After all, the point of a blog or website is to convey information with the ultimate objective of creating a stronger, more productive client base: finding new prospects, making new sales and building an effective client support system.

In other words, building your website or blog is primarily about creating useful, relevant content.

SEO, on the other hand is about website promotion. It is about getting search engine exposure so your site will come up high in searches for your most important keywords (search terms). SEO is one of the most effective ways to drive targeted traffic to your website or blog.

Who is the expert?

This is a useful way to think of building, maintaining and promoting a website. Content creation on the one hand, and website promotion on the other. These are closely related tasks, but they are different.

One of the most important differences is that you are the expert when it comes to content creation. You know your product, your customers, and your prospects better than anyone.

So it is usually quite difficult to offload this part of the project onto someone who is not part of your core team. If you want someone else to come up with product descriptions, lists of advantages and benefits, directions on how to use your product, and so on, you’d better be prepared to spend a lot of time with them.

This is not so much the case with the promotion side of things, and especially the SEO part of promotion. It is relatively easy to outline the tasks you want an SEO expert to perform. And it is relatively easy to find (or create) an SEO expert to perform them.

Hiring an SEO Expert

But before hiring an SEO expert you should have a clear idea of what you want them to do for you. After all, your SEO campaign will be an important contributor to the success or failure of your web promotion efforts.

Many SEO experts just assume they can dictate their role. After all, they are the experts, right? Well, maybe yes and maybe no. Most SEOs have a pre-defined program they try to fit you into. They focus on certain things that they can do efficiently, and they charge accordingly.

As with most “experts”, SEO companies often charge exorbitant prices based on a combination of the mysterious, specialized nature of the work and the results they claim they can provide.

But guess what? SEO is not really that mysterious anymore. And SEO results cannot be guaranteed by an expert any more than they can by a competent amateur. If you know the basic techniques and you apply them on a persistent basis, anyone can get the same kind of results.

If this is true what you need is a checklist of the basic tasks you want your SEO to perform. And then start “interviewing” prospective experts to see if they can provide them.

Your SEO task checklist

1. Create a keyword list based on your products and services and the target markets you are interested in reaching. For more information about this do a search in this blog for “keyword analysis”.

2. Analyze the structure of your website and make recommended changes in light of SEO principles. For more information about this do a search in this blog for “site structure”.

3. Integrate your keyword list with your website in a strategic way. This is called “onsite SEO” and is a major contributor to your site’s search engine success. For more information about this do a search in this blog for “keyword integration”.

4. Recommend how content can be optimized on an ongoing basis. This is also part of “onsite SEO” and should enter into every one of your decisions about content, how it is presented and how it should be categorized and promoted. For more information about this do a search in this blog for “content optimization”.

5. Create a comprehensive, detailed link building strategy. This is called “offsite SEO”. Apart from the quality of your content, this is the most important strategic planning exercise your SEO expert will be involved in. For more information about this do a search in this blog for “link building strategy”.

6. Execute the link building strategy. Once your website plan is put into place, this is the most important function that your SEO expert must perform. For more information about this do a search in this blog for “link building program”.

There you have it, the 6 tasks any SEO expert should be able to perform for you:

1. Create a keyword list.
2. Analyze and optimize the structure of your website.
3. Integrate your keyword list into your website
4. Recommend how new and old content should be optimized.
5. Create a link building strategy.
6. Execute the link building strategy.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of the Samsung Captivate Android Phone with the Apple iPhone 4.

You are probably familiar with Blackberry and iPhone smartphones but you may be completely in the dark about the up-and-coming alternative – the Android. Android is actually an operating system developed by Google and made available to phone manufacturers such as Samsung, Motorola, HTC and many others.

This review of the Samsung Captivate shows how impressive these phones can be. For business users the question is, how well does this phone perform your most critical business-related functions. We’ll address this question in future posts.

The first step in developing an effective SEM strategy is to choose the right keywords or search terms. As I explained in a previous post about keywords, Google runs on keywords. So it is your choice of keywords (search terms), along with aggressive keyword-centered promotion of your site that will build steady traffic.

You need more than one Target Search Term

Note: I prefer the term “search terms” rather than “keywords” because it makes it clearer that this discussion is about search-centred marketing.

Regardless of your business – and certainly if you are a real estate agent – it is tempting to assume there are just one or two search terms that you should concern yourself with.

For example, you might assume if you are an agent in Toledo that your primary search term should be Toledo real estate or Toledo homes. This may be correct as far as it goes.

But it is best not to make too many assumptions in this field. On the one hand you can easily choose the wrong primary search term. And on the other hand you can just as easily restrict yourself to one or two terms when you should be going after 10 or 20 or more.

Creating a group of Target Search Terms

If you do any kind of analysis of the traffic coming to your site you will quickly find that your traffic comes from many diverse directions. In many cases people are coming to your site as a result of search terms you hadn’t even thought of targeting.

What you should be looking for is a range of 10 or 20 search terms that you can target in various ways. This will include 3 or 4 that will get special emphasis – your Primary Search Terms or Most Important Search Terms. But it will also include beteween 10 and 20 that you can target in a less intensive way. These make up what you might call your Target Search Term List.

Developing your Target Search Term List

Even the most web-savvy person will have only a vague idea of which search terms are the best ones to target. So you need a tool to help you do a bit of analysis.

Fortunately there are lots of search term analyzing tools available to you. For example, Wordtracker is a well-known tool that has been around for years. Unfortunately it will cost you $59/mo.

Probably the two most often used keyword analysis tools are the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Wordstream Niche Finder.

These tools are capable of giving you some very detailed information about search trends. But for your purposes you need some basic information, namely, Which search terms are my target market using when they search for my type of service? This basically boils down to finding out how often certain search terms are being used.

Niche Finder from Wordstream lets you type in a specific keyword like “Punkydoodles Corners real estate” or “Punkydoodles Corners homes” and it will give you a list of related terms (ones containing these words) and an idea of the search volume for each of them.

For example, when I enter “Waterloo real estate” I’m given other terms such as:

Waterloo on real estate
real estate in Waterloo
Waterloo real estate agents
real estate waterloo county
real estate waterloo region
flat fee real estate waterloo ontario
waterloo ontario real estate listings
real estate kitchener waterloo ontario
kitchener waterloo ontario real estate
Waterloo homes
Waterloo mls
kitchener waterloo real estate
kitchener waterloo mls
etc.

Plus I’m given a rough idea of the frequency of searches on each of these terms. That makes all of these search terms candidates for inclusion in my Target Search Term list.

But you won’t want to stop there because people also search for real estate in surrounding communities and sometimes by housing development, or subdivision. You can use Niche Finder to determine if searches of that kind are ever done.

What you want to end up with is a list of 20 or so search terms that are the potentially most fruitful for you. It should include the high frequency terms and the best of the not-so-high frequency terms.

Once you have your TST list you can start on the next step of your SEM strategy. As we will see in the next post this involves more than just sticking these search terms in your website.

In the next post: Fleshing out your SEM strategy

As you get deeper into web marketing the importance of keywords will gradually begin to dawn on you. Keywords and keyword phrases are at the heart of how every search engine operates.

Why keywords are central to SEM

The way the search engines (SEs) work goes something like this:

- The SEs send out their “spiders” to “crawl” the web on a regular basis. They are constantly out there crawling away. As they go they analyse and digest the content of new and existing web pages.

- The SEs analyze the content of these pages primarily by reading the text and other expanatory material called “meta-information” contained in them. They pick out words and combinations of words and “index” this information for future reference.

- The SEs make certain assumptions about the importance of keywords and phrases found within pages. For example, if a keyword is found in a page title that is considered more important than if it is just found somewhere in the text on the page. If it is found in a major headline, the same thing. If it is found in bold text that may also signal its extra importance. And so on.

- This information (the “indexed” information) is used to populate search results. If someone searches for “Joe Blow plumbing” and your pages make no references to “Joe Blow plumbing” then your pages will not come up in those search results.

- If you want to be found for specific search terms – for example, “Toledo homes for sale” – then you have to include those search terms (keywords) in your web pages. These are usually called your target keyword phrases or your most important keywords.

How does this apply to you?

Are you getting the idea? To win at the search game you have to think like a search engine.

That means you have to clearly spell out what each page is about. Thinking like a search engine means you should not make your visitors read between the lines to figure out what your content is about.

For instance, if a particular web page is about Punkydoodles Corners homes, then the search engines should be able to clearly see that and then put that in their database: “This page is about Punkydoodles Corners homes.” In other words, decide on what keywords you want to focus on, and make sure to include them in all the most important places.

Winning at the search game

That makes it important to anticipate what keywords and keyword phrases people will use when searching for your product or service – and then use those exact terms in the text of your pages.

There are important ways to focus your content so the search engines recognize the theme of each page. But to keep it simple, the more you say about your specific target search term, the more likely you are to score well for it.

Common sense, right? Optimizing a page means focusing on a specific term and going out of your way to emphasize that search term in the text of your page.

It isn’t magic. It is common sense. If a page has lots of content focused on a specific keyword it will score well for that term.

In the next post – How to Choose the Right Keywords

If you know anything about online marketing you know the importance of search engines – especially Google. For the last five or six years Google has dominated the online search field. You cannot possibly be serious about online marketing unless you spend time getting ranked in Google. There are other search engines such as Bing, but in this series of articles I will use “Google” to cover all of them.

There are two main types of traffic you can get from Google – “free” (or “organic”) and “paid” (or “sponsored”). Trying to get the search engines to drive “free” traffic to your website(s) is called Search Engine Marketing or SEM. SEM involves different ways of trying to influence search engines – especially Google – to give you high ranking for searches done on your most important keywords.

Keywords are important

As we will see, it is important to understand the role played by “keywords” in the SEM game. For example, if your most important keywords are “Toledo Real Estate”, SEM involves trying to get high ranking when people do Google searches for the phrase “Toledo Real Estate”. This way people will click on your link in the Google search results and be taken to your blog or website.

Voila. Traffic.

As we will see (in the third article in this series), your choice of keywords is very important, and involves a bit of “science”. In other words, before beginning a serious SEM effort you should do some research to determine which keywords are going to bring you traffic.

Basic SEM techniques

The two most important techniques used in SEM are:

1. “Optimizing” your content for specific keywords. This is usually called SEO – short for search engine optimization. SEO involves choosing the most promising keywords, and then making sure those keywords show up in your web content in the most important places.

One of the basic operating principles used by Google is that if a web page mentions specific keywords, then that page is relevant to those keywords and is therefore a potential valuable resource for people searching for those keywords.

So it follows that you should go out of your way to make it as clear as possible what your pages are about. In other words, you should include your target keywords in as many significant places as possible. We will discuss this more in Article 2 of this series.

2. Getting links from other sites pointing to your content is crucial to getting the attention of the search engines. They consider inbound links as “votes” by other online bloggers and publishers that your content is worth looking at.

There is much more we can say about “link building” and we will discuss this further in Article 2.

Generally speaking, the more your content focuses on your primary keywords, and the more inbound links you have, the better your website or blog will rank in the search engines.

Limitations of SEM

While SEM is important, it should not be considered a complete marketing system in and of itself. Even in terms of online promotion SEM is incomplete. To do a really thorough job of online marketing you should augment your online efforts with other things like email list building, video placement in places like Youtube, and social networking – especially in Facebook. All of these things are beyond the scope of this series of articles.

Here are some of the shortcomings of SEM:

1. It is indirect and passive. You are relying on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. to determine who is or is not a good candidate to visit your site or blog. This can be a very frustrating experience - especially when you are in a competitive market, and especially for local businesses like real estate agents.

2. It takes a lot of time and effort (usually) to influence the search engines. Typically you will have to wait at least three months to see any lasting results from SEM and SEO.

3. It can be unpredictable. We have seen clients rise to #1 for their search terms, and we have seen other clients drop off the map. It is hard to know if this is ever the direct result of a concerted SEM/SEO effort.

SEM is just one part of the marketing puzzle

SEM is a valuable long term strategy which every serious online marketer should adopt. But don’t count on immediate results. Eventually as your website or blog gains credibility you will consistently draw traffic from the search engines. But it can often be a very long and tedious process.

Even more important, SEM will only take you so far. It is a passive method of marketing. It is like Social Networking in this regard. Social networking – being active in Facebook, for example - will introduce you to many new friends and prospects. But it will generally not do much direct selling for you.

For example, if you own a restaurant and you want to run a one week lunch special, SEM will be almost useless. To generate traffic to your offer page you will need other promotional techniques. These will be discussed in future posts and articles.

In Article 2 of this series we will discuss optimization and link building.

- from the ebook “Retire to an RV”

When you are just one realtor among many others in your community who provide almost exactly the same service it is important to be unique. If there’s nothing unique about you, chances are people see you as just another boring real estate agent looking for easy commissions.

Of course you can say “I am unique because I am a professional providing exceptional service.” But then all agents say that, don’t they? From the marketing point of view there is nothing unique about just saying “I am unique”.

Find a Unique Selling Proposition

Finding something unique to hang your hat on is what marketers often call creating a USP – a “Unique Selling Proposition”. Your USP is a feature of your business approach that will set you apart from your competitors, that you can build your prospecting approach around, and that you can use in your marketing so that your brand has a consistent and unique identity.

In some cases your USP can be boiled down to a slogan or catch phrase or tag line. In fact it is often easier to think in these terms. While real estate agents are not peddling fast food, they can learn something from mass marketers like McDonalds. These companies almost always use slogans like “I’m lovin’ it” or “You deserve a break today” to capture some value-added aspect of their service.

Often your USP will not be a price advantage – such as a lower commission – and probably should not be. In spite of the griping people do about real estate agent commissions, when the deal is done they are almost always happy to acknowledge the value of the service they have received from a competent and hard-working agent.

That is not to say that you could not build your entire business around offering cut-rate commissions. You probably could – especially in the internet age where there is a sizable chunk of prospective home owners looking for the cheapest deal they can find.

But the result will probably not be what you were hoping for. And it is unlikely that you will be able to build a lot of referral business from that type of client.

Adding Value is the Name of the Game

Your USP should add value – a perceived advantage – in the eyes of your prospective customers. It should give your customers and prospects a reason to deal with your business rather than one of your competitors.

For example, if you primarily service a specific area, subdivision or community you could be the “Holly Hills expert” or “We know Holly Hills inside out.”

It is even possible to do this with more than one area or community. There is nothing inconsistent about being the “Holly Hills expert” and the “Pleasant Valley expert” and the “Sleepy Hollow expert”.

The point is to set yourself apart from other agents who service those areas or communities. If you call yourself an expert and set your sites on becoming one, not only will people think you are an expert, but you will actually become an expert.

Or if you cater to seniors or military personnel, or first time home buyers, or potential condo buyers… you get the picture.

What has worked for you?

Do you have any thoughts on this or any experiences that would shed some light? Have you had success with a specific approach to marketing your real estate business.

Please share your insights by adding a comment.

Part of RIM's new campus in Waterloo Ontario

But with the introduction of the Apple iPhone in 2007 and more recently, Android-powered smartphones, RIM’s dominance has been threatened. Some analysts are even predicting that RIM simply cannot compete because it has fallen too far behind and is stuck in a rut.

Apple iPhone 4

Anybody who wants an easy-to-operate phone/camera/mp3 player/video camera/video-player/web browser/youtube viewer/games device/gps/and so much more…will quickly fall in love with their iPhone or Android device.

Forbes magazine predicts that by 2011 Apple will be outselling RIM phones. They predict that Apple will have about 11% of the mobile phone market compared to 8% for RIM. That still represents rapid growth for both products. RIM now has 3% and Apple just 2%.

The shift will take place, according to Forbes, because of the broader appeal of the entire Apple product line, the inroads the iPhone is expected to make into the business market, and broader distribution of the iPhone in the U.S.

Game far from over

Blackberry Torch 9800

After all, it is the larger screen size, easier web browsing and intuitive touch screen of the iPhone/Android that are most likely to lure Blackberry users away. The Torch offers all these things and is likely to keep a lot of Blackberry users in the RIM camp – at least for now.

It also offers better battery life and a physical keyboard which are major attraction for many Blackberry users. As Carmi Levy of thestar.com says “my BlackBerry, with its relatively paltry 9,000 apps, is a productivity device. An iPhone would be more fun, but I wouldn’t get any work done.”

Clearly Apple is the king of the apps, with over 250,000 of them. And so far they are much easier to download and install than on the Blackberry. But this can quickly change. With a more app-friendly OS like Blackberry 6 seems to be, there will be much more incentive for developers to write apps for the new Blackberry.

The impact of Android phones

Motorola Droid 2

But Android (all systems combined) is well ahead of Apple, and there are good reasons. The OS is solid, has the backing of Google and is nicely integrated with other Google services (like Maps and Youtube), and basically does everything the iPhone does.

Android phones are also available in service bundles that make it cheaper than getting into an iPhone. The fact that Android phones are competing more directly with the iPhone for the broader consumer market (as opposed to the business market) means that this will ultimately take some of the steam out of the fantastic sales figures that Apple has been racking up.

Here is a step-by-step description of how to use BlogEasy pre-written content.

Step 1 – Open the Program and log in. You have to use the id and password you used when you set up your profile.

Step 2 – Once you’re in, and you want to post a “BlogEasy Article”, click on the link that says “BlogEasy Articles”. This will take you to the list of prewritten articles.

Step 3 – Search – You can search for a specific article, or for a type or category of article. To open an article click on the title.

Step 4 – Check and Add Video Embed Code – Once the article is opened you can read the content. If the article contains an embedded video when you post it remotely (using BlogEasy) the video code will often get dropped. In that case you can either add the video embed code directly to your blog, or you can stay with the screen capture image already in place.

Step 5 – Set Your Locations – When you set up your profile you should have chosen your three “locations”. These are your three most important location names and they will be randomized throughout the article (and headline) – wherever the program finds the code “Location” code (in square brackets).

Step 6 – Click on the “Generate Article and Go to Next Step” button.

Step 7 – On the “Get Spun Article” page you will see the final version of the article that will be sent to your blog. If you want to post it manually just copy and past the relevant sections. If you want to have BlogEasy post it for you (self-hosted WordPress only), just scroll to the bottom and select the blog you want to send it you as well as the date and click “Post to Blog”.

You now should be able to click on the resulting link and see the post as it appears in your blog.