Once again the SEO world is getting excited as it would appear Google is in the midst of a PR / Backlink update, however as the real estate SEO and real estate internet marketing world knows these updates don’t normally effect the SERP’s that much.

There are many reports out there from Google and especially Matt Cutts that state that PR is updated dynamically within the SERP’s so an update is nothing to get excited about, all it is, is Google letting us know what our PR and backlinks are at this specific moment.

So for all of you out there that look at it for whether or not you will link with a site the results appear to be starting to show on some Google Datacenters, give it a few days to roll out and you should be able to see it locally and in the Toolbar

Recently we have had many discussions with real estate agents about their web sites and conversion rates from their traffic. Many agents seem to get a lot of hits and no conversions, others not so many hits but a much higher conversion rate. This appeared to be strange as many of the sites were using a templated setup that we have worked with in the search engines.

So as a real estate internet marketing company we started to look in more detail at what was going on with these sites. The property searches were laid out the same, same navigation, articles and information (Albeit duplicate content) etc.

Then we noticed a key thing which came out at us, the sites that’s appeared to be doing better had a picture of a team of people, not just the real estate agent who’s site it was. This may seem extremely strange at first, but if you think about human logic it isn’t as strange as it seems.

Most of us start to think about the fact, if the agent is out at least I’m going to be able to speak with someone else, at the end of the day what we all want is a response, and even in this day of the internet and emails, we still need that human touch. So we have come to the conclusion that in people industries, people do in fact still buy people. So put up a picture of your team and let your clients know that you are not a one man show, but have the complete backing of a team of professionals behind you who can help with their needs.

With the Spring only 3 months away now is the time to consider getting your real estate web site in order for the upcoming year. Many web site owners leave it until they need to be placed and ready to receive visitors before thinking about their marketing.

Marketing online is a process that can take many months depending on where your site is currently placed, how old the domain is, whether you have your content ready etc.

So start the process in advance, this also makes sense if you are going to embark on the marketing of your web site yourself. While it is quiet you have the time to concentrate on it, ahead of the rush that normally comes with real estate in the Spring.

So, do your Spring cleaning now in the Winter, and be ahead of all of those other real estate agents that are sitting back with their feet up, and even if you are going to employ a real estate internet marketing company, do it now and give them a chance to do a good job for you. There is no magic formula that will have you immediately up and running, and if a company tells you different take a good long hard look at them before you do business with them. None of us have any special relationship with any search engine that gets us immediate placement, other than Pay Per Click.

So in short, don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today, and have a great and prosperous new year.

When it comes to marketing your real estate web site there are several things you should ask yourself before you decide that you will do it yourself.

Firstly, Do you know how to do it ? All too often people think they know what they are doing and receive advice form a whole multitude of web designers, friends, blogs and wherever. But is the advice right, we had a new client recently whose designer knew all about search engine marketing and was going to build his knowledge in as he went. The first thing we found was hidden text on the page an absolute no no of course, with all engines, but an immediate ban waiting to happen with Google.

Secondly, OK, you know what you need to do to get those elusive top 10 rankings but do you have the tools to do it, and the technical know how. It’s all well and good knowing you need links and to restructure the HTML of your site etc. But how do you go about getting links, what are you looking for, how do you find them. Without the right tools it is a daunting task and one that many set out on, but never achieve.

Thirdly, Do you have the time ? Many people ask me how long do I need to allow each week for internet marketing, well actually they still call it SEO. My answer to this depends on the site, but in general if you cannot give at least 10 hours a week, you are not going to succeed and even then you are talking 10 hours a week for at least 6 months in many cases and even after that around 5 hours a week. So is your time better spent on what you know best ?

After reading this article you like many people we speak to say, then how can you do a good job for the fees you charge ? The answer to this is volume and years of knowledge and expertise. When we are working with links we have many contacts already and can exchange or get one way links for many clients in one go. Hence we are more efficient than one offs, and contacts want to work with us as it is more beneficial to them. So we may achieve in 10 hours, 10 times what you would for a one off deal. Also we have technical writers who know how to write content to look good on your site, and be be good for the search engines. These people do it everyday and it’s second nature to them. We know how to title pages and write those meta descriptions so consequently we can make change fast and efficiently. All in all it’s our job.

So market it yourself or use a company ? – Should I sell my house myself, I think they call that F.S.B.O. You decide for yourself, but I think you know the simple answer.

I speak to many people in both the real estate world and other areas where templated web sites are used and they ask us the question should I use a templated web site ?

This is a difficult question to answer so knowing I’m about to get a lot of comments objecting to my response here goes.

Templated web sites all come out looking pretty much the same even if you wrap them with a different graphic, footer, colors etc. The main problem is, everybody using a templated site is likely using the same names for their pages, with virtually the same content, all hosted on the same IP address. This then brings up the duplicate content question, and experience tells me, that if the search engines, especially Google see duplicate content, on pages with the same name, on the same IP address you are going to receive a penalty of some sort. I’m not saying your page or site will be banned, but I would expect to see it in the supplemental index, then what this means is that Google will only report that page if it doesn’t have a page in it’s main index that matches. Before all of you templated guys start screaming at me, I know many of you allow custom pages, but on the whole many of the pages are the same.

So my advice is find a nice web site template layout that you like and then build up from there. The clever guys today are using a template like this, then using a content management type system to generate unique pages, with unique content. This does mean a little more work up front, and I’m sure in many cases a little more cost, but in the long un you will end up with an Internet Marketing friendly web site, with unique content that will be appealing to your visitors.

Remember internet marketing is about having a site that is appealing to your visitors when they arrive on your site, being friendly to the search engines so you rank well and driving traffic there using all of the internet marketing tools available.

I’m in no way saying that a templated site will not rank or that it cannot be ranked, what I’m saying is more pages will likely be indexed and it will be more appealing to your visitors if they see something that is telling them what they want to know that they haven’t already seen on 10 other sites before.