One of the tracks was basically someone completely out of touch with everything SEO/SEM telling the packed room to “never check your SERPs, they don’t mean anything, they are inaccurate and too many factors effect what you see” and in the very next track someone who knew considerably more than the previous speaker saying “check your SERPs frequently, its vital!”

Disappointing how many contradictions there were at this event and some of the flat out bad advice being offered by the “experts”

One person for me stood head and shoulders above everyone at this event, including the keynotes. Rand fishkin from seoMoz.org. He is quiet possibly the smartest person on the planet when it comes to SEO. while it seemed that 95% of all panelists wanted to force opinions on SEO and their version of best practices, Rand was able to show facts, and back up these facts with math. He expressed when he was stating an opinion and he backed up what he thought to be the truth with evidence and smart thinking. I’m now Rand’s biggest fan and highly recommend anyone in the SEO/SEM industry to look into what this guy has to say, he got me thinking, he inspired me, he truly rocks.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog, I wanted to let my 12 readers (thanks!) know that I’ve moved to a new job,  I now work for LandCentral as the Internet Marketing Manager. LandCentral specializes in cheap land and rural land with in house financing and no credit check.  I’m excited to be working with some very talented people in an incredibly creative and productive environment.

I’ve also updated my Twitter so you can now find me @LCSimon

I’m really looking forward to what the future holds and this new adventure. I’ve already been to pubcon which was amazing and SES is upcoming in March. Let’s connect!

This video is the 3rd in a series of SEO Training we offer to all our Agents at M. In the video I discuss the importance of “On-page SEO” These techniques can be applied to any website in any genre, so, I hope you enjoy and I’d love to get your feedback!

BTW – this was my first ever solo video, I did it first time, in one take. Yes I’m very proud right now.

SEO Training Week 3 – Optimizing Content and On Page SEO from chris lynch on Vimeo.

Just have to brag about the environment we have created at M Realty. I received this email today for a training program that was put together by Simon, our SEO/site director. He is passionate about all thing web and SEO and decided to build the ultimate education program for our agents. What struck me was how “normal” this feels here. We have an environment where these discussions happen every day.

I couldn’t agree more. We are on the cutting edge of technology and our agents are thriving. This high tech environment just feels so normal for none technical agents who are reaping the rewards of our previous SEO training.

As I look forward to the new, indepth training course I invite you all to check out some of the amazing things we are working at over at HomeQuest (polygon shading, new map labels, huge IDX upgrades and so much more) and M Realty, I promise you wont find another real estate brokerage in the world quiet like ours and I’m proud to be a part of this real estate revolution!!

A perfect example of this is Aaron Majors, a dynamic M Realty agent who came to us with grand visions of portland real estate auctions. After spending the last 5 months immersed in the M vision, Aaron now completely dominates his niche online, through taking advice and employing strategies learned during our inhouse training and just being around our tech conversations.

One of the best pieces of advice I can give to any Realtor looking to be successful with online marketing, or any new media is to completely immerse yourself in it. Join online communities, attend local work groups and utilize social networking to get a greater understanding of whats involved, whats needed to become successful and most important of all: what works for your industry! There are experts out there brimming with knowlede and experience, if your not utilizing it, your missing out!

• Comment on related Blogs and posts. Do a Google search for your target key phrase and get to know the blogs or forums that are on the first couple of pages.
• Get involved with the community. Don’t just post 1 line comments purely for generating the back link -  get involved in the discussion, on most blogs the authors decide whether to approve comments or not and most 1 liners never make it into the discussion.
• Make your name your target keyphrase, if you are targeting Seattle real estate, make your name “Steve Seattle Real Estate”  with the website link going back to your own site.
• Create an avatar! most blogs use the gravatar service, Its free and simple, just upload your image and associate it with your email address then each time you comment the readers can see your a human and not some auto spam comment bot.

There are thousands of discussion forums online around your websites topic, registering and participating in these forums is another way to generate legitimate back links to your website. Use the same tactics when entering these communities, fill out your forum profile, upload a picture and post relevant contributions. Most forums allow for signatures, this is where you can use your URL and anchor text which will be displayed on every forum post you create.

Well, what are you waiting for? get out there and get involved! once you become a member of these online communities a whole world of back link opportunities will arise, you’ll also meet some great people and make some valuable connections!

Find your niche. As you probably already know, real estate SEO is incredibly competitive, unless you have a lot of time, money and resources at your dispoal, forget the head terms. These are usually:

• city name real estate
• city name homes for sale
• city name mls
• real estate city name

Be more specific, target a town, a neighborhood or your real estate specialty. Incorporate this into the head terms and pick no more than 5 main terms or variations to target. Example:

• neighborhood name real estate guide
• town name real estate blog
• first time buyers neighborhood name

Research the competition. Keyword research can be very complex and require tools and a deep understanding of on-page SEO. The best way you can research the key phrases is to do Google searches for them, see how many websites are returned, what websites are at the top of the list then research those sites, Some tips for competition research:

• Google: site:www.competitiorsite.com – this will show you how many indexed pages the site has in Google
• Use SmartPageRank to gain valuable back link information of the competitior site, see how old the domain is, how many back links it has, alexa ranking and more.

Implement your Key Phrases. The absolute best way to impliment a key phrase into your website would be to use your main key phrase as the domain name. If this is not an option, place your keyphrases at the top of your pages in header tags <h1>,<h2> etc. Write your content around the key phrases, use the key phrases within link anchor text to other relevant content pages.

Theres much more to cover with understanding key phrases, my next article on the subject will be a lot more indepth guide to competition research and what’s needed to compete with them. Stay tuned!

• White Hat - Everything done with on page / off page SEO is above board, following Search engine guildelines to a T.
• Grey Hat – Walking the thin line of ethical search engine optimization. an example of Grey hat SEO would be stuffing or spamming key phrases in your post, meta tags, pages etc, saturating your content with potentially none relevant phrases in the hope of becoming more relevant than a competitor site purley based on the number of times said keyphrase appears within your content.
• Black Hat – Completely breaking the rules, going against the guidelines set forth from the search engines. An example of Black Hat SEO is hidden text. The art of making the font text color the same as the page background color.

If you have a Google account within webmasters tools there is a “report” link where you can let Google know of offending sites. Here is a list of things you absolutely cannot do to try and artificially increase your ranking within the search engines:

• Hide text content using CSS, java, or HTML. The search engines can and do spot this, the penalties for employing this technique range from de-indexing of your site to complete removal and IP ban.
• Buy Text links. Most SEO’s know the key to successful performance specifically within Google is the amount of quality, relevant back links pointing to your site. Though a back link campaign can be tedious at times, don’t be tempted to purchace text links from anywhere. They are detected, they are reported by competitors, they are incredibly easy to spot and the devalue your websites credibility almost instantly within the search engines.
• Spam or Stuff keywords into your content, meta tags or anywhere else on your website. Write your content for humans, include the keyphrase you are targeting in well written paragraphs and you will be rewarded in the long run.
• Duplicate Content. Sometimes putting aside time to crank out blog posts or website content can be very difficult, especially for Realtors. Don’t be tempted to copy and paste some content from another’s website. It will be instantly devalued and can also damage the sources site credibility. Taking quotes and sourcing them with a back link is absolutely fine, Copy and pasting an entire Wikipedia entry isn’t.

Obviously theres hundreds of ways to try and dupe the search engines, this lists just a few. The best piece of advise I can give you is to use common sense. If it does’nt feel right, just don’t do it the risk vs reward do not balance out with Black hat SEO.

1. Submit your website to directories. There are tens of thousands of website directories out there, though most of the search engines have devalued the vast majority of web directories they still provide completely free one way back links to your website.
2. Guest Blog. Submit guest posts to the blogs you subscribe to. Guest posts are a great way to wrap your links around relevant content, use your own anchor text and create relationships with Bloggers. Bloggers in genral love guest posts, its free content for their site and enables a lot more visitor interaction.
3. Create “Viral” content. Spend some time creating a post that other people will love. put some time and effort into this and the rewards could be unmatchable. Having a post/picture/video show up on the front page of Digg / Stumble etc is huge exposure and usually generates thousands of completely free backlinks, not to mention the massive traffic these viral spreading sites are capable of producing.
4. Ask your friends. In today’s society everyone and their mum has a website of some kind, leverage these websites and ask friends or family members for a link on their site.
5. Create social profiles. There are currently hundreds of social network sites out there, create profiles with them and keep them upto date. Some social networks are very specific and carry a lot of weight when linking back to your website, one of these is Zillow.

Stay tuned for more information on back linking, the various varieties of SEO and more in the comming weeks. Enjoy!

VisiStat offers real time website analytics, in other words, you can actually see when a visitor lands on your website, where they came from, what page they are looking at and a wealth of other useful information as it happens.

VisiStat is a premium analytic service (and by far the best I have used in 11 years of SEO / Internet marketing) and costs around $100/year per domain.

Here’s the reason I suggest VisiStat for realtors. Not only do they offer real time tracking, they are also introducing a whole host of SEO tools without raising the price.  So far VisiStat have replaced four of my every day SEO tools, two of which I pay a yearly subscription to use.

Some of the key SEO features included in the subscription are:

• Multiple Keyword Rank Tracking (see the position of a keyword in the 3 major search engines, this information is saved so you can visually see your movement within the search engines over any given period of time)
• Keyword Trending
• Keyword Tracking
• Meta Tag Analyzer
• Keyword Saturation
• … and even a meta tag generator for all you none CMS (wordpress/joomla) folks!

We love VisiStat so much, we set it up for all of our websites, even sites with little to no traffic so we can keep a close eye on their progress as they are developed. As far as I know, no other web analytic service offers this many tools, with blistering fast customer service and support at this price, Realtors – I urge you to investigate VisiStat, then keep an eye on this blog as I explain the usage of some of the tools they offer.