Archive for May, 2008
SEO and Website Changes
· CommentsQuestions come up from time to time about how changing a website will impact search engine rankings. I have talked to folks who have “heard” from SEO “experts” that you need to change your home page regularly, meaning at least once a week, to get good rankings. Others have heard that if you change your home page you will fall off the charts.
Neither of those theories are true from my perspective. Since I just did a fairly major restructure on our main website, I thought I’d share my experience as an example.
The www.BuildRealEstateResults.com (BRER) website is always the last one to get any attention. The home page on that site is changed very infrequently. This blog is resident on that domain name, so the posts here do count as updates for the BRER site.
The latest update was published on 4-27-08, so it has been online for about a week. The update consisted of major changes to the home page, the elimination of quite a few pages and the addition of several new pages. I considered doing 301 redirects from the deleted pages to the new pages but never did get that done.
The main keyword phrase for the BRER site is real estate marketing. I wish I had more detailed history, but I tend not to track that site’s rankings very regularly. I do know, however, that right after the update was published, the site went from about #4 on Google to #1. That often happens when something changes – a quick bump up in rankings.
As of the last time I checked, the site is now #2 on Google. Still a better position than the site had before the update. And, Google is doing what seems like almost daily adjustments to that search term. The number of results returned has been bouncing around in a range from 9-13 million.
So, one week after a fairly major change, the site’s ranking has improved. I attribute that to the strength of the site’s incoming links, the length of time it’s been online, and the fact that I was careful to maintain the relevance among the page titles, meta tags and content.
This experience reinforces what I’ve seen when it comes to SEO and website changes.
- Engines like it when there is fresh content, but if it doesn’t make sense for your visitors if you change some words on your home page each week, don’t worry about it – fresh content on a blog counts, too.
- And, unless you do a very poor job of updating your site, the benefit of the fresh content will probably outweigh any confusion the engines have if your pages have been shuffled around a bit.
How Long Since You Wrote a Press Release?
· CommentsWriting a press release is a great way to get incoming links to your website and exposure for your business.
If you haven’t written a press release lately, now would be a good time to get one put together. The biggest question when it comes to press releases centers around finding something that you think merits a press release.
What is Press Release Worthy?
An online press release can provide two benefits. One is to get one-way incoming links to your website – that’s good for SEO. Another benefit is that other websites will pick up on the press release, and your information will get published on several or many websites.
To get the second benefit, you need to write about something truly newsworthy. And, I don’t think something newsworthy comes along all that often. However, to get incoming links to your website all you really need to do is write a well-optimized press release that is about something that you are doing.
Press Release Topics Don’t Have to be Newsworthy
I have a Google Alert set for the term “real estate marketing”. So, new pages that Google thinks is important for that term are sent to me in an email every day. Last week Google included a press release in one of those emails that announced ”Real Estate Website Offers New Way to Search For Properties”.
And, what was the new way to search? Using a Google map to display where homes for sale are located. Hmm… sounds like a map search that is available on lots of real estate websites. But the point is, who cares? If a consumer comes across that press release, they will know that the agent is Internet-savvy and has an easy way to search for homes available.
I’m not sure that lots of other websites will pick up that press release. Maybe a small newspaper in the agent’s hometown? But, the search engines will notice the links going from the press release to the agent’s website.
So, don’t wait until you have something to write about that is earth-shattering news. Have you updated your website lately? added a new team member? published a new market report? started a blog? The possibilities are endless.
And, you just never know who might find your site from seeing the press release, or from seeing your site as it climbs higher on the search result pages.
