aussiehome.com MD Charlie Gunningham was in the UK recently, where there seems to be total doom and gloom over the property market everywhere you turn.

Indeed, the announcement that property prices fell 5% in June across the UK was greeted with some relief, as one valuer told us, "prices had been falling too slowly to make much difference ... now maybe the market will gain some traction."

Returning home to Perth, we see newspaper headlines predicting a 15% fall in Perth property prices, with our local daily newspaper using such emotive descriptors as "slump", "plummeting", "crash" and "dire" (all in one paragraph). Is this right? Accurate? Responsible? These are the same people that predicted a 20% 'correction' in 2007 (the market rose 13% that year).

We hear from the 'coalface' that things are not like this - some of our clients tell us they've had good months in July. Buyers are returning, if still a little slowly (there's a lot of stock around).

REIWA President and longstanding aussiehome.com client Rob Druitt believes the media's predictions of 15% falls are a "remote" likelihood.

The fundamentals in the WA economy far outstrip those of the UK.

157 aussiehome.com web users and clients filled out our online survey last month, and the results surprised even us ...

• property portals were the MOST USED tool for property searching
• 89% of people GO FIRST to the INTERNET to look for property
• aussiehome.com and realestate.com.au were the MOST USED sites by our clients and users (skewed sample!)
• AGENCY's OWN SITES are MORE IMPORTANT than the newspapers! (it's what we've been saying for years - and thank Goodness, this means you have the power!)
• FAST TO LOAD, EASY TO NAVIGATE and UP TO DATE were the 3 most important features of a real estate site
• aussiehome.com ranked BEST on these 3 features, plus the fact we specialise in WA properties

Chart 1: "WHERE DO YOU LOOK FOR REAL ESTATE?"

(Blue bar - most useful; Red bar - where do you go first? Max = 100)

* notice how your own real estate agency site RANKS ABOVE the 'papers!

Chart 2: "WHICH REAL ESTATE SITES ARE THE MOST USEFUL?"

(Blue bar - used; Red bar - which is in your Top 2? Max =100)

* OK shucks ... skewed sample ... but thank you fans!

Chart 3: "WHICH FEATURES DO YOU LOOK FOR IN A SITE?"

(Blue bar - features; Red bar - how aussiehome.com ranks on these)

* fast to load (5 seconds), easy to navigate (not messy) & up to date = most critical

Source: aussiehome.com online questionnaire linked to property enquiry & alert pages for the web users, and asked in this enewsletter to clients, June 2008 (some non-aussiehome.com clients also took part.)

We get a lot of questions about how to get a site ranked higher on Google.com. It's actually not all that hard, and we have/can deploy this on your web site for you.

Here are the secrets we have learned (keep them to yourself!):

1. “Meta tags” are useless for Google (they are ignored). If anyone tells you you need your meta tags changing, you can give them a quizzical glance as they do not know what they are talking about!

2. Google (and its mainly only worth SEO’g for Google, which has 87% of all search traffic) works on READING THE TEXT on the homepage and the rest of the site. Our real estate sites tend to be very text heavy as there is relevant text on every page, and all property pages, which is deliberate and good.

3. Google starts by reading the TITLE (top blue bar) – whatever it says on your site is the MOST IMPORTANT text for Google. Company name is not enough - include key search words here such as the suburbs you work in, 'real estate', 'rentals', 'sales' etc

4. NEXT – Google reads the TEXT on the home page, and reads from TOP LEFT to BOTTOM RIGHT. What text do you have here on your site? Again, this is very important. Google can't read images!

5. Every property page should be SEO’d so the title bar refers to the address of the property – check every property and you’ll see what I mean. If not, we can do it for you.

And just getting these simple things done will make HUGE improvement on your Google ranking. Basically, think what words people (not knowing you exist) would type into Google. It's THESE key search words you want incorporated into the site’s top title bar and on as many pages as possible.

Finally, Google ranks you higher if you have relevant links TO your site, are a deep site (lots of pages with relevant content) and the older the site is.