Property for sale on the web is a fairly competitive world! For example, Google reports around 30 Million pages indexed for the term "property france". So to get ANY chance of a natural click you have to be in the top 0.0001%!
The logical alternatives you have are SEO (or more specifically Longtail SEO) and Pay-per-click marketing (if you have lots of money and don't mind making a loss).
That said, what you need to do to get any web site to the top of Google for 10's of thousands of keywords is reasonably well understood by real SEO experts (not the cowboys). It's just not that easy or quick to do!
A good case study is the work we have done for Overseas Property Centres. Launched in April 2007, it is now on page 1, 2 or 3 of Google for around 70% of it's target keywords (specifically a list of 550 locations plus the work 'property' - e.g. 'property mitte'.) With the Drupal-based architecture we have implemented for OPC, they have the opportunity of joining the Global Top Ten Search leaders in property - given enough links, content and time.
Together with the work we have carried out for other web sites such as Holiday Rentals, we now have a blueprint for Property and Real Estate SEO that is well-proven.
We are of course constrained by agreement as to the sharing of much of this information with potential competitors to OPC, but with their permission can enter into certain types of contract with Property portals and Agents in some areas of the market. Contact us for more details.
