Realtor Websites – Real Web Results Blog

Question: Will adding content to my Realtor website increase my rank in Google?

Answer: No… and yes.

You know how a story changes a bit with every person that passes it along until it bears little resemblance to the original?  That is what has happened with the concept that adding content to a website helps that website to rank better in Google. This concept has morphed into a belief that adding content to a website helps that website rank better for the main competitive keywords being targeted. In the case of a Realtor’s website, the belief has become that “adding content will help my site rank better for “my city real estate”. Not really true I am sorry to say.

Much like how template site providers encouraged the misconception about frequently updating a website causes it to rank better, those that help provide content to websites are encouraging misunderstanding about the idea that “content is king” because it helps their bottom line.

Back to basics…

Google ranks pages – not sites. A one page site has the same ability to rank well for a single competitive keyword as a 10,0000 page site has. Often though, a 10,000 page site has tons of unique content. The unique content itself does not cause the main entry page of the site to rank higher. The extra 9,999 pages of unique content may cause people to link to the site though because the content is helpful and can’t be found anywhere else – and it is those links that were attracted to the main entry page that give a 10,000 page site the advantage over a one page site.

The reason the main entry page of a website usually ranks higher than the other pages of the site is only because it has more links pointing at it than the other pages. The main entry page of a website has “Page Rank” because of these links and passes some of the PR on to the subpages that it links to and in turn those subpages pass on PR to the pages they link to. If those 9,999 extra pages are about things people search for then those pages may rank in Google and bring extra traffic. Where those pages appear in the search engine results will depend on the page optimization for the keywords, the competitivness of the keywords, and how many good links are pointing at that particular page that contains the actual content.

Any content that you add will only help you to rank for the keywords that the new content is targeting on the particular page. Such keywords are usually called “long tail” keywords as the combinations are usually several words and only searched for once or twice a month. So, If you add 10 pages of new content you may get 10 or 20 more visitors a month – unless the keywords are quite popular – then the pages could get more traffic as long as you develop links to those new pages that contain the keywords in the link text.

The extra pages themselves offer zero help for the main entry page to rank for the keywords the main entry page is targeting (except for the link bait aspect I mentioned previously). There is one little thing that those pages can do to help – sometimes – and that is if they link back to the main entry page using the keywords the main entry page is targeting as the link text it can give a bit of a boost to the main entry page. More often than not though Google looks at this as “overoptimization” and gives the site a penalty were the site ranks at the very end of the search results. (Often called the -950 penalty)

The “link bait” aspect of those extra 9,999 pages does not really work with typical real estate sites though – who do you suppose would link to those pages? The content is rarely unique and of enough interest that good links would be attracted.

More often than not, what is being sold to Realtors today as a way to add extra content to help their search engine ranking – is custom designed search-engine-friendly IDX systems. The idea is that each listing would be unique content because the system is custom designed for each site and a Realtor would have a site with tens of thousands of pages listed in search engines.

This seems attractive on paper but it does not really work that way. These listings are not considered unique content and are soon dropped by Google as duplicate content. The idea of having tens of thousands of new links to the site’s home page from these listings is touted as good for SEO – but in fact may be inviting the -950 penalty.

Adding new content does not generally help your Realtor website rank for the primary keywords being targeted by your main entry page. Content is indeed king for attracting visitors searching for those “long tail” keywords – and the best way to add that new content is by using a blog.

Once the blog is established, those new pages are usually picked up by Google and already ranking within hours of being published. This is because Google considers blogs (and forums) to be “news” and wants the “news” to be as fresh as possible. If you upload the same new content to a regular website it can take weeks or months before the new page starts to rank.

So, to recap…

- adding new unique content to a website may help with ranking – but for the “long tail” keywords and not for the primary keywords being targeted by the main entry page of the website.

- a custom designed search-engine-friendly IDX system is not necessarily considered unique content – so think long and hard about this before committing the thousands of dollars this costs. (for more on this subject – check out the discussion about $20,000 Realtor websites)

- the best place to add new content to target the “long tail” keywords is in a blog.

Happy Blogging!

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Ever since we started the site at Real-Estate-Blogs.com it has ranked #1 in Google for “real estate blogs” and also for most of the state and province terms. We are now making Wordpress blogs available that cover individual cities and market areas – just one blog per area -  and I would expect that these will inherit some of the site’s “authority” and will also rank very well for ” ‘my city’ real estate” in a fairly short period of time.

Since search engines love blogs and especially love Real-Estate-Blogs.com – I would also expect these SEO friendly blogs will soon have your posts and articles ranking well in search engines and generate extra business for those who make full use of the blog.

How do you get one of these exclusive blogs? These exclusive one-blog-per-market-area blogs are being included with the package of Realtor Websites we provide. Our package of websites is also on a one-Realtor-per-market-area basis so the addition of blogs fit in the package nicely.

The blogs will not be set up automatically with each website package but on request for new and existing customers. This is because many agents have no interest in maintaing a blog and having a blog sitting there being ignored would be counterproductive.

Existing customers can simply email me if they are interested in having a blog set up for them – there is no charge. New customers will be made aware of the option to include a blog when they sign up for our program.

We are just in the process of setting up the very first blog for an existing customer. To get an idea of what the blogs are like you can check out Jerry Hart’s Denver Real Estate Blog

Since the blog is so new there are no posts yet and Jerry is still moving stuff around and setting it up the way he likes it but you will get the general idea. We make several templates available at the click of a button and there are hundreds more that can be downloaded so you are bound to find a design that you love.

If you are looking for a complete SEO friendly web promotion package including a primary website, 3 promotional websites, PLUS a search engine friendly blog – check out our system. We have been providing Realtors with a proven successful solution for over 10 years!

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I was thinking today….

Many Realtors spend hundreds of dollars each month on pay-per-click advertising such as Google Adwords and even Homegain’s BuyerLink product to generate traffic to their website. I have a bunch of existing well-ranked Realtor websites currently without Realtors – why not use those websites to direct traffic to the IDX Search and lead generating pages of your existing websites that perhaps are languishing in the search engine results?

I have some existing clients that have been doing this successfully for quite a while already – one has been doing it for over 4 years. The idea of redirecting traffic to the IDX search and lead pages of the website a Realtor has elsewhere – that is not one of ours – is not something that I ever offered before but was willing to do if asked.

The Realtor website landscape has changed a lot in the last couple of years however and I realize that often agents are spending many thousands of dollars on customized IDX searches and websites – which is not something that we offer. Agents can always use a little help in directing traffic to those high priced websites and IDX search services – and perhaps that is where our system can be of help.

The traffic that comes to our websites is high quality traffic that arrives by searching the big 3 search engines  for “city real estate” and other popular real estate keywords. It is not traffic that comes from deceptive advertising and popups etc. It is the same traffic you strive for when you work to have your current website ranking well in search engines. When visitors to sites we provide click on links to the search forms and listing searches on our sites – they can be directed to the IDX search and forms on your current site. The websites we provide would be personalized with your information – just as if you were not redirecting the traffic – so visitors would know right from the start that you are the Realtor providing the information to them. It would not be like Homegain’s BuyerLink service where visitors are redirected to a totally different Realtor (surprise!).

If this is an idea that holds some interest for you, check out our website for more information on our Realtor Websites.

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Many years ago using frames in the designing of a website was known as “poor man’s cloaking” because it was possible to stuff the frame controller page full of keywords and links which would then assist in ranking the website. That came to an end a few years ago when links leaving the site were no longer counted in the frame controller page. The frame controller page was still useful though as links were still followed to pages within the site and this helped search engines spider the site. The title and keywords within the frame controller page were used as well.

Domain registrars and some hosts began using frames to forward parked domains – often calling the service “masking” – because using frames prevents the domain from changing in the address bar when the domain is forwarded to a website. This has become a popular way of forwarding parked domains and depending on how it was set up – worked well.

That all has changed however. I first noticed the change a few months ago with the Agents Online Real Estate Forums. The forums ran in a frame because the old version of the software was a cgi script that that could not be accessed by search engines. Using frames allowed links to be placed in the frame controller page which allowed search engines to spider the site. It worked well and the forums were #1 in search engines for many years.

When the forum software was upgraded the frames remained even though the new forums were search engine friendly – simply because they were working well and it was not worth changing and having ranks drop. A few months ago Google stopped reading the frame controller page and treated it like a redirect – using the information on the framed page instead of on the frame controller page. I guess that was when the change took place.

Something happened in the past week which really made me take notice though. A client discontinued our website service  due to the poor economic conditions and decided to have her domain and email hosted with Internet Crusade who would then forward her domain to the free website that her company provides. At that point her domain (and the website she had with us) had been ranking very well for a long time in search engines  due to our efforts – including a #3 for “city real estate” in Google.

I suppose that she expected that her domain would continue to rank well,  she would no longer have to pay us, and she would have more money as a result of the change. It did not work out that way however. Her new host used frames to forward the domain  and within 48 hours the change was reflected in Google with a drop to page 5 of results!

Her domain dissapeared from Google to be replaced by the url for her company web page way back on page 5. All of the “link juice”was lost immediately which is not something that would have happened just a few months ago.  A few months ago the domain would have remained in the search engine results and would have continued to rank well on the strength of links alone. Now the forwarding using frames is treated as a redirect without the benefit of the “link juice” being transferred as would be done if a 301 redirect was used.

If you have domains being forwarded using what your registrar or host calls “masking” – I would suggest you check your domains and change that forwarding to 301 redirects.

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The most valuable thing you have is your time and how that time is spent will determine your wealth, health, and happiness.

Ever since the inception of the web, there have been many opportunities to participate in activities that are a waste of time. I first wrote about this long before there was such a thing as blogs – but the issues were the same. Back in September 1999 I wrote an article titled “Get off the computer and back to work!” in my newsletter that was subscribed to by thousands of Realtors at the time – the forerunner of this blog.

Spending your time maintaining a real estate blog at one of the many blog communities may just be a colossal waste of time. Yes, I know that statement is politically incorrect but I did not say blogging was necessarily a waste of time – just the reasons most agents give for frequently writing blog posts at blogging communities may no longer be valid.

Continue Reading »

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Last month, Google penalized Realtor websites from Advanced Access, RealEstateWebmasters.com, and a couple of other providers as well. According to Matt Cutts from Google’s spam team this was a “shot across the bow” to the real estate website industry to warn that extensive reciprocal linking is not acceptable to Google. This was a manually applied penalty and not something (at this point) that happened algorithmically. Continue Reading »

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In search engine forums around the internet people obsess over Google and every twitch it makes. Any time there is a change or a snippet of new information discussions are rampant for days and weeks.

It comes as a bit of a surprise to me that there has been almost no discussion about Google rep Matt Cutts’ October 2 blog post titled “More info on PageRank“.

I guess people have finally woke up to the idea that Page Rank is now just a very small component of Google’s ranking algorithm now. It sure took a long time – we first discussed the Death of Page Rank back in June 2004!

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We have all been inundated lately with requests for triangular or 3 way links. So far I have refused them all for myself and my clients. Why? Because those being offered are of minimal value – except to those doing the offering of course.

A triangular or 3 way link is one where website A links to website B but instead of B linking back to A – a different website – C – will link to A. The way this scheme is always offered is that the link you provide to B is valuable but the link you receive in return from C is worthless or at best worth a lot less.

Continue Reading »

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Lately internet forums that discuss real estate and SEO issues have been buzzing about Yahoo and the across-the-board penalty doled out to two of the most popular template sites used by Realtors. These penalties actually happened a few months back but I guess many agents were just waking up to the fact that their presence in Yahoo had disappeared. Continue Reading »

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One of the more public faces of Google – Matt Cutts – has an interesting blog entry about the timeline of Google’s implementation of “Big Daddy”, Google’s new search structure which has been unrolled over the last few months.

There are some interesting points made in the article which confirm some things that have been “known” for a while and also one or two points which may contradict some commonly held beliefs.

One thing to take note of is that linking is still important but who you link to and who links back to you is far more important than the number of links. In particular, If you are buying links or exchanging links on sites that are not related to real estate you are probably receiving no benefit. Continue Reading »

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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!

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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.

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