SEO Fundamentals

1. SEO Fundamentals On page basics to advanced customizations.

2. What is SEO? • SEO refers to “search engine optimization” – a process in which a website owner works with the elements of their website to improve it’s overall rankings for particular keyword terms. • SEO has both “on page” and “off page” factors. This presentation will focus on the on page factors of SEO from beginner topics to more advanced discussions.

3. On page optimization • When we refer to on page optimization, we are referring to all of the elements a search engine can access by visiting your website URL and various pages. • Things like images, links, html, text, css, video code, header tags, paragraphs, bullets. If you go to a page and “view source” anything visible is considered “on page.

4. Getting started: Key On page Elements When working with a single “content page” there are several key on page elements to discuss. These elements include: • Page Title: • Meta Description • Headings (H1, H2 etc) • Paragraphs • On page anchors (links to self) • Outbound links (to other pages on your site or to other websites) • Images • Snippets • Emphasis elements (Bold, Italic, Underline etc) Each of these elements is discussed below:

5. On Page SEO: Titles Page Title: The page title (when viewing source) is contained within header tags that look like this: <title>Title information here</title> however you don’t need to worry about the brackets if you are an REW CMS user as the system will take care of that for you. In our system it is the first element of any page so all you need to do is fill out the title information. Why is title important? When you do a Google search, any result will have “at least” 3 elements. A hyperlinked title, the website URL and a brief description about the page you are about to visit. The part you click on (the part that is linked) is the “Page Title”. Clearly it is the call to action (and the clickable item) and it is regarded as the MOST IMPORTANT element to any page. The page title is used to help Google determine which keywords you should rank for, but ALSO the page title is the main element responsible for convincing a user to click on your search result over someone else’s. Creating your page titles: Best practices: Google limits the amount of characters they show in search results to around 70 characters (including spaces) – your title should fit within the 70 character limit so that you are confident in what will be displayed to your user. Your page title should include your primary and secondary keywords and can also incorporate your brand or your phone number. Your title will look like this: Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Brand Name Or Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Phone NumberOrBrand Name | Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword (in the case that you have a strong branding need on a page) Using a city like Austin, and primary keywords Austin Real Estate and Austin TX Homes For Sale for a company like Realty Austin my title might be: “Austin Real Estate - Search Austin Homes for Sale | Realty Austin” (Total characters with spaces 66) Note – I had extra space, so I included the word “search” in the title to make it read better and be more compelling to a user. My goal is to tell them what they can do there, and call them to action (click) if they are looking for an Austin home search. Some times you run out of space (long city names etc) so you would eliminate the “search” or even the “for sale” if you had to.

6. On Page SEO: Meta Descriptions Meta description: The meta description is another header element (not seen on the page, but seen by search engines and displayed in results.) When you do a Google search after the title (which is hyper linked) and after the URL you will see a snippet of text which typically expands on information you might find if you click through to that page. Meta descriptions best practices: Meta descriptions do NOT count directly towards search engine rankings. However they DO help your website capture more clicks when displayed in the search engine results pages (Or SERPS) and they also have an indirect effect on your rankings as they count towards your “click through rate” (CTR). Search engines generally don’t display more than 150 characters in the results so it is recommended that you try to work within this limit. When writing a meta description you should think of several things: • Does it further expand on my title? The title captured their attention, if they haven’t clicked yet, use your description to convince them why they should. • A call to action! Tell them to click on your result if they want the information. Or if you are including your phone number in your meta description (I like to) then make sure you tell them to call for instant help. • Your keywords: Your primary, secondary even tertiary keywords should be in your meta description. Google has said that their research indicates if someone sees exactly what they typed reflected in the SERPS, they are more likely to click through. Also, Google tends to embolden those words in the results when they find them. • Make it readable: Don’t just try to cram keywords in there, use this as your opportunity to sell your potential visitor on why they should pick you and click your ad. If your ad is unique, well written and readable – it will stand out and a user will more than likely click on it.

7. On Page SEO: Headings Headings: On REW pages you will notice at least two headings. These headings are created by wrapping the text in a heading 1 tag (H1) or heading 2 tag (H2). Because headings are naturally larger than normal text, Google recognizes them as your attempt to draw particular attention to something thus they give text in the headings more weight. Headings tags best practices: When writing your headings tags it’s important to first ensure that they are an appropriate guide for your visitors. Headings should clearly indicate (especially the heading 1) what a user will find on the page of content below. However if you choose your topics appropriately, you can also enrich your headings with your primary or secondary keywords and still have them be perfectly readable to your visitor. An example of headings: <h1>Austin Real Estate Information</h1> (note this is the html form, in the REW CMS all you need to do is highlight your text and select heading 1 from the formatting dropdown. In the above heading, you are telling your visitor that they will get information about the Austin Real Estate market which is what they likely came for. You are also able to get your primary keyword ‘Austin Real Estate” into the heading. It’s a win win. Secondary headings are a similar format. I recommend your secondary keyword for your H2 for example: <h2>Austin Homes For Sale</h2> I would place this secondary heading directly above my snippet of homes for sale so that it not only gets my keyword “Austin Homes For Sale” on the page, it also clearly labels what the user is about to encounter. My advice is to never overdo heading tags. I typically only use the 2 mentioned above unless there are additional topics on the page that clearly require their own announcement / labeling. It’s ok to have more than two however many webmasters overuse the headings tag on a page hoping it’s an accumulation thing and although it likely does not hurt them much , it makes their page look unattractive and harder to scan for and digest the important elements.

8. On Page SEO: Paragraphs Paragraphs: Most of your on page content is in paragraphs and wrapped in the paragraph tags <p>text</p>. When you are writing your content, my advice is to always think only of your visitors for your first round. You created a topic (which you put in your heading 1 <h1> tag) now just write to that topic as if you were trying to show yourself as an expert on the subject. Try to think about what your potential customers want to read about and of course guide them towards the helpful links and features on the page they are reading. Example: “The average home sale price in Austin is around $300,000 and homes tend to be quite spread out. Be sure to use our map searchif you would like to view where any property is located.” You will see above that I provide a snippet of helpful information (the average home sale price) and I also embedded a hyperlink with text calling the reader to action. There are also potential keywords in my example like “average home sale price in Austin” (a direct keyword phrase) and “Austin homes” (an indirect keyword phrase, meaning Austin and homes are not directly together, but close in proximity). Interestingly I did NOT put those keywords there intentionally. They just came out organically because of the topic choice I was writing on. So for the most part when writing, you don’t even need to think about keywords at all – you just write. Once you have finished writing I recommend doing a review of your keyword objectives for that page (you may have a list of 5-10 main ones). Compare that list of keywords to the content you have produced, and IF for some reason you have neglected to mention a word or phrase “homes” or “MLS” it is ok to scan your written content and look for an opportunity to replace a few select words or add to your content if needed. Once again – produce your content for your USERS and only consider keywords as a secondary measure.

9. On page SEO: Links Links: When I refer to links, I mean links from your current page to anywhere else on the web. This means it could be to another page on your website (like a link in your content or your navigation) or it could mean you are linking away from your website to a website with a different URL. Before I post the best practices I want to make sure everyone is familiar with the code components of a link: <a href="http://www.urloraddress.com">Anchor Text"</a> Linking best practices: • Anchor text should always make sense. The text presented should set a reasonable expectation for what the user will find when they land on your page. Example a link that says "Austin" should take you to a page about Austin in some way. • Links to your own pages can always be trusted, links to other websites should be nofollowed if you cannot vouch for the current AND future quality of the site. • Keywords (or parts of keywords) should be included in anchor text. BUT only if it does not violate rule the first rule. Remember, links can be important calls to action. When you are writing your content if there is a logical place where you want the user to "jump" to different content, or you think they are ready to access a tool, feature or piece of inventory on your site - by all means use a link. If you would like more information contact me, for example. Or if you would like to learn more about code elements in a link click here! Linking and SEO: • Google finds your pages by following links, so if there are not easy to follow links (preferably text links) to your pages, Google will not follow them. • More links to your pages mean more "page weight" and more ability to rank. So if you have an important link, make sure it gets lots of links (from inside your site and from other websites). • Links only need to be on a page once to count for SEO, so unless it makes sense from a usability perspective don't add multiples as it will bloat your code. • Anchor text is important. Google basis part of how your page ranks based on the text it reads when it follows your link. Try to make it count (best practices above, keywords).

10. On Page SEO: Images Images: People LOVE pictures! But the one thing that I find almost all websites lack; it is quality, unique pictures. Not only will having great pictures on your website make your content more attractive and leave a better impression, it can help your SEO as well. The cardinal rule for pictures: You MUST own the picture, or own the rights to post it. You cannot simply go to the web, copy a picture and paste it into your content, that is illegal. But if you DO have great, unique pictures for your content PLEASE USE THEM! An easy way to do this is by using the featured areas module like Eddy Kicker does here. Or you could just embed 1 or two per page. Gerry has some great commentary on his blog including this one: http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/gerrythomasen/6747/show/ You must resize your pictures! Don't use html / browsers to resize your photos. What you should do if you are putting images online is resize them in an image editor first. Resizing applies not just to the height / width of an image but the overall kilobyte size of the image. If an image is too large it will cause your page to load slowly and cause your visitors to leave. SEO for your images: SEO for images is pretty straight forward. First you name your images. A picture of Austin should be called austin.jpg instead of picture1.jpg, there is no need to overly keyword load filenames, just make them descriptive of the photo. Second you can use alt tags. An alt tag is a tag who's purpose is to support visually impaired browsers but also has some SEO value (how much is debatable). To add an alt tag, just go into your source, and add an alt="Alt Text Here" within the image source. Image source looks like this with an alt tag: <img src="/austin.jpg" alt="Austin Picture"/> By performing basic optimization on your images, you might show up in Google image search or even mixed into the regular results for that image. More importantly, if your page is visually appealing and interesting the time visitors spend on site, and the amount of pages viewed will go up which in turn will also help with your SEO.

11. On page SEO: Snippets & Emphasis • Snippets: We use property snippets on REW websites wherever we can. Why? Because it is the #1 driving element for converting page visitors into leads (snippets show pictures of houses which trigger registration). Snippets also serve a secondary function, they allow Google to easily find and crawl your property details pages which subsequently allows them to rank. • From a basic SEO perspective, snippets help your SEO because they engage your visitors, cause them to stay longer, view more pages and of course help Google find the details pages as mentioned above. I am going to talk more about optimization for snippets in the advanced section because advanced optimization / modification to snippets does require production time and is too complex for a DIY tutorial. • Emphasis: When I say EMPHASIS I am referring to bold, underline, italics etc. I recommend using emphasis ONLY where it would be logical and grammatically correct to do so. However there are some who believe that emphasis does highlight your keywords / topics to Google. Logically that makes sense (you made it bold, it is likely important) however I have never seen empirical proof - so I am sticking with my statement that emphasis should only be used where it makes sense for the user. Now that you have a basic understanding of “on page” SEO I will move onto a discussion of some advanced SEO items but before I move on, I’d like to point out a few resources if you would like to learn more. SEO Resources REW Forums: www.realestatewebmasters.com/forums/ REW Chat On Facebook: We have a group (searchable by Real Estate Webmasters) it’s open to all REW users, you just need to request access: SEOMOZ.org : One of my favorite resources for SEO both beginner and advanced.

12. Advanced On Page SEO Techniques Typically when I refer to advanced SEO techniques, I mean anything that requires quite a high level of SEO knowledge to execute correctly AND often times involves programming / design or consulting. This section is meant to serve as the consulting portion for those already using the REW system who are interested in fine tuning their on page SEO once the basics are in place. Some of the topics I would like to discuss for advanced SEO: • Indexing pages • Link sculpting • PageRank distribution • Advanced Interlinking • WPO (Web Performance Optimization) • Differentiation of dynamic content.

13. Indexing pages What does indexing pages mean? When I speak of indexing pages, I am referring to allowing search engines access to pages on your website and subsequently having the search engine “index” them. For a page to be considered in Google’s index means that Google is aware AND has stored the location to your page. The past and the present: In the past, it was thought that you should try to get as many pages in the index as possible. In this way you had “more hooks in the water” and opportunities to capture more long tail search traffic. It was also though that you could leverage these indexed pages for internal linking. Internal pages did not need much page rank or authority to rank because there was little to no competition (especially when it came to indexable IDX pages). In the present, now (more than ever) you need to think about what pages are most important to you and evaluate which pages can or should be removed from the index. Today there are far more competitors out there (meaning agents and brokers) with spiderable IDX and to make matters worse, you have heavy hitters like Trulia and Zillow to contend with. No longer can pages simply rank because they have been found – they need to be reinforced with their own PageRank, authority, anchor text and volume of inbound links. Also having extra pages can actually harm your rankings as they are taking away PageRank from the pages that really need it. Let’s use this simplified version of the PageRank algorithm formula: (page weight / number of links on page = weight passed) • You have 1000 PageRank weight points to distribute from your main page. • Main pages need 100 weight points to rank (they are competitive) • Internal IDX pages need 5 points to rank (not as competitive) If you have 10 (or less) links to main pages from your homepage, they will all be fine and get the PageRank they need: The equation (simplified) is just 1000 / 10 = 100 so each of your internal pages gets 100 weight points. Now each of your internal pages has 100 weight points from the home page, and if you are linking to your IDX pages from your internal pages and they need at least 5 points to rank, you can only have a maximum of 20 outbound links on the internal page (100 / 5) so if you do have 20 links or less each of your IDX pages will get the required 5 points (100/20 = 5) But what happens if you have to many links? Most people have too many links (and page) to be supported properly by their total PageRank. Go back to your homepage of 1000 points and put 40 links on that page. Each of those pages will now get 1000 / 40 or 25 points per page. If you need 100 points and you only get 25, no matter what other factors are correct from an SEO perspective that page will still not rank competitively because it needs “at least 100 points”. Your options (if you need 100 points to rank) is either “remove” pages (thus links) from consideration (until you get to the points needed) OR increase your total weight points to distribute (get more links from other websites). This class focuses on how you can increase page strength by removing unnecessary pages from the index. “Link building” (increasing your overall points) is a different discussion and beyond the scope of this talk.

14. What should and shouldn’t be Helping you decide: Below I have a starting list for pages and that should and should not be included in the index. The idea being, most of you likely do not have enough weight to support all of your current pages so you need to lean out in order to get your most important pages ranking. Which pages do you not want in the index? • CMS pages: Pages you created and optimized intentionally, such as your area landing pages, bio page, homepage • Blog posts: Your blogs should be high quality and drive traffic to your conversion pages or have CTA’s to convert directly. You want these found. Great blogs also compel other bloggers to link to you which is a good thing. • IDX details pages: You want any listing that you might be able to service found and ranking ESPECIALLY those areas and property types that you focus on or specialize in. • Your sitemap Which pages do you NOT want in the index? • Price range links: We have these in the REW system to make it more convenient for users to drill down quickly with a single click to the price range they are looking for. They are useful but have no unique content, do not rank well and should not be taking PageRank away from pages that need it. • Pagination links: Page /blog/page57/ or /idx/pageid=2 these kinds of pages. If there is pagination to something you should be using the appropriate markup for Google to recognize that this is just a continuation of the previous page. • Search results links: Again no content here, and honestly Google should not be finding or spidering these pages, but sometimes someone will create a search and then link to it, causing it to be in the index. We don’t want this. • Details tabs: Maps, Get Local, Directions, Walkscore, Inquire anything linked to from a details page that has no unique editable content of it’s own should not be in the index. How do we deal with removing the pages we don’t want? By applying appropriate tags / signals to Google to tell them to ignore certain links or pages and by blocking search engines from other sections via robots.txt or other methods. I cover the tags and signals in the next section: Link Sculpting.

15. Link Sculpting What is link sculpting? For our purposes link sculpting is evaluating links on our websites and applying appropriate tags or signals so that search engines know how they should be treated. The tags we will review are: rel=“nofollow”, rel=“next”, rel=“prev” and rel=“canonical” rel=nofollow: This tag is used when you want to link to something for your users but because it has little or no content you don’t want it showing up in the index or taking weight points. Like an inquiry box, a map link or an outbound link. A full explanation is located here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96569 but for our purposes we need to know that after we have decided which links we DON’T want in the index or given priority we need to ensure there is a nofollow attribute anywhere that page is linked to. rel=“next” & rel=“prev”: These are our pagination tags. We want to use these anywhere that there is pagination in a serious. For REW websites that includes your blogs, your page snippets, your sitemap links basically anywhere else you see pagination. You can read more about these tags here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html rel=“canonical”: I mentioned above that we do not want things like search results in our index, however sometimes a user (outside of your control) links to a search results page causing it (and many other search results) to get indexed. The rel=“canonical” tag allows us a way to tell Google – hey Google, even though this is slightly different, it’s basically duplicate content and there really is only one page you should worry about here and that page is /thispage.php (whatever that page is) Google’s explanation for rel=“canonical” is found here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html By using these tags on all the appropriate links / pages we can dramatically decrease the amount of unwanted pages in the index and thus ensure our important pages get as much weight and attention as possible. In the next section I am going to build on the discussion of PageRank and discuss how it actually works in a “system” (as opposed to just one page linking to another 1 way).

16. PageRank distribution In a previous section, I provided a simple formula for passing weight points (PageRank). In this section I am going to discuss the actual PageRank algorithm and how “passing PageRank” actually works in a system. This “concept” is important to discuss prior to discussing advanced interlinking. WARNING THIS IS MATH – Please feel free to ignore it or not understand, I promise it should not stop you from “getting it” The PageRank algorithm: PR (A) = (1-d) + d[(PR(t1) / C (t1)] Where A is the page being linked to Where d is a dampening constant of .85 Where PR of t1 is the weight of the page doing the linking Where C of t1 is the number (or count) of links on the page doing the linking. Run it through with 1 page only linking to itself (a closed system) and you get (1-.85) + .85[(1/1)] = 1 calculate out the brackets and it comes out as .15 + .85 = 1 So in a closed system there is no PageRank distribution and the dampening constant does not have any effect. However go back to the example I gave of 1000 weight points and 10 pages linked out to, and the actual equation would like look this: PR (A) = (1-.85) + .85[(1000 / 10)] = 85.15 weight points. Notice it is not quite the 100 we talked about. This is due to the dampening constant and is quite important to our discussion of advanced interlinking here is why: Our homepage had 1000 points to give away but it also “keeps” those points. So it’s weight is 1000 and the 10 page it linked to are now 85.15. However what if the page we linked to now links back to the homepage? (A reciprocal link) It has 85.15 points to distribute right? So it links back .15 + .85(85.15) = 72.52 to the homepage. But wait, now the homepage is 1072.52 now, so isn’t it passing more weight to the page that linked back? Why yes it is! So you can see how this might create an infinite loop if each page could just keep growing by linking off another page and then having that page link back. The dampening factor in essence allows each link cycle to loose 15% page rank per iteration . Eventually if you follow the math long enough you see as the interactions approach infinity the weight passed approaches zero. This is probably way more than most people need or wanted to know but what I would like you to take from it is that we have a limited amount of PageRank to pass around and there are reciprocal benefits, so 2 or more pages can gain more than the sum of their pages weight if they link together creatively.

17. Advanced Interlinking In the last section we learned that by linking to a page and having that page link back, we can increase the weight of each of those pages which in turn will give each page a better chance to rank. In this section we will discuss which pages should get linked to, and in which priority. Before I get to which pages should be linked to, I need to discuss “link count” (how many links there are on a page). If there are too many links on a page, it does 2 negative things: #1: It increases the overall size of the page (kilobyte size) and thus makes your page load slower for users and provides more code than a search engine cares to store. 2: It does not provide a very positive user experience for your visitors. Who wants to visit a giant directory of links? My recommendation is not more than 100 links on a page, and to be honest, this is pushing it. So which pages should get links? And in which priority? I actually already outlined these in a previous section. Your CMS pages (and sub pages) your Blog posts, your IDX details pages and your sitemap should all get links. Your sitemap should be linked (for usability) from every page. It’s fine to put it in the footer as it is low priority page to rank, we just want to make sure spiders can find it.

18. Interlinking Continued What about the rest of your pages? Which should be linked to from where? The CMS pages (main pages) already take care of the most important links for you. These links are the CMS page links. Any main page you create is automatically given a link from your homepage, and every other page CMS main pages. We feel these are your most important pages (your area landing pages) and so they get the most weight points from other main pages. Where they are NOT generally linked from is the blog or IDX details pages – should they be? Typically your site will have far too many main pages to be linked from everywhere – what we recommend is that you pick you MOST important area pages and feature them in navigation elements that ARE contained throughout every page of the site (top navigation or footer for example). You don’t want all 100 pages in your CMS footer, that would look silly and be too bloated – but typically you will have 5-10 main areas that (if you had to pick) would be your most important pages to rank. What about CMS sub pages? Sub pages automatically get linked in the navigation but ONLY as sub navigation of a main page. If you leave that main page or any of it’s subs the links go away. (Sub pages are not linked from all CMS pages). This makes sense for your visitors and is necessary for organization because sub pages “belong” in a category. An example would be a list of 20 featured neighborhoods within a city. But what if a neighborhood (or a few of them) were so important that you wanted it to rank just as much as some of your city pages? This is a great example of where you could use the footer or top navigation to “feature” such a neighborhood site wide and give it far more weight. Blog posts: Blog posts are linked from the main page of the blog, and in any categories you assign those posts too. Over time however your blog posts get pushed down from the main page to the paginated pages. This is generally fine as blog posts are typically time sensitive and become less relevant over time. However if you have articles that are more timeless but still made more sense as blog posts than CMS pages (because you wanted to allow commenting for instance) – you might consider having a snippet that you can update that drives more PageRank and links directly to your blog post permanent URL’s. As for making sure your blogs can be found easily and quickly, having the REW RSS reader will make sure your most recent blogs are in the index as soon as possible and receiving PageRank from the main page.

19. Interlinking continued Finally we come to IDX details pages: IDX details pages getting spidered is STILL a huge advantage that REW users have over most of their competition. I say most because in some markets, there are many REW sites now, and other competitors have started to use spiderable solutions. That being said, the majority of agent websites do not have spiderable IDX, so the competition is far less intense for rankings on details pages which are typically for things like address searches and MLS numbers. There are 2 main ways to get IDX details pages spidered: Property snippets and featured listings. Most of you already use both of these features and I have outlined the recommended use of snippets on area pages in the previous page setup section. So all you need to know about that is snippets and featured listings DO help listings get indexed. But how do we give them more weight? Typically you will only have 1 or 2 links to a property details page. 1 from a feature and 2 from a snippet on a page. If you want to get more links to your details pages, then there a few options. #1 - Properties sitemap: A product many of you already have that offers links to property details pages. #2 – Randomly generated footer properties: You may have seen these on sites like http://www.barkerhedges.com #3 – Similar properties: Creating an algorithm for similar properties page links TO details pages FROM details pages. We recommend all of the above HOWEVER – remember you can only have so many pages get in the index and have enough weight to rank. Therefor it is recommended you be very selective with which areas, property types and price ranges you have added to the footer, featured properties and sitemap. Don’t add the whole MLS – just the best parts of it. Additional linking. The details page is also a great place to link back up to the top (CMS pages, sub pages, blog posts etc) if you do not have room in your top nav or your footer site wide, but you want to get some of these pages extra love you can have things like “related pages” or “related blog posts” added to the detail page which will add more links back to your most important pages. In summary, you must first get rid of the pages you DON’T want, then take steps to make sure the pages that are left get prioritized and are linked to accordingly.

20. WPO and Dynamic Content Optimization Coming to the end of my presentation I wanted to make sure I touched on two more on page items for your consideration “Web Performance Optimization” (or WPO) and Dynamic Content Optimization. Web Performance Optimization (WPO): Is the process of working with a website to make sure it is downloaded and displayed to your users (and search engines) more quickly. While the techniques involved in WPO are beyond the scope of this presentation (and something that must be done by a specialist), the reasons behind it are not. The two main reasons for WPO are: #1: Faster sites mean your visitor experience is better which will mean better stats including conversion. #2: Faster sites are better for rankings. Better stats and fast response times make Google happy, and they will reward you for making the effort. Each time we make a product (meaning not a custom site) we have our WPO people work with it ensuring speed and performance so an LEC 2013 for instance will have all the latest techniques applied however the web moves quickly and we are always improving our WPO knowledge base and changing techniques based on NEW browsers, and available technologies – therefor WPO is something that should be done every year if you are serious about keeping up with the Jones’s. It’s not cheap (because WPO specialists are rare) but can mean the difference between a good site and a great site from your visitors and search engines perspective. Dynamic content optimization: You have the same content as everyone else (and the rules say it must be so). I am of course talking about IDX content. It’s fact based data and subject to rules and compliance, therefor you can’t change it. You CAN however display it differently than everyone else and augment your pages in an attempt to make Google think “out of all the duplicate IDX pages out there, this one seems to be different or provide more value”. We at REW have a whole list of IDX augmentations that can be done and I am happy to send it to anyone who requests it. Examples of augmentations: Different titles, different meta data, re-organizing content on the page, generating content snippets using language + MLS data, installing the commenting module. The list is quite extensive. If you are in a market where you have a LOT of IDX competition, sometimes every little bit can help.

21. Conclusion – Thank you! This concludes my presentation for on page SEO fundamentals and advanced techniques. Are there any questions? For a copy of this presentation, please contact Carrie Baker, REW Summit coordinator carrie@realestatewebmasters.com she will be happy to send you the full PowerPoint. Morgan Carey, CEO Real Estate Webmastersmorgan@realestatewebmasters.com 250-753-9893