I've hired companies to help me get site placement with other businesses (not real estate) and to me, it's not worth the price.  

No one can guarantee a good position on Google because they change their ranking algorithims so often.  Yahoo and MSN are fairly easy.

With a little bit of research and work you CAN get your web site to place well on your own without spending any money.  Key word title, key word description, and key word density on each page will get you where you want to be.  A MANUAL link exchange program helps big time too.  Linking is all about "anchor text". http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2004/04/08/anchor-text-optimization

If you want instant placement on the first page, spend money on pay-per-click.  See http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com for help with these.

I believe the advertisement medium there is, is your blog.  If you blog about local neighborhoods and market conditions, you will attract the type of buyers that are looking for information.  If they find the information on your site, they might stick around, read more and then eventually contact you.

It's free, just takes time and dedication, but you have to be consistent and provide "good" information.  It's all about target marketing.

Money in....money out. It is all relative.

I spend $3000+ per year to SEO my site. If it brings in 2 deals (which it has) and I make $50K+ then I am pretty darned happy. Actually, I am very pround of my self and my SEO company as it allows me a very minimal work output for those 2 deals.

Anyone who is reluctant to spend money on their RE site is simply kidding their self and I suspect they are past 45 y.o.

and are underestimating the power of the Internet. This may

sound harsh, but I see it all the time with older agents who continue to spend +++$$$$ on print ads with little attention

to their site or a Blog.

I started my RE career at ZipRealty, so naturally I see the benefit

of online promotion. Each year more and more Buyers flock to the 'net for their search and I personally buy everything online including groceries.

Tom

http://www.LAexclusiveProperty.com

I fully concur with Tom's opinion. While, of course, I like people to spend money on design, I really don't want them to hire me until they've made a commitment to getting good search engine placement, whether organic or pay per click.

My work is aimed at converting more visitors to leads, but the first priority has to be getting visitors. It makes me very sad to see my hard work going to waste on some sites that I've done that only get tiny trickles of traffic, with my appeals to my clients to have SEO work done falling on deaf ears.

PPC works fine for some agents, even for long term use, but in a market like Tom's, it's cost prohibitive, making SEO more cost effective.

A key element of SEO is getting in-bound links, with some top-placed real estate sites having thousands. (I ran across one today that had 3880 inbound links.) Getting these links isn't rocket science, but it's boring and very time-consuming work.

An agent could much better spend his or her own time creating content unique to his or her market area, such as taking neighborhood photos and writing descriptions of neighborhoods and subdivisions. Or get away from the computer and get out where you can meet people. Let someone else do the link-building!

Like Tom, I buy almost everything online. If Starbucks would deliver, I would rarely leave the house. -:)

Dennis, Suzanne and Thomas are right on. I have only been at SEO's for 2 months and as I said in your other post I have gotten 10 fold results. I recommend Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com to begin with and stay away from the companies that do it for you. With some practice, time and work you can do it yourself. Blogging will get you great results also. Find the right key words. Active Rain has been keeping me on page one and two for the past 4 months on my blogs. Gopod luck and look at SEObook.com "Expect the Best" Mike

Kinda like the best coaches were not always that hot as players. To broad brush paid seo as bunk is not fair either.  There's a learning curve but jump right in there and learn tyhe ins and out of site promotion on your own!

There are ways if you have the time yourself that you surely can put your site at a decent position where people will find you and contact you.  I just had 6 new prospects register on my 100% FREE Point 2 site today!  This is largely due to my blog that I post on regularly on Active Rain.  I have never paid for SEO, but I'm not going to lie, I am looking into it this year as I am starting to get too busy to do it on my own.  If I spend a few grand and free up time to close even one more deal, then it has already paid for itself.

I fully agree that you need to taylor your site to be more specific to the areas that you serve!