Archive for SEO
There’s a website called Tynt that can help you, if not stop Internet theft, at least make those thieves think about what they’re doing. And, for people who just like the information you have on your website or blog, Tynt’s service will help them keep track of where they got the information, and establish incoming links to your website, too!
I heard about Tynt from Mr. Internet, Michael Russer. If you read Michael’s post, you can watch a short video explaining how Tynt works.
I tried adding the (at-least-for-now-free) Tynt code to our main site at BuildRealEstateResults.com. Then, I copied a paragraph from one of the articles on that site to this post. You can see what happened in between the 2 lines below:
_____________________________
Tynt automatically added the information starting with ”Read more” to the text I copied.
Now, this service won’t stop a determined Internet thief from stealing your content. They can very easily delete the attribution that automatically appears after the content or image that has been copied.
However, for copies made by people who aren’t trying to build a website or blog by stealing the content from other places, this could be an interesting way to get some incoming links to your website or blog.
If someone copies something from you to go in an email, the email recipients may well follow the link back to your page. If someone copies something and places in a public place such as a blog or Facebook page, that incoming link could help your SEO and bring more visitors to your site.
And, I would hope that when someone who just isn’t aware of the laws against Internet theft sees the link, they will leave it in place – or decide to write their own content!
There are some Tynt options. Here are just some examples. I chose to show the Creative Commons license which applies to my copyrighted material. You can also connect Tynt to your Twitter account – anytime someone does a copy/paste from a protected site, it will show up on your Twitter account.
Tynt will also provide activity statistics. You’ll notice that the URL referenced in the Tynt attribution has some coding after the .html for the page. That coding allows Tynt to let me know things about what is being copied.
Just as an FYI, when I copied the Tynt-attributed text to this blog post, every paragraph I entered after that copy was placed in a <div> which eliminated the white space between paragraphs. So, if I hadn’t really wanted to show that example, I might have given up on copying the information. Tynt, if you’re listening, please tell your code to stop doing that! Also, it would be nice if you could set up multiple websites in one account. Right now, it looks like you need a new account for each one.
In any event, it’s an interesting capability to play with!
.
Examples of Hyper-Local Real Estate Blog Success
There’s a great post on Active Rain written by Donna Harris from Austin Texas. Donna does a great job of illustrating how her blogs are ranking well for long-tail search terms. As you may know, long-tail search terms are those search phrases that are related to your website’s main search terms, but are not as popular.
For example, in Austin, the main real estate related search phrase is probably something like “Austin homes for sale”. But, Donna is having success by focusing her blog posts on less popular search phrases that relate to communities or area names around the Austin area.
Make Your Post Titles Count!
It’s worth a trip to Donna’s blog to read her post for another reason. Her post includes links to several of her blog posts that contributed to her great ranks on long tail keyword phrases. Take a good look at how her post titles are written.
For example, one title is “Real Estate Hill Country Austin TX Homes Are Selling!” I know that many real estate bloggers might have written a title like “Local Homes Are Selling!”. That title might attract readers, but you’ll be hard-pressed to get readers to find that post! Using keyword phrases in post titles has a big impact on the ability of the post to rank.
It’s always a challenge to write titles that attract both search engines and readers. Another way to write the title could be “Hill Country Real Estate: Austin TX Homes are Selling!” As Donna mentioned in her post, her new approach may seem a bit more “robotic”. But, given the progress she’s made so far, I’m sure she’ll continue to find ways to satisfy both her readers and the search engines!
From time to time I run across another useful Google tool that I didn’t know existed. This time I saw a new tool in an Active Rain post by Rita Burke who markets Denver Luxury Homes.
Take a few minutes to read that post. Rita did a bang up job with illustrations on how to find and use the Wonder Wheel.
What does the Wonder Wheel do, you ask? It provides a visual “wheel” diagram showing search phrases that Google recognizes as related to a search you’ve just performed.
It could be very handy in identifying those “long tail” search phrases that you’d like to encourage the search engines to rank your site for. Once identified, you can use those phrases for optimizing blog posts, secondary pages on your website, and a host of other things!
7 Tips to Make Your Blog SEO-Friendly
· Comments
A client recently asked how he could use his blog to pump up his website’s SEO. Blogs can have a very positive impact on your website’s SEO if you plan carefully.
7 Tips to Make Your Blog SEO-Friendly
1. Blog Frequently – Blog as often as you can.
2. Optimize Your Blog – Use On-Page Optimization for your blog pages. On your blog, you can put keyword phrases in your blog’s title, post titles, post content, category names, tag names and the ALT text of photos or images that you use in your posts.
3. Maintain a Focus – You can blog about anything you want. But, especially when you’re first starting up a blog, make the majority of your posts about real estate and your keywords. That focus will help the search engines understand the theme of your blog.
Too often you’ll see blogs with a wide range of categories, none of which contain any discernable keyword phrases. If you were marketing in Atlanta, for example, your categories should include things like Atlanta Real Estate, Recent Atlanta Homes for Sale, Atlanta Real Estate Market Updates, etc.
4. Link to Your Website – Use your blog as a way to get quality incoming links to the pages of your website. This is a great way to get deep links to the interior pages of your site. You can write about a variety of topics and link to your community pages, MLS search page, market condition page, etc. and it would make perfect sense within the post. Use good anchor text in your links to get the most from them.
5. Link to Outside Resources – You don’t want to put too many outgoing links in your posts, but 2 or 3 links to quality outside websites that can be helpful to your readers is a good idea. You may get a link in return, and the search engines will notice your choice of outgoing links, too.
6. Submit Your Blog to Blog Directories – One way to jump start your blog is to submit it to blog directories to help the search engines find it. Just do a search for real estate blog directory, and you’ll find quite a number of directories that focus on real estate blogs.
7. Advertise Your Posts – Set your blog up to “ping” Update Services. If you’re not familiar with pinging or Update Services, take a look at this explanation on the Wordpress site.
Typically, you can also increase the traffic to your blog by being active on other blogs. If you read and leave comments on other related blogs, that may bring visitors on that blog to yours. And, if you leave comments, very often other blog masters will return the favor.
I was talking to an agent the other day who mentioned that many of the websites we customize for clients look very similar. And, that’s true – there are key elements that any website needs to have in order to be effective.
One of these elements relates to good internal linking. All of the home pages on sites that we customize have “graphic buttons” on the home page to quickly direct visitors to key pages on the site, for example. While these buttons aren’t text links that have effective *anchor text, the buttons do have keyword phrases as ALT tags, which the search engines read.
We also make sure that the home page introduces the visitor to the website. We want visitors to know what information and tools are available to them on the website. So, we add content that briefly describes pages of interest that are in addition those represented by the buttons.
Internet surfers in general don’t read every word on a website, but they will scan a page. Therefore, we make sure that the link colors on the site have a good contrast from the background color and the color of the text. And, we make sure that links are underlined, but only the links. Underlining for emphasis on a website only serves to confuse the visitor.
That may sound silly, but there are many designers who think that underscored links in a contrasting color are ugly. These designers try to hide links as much as possible so as not to conflict with the design. We think that’s silly. The links are there for a reason. If they are easily identifiable, a visitor scanning down the page will be much more likely to click on one.
But, there’s another good reason to have links on your home page to other internal pages. For one thing, you may realistically drive more traffic to your interior pages if visitors find links easily. The other consideration is the search engines. If you use good anchor text* on your home page when you’re linking to internal pages, those links give the search engines a good idea about the content of the page they’re about to visit.
So, while you want to concentrate on getting good incoming links to your website, don’t forget the importance of good internal linking. Giving visitors and the search engines as many ways as possible to get to your web pages is a good thing!
________________
*Anchor Text – The words that are used as the link to another website or web page. Good anchor text includes keyword phrases.
