Optimizing search results pages

[JayBoy]

This post is deleted!

[RobertFisher]

JayBoy,

First, in looking at the site (and we do a bit of real estate in the US), my first concern is the search results are returning duplicate page titles: Daft.ie : Search results. But, then I see more...

You have taken on a daunting first project. This is a massive site and it needs work, so your statement, "...quite new to SEO and must... ...I am working part time with a client on improving their on-site SEO..." is a bit scary to me in that you may have taken a big bite out of a bad sandwich. This is a site that will require tremendous time to fix and a lot of skill. You may want to consider getting a firm to assist you and teach you as they do - and find a way to make the fee structure work. Just out of the group on moz, there are a bunch of great SEO's in the UK overall. That said, on we go.

Whomever originally set this up, did it based on a very old SEO frame of reference around saying as many keywords in as many places as possible as often as is possible. They also included every keyword meta tag in the cms and all of those need to be removed. (Dont start here as there is much more important that must be done).

All title tags have colons instead of Pipes. This needs changing along with the brand is leading and you want keywords leading | Brand. The straight up line is a Pipe. (if you knew that, please understand I do not know where you are in SEO and I am trying to assist).

Being real estate, location is most important. In Houston, TX, USA we would have it like this:

Homes for Sale (in) Neighborhood | Our Company or

Home For Sale 11211 Peden Houston | Our Company (the italics just help show the pipe as opposed to looking like an "I")

The next thing is the meta descriptions are all way too long, full of keywords, and dont address the query. The meta description is to bring the buyer to the page. Seeing how many times you can say County Cork over and over wont and most are truncated.

Once you attack these two daunting tasks you still need to look at each page and how to differentiate from competitors. That said, I likely should have started with: KEYWORD analysis. 
In other words, what kw's do those in Ireland search for? Homes for Sale or houses for sale, etc. This is where you get clear on what KW convention you will follow. Do the research, do not just copy others.

This is a good start, but you need to dig into moz, just start with everything on this page: The Beginner's Guide to SEO

Once you have been through all and can quote them, stay on moz for at least a year or two. When you are totally the bomb at SEO, stay on moz and pass it on.

Hope this helps,

[JayBoy]

Hi Robert,

I really appreciate the time you taken to write your post. Excellent advice which I will follow and put into practice.

It's a massive project for me to undertake and one I would seek advice from a firm if they budget was in place to do so.

The SEOMoz beginners guide is a little bit light on keyword research. Would Google Adword's keyword tool really be enough for me to use at this stage to identify the most suitable keywords to utilize?

Also, the company is quite keen for me to focus on the ten most glaring issues with their site from SEO perspective. Besides the ones you named, anything else stand out?

I'm honestly grateful of any advice I can receive. I might be quite out of my depth here as the company themselves believe SEO is a straight forward thing.

I rather focus on the most glaring problems before delving deeper. Thanks again anyone who offers advice to me!

[RobertFisher]

Sorry, I had to go work. The good news is its SEO and WebDev which I love. So, yes, if you are intuitive then he Adwords tool is a good place to start. You can also use the unpaid Majestic, etc. or find one with a free trial that you can cancel if not good enough.

Start with keywords. Then on page. For me, and you will see some who have other opinions, you want to work on Title tags, H1, H2, meta description (which is so damn important and so damn mishandled) obviously not from an SEO perspective in terms of Google/etc. but from getting those who are looking to the site.

Understand that I am in the U.S. and I am sure there are patterns in real estate their which are different than here. (My wife is an agent with the top firm in Houston). So, I would suggest making sure you are putting content other than homes and pics based on geography. Your best areas first and more frequently (monthly or every two months) make a post to a page, etc. So here it would be a neighborhood, but lets say there it is a county. You could place a post on how to sell a home in Cork or the three things most buyers look for in Cork, etc.

I would really spend some time with the developer and insure that the pages resolve correctly for the bots. I would run Xenu Link Sleuth on the site and see that all the response codes are good, etc. That will give you a nice road map to issues.

Also, you don't have FB share or like, Tweet, Google +, etc. and those will help you as people click them.

Hope it helps, keep us posted,

[JayBoy]

Thanks again Robert

Certainly the immediate on-page elements I would want to fix are the title tags, H1's, H2's, meta descriptions etc as you mentioned. This appears to be a site wide problem and a major project in itself.

They do have social sharing buttons on the listings for individual properties. Not sure if it would benefit the site to have social buttons on the main categories too?

Do any other major issues stand out to you? (or anyone else who wants to chip in with some ideas)

I know the company is also interested in off-page optimization (outreach) but I'm not sure if it would be the best idea until they tackle the major problems they have at the moment.

Quite surprised the site has a page rank of 7

[JayBoy]

Thankfully the company has realised that the website in question would require a lot more time than they first realised.

I've now been tasked with adverts.ie to look at. It seems to be in a better position in terms of On-Site SEO