Could you tell me how to have my property that I have for sale, come up when a search is done?Have own site.?

Question

Have waterfront acreage for sale, and have a website to promote it, need to know how to get my website out there, so that when someone does a search for e.g. waterfront - my website will come up.

Answer 1

The search engines look for meta tags and title tags. The webmaster of your site should be able to tell you how it's done, but basically meta tags are information inserted into the "head" area of your web pages. This information in the head area of your web pages is not seen by those viewing your pages; instead, meta information is used to communicate information that a human visitor may not be concerned with.

If you are seeking exposure for real estate in central Missouri, your meta tags would include, for example, acreage, waterfront, two story, forested, property for sale, Jefferson City, and similar descriptive words or phrases. They would also define what character set is most appropriate for the browser and other things necessary for proper display of the page. Be sure to use words that will be displayed in the body of the page! Just adding them to the meta tags without repeating them within the body will lower your chances of being picked up by a search engine.

Once the meta tags are in place in the 'head' of the HTML, turn your attention to the Title Tag. The title tag is crucial for web crawlers (search engines). The text you use in the title tag is one of the most important factors in how a search engine may decide to rank your web page and the text they use for the title of your page in your listings. If someone saves your pages into their Favorites, it is the title tag that determines how it is stored.

Now, you move to the meta description tag, which allows you to influence the description of your page in the crawlers that support the tag; it gives you some degree of control with various crawlers. An easy way to do this often is to take the first sentence or two of body copy from your web page and use that for the meta description content.

Once your page has all the triggers necessary to grab the attention of the web crawlers, you are ready to submit it for listing.

Condensed from Search Engine Watch, here: http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167931

Search Engine Watch offers this advice:

'The web offers two fundamentally different search tools to help you locate information -- search engines and directories. The differences between the two, in design, scope, and even bias, are huge, and choosing the proper tool can often make the difference between finding what you want and hopelessly floundering in a sea of irrelevant information.'

'The simplest way to think about the difference between a search engine and a directory is to consider the finding aids available in a book. In the front of the book is the table of contents, which provides a high-level overview of the book, with descriptions of chapters and sections. In the back of the book is the index, with lists of important words in the book and the exact pages on which they appear.'

'If you're just browsing a book, using the table of contents is a great way to quickly locate an interesting section. It'll get you near what you're looking for, but you'll have to do some additional reading to find what you're looking for.'

'By contrast, an index lets you quickly pinpoint specific pages with only minimal need for additional reading. '

A directory could be represented by a book's table of contents; a search engine is more like the index.

'Search engines are created by automated software, whereas directories are painstakingly assembled by human beings. '


(see entire article here: http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2158811).


The Search Engine Watch site has lots of information available to help you put your web page in the best possible position. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

The chances of you getting this site ranked high in the search engines, especially Google, is not good. Unless the site has been up for several months you will be in the sandbox with Google. If you optimize it very well, you may get decent rankings with Yahoo and MSN.

Your best bet is to use pay per click campaigns with a good ad. They will cost you each time someone clicks on your add but that's about the only way you are going to get on the first page of search results.

Google has Adwords https://adwords.google.com/select/Login4
Yahoo has Overture http://www.content.overture.com/d/
MSN has Adcenter http://advertising.msn.com/microsoft-adcenter
Looksmart covers quite a few search engines http://aboutus.looksmart.com/p/aboutus/advertise

If you want to use the keyword search "waterfront" the current cost per click on Yahoo is .75 for 1st position so to get 1st you would have to bid more than that.

Freebies:
Also put it on craigslist.com and googlebase.com

I

Answer 3

To generate additional interest in the property, I'd suggest posting a free classified ad in your local craigslist.org (online classified ads) providing a short description of the property along with a link to the website if potential buyers want more information. There are other online classified ad sites that may be available through your local universities where you could also post links to your website.

Answer 4

It appears you are going the FSBO route. Good Luck. You are looking to be among the 10%-15% that, depending on how good the market is successfully sell on their own. The slower the market the lower the success. Lake front property not convient to town will likely be a long process. You are seeking a needle in the haystack buyer.

Those of us in real estate pay big bucks for what you seek- prime web exposure. However, a web site is not the only nor best way to sell property, just a part of the tools Realtors use. 80%+ of all real property is sold with a real estate licensee in the US. Individual FSBO home sales make up a small percentage of the overall total. You are learning why. It is not easy selling real property, especially in a decling market- even for the top licensees at times and we have the advantage of the real estate community to help as well.

The vast majority of property seekers seldom buy the property they see in a real estate ad. They typically buy other than the inquired about property. The beauty of having your property with a realty firm is you increase your odds of a successful transaction to 80%+, and yours may well be one of the other properties that is sold.

A question to ask your self: if I were needing brain surgery, would I hire a brain surgeon with a less than 80% success rate? Of course not, you'd go for the higher success rated surgeon. But when you go FSBO that is exactly what you did- hired the lower success rate. In the business world there are no free lunches, somebody always has to pay. You will pay in the form of longer market times due to poor exposure to the buying public, missed opportunities or failed contracts because of champaign taste and beer budgets. The best real estate licensees know before we get in the car what to show buyers as we have already assisted minimally with pre-qualifying (tells how much house to shop for) and the savy licensees have their buyers pre-approved (they have their credit secured and know the price to shop for, they just need a home). Th ekey does not go in my car until I know what they can buy adn if they can buy. Gas cost too much for joy rides. If non-qualified buyers look at homes they can not afford, then look at the homes they can afford, they will never be satisfied.

There is a mis-conception that the web is going to be THE way to sell real estate. Not so as it is proving out. It certainly does help those of us in the real estate business to expedite sales,
but Realtors provide numerous (like described above) other functions and services; we have other inventoried properties to draw more opportunities for our sellers and more choices for all buyers. FSBO sellers lack those services, cannot perform those functions and lack the multiple property choices for buyer opportunities, to a FSBO's great disadvantage. I will also note that a number of FSBO's include home builder corporations with their own in-house real estate firm which is also real estate licensee friendly, leaving the real FSBO (the individual home owner) as a smaller protion of the successful FSBO sellers.

If you take the additional time & money you will spend self marketing your property and add up the additional payments you will make because of the extended market time, you probably could have easily paid a licensed Realtor to properly expose your property and moved on to the next.

The real estate community has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on perfecting the marketintg of real property in the US. Members of the National Association of Realtors have been invited to numerous foreign countries to assist in getting their real estate industry up and running because of our huge success in getting the job done.

When you employ a licensed real estate agent, go for a full broker with a minimum both CRS and GRI credentials, and a proven track record. The fee end cost to you likely will be less overall. They'll get the job done, done right and done as quickly as possible using all the tools of the trade. I hold the CRB, CRS, GRI and am a candidte member of the CCIM Institute working towards the CCIM designation (CCIM is considered the PhD of real estate). I have over 500 hours of real estate specific course work. I earn my commissions and have extensive repeat business. I'm also a full licensed broker in TN.

I am proud to be counted among the licesned real estate professionals in the US.