RealTown's RealTalk

Good response Kathleen. I definitely agree that SEO when done well and continuously can expand one's Internet presence. I also understand your rationale regarding improvement of ranking even when the competition for certain words/phrases may be intense. My suggestion to all SEO consultants is to avoid using the phrase, "guarantee first page or top ranking". Most would be pleased to achieve sufficient improvement as to make it even to page two.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

I have responded to you by sending you two great booklets about SEO in general, and REAL SEO, which is what we supply our clients. Anyone wishing to obtain these may go to www.compassinternetsystems.com resources and success guides and download them. They are packed with ideas and ordinary SEO companies quote them and crib from them all the time--the highest compliment one can receive.

We guarantee first page placement because we know what we are doing and we deliver. It is not unusual for clients to be on up to 500 different first pages for various searches relating to their market area on the seven major search engines, and 82% of our clients are on Google's first page within 90 days for searches relating to their targets. If you would like to see a few examples, contact me and we will walk you through a few online in the management system we give each client as a part of their subscription: there is NOTHING like it anywhere else.

As to how we limit competition amongst our own customers for the ten phrases on each search, it is quite simple: we will not accept subsctiptions for a phrase more than five times: that is, we won't oversell a phrase.

I thank Lilo for her comments. It IS easier to dominate a smaller search depth than a huge one, but we have clients on page one for all sorts of HUGE depths, including this one: go to Google and type in "for realtors" and see who comes up in the top three.

Next week in RIS media, there will be a great success story for Cincinnati Real Estate. I hope you enjoy it.

I use Compass and am very pleased with it. I have been on the first page on Google and Yahoo for months. My rank changes but I am still there. It's a lot cheaper and easier that trying to chase clicks and keep up with them.

Cheryl Spears

My goal is to obtain the best return on investment for every marketing dollar I spend. I have just concluded an 8 month trial period using PPC. I am now evaluating the results.�

Hi Parker,

My initial reaction to spending $48,000 for ppc would make my teeth grind.  I always like to ask the bigger picture.  What was your return on this?  Did you earn a 6 figure income from that?  Do you have an incredible database of people that you are staying in contact with, not just by drip email campaigns?

How are you managing all the leads that came in through your ppc?  You surely could have spent this on an intuitive site that is beautiful, easy to navigate, along with a very aggressive seo campaign.

I must say that I have never met someone who spent $48,000 on ppc, was that in a year or over many years?

Curious,

Cherie Young
Real Estate Web Designs
760.782.0103

John, you said:

I definitely agree that SEO when done well and continuously can expand one's Internet presence. I also understand your rationale regarding improvement of ranking even when the competition for certain words/phrases may be intense. My suggestion to all SEO consultants is to avoid using the phrase, "guarantee first page or top ranking". Most would be pleased to achieve sufficient improvement as to make it even to page two.

As long as we are discussing SEO for profits, let's remember this: Getting your site FOUND is only step one in becoming a successful online marketer. While it is a huge technological feat to put over 1000 clients on about a half million first page search results (which we do, daily), all that technology is not going to help you sell ONE HOUSE if you do not do the following: (1)Incorporate attractive lead capture on your home page and on every community page; (2) respond instantly to every internet lead received.

It is very hard to sell anyone anything if you don't know who they are. Lead capture is the process of identifying visitors to your site and getting them to register with you. Despite the overwhelming stats showing the efficacy of lead capture, even some of our own clients resist its implementation. Such was the case with a long standing client in West Virgina, who thought it "didn't look good" on her homepage. We finally convinced her to trust us on it and three weeks later, she received an actual offer for a $500K property off her lead capture! This is repeated all the time. Get lead capture!

Likewise, Internet shoppers expect instant response. Waiting days or even hours is foolhardy: they want to be contacted right now, and not by an auto responder, either: they want an email or a phone call.

Finally, performance can be attained on a wide variety of websites. SImple, complex, whatever, because it is not the appearance of the site that makes it perform. It is, however, the appearance and utility of the site that attract the visitor and keeps their attention. We have hunderds of clients using FREE website platforms, hundreds using custom sites, and hundreds using everything in between.

In the final analysis, it is making your website welcoming and a source of the information the shopper is looking for that matters. If you've got that, you need to make sure you can be found when people go looking for homes in your neighborhood, that you can get a percentage of them to register, and that you follow up assiduously.

Anyone, anytime, is always welcome to contact us for a FREE evaluation of the Search Engine Friendliness of their site. Also to download our Success Guides, Success Stories, and to ask any question without obligation. Success online CAN be yours. YOu just need to partner with the right company.

Best regards

 We started www.bevwaring.com about 4 years ago with a couple of pages of boilerplate.  I have lots of experience building corporate software applications but the content is based on requirements, and you don't generally have to attract people, so I wasn't happy that I had to learn about SEO.

Fortunately, I found Kathleen Allardyce and she came up with some great copy and ways to structure the site for SEO.

Then we had no other choice but to use PPC until the organic results could build up.  Wow, I thought we had it bad spending what we did at the time but it wasn't a fraction of 48k.  I never liked the whole concept, especially since their really was no accountability and you were subject to someone clicking your dollars away just for spite.  

So, we started climbing out of the basement but got firmly stuck at page 3 on google.  Then we found Compass and that got us up to page one where we have stayed for several years.  Now this isn't Denver but it's still competitive.

Finally, I have done a load of work trying to differentiate the site and that has worked really well for long tail searches.

Disclosure: we do have a small Yahoo budget just for the heck of it, and we pay a flat monthly rate for one search term on google but that's because I just figured out it was as important as our main term and I haven't done the organic work yet.

I just looked at the results for the two terms over the past 4 months.  In the google keyword analysis tool, they both rank equally.  For the main term, we are consistantly on page 1 near the bottom.  For the second term, we are at the TOP of the PPC, 24 hours a day but page 11 in organic.

So, even though we are highest on the page with the PPC, we only get half the traffic.  I gotta work on getting that higher but it confirms what Mike said about people not clicking on the PPC as readily.  I'm that way myself in my own searches.