Real Estate SEO Blogs by Key Yessaad

Everyone who takes a journey towards understanding Websites, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and how they all connect to their Real Estate Business must confront the idea of Meta Tags. It is true that many Web Developers will tell you not to worry about such concepts, and in some instances they are correct – but many times this is a veiled attempt to seduce “your ignorance” which correlates towards your ongoing dependence and confusion.

So let’s learn what these terms mean:

Meta Tags Definition: Meta Tags are HTML elements used to provide structure about Web pages as well as Blog Pages. Such elements must be placed as tags in the head section of an HTML document. This is information that is not visible to users on a website, but is loaded into areas of a web page to be found by Search Engines, called the Header Section.

When you hear about Spidering or Crawling of Websites what you ought to understand is the method that Search Engines access the code behind your website and read the Meta Tags as well as the HTML Code in your Web and Blog Pages. In effect Tags describe pages to Search Engines, like Google and Bing, and help them organize the Internet. Given the potential of manipulation by Web Publishers Search Engines use other criteria besides these Tags, so in essence they have a recipe that counts each element with a percentage of effectiveness – unfortunately they don’t share what that recipe is.

The three most common Tags within this Header are the Title, Keywords and Description Tags. It must be understood that the Keyword Tag is no longer heavily weighed and many even argue that the description Tag is no longer necessary since Google can select the text from your page to describe it.

I want to share with you what I call Best Practices that correlate with your business habits:

1. It is not the job of the Real Estate Agent to worry about how Meta Tags are aggregated within a website – it is the job of the Web Vendor to do it right. If I am an agent who buys services from a Web Vendor I expect these elements to be setup properly.

2. Most Vendors do a horrible job of this but a few excel tremendously. In order for you to gauge if your vendor is up to the challenge ask them to show you their Page Creation Tools – you will be able to tell if they offer the following areas: Title, Description, Keywords, Tags, URL, Include in XML RSS Site-Map, Navigational and Footer Control.

3. The Page Creation Tool, some call it CMS for Content Management System, must be Blog-ish. This is a topic I have covered before; it only means that as the user fills in the various part of a Blog as they create a Post all the Tag Elements are created automatically. In fact the user is not required to even understand where these Tags are going to reside.

From here on I am going to assume you have a product in which the Page Creation Tools give you access to the above.

4. Title Tag: Very important Meta Tag and must be managed in a thoughtful manner. Always use a Title that truly relates to your content – those who try to stuff keywords here fail miserably. Try to avoid Fabricating Titles with a certain order that are not organic – in fact just be precise and Descriptive as in: “Short Sale Properties in Lexington South Carolina under $200,000” – if the page that you are creating is about that topic.

Many get crazed about what is called “SEO Title Sculpting” or what words and what order you ought to place them to get the most visibility – and for some SEO Experts these ideas are important; but remember: you are a Real Estate Professional who must stay focused on your story and how to make sure it finds its way on the Internet.

5. A good Title is usually 7 to 10 words long – again; if you focused on truly description the page in a few words and ignore Keywords you will always be fine.

I will Pickup on this topic in the near future and share how Meta Tags ought to be turned over within your control. I want you to know that these concepts are easy to understand and ask you to remove the fear of Real Estate SEO.

Happy Blogging – Key Yessaad