In it's ongoing effort to protect consumers, The Federal Trade Commission has revised its' guidelines concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising... to include bloggers. They have specifically added that "material connections" between an advertiser and an endorser, via payment of any kind and that consumers might not expect, must be disclosed.
These revised guidelines go on to include bloggers and "word-of-mouth" marketers, saying that any payment to this sort of an endorser is included AND must be disclosed.
I saw something written up on how AR generates "Google Juice" and wanted to throw some caution because Google juice or search engine optimization is never simple. Google certainly understands what a network of blogs is so, if you're seeing "Google Juice" it's likely because *you* created good content!
Google's algorithm is known to compare pages or sources of information [i.e. Kalamazoo real estate] in over 200 different ways [via heuristics or signals]. Signals liike choice from the SERPs, RSS Subscriptions, bookmarks and 'time on site' and many others are becoming ever more important. Signals are also changed and/or re- weighted almost weekly due [mostly] to gaming tactics. Linking, for instance, is the most obvious and abused gaming tactic. Links, while still important, have lessened in terms of their overall weight toward actual 'google juice'.
Google has an interest in serving up the best answers to a search. If they do, it's likely that person will search again and again and 1 / 10 will click on an add/ PPC. Other words, it's the reliable organic search results that drives search loyalty; loyalty drives or equals Google PPC revenue. So, it's in their best interest to serve up 'the best organic results' possible... never just those that have the most links or that come from a blog network.
I'm seeing a lot about duplicate content here in Active Rain today so I thought to pass along what I've been mentioning to folks blogging at Star Power ...
Regards duplicate content and your blog posts, if they are duplicate to a page somewhere else on the web you should edit them to be different or you could eventually hurt yourself [or SP] in the indexes.
Please know that I don't want to be an alarmist, just to share that Google doesn't want duplicate pages in its index. For anyone interested, I can show an instance where over 4,100 blogs have the same exact pages and only one gets indexed. Google is not looking to police duplication, just to eliminate it.
If any of your pages are eliminated from the index the negative effects may include:
3) you may have thrown out any back links to that page otherwise favorable to your overall page rank.
4) It's also believed by some that duplicate pages are a bad behavior signal and that it may eventually have some kind of trust penalty.
5) And then finally on the topic, it's believed by some that Google's filters detect 50% + duplication on a page or post and drop it. Is it 50% in succession? Probably, but ...?
Bottom line, I never underestimate the folks at Google who have a business to serve and protect.
Update: "There was a lot of damage, but Galveston is down and certainly not out. We have recovered from worse and will do so again. The city leaders are working hard to make the island livable again... " James Selig
Who better to report on the recovery of local property and community than life long native and 22 year Galveston TX Real Estate Broker James Selig? So please, tune in to his effort to leverage blogging as a Galveston TX community recovery resource.
I saw a neat conversation going on about ghost blogging over here, commented and then thought to write up what might be some useful information on a good Ghost Blog Writing Service.
With an advertorial blog, being visible in the search engines is possible for any Real Estate business. In fact you should be transferring what you see, hear and know about local Real Estate to the web.
Consider the search engine's interest in organizing all the webs information for their search traffic and you'll see why *spiders are tuned to visit active / topic focused sites more than inactive sites.*
However, many Realtors just don't feel comfortable writing. Blogging isn't for everyone, but *online marketing is!* Some may argue you get from advertorial blogging what you put into it. We don't disagree with this at all and one way or another you should influence the content being created, but is there any reason why carefully directing someone else to Ghost Blog can't work?
After all, before the web, search engines and blogs offered us a great opportunity did we all do the creative for our ads ourselves? Sometimes experience can help, but I agree in that it should be client driven / directed so that there is an authenticity.
We provide experienced ghost blog- writing services so that you can convey a leading local knowledge and enthusiasm. After all, if home buyers research before they get in touch, it's very important to do your best to be there when they do!
Our Ghost blog- writing service offers to:
Follow Client direction carefully
Focus titles & content on targeted topics, key words and phrases
Enter posts on a planned time line
Use Minimum word counts per post
Add anchor text based links and images wherever possible
It's been hinted to and disccused for awhile now, but Inman broke news today about the LA Times officially cutting its Real Estate section. Granted the LA Times is BIG media, but events of this nature should not come as a big surprise. News media revenues have been spiraling downward because of companies like Craigs List and, as a result, both large and small newspapers alike are finding it difficult to cover subjects locally.
According to Inman News, "Such major cuts at that paper and others have triggered questions about how the industry can properly inform readers about community news in the face of staff cuts, the article notes." It is an enormous opportunity to become the locally branded source of real estate media coverage.
And because of things like business blogs [which have reduced the cost of content creation and distribution to negligible lows], really simple syndication and search engines, there are no longer barriers to content creation or to content distribution. What costs that stood between your local real estate knowledge and those who want or need it have been eliminated!
Locally Branded Business Blogs empower the real estate business to step up and become the source of local real estate & community coverage! As a real estate marketer, do not miss this local advertorial blogging opportunity!
Were you aware that when you search in Google you [or more important, your future customers] are actually searching all forms of content? Known as Google ‘Universal Search' now, the results of search you perform may include website or blog text links and then also picture images, video and audio files. According to Google's Bailey, "The goal is to present balanced results based on the search term and move away from the heavy emphasis on only textual Web links that existed prior to the switch to universal search in May 2007."
It's important to mention here that the Google spider or crawler cannot read text contained on/ in an image; however, it will read the 'alt tags' you've added. To jog your memory 'alt tags' are only visible to the eye when you roll a cursor over an image, but with most alternative content [i.e. a picture] that is published to the web there is no visible [to spiders] description.
SEARCH ENGINE MARKETER
Important heads' up: As a search engine marketer and/ or advertiser, you should be asking yourself one question and that is "am I doing my best to assist Google in understanding my business blog pictures?" If you can index where most competitors haven't, if Google wants to index all pictures and if your purpose is to develop search visibility/ findability then why not start tagging immediately? In fact, you should really go back into your blog and add text descriptions or ‘alt tags' to all its' pictures.
Typically referred to as ‘alt tags' or ‘alternative text tags', your pictures can be labeled easily for search engine indexing and, as a result, consumer findability. Again, Google can't see text on/ in an image; however, depending on the content editor you have, there should be an icon for uploading pictures. When clicked you should see a pop up window appear with tabs for 1) picture file upload, 2) add ‘alt tag' data entry [shown above], and 3) add link areas. Sometimes the ‘alt tag' data entry will be referred to as ‘alternative text', ‘image info' or ‘tool tips', but I'm certain you get the picture.
In all, if Google actually wants to understand, to index and to include your picture images in search result pages it should do nothing less than excite your sense of opportunity! Why? Because, if not already, all of your picture images offer the chance to get a leg up on your competition.
Let's back up with this post a bit and think about what we all really stand for in real estate. Frankly, we've done 5 posts to date on Better Blog Writing Techniques and none take priority over this simple step. We mentioned it briefly in the very beginning, but lets revisit and re- emphasize your topic targeting.
For some this post may be incredibly obvious, yet I still see it so often. Folks real estate blog and they talk about the optimization of their real estate web presence with blogs, but they still lack proper real estate topic targeting discipline. They haven't sat down and made their list of target topics, key words and key phrases. The things they, as a business, want to be search engine relevant for.
You see, without the consistent use of your target topics, you're not going to impress the Google algorithm enough to generate the high rank that can bring traffic. So, for starters, stop and ask yourself these very important questions:
"What are the target topics that best represent my real estate business interests?
"What geographic area[s] do I conduct my business in?
"Has my Business Blog demonstrated a consistent focus for my target topics?
"Have I achieved search engine findability for my target topics?"
If not, open a spreadsheet right away and write the top keywords and phrases you'd like to be highly ranked for [i.e counties, towns, communities, developments, condominium complexes, schools, events, parks, and then real estate, homes, property, foreclosure, etc., etc.] Add geographic reference so that you're not competing with the whole world and so that you're attracting the leads you can actually serve. If, for instance, you are a Houston Realtor also focused on the sale of Sugar Land TX Real Estate, add it to your list!
Prepare to cast as wide a topic target net as you can serve! Don't limit yourself because breaking down the valuable knowledge you have will amount to many specific target topics... including the one that qualifies your next sale :-)
My partner Kristen Veraldi just wrote a terrific post Real Estate Blog URLs - Should I Use a Subdomain? on the different Blog URL / domain scenarios including 1) standalone, 2) subdomain and 3) then using a folder of an existing site. I highly recommend you give it a quick read.
It sheds light [especially] on how your URL may or may not effect SEO; however, she's careful NOT to say that one is better than another for search engine optimization because she knows it would be irresponsible to do so.
* She knows there are over 200 variables considered by Google's algorithm when ranking content.
* And she also believes the only way to truly drive sustainable SEO is to 1) blog consistently, 2) to blog on topic, 3) to have what Google considers to be important links [including outbound and deep internal links] and 4) to have a good blog solution.
And then a few important points you may find useful to know:
* Architecturally, a folder makes sense; however, there is no evidence that one URL/ domain strategy works better for SEO than another. How could one be better when so many variables [200+] are taken into consideration when ranking competitive content.
* An Acive Rain blog can offer the advantage of lots and lots of links. It is, in other words, partly or mostly a linked network of blogs. Careful, you'll notice some social networks like myspace and squidoo, which certainly lack the content focus of AR, offer little to their bloggers in the way of SEO. Google, in order to do its' job successfully and to make money, must be able to evaluate the value of content accurately. They get better and better at doing it by the day. The point: regardless of where you do it, blog well because there's no guarantee a network of blogs or a URL / domain strategy will enhance OR protect your SEO.
* QUOTE: "Prior to affiliating the blog with our primary domain we weren't having too much success in the Search Engines. 15th page of Google was pretty much the case. We didn't know how to develop an online brand cost-effectively. Since we integrated the Blog both our basis Santa Clarita Real Estate Website & blog have seen dramatic improvement rank-wise. For the topic indexing we target, you can pretty much find us on the 1st or 2nd page now." Connor MacIVOR Santa Clarita Real Estate Blog
* Depending on who you are speaking too, you can expect some good old fashioned bias. Here's some of our own: with our companies we offer 1) standalone and also 2) subdomain and we do NOT offfer 3) a folder of an existing site. We're biased toward 1) and 2) because that's what we have ... and because [our blogs and] our client blogs have worked fabulously [real estate bloggers].
How much have you thought about direct subscription to your Real Estate Advertorial Media Blog?
Voluntary Direct Blog Subscription
Voluntary direct subscription by clients & prospects to your Real Estate Blog is a giant value to your business! Versus other forms of marketing and advertising, can you think of a more qualified opportunity to stay on a [warm to hot] buyers radar screen?
Search Findability & Online Brand
Sure, an active blog will support a real estate business in other important ways. If home buyers have the immediate ability to search, findability [or search marketing/ advertising] is an obvious benefit. Equally for those that do find you when searching, an enthusiastic knowledgeable and human online presence or approach to the blog should never be underestimated; however, if you could convert 50, 100 or even 1000 voluntarily connected subscribers *isn't it likely you'd have the closest connection to eventually serve your prospects with what they desire and with what they are eventually going to buy?* And remember, if they like you enough to volunteer a subscription it's a good bet many of them will recommend you to other who may like you too :-)
Pursue Direct Blog Subscription
We believe, you should preempt Real Estate Blog Subscription by inviting it. RSS is an immensely important sales channel with endless upside. If you're not confidant your market understands RSS you should be sure to have a blog that offers an email subscription option. Baja Sur Mexico Real Estate Blog owner Alfredo Cristo knows the value to his business of direct subscription: he actively *pursues it by sending his database of clients and prospects an email invitation to subscribe.* And rather than wait, his proactive effort has brought surprising direct subscription numbers to his Real Estate Blog.
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
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