Realtor Websites - Real Web Results Blog

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.

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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.

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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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When Google first appeared on the scene its relevant results and word of mouth advertising quickly propelled the search engine the top of the search engine heap. The media caught on to this as well and the gushing stories about Google solidified its position. Continue Reading »

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Google is once again in the middle of a major update - this one has been dubbed “Jagger” and the good folks at Google have been kind enough to tell us that Jagger is actually being rolled out in 3 parts. As of this writing, we are still waiting for the completion of Jagger2.

This update did not just begin - the changes some are seeing now have been happening for several weeks now as Google has been incorporating new backlink and PR updates into the indexes. The update was just recently given a name but probably has been underway for many weeks. Continue Reading »

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