We thought we would share some insight with you.  Many of you post your listings in online directories and are probably aware of the benefits.  We ran a query on 2 of the most active flyers created this week on ClassifiedFlyerAds.com and following are the views these flyers (listings) have had in each directory.  The report below only shows sources that had a total count above 10 views.  Anything below 10 views was excluded and keep in mind some directories such as Craigslist do not record opens (disallowed) so are not taken into consideration.

Natural search engine means flyer views that were made from searches done in Google, Yahoo or other search engines and as you can see those top the list.  What this tells us is many buyers are finding listings from a good old fashion search engine search over finding them in directories.  So if you can accomplish getting your listings ranked in search engines then your listings will benefit greatly.

Backpage is second on the list so if you are not posting your listings to Backpage you should start.

OLX has also returned good results on a consistent basis.

Of course the results vary based on listing, price and location but this should give you a general idea on the top online sources where you should be advertising your listings.

DON'T FORGET - most of the directories also allow you to create and post service ads.  Many Agents will advertisie their listings but forget to advertise their services.  Create "Real Estate Service Flyers" and post those to directories too.

Real Estate Search Engine Optimization

We have compiled a list of tips and resources for those of you who do or want to do your own search engine optimization for your Real Estate Websites and blogs.

• The first resources I want to discuss are blogs and social networks. RealTown and ActiveRain are great resources for Real Estate SEO. When you create blog posts though these sites, it is a very good chance that your posts will be picked up by Google.
• Press Releases and Articles – Having a quality press release or article written and then distributed to the top media networks can be a great way to not only bring in more traffic to your site but also a great SEO method. Press releases and articles generally have links back to your site and services and if written well the articles will be optimized to be search engine friendly.
• RSS Feeds – have an rss feed of your property listings programmed. Add a link to your rss feed to your blogs and add the feed to rss feed directories.
• Don’t use too much Flash or JavaScript. Search engines cannot index Flash or JavaScript. There are some great widgets out there but most of them utilize Flash or JavaScript technology. For example if you have a Flash or JavaScript listing widget that displays all your listings, search engines will not index that widget. But if you have an HTML widget of your listings, then search engines will index all the listings and the links back to your listings will also be indexed. So to sum it up, if you are using Widgets, Adlets or any other utilities/tools, check to see if there is an HTML version available.
• Keyword Hyperlinks – Link keywords in your pages and blogs and make sure and attach titles to your links. For example: create a hyperlink like Listing Widgets and link it back to the page rather then a direct url like http://www.classifiedflyerads.com/adlets.php
• Surround your main page title by h1 tags. You will need to be familiar with HTML to utilize this method.
• Properly code your web page title tags so the title tag in the HTML is relevant to the page. For example if your page talks about Email Signature Widgets then your page title tag should be something like . You will need to be familiar with HTML to utilize this method or contact your web developer and ask him/her about this.
• CSS/Hyperlink menus – use hyperlink/CSS menus on your websites rather then image, Flash or JavaScript menu. Ask your web developer if CSS hyperlink menus are being used.

There is a whole lot more in regards to SEO but the above list is some of the most important. Please feel free to ask questions and we would be happy to answer. We also welcome any tips anyone else can add to this list. If we get lots of good tips from ActiveRain members we will publish a web page of all the tips.