How Some Realtor Sites Rank Well In Google

Ever since Google's big shakeup update last November - dubbed the "Florida" Update - it has been extremely hard for individual Realtor sites in most market areas to rank highly in Google for competitive keywords. This is not isolated to Realtor sites but is a phenomenon that applies to all commercial sites in all industries.

For Realtor sites it does not apply in all market areas either. Google has a list and some market areas are not on it usually because they are very small and managed to stay off the radar. The sites that replaced the missing websites were sites deemed to be "authority" sites or directories for the most part.

Prior to last November our own Realtor websites ranked in the top 10 consistently but disappeared after "Florida". Thankfully, the program we provide for Realtors includes multiple websites and a couple of the sites included in our package are part of larger "authority" sites so Realtors on our own program still had excellent positions after last November and that continues today.

But in some market areas affected by the Florida update a lone Realtor website would survive - why? I did extensive research into this question and presented my results back in March in this forum post.

Over the summer and into the fall some other Realtor sites began ranking well too. What are they doing to achieve good rankings? There are 3 main ways sites are managing to rank well in the new Google. Almost all real estate websites that are not part of larger sites but are stand-alone sites use one, two, or all of the 3 methods.

Google is all about linking and very little about on-page factors nowadays so all methods involve linking.

The first method is the one that allowed some sites to survive the "Florida" update - and that basically involves having very many other sites link to you and not link back to them so you basically have one-way links and not reciprocal links. These sites do have links pages and did exchange reciprocal links - lots of them - but their own links pages are not indexed in Google or do not actually reside in the same domain as their website. Also in some cases the links themselves can't be followed by search engine spiders because of the scripting used so they are not reciprocal.

In the majority of cases these sites that remained were template sites and the owners benefited simply because these template sites are search-engine-unfriendly to begin with and they had exchanged many links prior to last November.

The second method also involves having non-reciprocal links and that is buying text link ads on thousands of web pages - usually on just a couple of websites where the links appear on every page. Realtors are paying hundreds of dollars a month for this and when Google discovers a site is selling links it has been known to then start ignoring those links causing the rankings to drop again.

The third method is where a group of agents all agree to exchange links on a sitewide basis - that is they put true reciprocal links on every page of their respective sites thereby giving each participant hundreds of links. It works even though the common thought in SEO forums is that it shouldn't and that Google will put a stop to it. I personally would not use this strategy unless you are prepared to trash your domain and start all over because it certainly appears to be against Google's rules and in the past their penalties for linking schemes has been a permanent penalty for all sites involved.

There is a fourth method that a few Realtors are using (and more are starting to) and it is likely the best method because it is honest and will not get you in trouble. All you need to do is exchange links with sites where your link will actually count (see this article for instructions on how to do this - and provide a real link on a beneficial links page in return.

It is honest because unlike method one above you do exchange links and you do really reciprocate so both parties benefit and not just one. While exchanging true reciprocal links also cultivate a few one way links by listing your site in various directories.

Also, participating in forums like http://www.agentsonline.net and posting your comments in Blogs - like this one for example - is a great way to gain one way links that will be picked up by Google!