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Is Your Website Optimized for SEO?

Posted on April 7, 2009 by Drew Meyers

If not, you’ve got some work to do to compete. Here is a great example of a real estate site that is optimized for SEO – Laguna Beach & Newport Beach Real Estate Guide. Here’s the kicker though — it’s not sacrificing the user experience in order to please Google’s algorithms. There are calls to action for exactly what buyers and sellers are looking for (mainly market statistics and properties for sale) when they visit a local real estate site.

lagunanewport1

Some things to notice:

The site is built entirely with WordPress by Virtual Results. You can contact Jim Marks on twitter if you’re interested in learning more about what they offer.

[update 9/23/2011: I now work with Jim at Virtual Results. Further, the site mentioned in this post is no longer online. A more recent site we've launched in the Laguna Beach area is John Stanaland's]

About Drew Meyers

Drew Meyers is the founder and managing editor of Geek Estate Blog. He currently runs ESM Exec Designs, a web design firm specializing in corporate and personal blog design. Travel addict and social entrepreneurship & microfinance advocate.

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  • http://virtualresults.net Jim Marks

    Thanks for the feature… if anyone has questions, I am happy to answer them here!!

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  • http://www.hawaiiilife.com/ Hawaii real estate guy

    Aloha Drew,

    No offense, but there are a few problems with your post.

    1. You don’t optimize your website for SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. So you SEO your website (I know, I’m nitpicking here).

    2. It makes me cringe when I hear supposed “SEO professionals” (NOT you Drew) say that they optimize their sites for Google. You should optimize your site for users. If the site works for users, it will work for Google.

    3. The site isn’t optimized perfectly for users. Sorry Jim. It’s done fairly well, but improvements could definitely be made.

    Drew, this site obviously has a lot of “work to do to compete”. It ranks #94 in Google for its main search term, Laguna Beach Real Estate, which is a moderately competitive term with an average of 4,400 Google searches per month. In comparison with my main search term, Hawaii real estate, which is more competitive and averages 22,000 Google searches per month – for which I have a #1 authority listing.

    If you’d like to be at the top of Google’s results, check out the real estate SEO company we use, http://realappy.com/

  • http://virtualresults.net Jim Marks

    HREG,

    Thanks for your comments, and as they seem to be well intended, I would like to respond…

    1) Yeah, a bit nick-picky, but good enough point..

    2) You say…It makes me cringe when I hear supposed “SEO professionals” (NOT you Drew) say that they optimize their sites for Google. You should optimize your site for users. If the site works for users, it will work for Google.

    This is simply wrong. When Drew mentioned this site as being well SEO’d, he was talking about ON-Page SEO… As I am certain, you know, there is on page (creating a site that the SE bots understand and can adn will crawl well and often) and off-page, something you hired a company to help you with. (It sounds like they did a great job!)

    Although I agree that there are more important things than creating great onpage SEO, (like conversion,etc)I disagree that this is even a decision. There are SO MANY instances where there is just NO crossover…

    Lets take some basic examples… (By the way, from first glance, your SEO did MOST of these)

    1) Canonicalization- Do you think that your users care whether your site url consistently starts with www or not? Google determined it confuses the crawlers enough to create a new tag for it less than 90 days ago..

    2) Duplicate content- Each and every time you create a WP blog post, WP creates (at least) 4 pages of dupe content.. (same content multiple URLs) date pages, author pages, etc.. Your users will NEVER care about this…Google does.

    3) Permalinks.. Not sure if your users care if a URL is xyz.com/p=123 or xyz.com/los-angeles-real-estate, See how this is going?

    4) Link Structure… Google ABSOLUTELY cares how easy or difficult it is to crawl content and will index more of your pages (this is good) if you create a structure that it easy to crawl. For example WP, out of the box, since 2.5 does not do great job of this.. easy enough to change, though. This structure is not usually relevant to your users…

    5,6,7)Proper Descriptions (that your users dont see, Proper Pagination,ditto, Clean Code (moving all your java and css out to external folders…

    I could really carry this list another 20 items or so, but I hope you see my point. There really are a lot of things that you CAN do to SEO your site, so that the valuable content you write sees better results and gets read by more users… none of these things effect, positively or negatively, the users “experience”….

    so lets talk about that..

    I do a fair amount of SEO, and I, like Drew and DG really enjoy doing it. I have never considered myself a master and totally understand why some think it is even irrelevant. With that said, I am totally proud of my success rate and my SEO clients (as opposed to my design clients, as the example in this post shows, although I am pretty thrilled it is #94 after only two weeks)tend to rank well for major search terms.

    3. What I WOULD like to discuss, however is your statement, “The site isn’t optimized perfectly for users. Sorry Jim. It’s done fairly well, but improvements could definitely be made.”

    HREG, you don’t really know me, but my experience comes from OUTSIDE the RE.net. I invested the last 10 years or so, consulting to BIG BOX Internet Retailers, studying 100s of millions of clicks, and making minute changes to web sites and on-line offers to gains 10ths of percent improvements in click-in and click through rates. Our single job within each contract was to learn to KNOW these Internet consumers and their expectations. We studied, interviewed and watched click patterns,etc. All this was done to better understand how to create an action. I often called this study, “Internet Anthropology..”

    I now have a mere few million clicks to prove out those same theories with the Real Estate consumer. But I approached Virtual Results with the same exact types of data collection and analytics, as in my previous contracts, and the results have been really gratifying. I KNOW what typical bounce rates, click-in, conversion,and self-identification rates are within this space and and we are really happy with our current analytics..

    Now with (all that said) I would love to hear your criticism and ideas for improvement… I will totally plug them into my model and provide you with feedback. I can tell you within a couple of weeks if it helped or hindered our ultimate result, which is conversion. If I am missing something… I really want to know what it is…

    Thanks for your engagement…

  • http://www.hawaiiilife.com/ Hawaii real estate guy

    @Jim – “Fairly well” is a complement, this site is optimized better then 95% of the sites out there.

    I don’t think I want to share SEO info with my competitors. But we could speak privately, I’m always interested in forming good relationships. My name is Justin at HawaiiLife.com.

  • http://www.zillow.com Drew Meyers

    And yes, to Jim’s point, this post was all about on-page SEO.

  • http://www.hawaiiilife.com/ Hawaii real estate guy

    @Drew – I actually took it a step further to mean SEO for this home page in particular and not the entire website. Which Jim makes some great points about, because as a whole, the website is optimized very well, including great site structure.

    I should also recognize that you make a good point about, “calls to action”. This site has great calls to action which I’m sure leads to high conversion rates.

    @Jim – Being #94 in Google after only 2 weeks (which I wasn’t aware of) is a huge accomplishment and speaks well for your work. Again, I’m more then happy to share with you how to improve the on page SEO in private.

  • http://virtualresults.net Jim Marks

    Thanks HREG, I look forward to that conversation…

    Also, just noticed the site is #1 in MSN and #4 in Yahoo… (Your results may vary…)

  • http://www.hawaiiilife.com/ Hawaii real estate guy

    @Jim – wow, #1 in MSN and #4 in Yahoo! after just a couple of weeks. Maybe you can teach me a thing or two. Good work.

  • http://www.zillow.com Drew Meyers

    That is good. You’re beating Zillow’s Laguna Beach page in both Yahoo and Live.com.

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  • Bob

    Jim,

    You did a nice job. The site looks great.

    If you engaged in link buying, comment spamming, and asking agents to trade reciprocal blogroll links, you’ll get to #1 just like HREG. ;)

  • Jim

    @Jim – Great site!!

    Bob is correct. There are really no secrets as to what Justin is up to. He probably should also disclose that he is realappy.com and wasabihawaii.com instead of pretending that it is a company that they have hired or use for SEO.

    No secret as to how they use their clients link pages to push links to themselves and creative three ways to get one way links to there site as well.

  • http://www.hawaiiilife.com/ Hawaii real estate guy

    @Jim – I’m not trying to hide anything. Anybody can see everything in a whois. Here’s the relationship of these three companies:

    1. I founded Wasabi and HawaiiLife.com, and with my partner at Wasabi bought stake in RealAppy.

    2.HawaiiLife.com employees RealAppy for SEO & Wasabi for design.

    3. I do not work at RealAppy.

    4. HawaiiLife.com has no stake in either of the other companies.

    I do 3 way link trade and every page I trade from sits on a single server with the same class block IP, so Google can see everything and is completely withing their guidelines. The reason I do this is because I only trade from highly relevant content.

  • Bob

    3 way link trades are not acceptable.

  • http://www.hawaiiilife.com/ Hawaii real estate guy

    Note: Jim (NOT Jim Meyers) and Bob hide their identities. Can you see how deceptive their posts are in the fact that they try and get you to think that “Bob” is replying to Jim Meyers and not the new post by “Jim”. The type of people who do this are the same type of people who employ black hat SEO tactics. You will notice I am completely honest about who I am and don’t try and hide anything. I even admit to doing 3-way (white hat) link trades.

    @Bob – If you are doing 3 way link trades in order to deceptively trick Google into thinking your site is more important then it is, then yes, this is bad. SEO blackhats do this by having fake sites on different C-Block IP addresses from which they trade links from. Here’s an example of the bad way:

    http://www.seobook.com/archives/000467.shtml

    This is NOT what I do. I trade links from highly relevant pages across websites that sit on the same C-Block IPs or sites that I’ve identified to Google through Google Webmaster Tools. I do this in order to put useful, relevant links on my pages and to receive highly targeted traffic from partner sites.

    But instead of argue about it, let’s ask one of the most respected SEO companies, SEOmoz.org. I’ve posted the question here (they’re busy and won’t answer the question for 4-5 days):

    http://www.seomoz.org/qa/discuss/15683/3way-linking-between-highly-relevant-content

  • Mel

    HawaiiGuy

    Its a violation of google policy 3 way link trades.

    Link schemesPrint
    Your site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results. Examples of link schemes can include:

    Links intended to manipulate PageRank

    Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)

  • Bob

    I dont need the lesson. I’ve been doing this stuff stuff for 10 years. No black hat.

    The point was that you went after a decent site just to blow your own horn, even though your success is based on little more than link spam, trading links, and buying sitewides and other links.

    If you step into the arena to blast Jim’s Laguna site, which was well done, then you need to be able to take the heat when your approach is brought into question.

    As for the links just to drive traffic, no follow them and I’ll believe you.

  • http://www.hawaiiilife.com/ Hawaii real estate guy

    Note: Notice how “Mel” does not identify himself either. It’s probably “Bob” being deceptive again.

    @Mel – The guidelines you posted specifically state, “disregarding the quality of the links”. This is exactly my point. I am not disregarding the quality of my links. I only link to highly relevant sites that are useful to my visitors.

    @Bob – Nofollowing all the links would be a good idea and I’ve thought about doing this ever since they came out with the nofollow attribute. However, I’m running 2 businesses and don’t have a lot of time these days. Perhaps one day between my own sites, but to coordinate all the link trades I’ve made over the past 10 years would be a lot of work.

  • Mel

    google guidelines

    Links intended to manipulate PageRank

    Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (”Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)

  • http://www.realtysoft.com Peyman Aleagha

    HREG,

    No offense but one big issue I see with your SEO is your keywords! You have optimized your website for “Hawaii Real Estate” (which is great) but you are not ranking well for more targeted keywords such as “Oahu Real Estate”, “Maui Real Estate” etc.

    I am sure you know your market better. So my questions for you is this: Would you say most of your prospects would search Oahu Real Estate or Hawaii Real Estate?

    Cheers,
    Peyman Aleagha
    RealtySoft.com

  • Lanikai Mamma

    Obviously, Hawaii real estate is the big price as far as traffic goes. that is why he comment spams as Hawaii real estate guy when it is a company site. Its all about Hawaii real estate. Too bad he was in such a hurry to look like a big shot and blast evry one else (he miss typed and added too many i’s) Whoops ;-)

  • Lanikai Mamma

    Whoops, Kind of like my spelling error – LOL

  • Lanikai Mamma

    Hmm?? Now who’s being deceptive here?? People responding to a blog post or someone who signs as Hawaii real estate guy? Hey HREG – I have seen posts by you on other blogs stating that you were not a a real estate agent but a SEM, SEO person for several Hawaii sites. Do you have a Hawaii real estate license or not? If not, why would you sign as “Hawaii real estate guy”. To some that would be considered deceptive. Don’t you think?? Or maybe you just happen to be doing SEO for a Hawaii real estate that day. Maybe next week it will be Hawaii vacation rentals, Hawaii car rentals or something along those lines.

  • http://www.zillow.com Drew Meyers

    Keep this conversation on topic please. Any further comments about people and not the topic of this post will be removed.

  • http://www.streetclothingshop.com Costello

    It is so annoying to read all the post because none of you care about users here. Drew, I appreciate your involvement. Although SEO must be carried out for each site but it is not an easy thing to do and need very consistent work.

  • http://www.hawaiiilife.com/ Hawaii real estate guy

    I’d just like to point out that SEOmoz has answered the question about 3-way linking here,

    http://www.seomoz.org/qa/discuss/15683/3way-linking-between-highly-relevant-content

    They start off by saying, “This is certainly not against Google’s Guidelines…”

    I’d like to get back on topic as Drew suggests and talk about the great job Jim Marks has done with call to actions. I think we can all learn something from this.

    1) Subscribe to RSS feed is very prominent
    2) If you click onto Market stats, they request you give your contact info to get their market stat info (this is great!)
    3) RSS feeds to all of their communities (never thought of this)

    Jim, this is something I most certainly need to improve on my site. I think I will be able to increase my conversion rate using some of your ideas.

  • http://www.hawaiirealestatereporter.com Hawaii Real Estate Reporter

    This discussion is cracking me up, so I’ll chime in: The Laguna site looks pretty well optimized to me regarding on the page optimization. HREG’s site is also pretty well optimized, especiialy regarding the off the page factors. Both are equally important, although the true success is measured in the actual rankings, serp positions, and above all BOTTOM LINE SALES. Theres a guy in the top 10 serps for “hawaii real estate” who hasn’t has a sale all year.

    Google says a lot of things in it’s guidelines, all of which are purposefully vauge. If your a big site with deep pockets, you can do whatever you want. If your a smaller guy, you might or might not get a google slap for getting aggresive.

  • http://www.hawaiiilife.com/ Hawaii real estate guy

    Aloha Hawaii Real Estate Reporter. As you know, I’ve contacted you regarding getting links to my site from yours previously. I did this by offering to put your TV content on my blog. This is how I generate links to our site.

    You responded back asking if we would be willing to buy advertising on your TV show. Of course advertising on your show would be great exposure, but to be honest, I have a $0 SEM budget (I did beg my broker, though, and he said maybe if we sell something on Oahu).

    So now I’m flying out to Oahu (using my miles and staying in one of our listings) to meet with you and your broker about accepting our leads. Part of the requirements for servicing our leads is a link back to our website (didn’t know if you knew that).

    So yes, if you have deep pockets, you can rank well. But I think my site proves that if you have some ingenuity, persistence and DON’T have the money, you can still accomplish the same thing.

    Perhaps geekestateblog.com would allow me to do a guest post about creative link building. What do you think Drew (you’ll have the opportunity to slam me back :-) ?

  • Bob

    SeoMoz is not the authority on Google’s guidelines. If you want a real answer, post your link strategy on Matt’s blog. I’m sure he’ll agree that there is nothing creative at all about your link building. Try reading Jim’s stuff about SM. Far more organic and creative than writing checks and trading links.

  • http://www.zillow.com Drew Meyers

    Link building is something relevant to any agent/broker who is focused on improving their SEO, so I think a post on creative link building strategies would be great – all you man!

  • http://www.cousinroy.com Cousin Roy

    Jim – Great site.

    Come on boys – all this talk about SPAM is making me hungry ;-)

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  • http://www.metroseo.com Mert

    @Jim wonderful site.
    @HREG, my name is Mert from Chicago. Feel free to google me. Real estate broker/SEO consultant. Just in case u think I am fake.
    #1 I got here because of someone retweeting Greg Boser tweet about Cousin Roy post about you.
    #2 since Greg who is followed by most search engines and other SEOs tweeted about your spam, Matt Cutts’ team shall visit your web assets and more than likely the SEO company you refer to.
    #3 first rule in professional SEO. You always STFU about your spam. RIP.

  • Anonymity is Better Sometimes

    Nothing much left for me to add, but I thought it would maybe, just maybe, help HREG (and others wishing to follow his style) if I leave the STFU link:

    http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/06/03/i-know-its-social-but-stfu-already/

  • http://www.froioslawn.com grass landscape

    A cool post right there mate . Thank you for that !

  • http://dietapersonala.com/ cura slabire

    I was been after the google for such info and i wanted to say thanks to you for the post. By the way, just off topic, how can i download a copy of this theme? – 10x

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