By Bernice Ross 

Several months ago a number of articles appeared on the Internet saying that Google had once again changed their algorithms (i.e., the mathematical formula that they use to determine organic web rankings.) To get "Google juice" or good ranking, the algorithm now appears to place the greatest value on videos. After that, pod casts, blogging, links, and in last place, static websites.

Consequently, one of the first steps that you can take to improve your web rankings is to include more video virtual tours of your listings. Research from Poin2Agent (the best place to syndicate your listings to over 225,000 agents in 141 countries and 30 major real estate portals) shows that increasing the number of pictures of each of your listings also helps you to have better search results. For example, the 2008 Point2 Agent study of buyer online behavior found that having 16 different pictures of your listings as compared to 15, produced 33 percent more page views. The minimum number for the best results is at least 20. An important part of how Google ranks your site is based upon how relevant is, how long people stay on your site while they are there (stickiness), and the number of page views. Using pictures and videos is a great way to improve this.

There's another new development that merits noting. Just recently, the folks at Adobe announced that they have a new product that Google has started using. This product takes the voice part of the video and converts it into a text file that the Google search engine can read. Consequently, if any of your virtual/video tours uses music in the background, it would be smart to redo the audio part of the video and change it to voice. For all new videos that you shoot, be sure to use words rather than just music on the audio portion. This is will increase your Google Juice and help you beat those competitors who don't know about this shift.