Don't you hate seeing a thousand other real estate agents right next to you on the real estate agent directories out there? There's certainly a need to be listed in as many places on the Internet as possible.

But what if you could be the only agent listed in your primary service areas...permanently? And what if your city name could link directly to your website (or any page on it)?

I've designed a way for every agent in the U.S. to do just that. It's extremely affordable; it is a one-time cost, not a subscription. Once you're in the directory, you're in for good. And when space runs out, that's it. There won't be more listings added.

Here's how it works...

Thanks for all of you who are visiting this site from up in beautiful Spokane, Washington. I appreciate the inclusion of my article entitled How to give your leads to your competitor in the most recent newsletter of the Spokane Association of REALTORS®.

Things you can do while you're here:

• Get Real Estate Marketing Tips
• Learn about the importance of link exchanges for real estate SEO
• Exchange links with my site
• Get into my Washington Real Estate Agents directory (Click on your city to link it directly to your website. See the Idaho Real Estate Agents directory for an example.)

Every real estate agent who has flirted with blogging needs to pick up a copy of Hugh Hewitt's book Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World. Better yet, read it, and see how it impacts your strategies for real estate marketing. I'm adding the book to my homeschooled kids' required reading list. It's that important.

Why would I recommend a book by a nationally known political commentator to a readership of real estate agents across the political spectrum? That could be dangerous, as I certainly don't want to lose readers over politics.

How much time did you spend writing your bio for your real estate website? Five minutes? Maybe even less? Uh oh. Dig it out right now!

Writing a persuasive bio for your real estate agent website is very important, because you're selling yourself long before you're selling a house. You won't convert a single lead to a client unless you sell them on who you are and what you do, first and foremost. Only then do you have the opportunity to list their home, or help them buy a new home.

When a visitor goes from one real estate website to another, participants in the Alexa program allow that information to be collected and analyzed for "related links" and traffic estimates.

Here's why this can be beneficial for website owners. You spend a lot of time on your own site, right? (If not, you probably need to talk to me about your website!) With Alexa, you can add your own traffic to your own website into the Alexa database, as well as the other real estate sites you visit on a regular basis.

If anyone doubts the high value Google places on internal linking (deep-linking), I have hard evidence that should blow them away. Google recently bumped a client of mine up from no results for a particular set of real estate keywords (local schools) to the top ten over a weekend. Yes, that included a coveted number one rank. All this for nothing more than taking the time to internally link, directory-style, to a number of very relevant pages for these terms.

Nothing too fancy, but very powerful.

This SEO project involved creating a page of useful keyword friendly links to internal pages (MLS listing searches, actually) on his own site. I knew it would be worth the investment, but even I was shocked at how fast this strategy would be reflected in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Have you ever wondered how some of your Realtor colleagues got to become the experts in a particular area of real estate?

Whether it's commercial real estate, development land, vacation properties, or even a neighborhood, city, or county, it's possible for you to become a real estate expert by combining your experience with focused search engine optimization strategies.

Everyone wants to be all things to all people, but sometimes it is better to narrow in on your strengths and really get that message out clearly.

When I talk to Realtors and real estate agents about their websites, one of the things I talk about is the importance of unique content—in other words—written content that is not boilerplate, that is not simply one copy of 10,000 copies out there on the web.

Boilerplate content is content that comes standard with most agent websites. But if you want your site to show up on the search engines, you need to either replace it or add significantly to it. Otherwise, your site will be exactly like the sites of the 10,000 other customers of that particular Realtor website factory.

Are you a boilerplate Realtor®? Are you a clone of all the other real estate agents out there you are competing with?

"Of course not," you say. But is your most important marketing tool, your website, a boilerplate site? I thought so.

Why do so many real estate agents get sucked into boilerplate sites that just don't perform—that just don't bring in leads, listings, or sales? It's easy to keep paying for them, month after month, year after year, with the same dismal results when it comes to search engine ranking and search engine traffic.

Sometimes Realtors® forget that in order to market their properties, they need to market themselves and their own websites. One can't simply focus on advertising her or her properties, and not spend time and resources dragging a wide net to collect leads. That should include plenty of offline promotion of you and your website.

If your job is to match buyers and sellers, it stands to reason that you need to get in touch with a lot of potential home buyers and a lot of potential home sellers before you'll be able to effectively sell real estate.

I can do some amazing things with search engine marketing techniques to drive organic search engine traffic to your site, but online efforts can be supplemented with great results through the following offline promotion techniques.