SEO Buffet #1 – PrimeTorontoNeighbourhoods.com – SEO University
Me With John Carr
At my last SEO for Africa I introduced a new initiative called SEO Buffet. The concept is simple: I’ll give you free advice for your website and profile you on my blog if you bring me food from your cultural background!
The first person to respond was John Carr. John is a Toronto based real estate agent who is trying to get his website, PrimeTorontoNeighbourhoods.com increased visibility in the search engines. John brought up a delicious assortment of chicken, beef, cheese, and vegetable empanadas that were representative of his Chilean culture.
Here was my advice for John:
1) Pay Attention To Your Titles
You need content to rank in Google and John has created a blog which is updated regularly using WordPress (http://www.primetorontoneighbourhoods.com/blog/). When you’re using a blogging platform you want to carefully select the titles of your blog posts because whatever you choose will impact your title tag, URL, and header tag (three of the most important ranking factors).
Make sure you put your keywords in the proper order and as close to the start of the title as possible. For example, if John was trying to rank for “Lawrence Park Homes” he should write a post with a title like “Lawrence Park Homes – Recent Trends” instead of something like “Recent trends for people looking at buying a home in Lawrence Park.” In the second example, the keywords are split up (home in Lawrence Park) and are at the end of the post. Put them together and move them to the front of the title to get the best results.
Delicious Empanadas from Chile
2) Get Links
You can have the most optimized content in the world but if you don’t have external websites pointing to yours then you won’t rank very prominently in Google. I encouraged John to think about people who might be willing to link to him.
A quick example is the real estate company he’s affiliated with. He pays a regular fee for using their services and should insist that they also link to his website from theirs. Other opportunities are to think about everybody he does business with on a regular basis and moving the offline partnerships online. This blog post will get him an extra link but he needs to go out and get more links to overthrow his competition.
My two programmers enjoying lunch!
3) Build Resource Guides
This last point is more focused on conversion than on SEO. John has picked a number of niche neighborhoods to sell in and attracts a number of people to the site who come, never contact him, and leave. It’s important to build as much value up front as possible to build the relationship because the next real estate agent is just around the corner trying to get the same customers. I recommended he build a resource guide for each community he specializes in. Profile what the neighborhood is known for, what the entertainment is like, how good the schools are, where the parks are, etc… basically all the information someone who is interested in the neighborhood would want to know. John already has the information in his head from his years of experience, he just needs to put it into a document and make it free online as a PDF if prospects leave their name and email. Now he’s able to build the relationship by offering tremendous upfront value and become the agent of choice.
I also recommended that he allow people to sign up for updates about their neighborhoods of choice so they could get notices when new homes came on the market. It’s a service any agent will offer but if you allow people to sign up for it themselves online you make it easier for them to do business with you.
I hope you enjoyed the first post in this new series – stay tuned for more SEO Buffet posts in the future! And thanks John for the great food!
What do you think of John’s website? Would you give him any other recommendations?
I’ve love to hear your thoughts if you leave a comment below!
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At my last SEO for .. http://is.gd/4SSio
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RT @tweetmeme SEO Buffet #1 – PrimeTorontoNeighbourhoods.com – SEO University Me With John Carr
At my last SEO for .. http://is.gd/4SSio
RT @tweetmeme SEO Buffet #1 – PrimeTorontoNeighbourhoods.com – SEO University Me With John Carr
At my last SEO for .. http://is.gd/4SSio
RT @tweetmeme SEO Buffet #1 – PrimeTorontoNeighbourhoods.com – SEO University Me With John Carr
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RT @tweetmeme SEO Buffet #1 – PrimeTorontoNeighbourhoods.com – SEO University Me With John Carr
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Recently i launched my own website. Naively i just assumed you put your site on the web and away you go.I knew nothing about SEO but i soon learned,it was a case of having to. The first month i had no idea really what i was supposed to be doing in getting my site noticed by the search engines. When the penny finally dropped and i came to realize about keywords and especially anchor text key words in blogs and replying to blogs, also i found one of the most important tools is original content on your site, it came quite easily in boosting my page position. When i started out my site appeared on page 27 of Google and this was out of 60 million results that Google pulled up. Within 10 weeks i am now on page 1. My other key words pulled up over 240 million results and i am currently on page 2 for this. I have had no training in SEO and i have not paid for a single thing in terms of links or help from any SEO companies. It is boring and tedious but you just have to stick at it, day in and day out. At first the rewards come slow and there are times when you actually think you arn’t making any ground but after 3-4 weeks i did start to notice my position gradually improving and this then gives you the boost to stick at it. It’s not rocket science and does not requires any great skill to accomplish, just very long winded at best. You only get out what you put in and this is just the way of the world. I havent mentioned what my site is called incase it comes across as spamming something that i am certainly against.
Hi, Evan:
What a great concept: food for consulting! I like it! (And John’s culinary enticement looks especially appealling, too.)
The tips and advice you have provided in this post are excellent for anybody looking for additional SEO insight. Thanks for posting!
:) GT
StarrBizz.com
John should put a footerlink on his website as we have on ours http://www.chaacreek.com/belize-vacation/. Has John installed google analytics on his website? If not, he needs to do so as having google analytic would help him tremendoulsy with his SEO efforts.
Hi Evan
Thanks for the great SEO tips in your post and that food certainly looks delicious. Pity we cant all share it.
MichelleJ
Sometimes it can be a little tricky to balance conversion with promoting the site, as you have to balance between what makes the site nice and easy to use for visitors and what things appeal to the search engines the most. Over doing one side will either end up in low conversions or low rankings.
Nice idea. Good tips. I hope John implements both the blog SEO tips and the pdf file of free info to help him build his list.
RT @/timesecrets2010RT @/Frank_OToole2010Time Management to beat the Interruptions http://www.evancarmichael.com/S... http://bit.ly/9dhJnN
i thinks this informative post …
Thanks for sharing this information about that..
but, with you’re techniques is can effect to traffic and PR you’re website ???