Realtor Websites - Real Web Results Blog

From time to time I hear from Realtors who are concerned that if they link from their site to outside resources they are just creating a way for visitors to leave their site. I used to hear this concern more than I do now as in the past this fear was widely planted by some template companies who were trying to attach a benefit to the framed sites they were offering. Now most template companies, in attempts to make their products more search-engine-friendly, have stopped using frames (on their main entry page at least) so they are not promoting this “benefit” as much as they used to.

When Realtors do express concern over linking out from their site, here is my usual response… Continue Reading »

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Don’t you hate spam? I used to receive over 1000 spam emails a day and it used to drive me crazy. I would wake up in the morning to find 600 in my inbox waiting for me - now there are just 6.

The best part is that stopping all of that spam costs nothing - it is absolutely free! 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 received an email from a client wondering about how often a website should be updated…” I have been reading Florida Realtor magazines and they suggest I should be “touching” my web site every other week to keep it fresh.”

My response…. 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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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.

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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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