One man thinks so, and a lot of other real estate professionals might agree. Especially tech savvy ones.
Galen Ward posted a blog entry regarding Trulia’s so-called “underhanded” SEO (search engine optimization practices). In most geographic areas a search for “san francisco real estate” for example will pull up Trulia’s website as the first result, burrying other relevant local real estate companies websites. Ward believes this to be unfair.
One of his very valid beefs is that Trulia makes links to your website on their website, no-follow links. This means that search engines like Google and Yahoo will ignore linking to your website, losing out on precious SEO ranking.
While it is more than likely not the case that Trulia wants to destroy your website ranking, they definitely do want to rank number one. Are you getting what you expected from your relationship with Trulia?
Also, take a look at how they optimize their website. Talk to your IT administrator to see if you can do the same. A couple things that I have noticed that would really make a difference in a real estate websites rankings is having a landing page for each city that you do business in. Also make the URL for that city search engine friendly, ie: http://www.pmz.com/modesto/ca/real-estate/ or http://www.pmz.com/stockton/ca/real-estate/. For each of those landing pages, in the title and metadescription, include something like, “Modesto Real Estate & Modesto Homes for Sale” to make it more relevant to your geographical area. That’s really just the beginning.
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