September 8th - 2009

WIRED OFFICE: If you build it, will they come?

You’ve created a great Web site full of information that your clients and potential clients will find useful and interesting.

You’ve created a great Web site full of information that your clients and potential clients will find useful and interesting. But you’re not seeing a lot of visitors to your site. How do you get the word out that your site is worth visiting?

Search Engines
First, some information about search engines. Search engines are used to locate information that interests internet users. Users enter keywords, partial sentences, names, or questions in the search field, and the search engine returns a list of potential responses.

Search engines work by sending out a “spider” to retrieve as many documents as possible from the world wide “web”. An indexer reads these documents and creates an index based on the words contained in each document. Each search engine uses an algorithm to create its indices and hopefully, only meaningful results are returned for each query.

Ideally, you want your web pages to rank high for your preferred keywords (more on keywords in a minute) on the main search engines. To do this, you must provide the search engines with plenty of clues as to what your Web page is about.

Currently, the most popular search engines include Google, Yahoo, Microsoft’s Bing, AOL and Ask Jeeves. While your site will likely be picked up by the search engines, it can take six weeks for the “spiders” to do a full crawl through the World Wide Web. You can choose to submit your site directly to the various search engines. To do this, go to the search engine’s home page (e.g., www.google.ca, www.yahoo.ca, etc.) and search for “submit site”. Once you’ve located the “submit site” web page, provide the requested information and submit.

Keywords
You’ve probably heard the term “keywords”. Keywords can be single words or a phrase used in searching for information. They should be derived from the content of your Web site or reference it. These choice words can go a long way in getting your Web site noticed.

Poor keyword choices would include words such as “that”, “and”, “for” and other generic terms that do not specifically reference your content. Good keyword choices would include words specific to your content (e.g., staging, condo registration, etc.)

Too much of a good thing can defeat the purpose. Search engines consider sites with excessive use of keywords to be spam. Some rules to keep in mind:

  • Don’t overuse your keywords.
  • Only use keywords that relate to the content of your Web site.
  • Repeat keywords a maximum of three times within Meta tags, and a maximum of two times within the page Title.

Content
Your Web site’s content is what makes your Web site worth visiting. It must be of interest to your users, be it informative and/or entertaining. It should be presented in simple to understand terms. Place the most important content near the top of the page, as sometimes users don’t bother scrolling down. Your goal should be for your Web site visitors to return to your Web site regularly, meaning you’ll have to refresh your content on a regular basis.

Promotion techniques
There are also offline ways to promote your Web site, and at very little cost.

Include your Web site address on all your offline collateral, including business cards, stationery, brochures, and even your voicemail message.

Never underestimate the power of word-of-mouth marketing. Start by telling your friends and family about your Web site. Ask your friends and family to share your url with anyone they think may be interested in the content your Web site has to offer. When you e-mail someone, be sure to include a link directly to your Web site in your e-mail either as part of your e-mail signature or as part of the e-mail content. When you’re talking with someone on the phone, be sure to have them write your Web address down so they won’t forget.

Ask for feedback. Let people know that you want and value their opinions so you can improve your site. Some of the people you speak with may have their own Web sites. If they have a “Links” page, ask them to link to your Web site. Of course, you’ll have to reciprocate. Links to your site will help to improve search engine rankings.

While these ideas are by no means exhaustive, they should help drive more users to your Web site. After all, you built it for people to see.

If you have any issues that you would like to see covered in Wired Office, send us an e-mail to orea@orea.com and we will try to address it.

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For more information contact

Ontario Real Estate Association

Jean-Adrien Delicano

Manager, Media Relations

JeanAdrienD@orea.com

416-445-9910 ext. 246

Ontario Real Estate Association
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