Worth re- blogging...

The other day, while doing some client research on a paid for real estate plugin for WordPress, I had a concerning experience I felt might be useful to folks. Namely, the person I spoke with told me their solution generated SEO. Before getting into that claim, it may be best to define SEO per Wikipedia.org:

"subset of search engine marketing that seeks to improve the number and quality of visitors to a web site from "natural" ["organic" or "algorithmic"] search results. In effect, SEO is marketing by appealing first to machine algorithms to increase search engine relevance and secondly to human visitors. The term SEO can also refer to "search engine optimizers", an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients."

Going forward, I believe there are IDX plugins that offer content value and we'll certainly share that with our clients so they can choose from a position of understanding, but I won't dare suggest there is some SEO magic... like I was told. The suggestion that someone or something is outsmarting Google and you can just buy SEO off the shelf is highly unlikely!

This is important! - The dynamic nature of a networked web, the constant modification of search engine ranking methods/ algorithms and the random local competitive activity surrounding content online makes organic search results unpredictable from day to day. If anyone guarantees or even suggest top organic search results, ask what proprietary information they have about the constant adjustments made to [content] ranking search algorithms? And then ask what exactly they know about your specific competitions content, day to day activity online and how it will affect competitive search outcomes?

There are pros' out there who actually sit on the leading edge of research and technique, like Aaron Wall and Rand Fishkin. And they'd probably tell you that even if there were proven gaming techniques, the reality of the environment we compete in is... it's never standing still! For some more detail, give the ‘Laypersons Guide To Understanding SEO'  a try.

We're not trying to expose anyone here - we don't suggest we're perfect, so we wouldn't. Not at all and there's too much misinformation out there anyway. If anything, maybe this can serve as an example as some caution about buying SEO. Anyway, never taking anything for granted, I asked why the plugin was so key for SEO. The first argument was that clients normally outperform Realtor.com & Zillow.com. I thought, "Hmmm, do some searching and so do many of our clients for various target phrases. And, to date, without this particular plugin". I should add that neither Realtor.com, Zillow.com or Trulia.com, nor any experienced WordPress Managers like us for that matter, have ever outsmarted Google's ranking algorithm. We may all be doing some of things right some of the time, but no one should ever believe they've gamed Google for top search results. Certainly not when over 200 hundred signals are used to compare your page to all the others with that same phrase. Think of it this way: if every time you searched real estate in a local area the Google search results page served up Realtor.com why would we need Google? If so, we could just go search Realtor.com... and that would be limiting. Being Google depends on [content driven organic search result] consumer satisfaction, loyalty AND pay per clicks, how would Google make a living?

Moving along, the gentleman asked I go to a clients' WordPress blog: a particular WordPress blog [it just so happens] I have observed for several years as one of the more well documented, back linked and organically search engine optimized real estate blogs in North America. A blog I later found out had only added this plugin a month or two ago. Again the content value of the plugin is relevant, but regardless of what we were going to find results-wise it would be very difficult to take credit for SEO in this blogs' case.

We pulled up, copied and pasted a particular posts' title into Google so that we could search it as 'proof' of SEO. The post was titled by its' exact street address, town, state abbreviation and zip code. When we searched that exact address, the posts highly specific title was the 3rd result in a little over 1,500 pages indexed. Number 3 in 1,500 is pretty good, but was it the plugin or was it the years of time, effort and money invested in this blogs competitive placement? And if not all that effort, could it have even been that Wordpress, when configured correctly, is highly search engine spider friendly?

Flaws In the this SEO Results Argument

1. With over two hundred signals used to compare pages, is it the plugin?
2. Is the result due to the plugin or all the positive organic SEO signals this blog has accumulated [back links, subscriptions, book marks, feed connections, SERP choice activity, etc., etc.] in 5 years time?
3. Is the actual phrase we searched even sought after by the competition? If not, why wouldn't it be high up?
4. Without the use of quotes around the phrase itself, does the phrase searched exist on any other page in that exact word sequence? If not, why wouldn't it be high up?
5. Search results change every day: is anything we're seeing going to sustain competitive positioning tomorrow and the next day? Not unless you keep it moving and there are measurable reactions to your effort.
6. Google search results are now personalized, so does this example even matter to the personalized masses who receive results based upon past search history?

Folks, our point here again is NOT to suggest anyone is purposefully being misleading. Yes, they may be less informed than they need to be to make any SEO claims, but they wouldn't be the first. And we've certainly heard much worse claims for ‘the silver bullet SEO solutions.' No, the point here is to give a 'heads up'. Understand some things about SEO before you try and buy it! Discern what is being sold as SEO! SEO is really based upon 1) consistent focused & well formed content, 2) a measurable reaction to that content [back links, bookmarks, feed connections to other sites, direct subscriptions, SERP choices, etc., etc.] and also 3) well configured / easily crawled site platforms.

The fact is, there is no silver bullet... and even if there was - the truly sustainable SEO you want requires time and some effort!

Chris Frerecks
Kinetic Knowledge
chris@kineticknowledge.com

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. 

For more detail see FTC.gov

Chris Frerecks
Kinetic Knowlege

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!

For some depth on the subject, try this: Confused By Search Engine Optimization? Try This ‘Laypersons Guide To Understanding SEO'

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. 

Ultimately, create good content!

Chris
Kinetic Knowledge

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:

1) you may waste a spider crawl / waste any indexing of good key phrases from those pages,

2) you may have lost some ‘findability'

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.

Realted Post on Duplicate Content AND Blogs

Chris Frerecks

Kinetic Knowledge LLC / Real Estate Blogsites^TM

Business Blogs / Real Estate Blogs 

At Kinetic Knowledge LLC / Real Estate Blogsites^TM we believe in adding tremendous value. Clients come first - we can't succeed unless you do!

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.

Chris Frerecks

Kinetic Knowledge LLC / Real Estate Blogsites^TM

Business Blogs / Real Estate Blogs 

At Kinetic Knowledge LLC / Real Estate Blogsites^TM we believe in adding tremendous value. Clients come first - we can't succeed unless you do!

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
• Manage meta tagging and categorization
• Add ‘calls to action'
• Spell check
• No negative posts
• Provide Month end posts review summary
• and much much more.

Chris Frerecks

Kinetic Knowledge LLC / Real Estate Blogsites^TM

Business Blogs / Real Estate Blogs 

At Kinetic Knowledge LLC / Real Estate Blogsites^TM we believe in adding tremendous value. Clients come first - we can't succeed unless you do!

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!

Chris Frerecks

Kinetic Knowledge LLC / Real Estate Blogsites^TM

Business Blogs / Real Estate Blogs 

At Kinetic Knowledge LLC / Real Estate Blogsites^TM we believe in adding tremendous value. Clients come first - we can't succeed unless you do!

UNIVERSAL SEARCH

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.

PICTURES, GOOGLE AND ALT TAGS

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. 

Related Posts:

• Better Blog Writing Techniques Post No. 6: Topic Targeting
• Better Blog Writing Techniques Post No. 5: Inviting Subscription to your Real Estate Blog
• Better Blog Writing Techniques Post No. 4: Demonstrate authority, trust and value add!
• Better Blog Writing Techniques Post No. 3: Mastering Anchor Text Linking
• Better Blog Writing Techniques Post No. 2: Deep Internal Linking
• Getting started with Better Blog Writing Techniques

Chris Frerecks

Kinetic Knowledge LLC / Real Estate Blogsites^TM

Business Blogs / Real Estate Blogs 

At Kinetic Knowledge LLC / Real Estate Blogsites^TM we believe in adding tremendous value. Clients come first - we can't succeed unless you do!

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:

1. "What are the target topics that best represent my real estate business interests?
2. "What geographic area[s] do I conduct my business in?
3. "Has my Business Blog demonstrated a consistent focus for my target topics?
4. "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 :-)

Related Posts:

• Better Blog Writing Techniques Post No. 5: Inviting Subscription to your Real Estate Blog
• Better Blog Writing Techniques Post No. 4: Demonstrate authority, trust and value add!
• Better Blog Writing Techniques Post No. 3: Mastering Anchor Text Linking
• Better Blog Writing Techniques Post No. 2: Deep Internal Linking
• Getting started with Better Blog Writing Techniques

Chris Frerecks

Kinetic Knowledge LLC / Real Estate Blogsites^TM

Business Blogs / Real Estate Blogs 

At Kinetic Knowledge LLC / Real Estate Blogsites^TM we believe in adding tremendous value. Clients come first - we can't succeed unless you do!