How Website Structure Helps Search Engine Visibility

Summary: In this real estate SEO tutorial, you will review your website to make sure it doesn't have structural or design problems that will limit your SEO success (by limiting your ability to climb the search engine ranks).

You may or may not have any control over the items I will cover in this first step, but it's a crucial step in the real estate SEO process so I have to mention it. When I refer to your website's "structure," I am referring to the basic setup and layout of your website.

This includes whether or not you use Flash on your site, how you are hosting your site, how you publish and organize your content, how your navigation menu is designed, etc.

These things are important because they affect your potential for search engine visibility. So there is no point going any further into these SEO tutorials if your real estate website has fundamental problems that will limit your success.

For instance, if your website is hard for search engines to crawl through due to one of the factors listed below, you need to address that situation before going any further into this guide. After all, what good is adding new content if search engines cannot reach the content?

Website structure has a lot to do with search engine visibility. So whether you're building your own real estate website, outsourcing the development, or purchasing a "ready made" website, you need to understand a few things about site structure. From an SEO standpoint, here are three of the most common structural problems I encounter on real estate websites:

• The improper use of Flash
• Dynamic menus without a text-based alternative menu
• Too much content framed in from another website

Problem #1 - Improper Use of Flash

Flash is a design program originally created by Macromedia and now owned by Adobe. I guarantee you've seen it used online. You know those websites that play a movie of sorts when you visit them, with a "skip intro" link somewhere down below? That's Flash.

When used carelessly, Flash can frustrate website visitors and send them packing. Overuse of Flash can also dramatically reduce search engine visibility, because search engines can't decipher your Flash movies. I'm not saying, "All Flash is bad." I'm just saying that many of the Flash implementations I see reduce both usability and visibility.

If you're going to use Flash (and you care about your website's visibility), contain your Flash movie within its own space on the page, and offer plain text content in addition to the Flash movie. This way, the search engines can simply "read around" and crawl around the Flash movie, because the Flash does not dominate the entire page. To see this concept in action, check out Adobe.com. Adobe sells the Flash program, and even they are smart enough to avoid entire pages made of Flash.

Problem #2 - Dynamic Menus w/ No Text-Based Alternative

You should also be careful when using dynamic menus (drop-down menus, rollover menus, or other menus with "action" to them). I've worked with a lot of websites that only had dynamic menus with no alternative path, and they all had one thing in common. The home page would be indexed, frequently crawled and well ranked by search engines. But the internal pages would be virtually invisible. The reason for this is that search engines have trouble crawling through dynamic menus, especially when they are poorly built. This means the search engines won't visit your internal pages as often, if at all.

But there's an easy fix to all of this! Simply create an alternate, text-based menu at the bottom of your website. It won't change the look and feel of your site, but it will improve your site's usability and visibility. Go back to the Adobe.com home page mentioned earlier. Notice how they have a fancy, dynamic menu up top (for people) and a plain text menu at the bottom (for search engines and general usability).

Problem #3 - Content Framed In From Other Websites

Where does your website's content come from? If the content is hosted on your actual website, in a simple and straightforward web-publishing setup, then the search engines will give you "credit" for that content. But if your content resides on another website, and is being ported or "framed" in from that other website to yours, then the search engines will not associate the content with your website.

Here's a real-world example of what I'm talking about. Without mentioning any names, there are a handful of real estate website companies out there that allow customers / agents to log into some kind of admin area in order to publish content. But in many cases, this content does not actually get published onto the agent's website domain (not technically, anyway). Instead, it gets published to the website company's domain and is merely "framed" onto the agent's site. In other words, the content is made to appear as if it's part of the agent's website, when in reality it is not.

I know this sounds complicated, but it's crucial that you understand the difference. If you use a website template company that allows you to publish content through some kind of "portal" or admin area, you should ask them about the technical details. If you have a straightforward website setup and don't use a company like this, you can probably skip ahead to the next section of the book, Step 2.

Here's an example scenario to help you understand what I'm talking about. Let's say I register the website domain name www.BrandonAgent.com, and I use a website template company to publish my web pages. If you go to my home page (hypothetically of course) by typing BrandonAgent.com, you are on my web domain: www.BrandonAgent.com. But when you click the menu link for "Buyer Tips," it pulls in content from another domain (such as www.MyTemplateCompany.com). The web page content seems to be part of my domain, because the address bar still ways www.BrandonAgent.com, but in reality the content is being pulled in from somewhere else, through the use of frames. Basically, the center content area of my website is nothing more than a frame that pulls in content from elsewhere.

Now, this is not usually a big deal in small amounts. For example, if I have a 25-page website with an MLS / listings page that uses frames, that's basically a non-issue. Maybe I'm using frames on that particular page in order to pull in listing data from some external website. That's okay, because the rest of my web pages are basic web pages, which means the content on those pages is part of my web domain. So in this scenario, I will get credit for 24 out of 25 pages of web content. I can certainly achieve real estate SEO success under this type of setup.

This type of framing setup only becomes a problem when your entire site (or most of it) is framing in content from some other site. I have spoken to agents who thought they had a 50-page website, when in reality the search engines were only giving them credit for three pages. Why? Because the majority of their content was framed in from elsewhere, and they didn't even realize it.

If I have a 15-page website, and 12 of those pages are framing content in from some other website, then the search engines will think I have a 3-page website. Multiply these numbers by a factor of ten or more, and you can see the enormous difference between perception and reality. The website owner thinks she has 150 pages of content, but search engines only see five pages on the domain. That's a serious discrepancy, and it will limit what you can do with search engine optimization.

This is not a crime. Website template companies have a legitimate reason to use this kind of strategy. They usually do it to simplify their internal publishing procedures. You just need to realize that it will limit your SEO success by reducing the amount of content the search engines attribute to your web domain.

Like I said, if you have a fairly straightforward website with good navigation, you can dismiss most of what I just said. In that case, you're ready to move on to Step 2, researching your key phrases.

SEO Tutorials >> Site Structure