VR Sales Q&A: SEO

The 3rd edition of our “VR Sales Q&A” is the topic of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). “Will the site SEO?” or “How good will the site rank in the search engines?” comes up on just about every call I have with an agent interested in either our predesigned websites that work or our full custom websites that work. It’s an extremely broad question that I wanted to address in further detail here. First, and I’m sorry to have to break this to you, but know that setting up a website — or moving your existing site to a new WordPress platform such as ours — by itself will not take you straight to the top of the search engines for your keywords. Most people just hear somewhere that their site “must SEO well”, but don’t have the faintest idea what that means or what to look for in a website provider to maximize (not guarantee) the chances of that happening. Some actually believe that a website provider can guarantee top placement in the search engines, which is completely bogus.

The short answer to the question of whether Virtual Results websites “SEO well” is as follows: we’ll provide you a highly SEO-optimized site to use as the underlying structure for your SEO efforts going forward. Without a website with solid onsite SEO to link build against, your linkbuilding time is likely being wasted. With a predesigned or custom website that works, you just have to being plug in your content to your new site and go! For those who really want to better understand SEO, I’ve included some additional commentary below.

Ranking well in Google (and other search engines) comes down to two primary areas — onsite seo and offsite seo. Here is some further background on each of those areas, and how Virtual Results thinks about each one.

Onsite SEO – Onsite SEO involves everything on your website that you (or your webmaster) can control such as URL structure, internal linking, title tags, H1 tags, domain age, meta tags, and redirects (among other things). Wordpress by itself is 70% of what Google is looking for in terms of site structure, and Virtual Results takes the site the other 30%. We build each and every web site with SEO in mind; it’s core to what we do. While great onsite SEO will certainly help your site rank highly, great onsite SEO by itself won’t instantaneously shoot you to the top of the rankings — you still need offsite SEO, particularly for ranking for competitive keywords.

Offsite SEO – This entails everything OFF of your domain, with the primary component being link building. There are no short cuts to getting other websites to link to your site, it requires knowing other website owners, getting your name out there as an expert, and creating fantastic content that attracts links naturally. One important thing to note is that all links are NOT created equal. The same way you’ll get more recognition if Oprah says you are the greatest agent on the planet than if your friend Susie down the street does, a link from a prominent site like CNN or Yahoo will give you considerably more SEO value than a link from JoeRealtor.com across town. Aside from guiding you in the right direction in terms of suggestions to build links or ideas for topics to write about, offsite SEO services are not part of either one of our website packages.

That said, we provide world class SEO services, but it’s an additional monthly expense beyond building a website. If you’re interested in learning more about the SEO services we offer, please fill out our contact form and we’ll get back to you.

Search Engine Optimization is an extremely broad subject that I could write about for hours — and still not 100% explain in that time period. If you have specific questions, please leave them in the comments or email me at drew at virtualresults dot net.