Unlike pay-per-click (PPC) advertising that may literally drive traffic to your site overnight, search engine optimization (SEO) strategies take time to pay off. That’s important to understand so you don’t become frustrated or discouraged and abandon your SEO efforts while you are on the brink of success.

In the last article in my SEO series, we’ll explore four important time-related SEO factors: the age of your domain, the age of your site, the age of your content the age of inbound links. Understanding these issues will help you stay patient while you wait for the reward.

How Old is Your Domain Name?

Domain registration age is important to your SEO efforts. That’s because spammers tend to have new websites with new domain names. When an ISP shuts one site down, they just launch another. Google can’t tell the difference between your brand new website and a spammer’s brand new website, so search engines proceed with caution with new domain names.

Search engines are looking for stability and credibility. As your domain name ages, it gains credibility online. Likewise, the longer you’ve reserved your domain name, the more trust you build with search engines. Spammers aren’t likely to pay for a domain name 10 years out. Just like in the real world, age associates with authority. A 35 year old has more authority than a 10 year old.

How Long Has Your Site Been Live?

Domain registration age and how long your site has been live are two altogether different animals. You may have purchased your domain name a year ago, but your website may be brand new. Google typically doesn’t give you a page rank—a value or importance assigned to your web page—for up to four months after your site launches. This is known as the “sandbox effect” and it’s one way of proving to Google that you aren’t a spam site.

How Long Has Your Content Been Posted?

Every page on the web has a date of inception. The search engines calculate the age of your page and factor that into your ranking. Google gives more weight to pages that have been posted to your site for months or years than it does pages that are brand new. That’s not to say that new content isn’t valuable. It may even be more relevant or timely. You need a blend of both if you want to keep the search engine spiders crawling your more frequently.

The point is this: When you change or add new keywords to your content—or you add new pages to your site—the results of your SEO copy may not take effect overnight, especially if you are using highly competitive keywords. That shouldn’t stop you from adding new content or continually optimizing your existing content. Just realize it takes time for the search engines to move you up in the rankings based on those changes.

How Long Have You Had Inbound Links?

When it comes to inbound links, it’s all about relevance and reputation points. Reputation points are given based on the popularity, quality and relevance of the sites linking to you. Sites with long-standing domain names have a better reputation than sites with new domain names, for example, and links that have been pointing to your site for long periods of time gain more reputation points than newer links.

Liken your SEO efforts to launching an exercise program. You won’t see results the first day. In fact, you may not see results the first week or even the first month. But it’s just a matter of time before you see the inches that were lining your waist begin to appear as muscles on your arms and legs. The same is true of SEO. It takes time, but if you use the proven strategies it works.

Here’s why: Although Google (and other search engines) evaluate scores of factors as they rank your site against the thousands of other agent sites on the Internet, inbound links are among the most powerful determinants of where your site will show up in the list of results.

And here’s another reason to focus on inbound links: Getting more relevant links to your website also increases the chances that real estate consumers looking for your type of services will find you as they naturally surf the web.

How Not to Build In-Bound Links

Before I give you the eight ways to get inbound links, let me warn you of a tactic from the early web days that could backfire today: link trading. Also known as reciprocal linking, trading links with relevant peers can be helpful to your efforts. But joining a link farm could be SEO suicide.

A link farm is a collection of websites that each link to every site in the group. Don’t be enticed by automated programs that promise to get you hundreds of links. The links are bound to be irrelevant and the search engines will punish you for trying to outwit their algorithm. In fact, Google may even ban you. Build inbound links the right way and you will gain credibility with the search engines.

The Right Way to Build In-Bound Links

Here are eight KW-sanctioned strategies you can begin using today.

1. Launch a Blog

You can use a free service like Blogger or Wordpress. Blog about your particular niche, i.e. luxury condos, foreclosures, vacation homes, or trends in your city or region. Linking from your blog to your website offers relevant inbound links.

2. Craft Strong Content

Content is still king online. If you produce interesting, relevant content, people will link to it. Let your service providers and partners know you are blogging or adding content to your site and invite them to share it with their customers in exchange for a link.

3. Consider Pay-Per-Click

Narrow in on your niche audience, choose a budget and launch a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. The text ads link to your site, giving you a potential boost in the rankings while also driving qualified leads.

4. Submit to Directories

There are many web directories you could list your site on, like Merchant Circle and DMOZ. There are free and paid web directories. You can find them by doing a simple search online.

5. Join Organizations

When you join organizations like the Better Business Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce and industry associations, you can often get the group to link back to your site.

6. Employ Article Marketing

Have you seen sites like ezinearticles.com? You can repurpose your blog content to submit to article marketing sites, position yourself as an expert, and get reputable in-bound links.

7. Get Social

When you join communities like Facebook and Twitter and post links to your site in status updates, you set the stage for high-quality links and relevant traffic to your website.

8. Write an E-book

With Adobe Acrobat Pro, you can include links back to your site in an e-book and post it on sites that host e-books, either as a free offering or for a small fee. This also positions you as an expert in your niche.

A final note: The text of the link makes a difference. Ask those who link to your site a to link on relevant terms like “Chicago real estate expert” rather than “click here.” The more descriptive the text is, the better Google likes the link.

Peppering keywords in your content is important, but it’s not good enough to get the attention of search engines that drive targeted traffic to your site. Once you understand the importance of page titles and meta descriptions—and once you learn to use them strategically—you’ll be well on your way to increasing your prospects.

What Is a Page Title?

A page title appears in the browser at the top of each web page. It’s important to choose your page title wisely because Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines put an emphasis on the keywords in your page titles when they crawl your site. Your page title will also appear as the link for that page in search engine results. That makes page titles a critical aspect of your SEO efforts.

Page Title Dos and Don’ts

• Do use natural language in your page titles.
• Do make your page titles interesting and engaging.
• Do include a strategic keyword in your page titles.
• Do use your keyword as the first word of your page title, if possible.
• Do make your page titles different for every page.
• Do include your brand name at the end of the page title.
• Do not underestimate the importance of page titles.
• Do not stuff your page title with keywords.
• Do not write page titles longer than 67 characters.

Good, Bad and Ugly Page Titles

Need some examples of page titles? Keep the dos and don’ts above in mind as you review the page title suggestions below. You can adapt these for your own market.

(Good)            South Beach Real Estate

(Bad)               Your Best Realtor

(Good)            Condos for Sale in South Beach, Miami Beach, Fischer Island

(Bad)               John Doe (Don’t use your name unless everybody knows you.)

(Good)            Real Estate | Foreclosures | Fort Lauderdale

(Bad)               Experienced Real Estate Agent

What is a Meta Description?

Also vital to your SEO efforts, the meta description puts the power in your hands to tell Google how you want them to describe your web page. In other words, it’s the description search engines pick up and run under the page title in the search results. Not all search engines use the meta description, but Google does.

Meta Description Dos and Don’ts

• Do include your keywords in your meta description.
• Do write a compelling description that entices visitors to click.
• Do maintain credibility and honest.
• Do place your most important keywords near the beginning of the description.
• Don’t use the same meta description on more than one page.
• Don’t use more than 160 characters.
• Don’t replicate copy from your page title or your Google Adwords ads.
• Don’t use your keywords excessively.

Good, Bad and Ugly Meta Descriptions

Still not sure how to translate all these dos and don’ts to your meta tag descriptions? Here are some models you can adapt based on your market—and some you should never use.

(Good)            “Looking for condos for sale in South Beach? Professional real estate agent Max Jones specializes in high rise and luxury condo sales in Fischer Island, Star Island and Miami Beach.”

(Bad)               Call Max Jones of Keller Williams Realty. Max Jones is a real estate agent licensed in Florida and Georgia. He has been in the industry for five years.

The key difference between the good and the bad (we’ll skip the ugly) is that the good offers locally relevant information and descriptive keywords like condos, high-rise and luxury. It still mentions the words “real estate agent” and offers the agent’s name, but the focus is on what’s most important: location, location, location.

In the next installment of our series, we’ll discuss how to generate inbound links.

One of the unfortunate downsides of the information age are less than desirable organizations that perform malicious acts and put your identity at risk.

Phishing scams are just that – illegal organizations “fishing” for personal information about you in order to commit identity theft. A fraudulent, yet very official looking, email is sent requesting the recipient to verify some bit of information about themselves.  This information can be banking account numbers, social security numbers or username/passwords. If collected, this information, is then used for identity theft by compromising your account.

It is important to always remember to treat any username and password as personal information that could be used to commit identity theft, including your email username and passwords!

A few typical indicators the email you received is NOT legitimate:

1. Indicates your account has been compromised
2. The use of odd spacing in the subject line.  I.E.:  “Your      Account:    has been    Compromised”
3. Indicates your account will be closed soon without confirmation from you
4. Some piece of information needs to be verified – your credit card number, username and password, etc

So, what can you do if you think you have been scammed:

1. Never reply to emails asking for personal information.  No legitimate business will ever contact you this way if your account has been compromised.  Ever.
2. Only divulge personal information when you initiate the service call.
3. If you wish to verify if the email is legitimate, call or email the company’s customer service center directly. If you are a Keller Williams associate, you would contact KW Support at support@kw.com.
4. If you have responded to an email you now think is a phishing scam, contact the customer service department of the account you believe is now compromised IMMEDIATELY.
5. To report scams in the US:
   If you believe you’ve been scammed, file your complaint at http://www.ftc.gov/
   If you receive spam that is phishing for information, forward it to spam@uce.gov
6. To report scams in Canada: file a complaint with www.recol.ca

According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, in May 2008 alone, 32,414 phishing Web sites were operational. Remember, be safe on the internet and keep your personal information private! Teach yourself to spot these indicators I listed above and first and foremost, take the time to find out before clicking on anything to provide your information.