Our second real estate case study is another big name in housing within Lehigh Valley. Patt, White Real Estate describes themselves as a Real Estate Company with ten agencies throughout the Lehigh Valley. Certainly they have been around a long time and grown quite substanstially, but have they succeeded in expanding successfully into the internet realty marketplace?
The website for Patt, White Real Estate is almost 12 years old. That’s an incredibly aged domain. On this alone, their website should shine. Indeed it has been awarded a Pagerank of 3 by Google and has an Alexa traffic rank of 597,600. But is this really that good? Let me tell you a little secret- Google awards just about any site that is doing things right a PR3. A domain that is 12 years old shouldn’t be at the same level as a domain that is 3 months old!
Regardless, this website ranks in the top 5 for both “Real Estate Lehigh Valley” and “Lehigh Valley Real Estate” in Google search results. That’s a very impressive and important result. Let’s dig a little deeper and see what Patt, White are doing to optimize and market their real estate website.
On Site Search Engine Optimization for Patt, White Real Estate
Patt, White’s meta title, description, and keywords are as follows:
Patt, White Real Estate Lehigh Valley Allentown Bethlehem Easton PA
Real Estate Company with ten agencies throughout the Lehigh Valley. Search for homes and open houses, information about buying, selling, relocation, and commercial services.
Patt, White, Prudential, real estate, realty, homes, houses, property, land, commercial, PA, pa, Pennsylvania, Lehigh Valley, Easton, Bethlehem, Allentown, Northampton, Lehigh, Northampton County, Lehigh County, Hellertown, Quakertown, Nazareth, Forks, Bath, Stockertown, Emmaus, route 22, route 78, route 309, route 33, route 248, route 115, Wilson, Palmer, Coopersburg, Macungie, Saucon, Milford, Salisbury, Whitehall, Weisenburg, Allen, East Allen, Coplay, Freemansburg, Hanover, Catasauqua, Lowhill, Heidelburg, Lynn, Glendon, Washington, Mount Bethel, Plainfield, Bushkill, Moore, Walnutport, Slatington, Bangor, Pen Argyl, Wind Gap, Roseto, Upper, Lower, Township, Twp
I wouldn’t change a thing about that meta info.
Unfortunately things don’t stay looking so hot from here on out! There are no Htags on the page to provide a hierarchy of keywords. The page consists of large amounts of javascript for navigation which is not viewable by search engines. The layout uses tables, which are archaic (although expected in an 11 year old website) The Patt, White real estate website contains 38 images on the home page without descriptive alt tags. Just what can search engines get out of this website? A reasonable interpretation of what Google, Yahoo, Altavista, MSN, and other search engines will see is this:
Open house flash
[spacer.gif]
[spacer.gif]
[curve1.gif]
[curve2.gif]
[spacer.gif]
[lphoto.php?lid=23907495&id=]
You’re in Patt White Country.
Rock Solid. Family Proud Since 1953.
[spacer.gif]
Quick Home Search MLS# ______________ SEARCH NOW
[spacer.gif]
[spacer.gif]Search by Map
Patt, White Company [spacer.gif] (800) 523-5074 [spacer.gif]
info@pattwhite.com
Allentown, PA [spacer.gif] License PA RB066122A Prudential Fox & Roach Partner
Prudential Patt, White Real Estate is an Independently Owned and
Operated member of The Prudential Real Estate Affiliates, Inc.
Copyright © 2006 Prudential Patt, White Real Estate, Inc. All
information provided is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed and
should be independently verified.
© 2006, An independently owned and operated member of The Prudential
Real Estate Affiliates, Inc.
[rock_prudential.gif] is a service mark of The Prudential Insurance
Company of America. Equal housing Opportunity [house_logo.gif]
This site is hosted, designed, and copyright © 1994 - 2008 by Delta
Media Group, Inc.
That doesn’t look too impressive, does it? On site, Patt White, Real Estate is skating by with domain age as the only thing going for it. There is minimal text that can be indexed and evaluated by search engines. It’s frustrating to see a site that could be ranking for many more terms and holding on to that ranking with a better web design.
Off Site Search Engine Optimization for Patt, White Real Estate
Patt, White Real Estate has 8 reported backlinks in Google and an impressive 14,808 inlinks reported by Yahoo. Much of those are internal links, some are from directories. There are no social bookmarks and Patt, White is not listed in DMOZ. Would it be easy to overtake Patt, White for the terms “Lehigh Valley Real Estate” or “Real Estate Lehigh Valley” well that all depends. I could do it, I know that for a fact. But let’s instead look at what it would take to get Patt, White to an even higher ranking.
For an example of what Patt, White Real Estate has done wrong, let’s look at what Realtor.com has done right. Realtor.com is just over 12 years old, has a Pagerank of 7 and an Alexa traffic rank of 904. Realtor.com has 12 diggs and tons of backlinks. Google reports 2,520 backlinks while Yahoo shows a mindnumbing 655,006 inlinks. If you ever wondered what it took for Realtor.com to dominate the search engine result pages, you now know. Can Patt, White Real Estate build even of fraction of those sorts of numbers and become highly competitive? Absolutely.
Right now when you search for Lehigh Valley Real Estate, you will notice that Patt, White has sponsored results. Here we have a site that should be ranking #1 for nearly every real estate term relating to Lehigh Valley and yet they are spending their budget on paid ranking via sponsored results. Why spend money on Adwords, when you can dominate the search engines?
Patt, White doesn’t see it that way, obviously.
One Comment
Interesting analysis. Personally I don’t find much value in the meta anymore, but then again you never know when traffic will arrive from HotBot. :)Good to see another active-blogger doing SEO near me (I’m in Northern MD). Keep it up bud, and if you wanted to get lunch sometime and talk some SEO let me know. I’m a little more shady to your whitehat though. :)