I received this email today and thought that I would put my reply here so everyone can see:


Paul wrote:

Joe,

My name is Paul . I have been a computer application teacher for 18 years in Los Angles. I have also been a part time Realtor and loan agent for the same 18 year period.

I want to create a website that allows people to search for homes and then in turn captures their information to build relationships with them. I have the vendor who can supply this information.

My confusion comes from the thousands of Real Estate website developers who have promised the world with templates and frames. Then you have to learn their software to maintain the site and pay them a hefty monthly fee. Then you have to send everyone there because you will never get an organic visitor from the internet.

I would love to learn how to generate traffic and leads to a real estate website but where do you start?

A. What format should this website take? I here frames and templates are bad.

B. I want to keep it simple but professional. I know what I want it to do and look like.

C. I want to invest in organic rankings and not PPC.

D. I need to create lead capture pages.

I want a useful site that ranks well, and I want to learn how to improve my rankings myself. I know that the SEO game is difficult and always evolving, but there has to be a starting point for everyone, right.

I have been a reader of yours for awhile, and I believe that you are very qualified. Can you help point me in the right direction?

Where should I go for a SEO Website in Real Estate?

What product(s) can I purchase from you that will help me learn how to improve my rankings on my future website? I would love to purchase your $995 package that you are offering only 50 subscribers to, but I do not poses the skills to put it to work as directed on you descriptions.

Or to be very honest: Because I have several hours a day to work on line, would you tell me that I could make a lot more money selling products on line using websites like the ones your software creates.

Thank you for your time,

Paul

PS: I am writing now and not in the past because I wanted to do my research first. I now know what I do NOT want, and this is why I am writing to you.

.... and this was my answer:

Hi Paul

Lets see where to start. I guess the first thing is to stay away from anyone "in" the industry that has cookie cutter sites. Unless they are working some special magic what happens is you get a web site thats just enough like everyone else's that it becomes hard to get yours to the tops of the search engines just because aside from changing the names the content is pretty much the same on every site that they sell.

If I were writing the "Absolute Spec" for the "ultimate website" I guess it would be as follows:

GENERAL SITE SPECS.
1. Done either completely using standard html or at the least appear to be done in html - This means you could do the pages in PHP but then you need to alias them in the server to look like html to the server and anyone viewing the pages. Here is an example:

http://www.joed.com/sl/Modular_Home_Financing.html

That page is actually a php page that is dynamically generated when someone calls the page up. IT really doesn't actually exist anywhere but is a php template with the data put in by calling a mysql database.

2. You are right. NO FRAMES. Frames are not only a stumbling block to the search spiders they are pretty much a pain for everyone that needs to use them.

3. The site would have to be completely W3C compliant.

4. The first page of the site needs to be named index.html not index.htm or index.php or default.html but index.html

5. Each page on the site needs to fulfill a purpose and links on each page should include 4 or 5 of the main pages on your site. As an example for real estate you might determine that your newsletter sign up page, your view listings main page, easy financing page, contact us page and your home page are the ones where you gather the info to possibly get "user data" that will help you make a sale. So all these menu options should be on every page. In any case the HOME page link should be on every page.

6. Each page should be built around a certain topic or subtopic. The primary key phrase should be used in the name of the page and also in the title, keywords and description of the page. The description used in the meta tags should if possible NOT be used as the same description as is on the page.

The Main topic should appear near the top of the page in an H1 tag followed buy a descriptive paragraph using the related terms in H2 tags.

example: Lets say your main phrase you want to target is Los Angeles Real Estate the related phrases would be:

Los Angeles
homes
California
listings
real estate
realtor
homes for sale
CA
houses
los angeles california real estate
multiple listing service

So you would want to use these phrases on that page in the descriptive paragraph and also sprinkled throughout the page. Now the tricky part. Each of these phrases should have an entire page built around it using sub phrases for that term and links from the page we just built. So if we decide to build a page about one of these phrases or a combination of these words like Los Angeles Home for Sale we would want to create a new page and call it:

Los_Angeles_Home_for_Sale.html

When you link to it you would use the complete phrase as your linking text. Los Angeles Home for Sale

The new page would have its own list of associated phrases:

sale
Los Angeles
homes
home
realty
house
Pasadena
los angeles real estate
realtor
California
real estate

Once again on the new page these words and phrases should be used and then link out to pages created for all the important phrases. This would have a cascading effect for your website that go go on endlessly and the search engines will just love them because what they see are related topics you are continuing to feed them the information they expect to see.

7. Make sure you have a Forum on the site. These are easy to set up and being they are user generated content they will grow fast. Maybe a forum for people who don't want to use a real estate agent knowing that you will eventually land some business when they can't sell it on their own.

Or a fix it type forum about getting ready to sell and what to look for when buying a home. Anything to suck a user in and make the search engines feel you are helping. Also every time someone posts something there it is unique content to your site.

8. RSS feed. Every time your site us updated you will want to update an RSS feed so that the search engines and your subscribed users will know. This file should have the ability to update automatically or to have an option you run to update it.

9. Automated site maps Again each time the site is updated. Once again for the same reasons. This file should have the ability to update automatically or to have an option you run to update it.

10. Photos, Graphics and videos should use ALT tags using key phrases or related terms as the ALT tag on each item. Use each primary tag no less then 2 times on a page and no more then 4 times. Also images should be named similar to the page names mentioned above. So instead of a logo.gif file the image should be named Los_Angles_Home_for_Sale_Logo.gif

11. All links on the site should be the full url and not just the page name so. use http://www.xyz.com/LA_Homes_For_Sale.html and not just LA_Homes_For_Sale.html

12. The last one. lol Make sure the software allows you to collect a newsletter list and to email from it. I saw a neat one the other day. It was on an auction site but it allowed people to sign up for the general mailing list but it also let them sign up for alerts. So you could set it up to immediately email them if a piece of real estate that met their specs were listed. Just about anything you can do to keep in regular contact will work.

Well thats the basics. If you want higher ranking in the search engines you will also need links back to your site using your search terms and add as much content as you possibly can.

I hope this helps. The look of the page isn't nearly as important as the way the search engines look at it. So no matter what graphics you use to make it look great to humans, if you go by these specs the search engines will like it a lot too.

As to making money on the net using my tools. I do it everyday. So it is possible. You just need to find niche markets to get involved with and push them.

Joe

This is the kind of advice I give out before you are a customer. Can you imagine what its like when you are a customer.

Please check out my My Ebay Store for Search Engine Optimization . for more information.