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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

If you check, you will find that I have been writing this blog since 2004 – so I am not anti-blogging!

If you are spending your time blogging at real estate blog communities because you enjoy the socialization – rock on! However, Realtors often give other reasons for their time there and those reasons need to be looked at a bit more closely.

One of the main reasons given for maintaining blogs at blogging communities is for the “link juice” – one can always find ways of getting links back to your main website within your posts.

Recently however Google has lumped blog posts at blogging communities in the same category as link exchange directories and article sites, and has awarded them all the “grey bar” on the Google Toolbar. This greyed out Page Rank indicator is used by Google to show that no Page Rank has been awarded to the page being viewed.

It seems that Google has abandoned their campaign to have us all use “no follow” to render links valueless and has instead decided to make the pages themselves valueless – making the links on the pages of little or no value whether they use “no follow” or not. Blogs maintained independent of blogging communities often fare better – the posts in blogs on your own website for example are more likely to have Page Rank .

If you are maintaining a blog at a real estate blogging community for link juice purposes – there would be better ways to spend your time.

Another reason often given for blogging is because blog posts often show up in Google quickly for what is called “long tail” search terms. – i.e. search terms that are rather obscure and seldom searched for. That may not really be a valid reason for spending time in blogging communities either as such terms are generally only searched for once in a blue moon and each term usually would bring just one or two visitors a month. Those one or two visitors could be directed to your site using pay-per-click for mere pennies instead.

If you spend a half an hour writing a blog post that will generate the same traffic to your site as a few pennies will – I would argue that your time is better spent elsewhere.

Another reason given for frequenting blogging communities is the opportunity to network with other agents and perhaps pick up a buyer or seller referral. I was an active participant in one of the first networks of Realtors on the internet a decade ago ( the E-Team Referral Network) and I did receive a referral or two in the process. In order for this to happen though I had to spend a hour a day at least working on the network and participating in the community.

When you take all this time into account – I probably would have been better off and made more money just spending that time marketing the old fashioned way – calling past clients for example. It seems that the other members came to the same conclusion as the network did eventually die.

Within the real estate bloging communities only a miniscule number of agents in a very few select cities will ever have clients moving to your area. You would be better of spending the time zeroing in on the cities that produce the most newcomers to your area and “farming” a large number of agents that work those cities.

With the spring market approaching it may be a good time to evaluate your use of time. The reasons why you spend time in real estate blogging communities should be one of the things considered during this process.

Why is extensive reciprocal linking not acceptable? Because it works – and causes individual Realtor sites to rank well for real estate related keywords and Google would rather not have individual Realtor websites ranking for general “my city real estate” keywords.

Google has always made ajustments where necessary to include or exclude sites in order to have the results presented that it deems appropriate. Google deemed many years ago that it is OK for Realtor sites to rank for “Realtor” keywords but Google would really rather have a different type of website ranking for “real estate” keywords.

The earliest attempt by Google to shape the “real estate” keyword results that I remember occurred around the turn of the century. Google used to give a lot of “weight” to a site if it was listed in the Open Directory Project and when this became widely known Realtors or their webmasters tripped over themselves to list their websites. It worked well and Realtor websites ranked well in Google of “real estate” keywords.

Google’s response to this was to change the Page Rank all of the “city real estate” directory pages at the Open Directory Project. Where these pages all had a PR of 3 to 5 previously, they were all changed to PR0 which reduced the ranking benefit and caused Realtor websites to drop in rank for “real estate” keyword searches. At the same time, the caetgories for larger real estate authority sites retained theit PR resulting in these sites increasing in rank in Google at the expense of Realtor sites.

The second major attack on Realtor websites began back in the fall of 2003 with the famous “Florida” update where the majority of Realtor websites in competitive market areas dropped dramatically in rank to be replaced by directory-type “authority” sites. This change in Google’s ranking was keyword specific and geographic specific – it was applied to a list of keywords in combination with geographic names. Some cities were not on the original list and were unaffected initially. More were added in the weeks that followed. Some areas actually avoided the “Florida” update altogther – at least for “real estate” keywords. It seems Google overlooked some City names altogether.

As soon as the Realtor web design industry discovered that the “authority” sites that replaced their Realtor sites in Google’s results were little more than directories with lots of links pointing at them – the Realtor website designers included large directories organized in different categories within their own sites and set about aggressively trading links.

This strategy worked (depending on the quality of the incoming links) and in the last few years Realtor websites have slowly been reclaiming some of the good “real estate” rankings enjoyed by Realtor websites prior to the fall of 2003. That strategy has now been rendered obsolete or at least extremely risky with Google’s recent penalties. Most of the sites penalized removed all of their directory pages, filed re-inclusion requests and many have regained their previous rankings.

The problem is, that these reclaimed rankings will only be temporary. Now that these websites have removed all of their outgoing previously-traded links, their former partners will be doing the same in return. When Google gets around to factoring the new lack of incoming links into the rankings several months from now – these websites will drop once again.

Google will be happy – many Realtor websites will once again be absent from “real estate” rankings. Realtors on the other hand need to be looking to the future and trying to figure out how they will get their name out in front of those searching the web for “city real estate” keywords.

Some seem to think that social networking and blog communities may be the answer and it may be in part – for Realtors who are willing to devote large amounts of time and energy into adding fresh commentary and content. You see, this solution largely removes the ranking onus from the webmaster and puts it onto the Realtor – which is not the reason Realtors hire webmasters / realtor website designers in the first place. Most Realtors would rather be toe-to-toe with buyers and sellers than sitting in front of a computer screen trying to think of something to say.

For those that do not find an attraction in social networking and blogging, you may want to explore being listed within the authority-type sites that Google seems to like for “real estate” keywords. In many cases it is possible to have an individual presence for your market area within such authority sites so a web page promoting you and/or linking to your main website is found in Google when someone searches for “yourcity real estate”. This solution frees you from the computer and gives you more face time with real clients.

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!

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.

The only such triangular link exchange I would recommend my clients accepting would be in the case where C is also a real estate site, the links page is listed in Google, and the links page has Page Rank at least as high as what you are giving in return. That way it is a win-win exchange rather than a “you lose, sucker!” exchange.

The only likely way to find such a win-win exchange is probably in a situation like my own where one person (me for example) controls many real estate sites. That way sites B and C can be equal and C is not just a low value site set up for links. Hey! Maybe I will start doing some triangular win-win trades myself this fall! If you can offer a link on a page in your real estate site that is actually listed in Google and has PR and want to receive the same in return in a triangular exchange – email me referencing this post and maybe we can get something going. I could do bulk trades with dozens of sites as well.

This should have come as no surprise as Yahoo has been penalizing template site companies and all of their sites for many years now – ever since template sites for Realtors first began. Those of us that were aware of the issue have been expecting these latest penalties for quite some time now. I wrote about this issue a few times over the years in posts at the Agents Online Real Estate Idea Center… -back in June 2003 I wrote “Something most Realtors are not aware of is that many popular web site providers have set up hidden “link farms” in an attempt to improve the rankings of their search-engine-unfriendly sites and in these cases almost ALL of their web sites end up being penalized. The list of the guilty include some of the biggest and most popular website providers who shall remain nameless…”

In October 2005 I wrote specifically regarding Yahoo and template sites – “a similar fate has happened to other template site providers in the past. It goes something like this…

The template site provider gets the idea to link their Realtor’s sites together to improve search rankings. It works! Their sites move up and in some areas dominate the top results in Yahoo. After a year or so Yahoo notices this – probably from complaints from the public who do not think 8 out of the top 10 results from the same website provider is a good idea(they all look the same to a searcher). Since large template providers have thousands of sites this is a big problem for Yahoo. They take action and the sites no longer rank well.

It has happened to all other template providers that linked their sites together in the past. I am sure the company thinks their way of doing it (non reciprocal or 3 way links) escapes detection by spiders but the way the penalty has been applied in the past leads me to believe that the penalty is manually applied. Sometime too much success is a bad thing….”

One thing I found interesting is that although the penalties are applied to all websites using the guilty provider’s services, in the past that penalty would still apply to the domain long after the agent had moved the domain and created a new site. I have had clients who had domains hosted by penalized template site providers and it was still impossible to get good rankings for the domain years after it had been moved. The only solution was to use a new domain. This might not be the case if the current penalized companies are able to successfully negotiate reinstatement but if they can’t my previous experience suggests that the affected domains are probably now damaged goods.

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.

Likewise, if you put links on your site to “spammy” sites and sites not related to real estate – especially if you put these links on your main entry page – you are telling Google that your site is not important and you will find yourself ranked accordingly.

Unfortunately, (for the mortgage industry) Matt does specifically mention a real estate site linking to a mortgage site as a “spammy” link. This may have to do with the industry itself getting a bad rap because of all the email spam from the mortgage and loan industry that we all receive. I personally don’t think that there is a problem with linking to mortgage sites but because of Matt’s comments I would refrain from doing so on the entry page of a site.

The article seems to be intent of discrediting the practice of exchanging reciprocal links and also link buying and selling. From Matt’s comments, I would say that exchanging links with non-real estate sites is not a good thing and likewise buying links on non-real estate sites (which some do when trying to increase their Page Rank).

I think for the most part exchanging links with quality real estate sites where the link you receive in return is on a page that Google includes in it’s index is still a good thing. I have written about this in the past and also have given detailed instructions for checking if a link exchange is worthwhile.

The article also mentions that Google has no trouble spidering deep down the directory tree – and that is something that some thought was a problem. Matt says in the article that Page Rank is a much larger factor. That statement basically says that Google still considers Page Rank to be important and that pages with higher Page Rank will be spidered more often.

The belief of most SEO’s is that while Page Rank may influence spidering it does not influence that actual rank of a site as it once did. Still, if you can exchange links where your link will reside on a page with good PR – any PR on a links page is probably good nowadays – you will probably gain some real benefits simply because the page will probably be spidered and will probably remain in Google’s index.

With this implementation of “Big Daddy”, sites that have experienced a big drop or disappearance have likely done so because they have “spammy” links on their own main entry page or many of their link partner’s pages have been downgraded or removed from the index because they are of low value.

To rank well in Google requires links from “trusted” sites – which now may be considered to be any links page that is still in Google’s index and that has Page Rank. Just as important is to be careful about the quality of the sites that you link to – as that tells Google a lot about the quality of your own site.

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!

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.