I changed the layout theme of my Memphis website thnking I was doing a smart thing for SEO. After reading a few things, I am not so sure I did anything to help my SEO.

I also did it though to allow the visitor to choose which area of interest they wanted more information on.

Did I hurt my SEO, help it, or Google just isn't going to care one way or the other?

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I'll be the anyone else... without specifics of what was changed specifically it would be impossible to say if there will be any effect on SE's. (sorry, I'm not familiar with your site... I tried to check the cache but it's not there yet)

But in a nut shell, the things that will make a difference to search engines are: links to the page, site architecture and the overall theme of the page. If you didn't change those things you shouldn't have anything to be concerned about, but you're right in focusing on the visitors experience.

P.S. when I refer to theme, I mean the page text, h1's etc... not the colors, images etc.

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Title tags need to be searched keywords.

A free source would be

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

You have a lot of unrelated pages that probably are not searched. A strong keyword analysis is a must for your area before you go any further in killing valuable PR points to websites that will not be searched.

Guess I should have been more specific. I was curious about the general layout "theme" if you will on my home page. With the KW content headlines (of sort) for the paragraphs and them link to that corresponding page about that topic. IE, the "buyers" paragraph that will take you to the "buyers" main page, and the "Sellers" paragraph that will take you to the Sellers main page.

Is this theme or layout going to be viewed as trying to "spam" the spider, or is it a "smart" way to provide a condensed version of each subject with the ability to get more information on only the subjects the viewer wants to receive?

I guess you would have to view my Memphis home page to get a full understanding.

I appreciate the information above, I will definately look in to it and learn evertime someone explains something to me.

Thanks for your opinions and comments.Off to check on my title tags.

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I have done extensive KW serach with the tool above and with Overture. I have laid out which realtors and companies are going after which key words, which ones are searched most often and which "niche" KW are not searched that often, but are very relevant.

One of the main serch terms is "Memphis Tennessee Real Estate" and "Memphis real estate".

I am doing well in both of those for MSN ( I'm a new site).

I will definately check my title tags, I have been editing and placing new content and deleting content I did not like, etc. I am sure I have forgotten thngs here and there, thanks for the heads up.

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Looks Ok to me.

The only comment I would make is that in the past the rule of thumb was that you could only / should only try to target three keywords/phrases per page. The targeted phrases should be used in the title tag, description tag, H1 or H2... and in the page text itself. All of this said you may be trying to do to much on your home page. You could pick out the three most competitve target phrases and work your home page around them and then use secondary pages to target those less competitive.

There is nothing wrong however to present all selections that may interest prospective home buyers on your home page, you just shouldn't count on getiing everything with respect to SEO from this one page.

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You turned your homepage into a blog

Will this effect your "homepage's" ability to rank, yes I believe it will. How much, I dont know.

Basically what he is saying here guys is that before his homepage focused just on memphis and memphis related keywords, now he has added much more content, for not just memphis, but other areas he services and linked those paragraph headings to the actual pages.

If you think it will help your visitors, then I say do it. 10 conversions out of a hundred is better than 10 out of 200 right?

Besides you can always rank just about anything just will take a little more links etc.

Is this the way I would do it? Probably not, but it certainly is not spam, and it certainly will not be the diferrence between page 1 and page 100 more likley the difference between spot 1 vs spot 2 when it comes down to it.

Try it out for a while, see how you like it, see if your visitors respond positively, you can always change it back

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I appreciate the input everyone. The quagmire begins, lol.
I'll leave it like it is and see if MSN adjusts my rankings any with the few KW's they have me on. The first two were definately from the old page, but I think the old cache' is already gone. I have ran across many websites that ranked high with PR and ranked high in the SERP's, but I wouldn't want to spend any more time on their site then I had to because they sucked. (do a Google search in my area for example). So, I honostly believe there is a compramise between user friendly and the SERP's to some extent. REW seems to have found the median to please both, that is why I am here.

OK, here is a customer question for you. Do you think the layout of the Home page is good, bad or indifferent for the average consumer that might visit the site? Granted, not knowing if they are a first time home buyer, relocation, existing home, etc, etc.

If you were searching for homes in Memphis would you stay on the site? (after I get my IDX solution up and going) Compared to my competition atleast.

Thanks for your input Morgan!

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You might want to underline your links to your buyers/sellers page's, I didnt know they were links until I happened to roll over the text. Although after that I realized that all of your headings were links, so it wasnt a problem.

I looked at a few of your internet competitor's and your site looks a little easier to navigate than most of them. In my opinion the $1,000 gift card kind of threw me off a little bit. The #1 site for memphis tennessee real estate in google took me 3 clicks to look for properties, and yours only requires one. To me thats convenient, and for people just browsing through it will catch thier attention more quickly than having to shuffle through several pages.

All my opinions of course - your site looks very clean and professional to me.

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No link exchange for you!

If you believe what the they say, you build for the visitor and the search engines will follow suit.

You site is very user friendly. MLS search fron and center and contact form just above.

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