There is an awful lot of talk these days about the need to be first on the search engine lists (or at least in the top 10 that are displayed). And there are an awful lot of people out there, who are willing to give you the secret - for a fee of course.

" I did a search on the words real estate, and your site did not show
  in the first 200 (1000, 10,000, or a million) ....
  let me share my secret with you ...."

Uh ... "which list" do these companies want to get to the top of? The search engine where they type in the just the words "real estate"?

According to The International Real Estate Digest, as of September 2001 there are over 50,000 real estate related websites.

If I were an real estate agent/broker, I wouldn't want to be at the top of this list. I'd want to be near the top of the list that specifies where I sell real estate.

Think about it. As a consumer living in Cincinnati, Ohio, I do not want to buy "real estate [somewhere in the world]", ... nor "real estate [somewhere in the] US", ...or even "real estate [somewhere in] Ohio". If I'm buying a house, I want "real estate [in] Cincinnati".

Did you know, many search engines do not use META tags, and some do not use Keywords, but ALL of them do use the page title?

There is only one clear way to get near the top of the search engine lists ... and that is with a page title that clearly states, Who you are, Where you are located, and What you do. (Your Company Name - Your City/State/Province/Country - what you do).

Testing the Search
Recently, I did a search on Cincinnati Real Estate and Real Estate Cincinnati.

The first 20 that appeared on the list used the words Cincinnati Real Estate in their page titles (none were brokers/agents).

The next 330 on the list, used the words real estate and Cincinnati in their keywords.These included sites that are located in California, Canada, Alaska, Hawaii, and other places located outside of Ohio!

The largest real estate broker in Cincinnati [at the time] came up #350 because NOWHERE in their page title was the word Cincinnati. (I guess the search engine found it somewhere in the page text). Interestingly enough, this page was titled Community Profile, although it didn't say which community!)

You don't need a master plan to gain a decent position on the search engines, or a pocket full of cash. Just use common sense.

And speaking of common sense ... if your city has 1000 real estate related WEB sites, you'll be ranked based on the individual search engine's criteria.

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