much different than investing in the stock market.

If you can’t afford to lose the money then steer clear of it. There are other low cost SEO techniques that you can take advantage of that will not take a huge bite out of your small budget.

Onpage Optimization refers to the SEO techniques that you use on your web site. This includes updating keywords and phrases and removing those that are no longer viable.

Updating content such as articles, blogs and other important information. If your site details property values and tax assessments in various areas of your region, then regularly updating those values and tax information is a part of SEO.

Offpage Optimization refers to those techniques that are done outside of your web site and some forms of onsite maintenance. These include determining your page ranking in the search engines and checking out what your competitors are doing on their sites.

You will want to view their HTML codes, and determine if using them on your own site will be helpful to you. It would also include removing links to sites that are no longer active and replacing them with ones that are

Finding out how many inbound links they have is also important when sizing them up. Having a lot of quality inbound links can raise their visibility with the search engines and garner them a higher page ranking.

How to discover how many sites link to your competitors and which sites they are will be discuss later on in this book.

Both onpage optimization and offpage optimization are both important in a successful SEO campaign.

In this chapter you learned the following:

• Search Engine Optimization is required to get your website recognized by the search engine and onto the first page of search results.
• SEO works by using text, links and increasing the popularity of your website
• It is beneficial for individual agents to create there own website to gain recognition, new customers and to be able to stay in contact with their previous clientele.
• Pay Per Click ads are a great tool but not for everyone. They can be costly and not guaranteed to yield the desired amount of leads.
• The difference between onpage optimization and offpage optimization.