by Lisa Oates

Created on: July 23, 2009

Real estate agents depend on the world wide web for new contacts, networking with clients and other agents, performing marketing research, portraying their expertise, and providing search capabilities for home buyers. It is imperative that real estate professionals develop a hard-working search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to conquer these tasks!

In order to thrive on the web, real estate agents must first create a web site. This web site should include their background information, who they work for (their brokerage), where they are licensed, what services they provide, contact information, and the like. The more quality information that agents provide on their web site, the more opportunity they'll have to attract home buyers and sellers. An important and essential piece of advice: use rich keywords and properly worded content on your web site! Search engines look for page headings, text within the web site, and quality keywords, so make sure those are prevalent throughout the site!

Once the web site is up and running, real estate agents should start a blog. Blogging is essential in today's real estate market because agents can really show their clientele that they are professionals, experts, and interesting! Real estate agents can develop a faithful readership through their blogging efforts, and this network of online followers will create a strong connection to the public. Referrals, anyone?

Not only does blogging allow for a great platform to provide expertise, but it also provides fabulous SEO opportunities! Search engines love updated content, and the more one blogs, the more updated content he/she will have.

Now there is a web site and a blog in place. Link the two! SEO rankings depend highly on quality links, both internal and external. Outbound links are good, but inbound links are superb. Getting high ranking, popular web sites to link to your site should be high on your SEO priority list! Great blog posts can link to outside sources as references, and those references will likely link back to the blog because of it's quality content.

Another important trend, that is leaning less toward being trendy and more toward being streamline, is social networking. There are a plethora of social networking sites out there, and many of them revolve only around real estate agents. Active Rain is a site devoted to real estate agents and other professionals in the real estate business. Agents can blog and network with other professionals easily. The developers

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