I would recommend that you regularly check to ensure those you have traded links with are keeping up their end of the bargain. You may be surprised at what you find. Today for example I was checking the reciprocal links of a client’s site and found that 100% of the links we had carefully accepted over the last couple of years had stopped linking back. Every last one!

The links we were providing to these cheaters were all good links on a PR3 page – which was way better than we were getting in return in the first place. There was no reason for these sites to remove their link back. I guess some people just like to take advantage of others.

So, even if you carefully check out potential link exchanges (as outlined in other posts here) to ensure that you are getting a fair trade – you need to keep checking to make sure you are still getting value and are not being taken advantage of!

 

Realtors are increasingly discovering the world of blogs and are beginning to use them to convey information about themselves and the real estate market in their area.

A blog is really just a web page you can post content to even if you do not have any web development skills.

A Realtor can use a blog to post listings, real estate news, interest rates, and it can be branded and publicized to reflect a local real estate market to attract regular visitors. A blogger just needs to find something good to write about everyday, but can be short.

Blogs are easy to set up and there are tons of good free blogging software out there, like blogger.com which hosts this blog.

Now there is a brand new search-engine-friendly directory that lists real estate blogs and also blogs of industries affiliated with and servicing the real estate industry. The directory is brand new – in fact this blog is the first one to be listed. You can find it at http://www.real-estate-blogs.com.

 

In an earlier post I outlined how to tell if an offer to exchange links was worthwhile. Lately there has been some talk that exchanging Reciprocal Links no longer works. The fact is that link exchanges still work although I believe some carry more weight than others. It has been widely noted in SEO forums (and I agree) that a link from a site whose links are organized as a “web directory” IS ignored.

By “web directory” I mean where they have multiple categories not related to the actual theme of the site – so if a real estate site has a links directory that has categories for travel sites and health insurance sites etc. – you probably get no benefit from the exchange.

Also, if a site uses popular links programs like Linksmanager you most likely get zero benefit from from the link as Google would recognize such programs and ignore links from them.

It IS getting harder and harder to find link exchanges that are of value but there still are some out there.

 

I was just going through some of my website statistics and was surprised to find that over 30 percent of visitors are now using a browser other than Microsoft Internet Explorer. This is a very large increase in the past year and it is important that website owners and webmasters understand that websites do not display the same in all browsers.

If you design your website (especially if you use a Microsoft product to do so) and never check to see how it displays in some of the more popular non-Microsoft browsers like Firefox and Netscape you may be interested to know that your website may look horrible to 30% of your website visitors. In some cases it looks so bad that visitors will leave immediately.

It is probably not a good idea to be turning off a rapidly increasing number of website visitors!

If you only check your site in one other browser -I would suggest you do so in Firefox which is available for free at http://www.mozilla.org/. Firefox and Netscape display pretty much the same as far as I can tell and those two browser’s make up the lion’s share of MSIE’s competition.

 

Some agents are concerned that their website content is being copied by others and are looking for a solution. Various website providers and webmasters have been recommending and implementing a so-called solution that prevents web surfers from accessing the menu that is seen when the right mouse button is clicked.

This is done because when that menu is accessed one of the choices is “View Source” which allows the code to be seen. The thinking is that if you can prevent the code from being seen then you can prevent it from being copied. A nice thought but most webmsters and anyone but a web “newbie” knows this to be total fantasy. Continue reading »

 

Where I live, this week has been Spring Break and the kids are off school and in need of activities to keep them occupied and out of mischief. So, I figured it would be a good time for my pre-teen son and I to head up to the family camp along the shores of the Winnipeg River in North West Ontario and take care of some work that needed to be done there.

The lengthy drive was quiet and peaceful – because “modern times” allowed my son to watch DVDs on my laptop the whole way (with head phones on as a bonus for dad!). Once we arrived at our destination, we found that there was still a couple of feet of wet snow in the bush so had to put on snowshoes and make the trek through the bush on a trail we shared with deer carrying our gear with backpacks and hands full. It took two trips to pack all our gear in – You would be amazed at how heavy a notebook computer becomes when carrying it through two feet of snow! Continue reading »

 

The practice of redirecting one domain or website to another does have some serious problems. It is commonly preached that as a way of increasing your internet business it is a good idea to have lots of domains – perhaps targeting different keywords or market areas – all pointing at your website. The reality is that this can actually cause you serious grief. Continue reading »

 

When building a website it is always a good idea to look at other successful sites and see what they have done so you can find clues as to what you can do to be just as successful. Some decide that the easy solution is just to copy some of the content or duplicate the meta tags. Those that try the unscrupulous and illegal route will be very disappointed!

It is not that there may be a risk of being caught – it is 100% certain that you will be caught. Not only will you eventually be caught and face the potential embarrassment of having your crime publicized throughout the internet where anyone searching for your name and/or business will find that you are an unethical crook – the tactic does not work. Continue reading »

 

Search engine forums have been buzzing with talk of the “Sandbox” for months now – “does it or does it not exist” and “can it be beaten” are the usual topics of discussion.

In case you don’t know, the “Sandbox” is a label that has become associated with Google’s practice of not ranking new sites – more precisely, not ranking new sites in new domains competing for competitive commercial search terms. Continue reading »

 

In the last while I have had a few clients who have lost their domains because they did not renew them. Apparently they never received the renewal notices – which is one of the consequences of email becoming less reliable as mentioned in this blog a few days ago.

Theoretically once a domain expires you should be able to re-register it but that doesn’t happen often. There is a large group of people out there who pay services to let them know which domains are expiring every day and domains like yours (even domains that are your personal name) are snapped up right away because of the link popularity of the domain.

The incoming links allow the domain to rank fairly well right away – no waiting – and the buyers usually put advertising on it or affiliate links. They can earn some easy money because of the effort that was put into exchanging links and listing in directories in the past.

Realtor domains are at the top of their list so remember to keep an eye on your domain expiry dates and don’t rely on receiving a renewal notice because you may never see it.

 

I just finished checking reciprocal links in the Epowered Professionals Realtors Directory and had to remove a couple of dozen Realtors from the directory because they were no longer reciprocating links.

Every time I check it is the same old story – a number of agents put a link on their website, apply for inclusion in the directory and then once they are in they remove the link. I wonder if they are just as dishonest in their dealings with clients and other Realtors? Continue reading »

 

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. Continue reading »

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