Archive for SEO
Five Secrets to Real Estate Domain Names
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Domain names are a frequent topic when I’m talking to clients. And, I’m sure you’ve heard 42 things that you should do when you are determining what domain name to attach to your website. And, it can get confusing. Here are some very simple truths about domain names.
1. Search engines put a great deal of weight on the age of a domain name. The older, the better. So, if you started out 6 years ago with a domain name of JohnSmith.com, but now you want to change it to ChicagoHomesforSale.com, don’t do it.
2. Search engines are somewhat attracted to domain names that contain keyword phrases. If you’re just starting a website, pick a name that has your keyword phrase in it if possible. But, if you’re changing an old name to a keyword name for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), don’t do it. It’s much more important to have an old domain name than one with keywords in it.
3. Search engines like domain names that are paid for many years in advance. It makes the website seem more stable if your domain name expires at a distant date. So, don’t renew your domain name each year for a 1-year duration. Renew your domain name for the next 10 years.
4. Don’t purchase a domain name through a vendor. Even if you love your vendor, I recommend that you create a domain registrar account of your own, and have all your domain names hosted in the same account. You should have the username and password to the domain registrar account and have access to renewing, changing DNS server information, etc. without anyone else’s participation.
And, make sure you keep the account information handy. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to move a domain name for a client and they can’t remember where the domain is registered, or the username and password if they can find the registrar!
5. Don’t point lots of domain names to one website. The search engines don’t like having lots of domain names that end up at the same website. So, make your default domain name the oldest one you own. If there are good marketing reasons to have additional names, such as ShortSalesFL.com when you’re advertising your short sale specialty, don’t worry about adding them. Just don’t go overboard.
Yahoo, in their webmaster guidelines point out a number of things considered unwanted, one of which is “Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames”. Of course, in good search engine fashion, they don’t say how many are counted as numerous, or how they tell if the name is unnecessary. But, the lesson I take from that is: be very conservative!
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Hopefully, that clarifies some issues. If you have questions about using domain names, or you want to check out something you’ve heard, leave a comment!
Get Real Estate Domains is our GoDaddy reseller account. Opening an account there is easy, and GoDaddy does a great job of transferring domain names if you’ve got some spread out around the Internet and want to get them all in one place.
Real Estate Business Tools ** Closing Gifts that Last
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This guest post was contributed by Sam Chapman.
Sam specializes in Lake Travis waterfront homes.
Commenting on Blog Posts to Build Incoming Links
A significant part of getting your real estate website found through search engine optimization (SEO) is link building. Getting inbound links from good websites should be an ongoing process.
You can get links by writing articles and posting them on article sites, you can ask webmasters to add a link to your site, you can get a link at a chamber of commerce site if you join the chamber, and there are a lot more ways to get links.
One method that became popular a couple of years ago is commenting on blog posts. That method does work, but you need to understand when a link is working for SEO and when it isn’t.
How to Tell if a Link in a Blog Comment is a Valuable Link
A valuable link is one that search engines will follow, and that allows keywords in anchor text.
Keywords in the anchor text is important. This is the text that your website url is embedded in – your key words. For example, if you click on the Rough Hollow homes link, it takes you to the Rough Hollow homes page on my website. BUT, how do you know if a link is a valuable link?
The issue of do follow vs nofollow is another criteria to use for evaluation. Many blogs will install a bit of nofollow software. When a link is coded nofollow, search engines ignore it and this makes the link useless for SEO.
If you are confused about anchor text, think of a door that leads into a room and the name of the room is on the door. The door is the link and the words are your anchor text. It accurately tells you where it will lead you. If you are confused about dofollow and nofollow think of a dofollow link as a door that can be opened to let you go somewhere and a nofollow link as a door that never opens.
How can you tell if a comment link is nofollow? You can view the source code for the page, which can be a headache, or you can install the Firefox NoDoFollow add-on.
After installing the add-on, click on Tools and select DoNoFollow. Any link on the page you are viewing will be highlighted in blue if is a dofollow link, a link of value, or it will be highlighted in red if it is a nofollow link. Then go to a real estate related blog you want to comment on, find a post that has comments and see if there links are highlighted in blue. If they are, you’re in luck. While using Firefox, click to get the NoDoFollow add-on (notice the great anchor text).
Let’s get back to key words for a moment. How can you tell if a blog allows commenters to use key words? This is pretty simple. Find a blog post with comments and look at the links. If you see words like Portland real estate, Austin homes, etc. as links, key words are OK.
Another couple of things to look for in WordPress blogs are Lucia’s Linky Love, KeywordLuv and CommentLuv. WordPress blog comments have the nofollow attribute unless the author installs one of these add-ons.
Lucia’s Linky Love makes blog post comments dofollow. However, to prevent spammers, the author of the blog can require a certain number of comments before a link becomes dofollow.
CommentLuv will allow you to enter your blog url and when you post your comment it will display your blog’s most recent post.
KeywordLuv allows you to enter your name, the @ symbol and then your keywords. When you do this, your anchor text has your url in it and it is a dofollow comment. So if I enter Sam@Marble Falls Homes, the comment will show Sam from Marble Falls Homes.
You will know if a WordPress blog has one of these when you look below the comment box. There will be a logo, text or both stating that the add-on has been installed.
Having said all this, do not go to real estate blogs only to get links. When you make a comment, make it appropriate. Spammers will add comments like “nice post,” or “you provide valuable information” or some other garbage. Make sure you read the post and add something of value.
If you can’t leave a good comment, move on to another blog!
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Note from Kathleen: I do want to support your SEO efforts. As we describe on the About this Blog page, comments on this blog are a dofollow for the name you enter with the associated domain name, and nofollow for links in the body of the comment itself. We set it up that way to discourage spammers because there’s no benefit for them in packing a comment with loads of links.
We don’t mind if you use keywords as your name, but please sign the post. That means if you put Atlanta Real Estate as your name, along with your domain name, that link showing your keyword phrase will be followed by the search engines. But, since it’s tough to respond to Atlanta Real Estate, please put your real name at the end of your comment!
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This guest post was written by Adam Vradenburg,
an Internet marketing guru
In Part III of this series on backlink strategies, the question was asked: What If Your Link Building Doesn’t Work as Well as You Think It Should? Here are the rest of the suggestions on what to do to improve the ranking of your real estate website.
Publish or Perish
This idiom from academia is applicable to your website as well. While the situation is perhaps not as dire as the phrase would imply, if you publish new content on a regular basis, you’ll often find yourself ahead of other sites.
Make a point of writing new content consistently. It doesn’t have to be every day, but make a point of writing a few articles a week, and updating existing content.
In addition to being a plus for users, it also lets Google know that your site is relevant and up to date. This can take an hour a week – if you can write a real estate blog post in 20 minutes, you can use the rest of the time to freshen up content and do some surfing yourself.
If you need inspiration as to what to write about, be topical, write commentary on events happening in your real estate market or on national real estate issues, and you’ll pick up higher search volume. It’s easier to jump in at a higher ranking for news than it is for “established” search queries. For example, I wrote early about a topic I knew would be trending in the future (in my case an annual event), and search finally became my biggest traffic source.
Just Keep on Linking
If you’ve been acquiring backlinks like mad and your rankings don’t seem to budge, don’t despair. Fresh links will score you points in Google’s algorithm in the same way that fresh content will.
If you can, get links to new articles on your website or blog. This practice is called “deep linking”. It is helpful if you can avoid having all of your incoming links point to your home page. Deep linking shows a more natural linking process. Stick to your strategy and it will pay off in the end.
Google puts a lot of emphasis on age – the age of your website is taken into consideration, and so is the age of your links. Let the links you’ve acquired ripen, and in the meantime go out and get new ones. Time is on your side.
Besides, link building is an ongoing process, it’s not a task that you check off once as completed. Rather it’s continuous, and even once you’ve reached your goals and you rank for your search terms, that’s no reason to sit back.
Get Creative
If you think you’ve exhausted all possible sources of links, it’s time to start thinking outside of the box.
- Explore offline alternatives to find linking opportunities: business associates, friends and your entire sphere of influence. Even if a site isn’t related to yours, get a link.
- Join the local chamber of commerce; get a link from the local REALTOR® organization. Sponsor a pinball machine for the youth center and get a link from their site. The point is: Think outside the box and get creative.
Most importantly make sure your site is linkworthy. In other words your site should be pleasing to the eye, look professional and have great content so that links can come naturally and so that potential partners will be willing to link to you.
Keep a Record
It’s important to keep a record to know what works, and what doesn’t. In order to build links effectively, you need to stay organized, and keep a record of who you’ve written to, where you have links, and a list of where you’d like get links from.
In addition to that, when you get a confirmation, or change something on your site, keep a note of it. It’s best to track your positions on dates when links are placed or something else of note happens – mark it and see if it influences your rankings down the line.
Don’t change too many things at once, because you’ll never know exactly which action helped or hurt.
And, finally. . . be patient and remember: ranking changes are part of the algorithm!
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At the start of May, the BRER Blog published two articles of mine covering real estate backlink strategies to dominate Google. It’s almost been three months since then, so if you’ve been working on your link profile you should see your efforts start to bear fruit, right? Well, that depends.
This article is a follow-up, but it will also help anyone who has been frustrated in their attempts to grow their link profile or anyone who hasn’t had as much success as they’d hoped to.
What If Your Link Building Doesn’t Work
as Well as You Think It Should?
You may be thinking: “I’ve followed all the steps, I invested a great deal of time and went out and got links from sites ranking for my search term, and I picked up the freebies you mentioned, and I’m still kicking around on page three of the Google search engine results page.”
There could be any number of reasons why you can’t crack the top 10, if you have a strong link profile and still aren’t getting anywhere it’s time to think outside of links and take a look at how your site stacks up against the competition. If you’ve done everything right so far you may have underestimated them.
Do a Competitive Analysis
While backlinks are an important factor in determining the relevance of your site to a specific key phrase, it isn’t the only criterion. Take a good hard look at the sites performing well to see if there are any points where you are lacking.
- It could be that other sites are stronger in that they are larger and have more pages indexed.
- Look for usability issues on your real estate site. Look at your analytics data and see how many visitors bounce (leave without visiting any other pages on your site). You can also check the internal searches on your site to see what they are looking for.
- Look at your competitors’ link profile, specifically the quantity and quality of links they have containing your keywords and see how you compare. At this point you might need a more powerful SEO Tool like Open Site Explorer – we’ll all have to find an alternative, since Yahoo! is shutting down Site Explorer at the end of this year.
If none of the above applies then it could be that your competitor’s site is older and has had good links for a longer period of time. A long track record with Google is often an indicator of trustworthiness.
So if your competition’s site is old and established, and you have a shiny new domain – game over, right? Wrong!
There are a number of things you can do to gain an advantage over old “evergreen” content. Stay tuned for Part IV!!
Finish This Sentence: Google +1 Is…..
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I don’t have an answer to that question. I could say it’s interesting, because that’s the adjective I often use to indicate indifference without being offensive. For me, I think the jury is still out on a few issues.
Is Google +1 a Social Network?
That’s the issue I’m really wondering about. I wonder if Google can outdo Facebook. I wonder if people will add Google +1 to the top social network list. Right now, my list includes Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.
Or, will people decide that three major networks is enough, and the networking side of +1 will fade away. I must admit, that would be my choice. I’m not a big social media maven, and I don’t really want to maintain another site.
Besides that, and I hope Google isn’t lurking around here somewhere, I am beginning to feel like Google is Big Brother. In order to use the +1, you must have a Google profile, and you must be logged into Google, too.
Between Google knowing everything I search for, controlling the ads I see to correspond to my interests, controlling the search results I get based on geography and so on…. I feel like I’ve been Googlized. And, I’m not sure I like it.
When you sign up for a Profile, they make your age required so they can customize your online experience consistent with your age! How can they presume to know me so well just based on my age?? It’s silly.
What about 11-year-old Jackie Evancho? Would they customize her experience to normal 11 year old interests? They’d be missing the mark if they didn’t include opera! And, just because I’m uh.. over 40 doesn’t mean I don’t still enjoy dancing around the living room to a Foreigner song!
There are three things that can happen to +1. Google could give up on the networking portion of it if it doesn’t take off. But, if it does get popular, whether it makes people move from Facebook, or just manage +1 as another network, I will be very impressed. Either of those outcomes would go a long way toward establishing/reinforcing Google dominance.
Is Google +1 An SEO Tool?
One thing I don’t doubt is that the +1 will have an impact on SEO. Google can very easily consider it another “vote” for a site, just like an incoming link. Of course, the Google party line avoids answering that question. They only say that “+1 helps people discover relevant content”, but don’t address the question of whether there will be an impact on search results.
Given that I think the SEO is real, I suggest that everyone get on the band wagon. You’ll notice that there is a +1 on this blog. I’d be ever so appreciative if you’d click the +1 button on any blog posts that you like.
I’m using a WordPress plugin called WordPress Google +1 Button – Advanced Plugin, Includes Redirection. Quite a name, huh? It installed very easily, has some good options and works without a hitch so far.
Of course, if you want to put the +1 button on other websites, you’re looking at a do-it-yourself project. Here’s what to do:
- Create A Google Profile (of course!)
- Install the code provided in Google’s instructions
From that Google link, you will get code with options for the size of the button. And, if you click on the “Advanced Options” link, you can control whether the number of +1s shows.
If you poke around long enough, you’ll also come across information about whether to identify the URL to be +1d or not. I’m not the world’s best coder, but the conclusion I came to is that most of us should let the code figure out the URL. Google says:
- “Google will use the URL of the page as found in the DOM. This can sometimes cause incorrect behavior as the URL in the address bar can contain session IDs or other parameters which are not part of the canonical URL.”
If you need more information, you’ll need to find someone who knows whether your site URLs contain session IDs and so forth.
In summary, the +1 button requires 2 pieces of code. One should be placed in the head section of your website, or it can be placed near the </body> tag. The other piece of code goes where you want the button to appear.
For example, if you have a Point2 Agent website, you’d put the first part of the code in the Footer on the TEMPLATE page. You’d put the second part where you want the button to appear. If you put it somewhere on the TEMPLATE page, it will appear on every page. Based on my test, that works fine. Be aware that Point2 websites are regular HTML pages, so I haven’t seen a problem letting the URL be identified by the code.
I started this post as commentary, but guess I got a bit carried away. Hope the additional information about implementing the +1 is helpful!
