Morgan's Blog

$1000 prize for Blogging contest: Everyone wins

Morgan Carey (Real Estate Webmasters) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:41:57 -0500

Well everyone wins because just by participating you learn to be a better blogger and hone your blogmastery (One word on purpose for dramatic effect)

So what am I talking about? Well - I decided that #1 Contests are fun and #2 I wanted to teach my members how to be the best bloggers they can be so I put up a $1000 first prize and $500 second prize for the best REW Bloggers.

Basically the contest will be judged on the best "overall" blog - first and foremost the contest will be rated on quality and appropriateness of content, but other factors like use of images, and other creative layout elements, and how well can you drive traffic to your own business (The SEO factor) will be considered as well. Who has the best bio - who uses tagging to it's full potential etc etc

Now I haven't asked yet, so I will ask here - (And maybe you folks could share this thing with your friends by pressing that little feature flag) - Matt, Kaleb or any other AR crew, we would be honored if you would participate in the contest as celebrity judges - your input just might help some rainmaker land themselves some much needed website sprucing - could be fun :)

I know I know, this is active rain, but you know what - just because it isn't on the AR domain doesn't make it any less fun. Incidentally, those prizes are for free web work and you don't have to be an REW Customer to use it - So if you can think of anything you could possibly do with a $1000 (Or $500) worth of graphic design, programming, copy writing / editing, or SEO consulting from our staff of 30+ developers, it's at least worth checking out.

I wonder if I can donate some of my AR points to the lucky winner if they are a member here (If they aren't what chance do they have to win right? :)

Edit - I am such a dummy, I forgot to post the link - here you go http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/morgan-carey/2379/show/

Promoting Active Rain - AR Must have aritlce ideas

Morgan Carey (Real Estate Webmasters) — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 13:54:26 -0500

Yeah yeah - I like it to :)

I am currently working on a showcase article that I will post at my REW Blogs site promoting the features and benefits of Active Rain to my readership - Although I have a ton of great ideas, I am still relatively new to the whole AR world, so I was wondering if I could call upon those more seasoned Rainer's for some "Must haves" in terms of the article itself.

A little more background - A large portion of my readership are web savvy Realtors and Brokers, and I "think" (seeing as I have only referred 80 via my link) a lot of these users are still missing out on this great resource - so I want to write an promo article for AR not just as a thank you, but because it is just a huge benefit to my readers to engage this community - so I don't want anyone reading this thing to miss out on any of the great things available here.

So a few questions:

What do you love the most about active rain (One thing please)

How much business do you attribute to active rain participation

How much traffic do you receive (At active rain or to your website from active rain maybe both)

What has your participation here done for increasing your SOI (On and offline)

Anything else you want to add is great - My regular REW Blog posts this year so far have had over 100,000 unique visitors (Just to my one blog) so as a feature this article will likely be seen by a HUGE audience, so it's a great opportunity to convert some new members which we all know means more great contributions to the social network, and more authority to spread around.

Thanks everyone !

Blogging Case Study: Relevant Reality

Morgan Carey (Real Estate Webmasters) — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 00:59:32 -0500

Hopefully after you read this blog you will decide to nominate it for a feature

#1: Because it is a case study that proves great blogging brings relevant search engine traffic (And that our stats aren't just high because other Realtors and webmasters are reading our blogs and commenting on them)

#2: Because I actually did math - I hate doing math, but I did some for you - so rate it a 5 and nominate for a feature!

Ok that was shameless - but seriously I think this case study is something every AR blogger will be interested in - I originally posted this at my REW Blog, under the heading - Blogging brings real traffic

Blogging brings real traffic.

Earlier today, we were having a discussion on the forum about using tags in your blog and it was stated by one of the members that we should care more about the SEO benefits of our blogs VS the actual benefit to our readers because this Realtor (And I quote) was "not convinced the general public is reading these things"

Now I already knew better and have been teaching bloggers and webmasters for years to always write and construct your content first and foremost for the benefit of the reader. Only after you have made sure that your writing is as good as it can be, go back and adjust where you can (Without sacrificing quality) and tune for SEO - This btw mainly means massaging your title's and headings a bit to make sure they contain some elements of your target phrases. (But remember it's not worth losing readability just to get a keyword in there) - Alright this is supposed to be a case study, so I'll stop tooting my own horn and get to the point

Blogging Case Study

On August 30th 2006 (Almost one year ago) I posted a blog article about the Northwest MLS and how I felt they were bullying one of their own members (Who also happened to be a member of Real Estate Webmasters Forum) to date this article has been read by 9375 unique visitors. I am going to use this blog post, and the Google Analytics data from my blog to demonstrate to all of those real estate bloggers who think that the only people that ever see our REW Blogs are other members and Realtors.

The blog post in question is located at: http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/morgan-carey/58/show/ for anyone who would like to reference it.

And now for the data!

Google Analytics Data:

Total Unique Visitors
NWMLS 1658 unique visitors
Combined Phrases containing NWMLS (328 different phrases) 2131 unique visitors
Northwest MLS 338 unique visitors
Combined Phrases containing "Northwest MLS" (197 different phrases) 664 unique visitors

These figures represent a grand total of 2795 unique visitors directly from Google searches and I have not even gone all that deep into the referring data, there are quite possibly this many more visitations brought into the blog post from other phrases that - quite frankly - I didn't even need to get into because just these numbers alone prove me point.

Also keep in mind that these figures only reflect traffic from the Google search engine, there are still many more visitations that have come by way of Yahoo, MSN and other search engines.

So what does this mean? Well let's crunch some numbers

With a total of 9375 unique visitors, just the Google traffic from 2 phrases (And their variations and long tails which total 2795) we can safely assume that 29.8% of traffic (And this is DRASTICALLY UNDER CALCULATING) has been brought to the blog post directly from relevant searches. If I had to estimate or guess, I would say that in reality no less than 50% of traffic that reads your REW Blog each time you post is a potential customer that was actually interested in what you had to say about some relevant subject and NOT just another member of Real Estate Webmasters that is a Realtor looking for blogs to comment on.

The moral of the story

Writing great blog posts that are properly (Not overly) optimized focusing on the subject matter and your intended audience will bring you a TON of relevant search engine traffic - and we all know relevant traffic means potential customers - and customers mean commissions right?

I hope this case study has inspired you to approach your topic selection (Hopefully using blogalytics) with the goal of providing the most relevant and insightful content possible realizing that it isn't just your fellow real estate bloggers that will be reading it

So what are you waiting for - GET BLOGGING!

I am tired of REW - A testament to a community and their moderators

Morgan Carey (Real Estate Webmasters) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 11:28:51 -0500

Recently a user at our Real Estate Forums posted a thread titled "I am tired of REW" I think he or she is a member here at Active Rain as well. This is one of my favorite posts of late, and really makes me proud of our community and our moderators.

The user writes:

"I am tired of REW, and because of that this will be my last forum post. I will not post any more blog postings either.

Much of my frustrations with REW stem from the fact that there is a predisposed position here that there is a right way and a wrong way of doing things, and nothing in between. As a result nearly EVERY thing that I have done here at REW has been confronted with negative close minded criticism that hides behind a front of silly rules and regulations. Mostly I have been confronted with this idea in the releam of SEO. The administrators of REW appear to have a firm belief in white hat SEO versus black hat SEO, and nothing in between.

I will admit that REW does have an amazing presence on the web and from what I have seen of their development work they appear to handle their clients very professionally. I only wish they did the same when they handle their "social network"."

My friend you couldn't be more wrong. There is no pre-disposed position that there is a right way or wrong way to do things, and we are open to discussing ANY SEO technique openly and freely. However what you have run into is a clear cut case of not following the rules.

At Real Estate Webmasters (Much more so than Active Rain which we know the good folks are working on) we have very clear guidelines and rules regarding spamming our forums and blogs. When a user signs up at the forum, they are sent an automatic PM inviting them to introduce themselves and pointing out these rules.

Now for new members, we (Staff and moderators) always point out politely the first time, that perhaps they have not read the rules, and what they are doing is unacceptable. This guy or gal chose to ignore them and kept breaking our rules, and because of our great team, kept getting busted. I am sorry that you are tired of REW, but we are tired of spam, and will not tolerate it just because you think for some reason you have the god given right to do so.

I mean how hard is it to understand? Here are the rules, please be mindful of them when posting. Most of them aren't even around spam here are our rules, anyone think we are overly stifling?

We encourage the sharing of ideas and all questions about real estate web development but we ask that you observe these few rules

#1. Be respectful of other members regardless of difference of opinion. (No profanity or name calling)

#2. No self promotion of services in public forums - feel free to PM individual members if they specifically ask for a service that you offer, but do not clog up the public discussion forums with posts concerning your own services, these forums are for learning and sharing, not selling yourself.

#3. No more than 3 links per signature.

#4. Do not post off topic in a thread, if your comment is not relevant to a thread, please start a new thread within the most relevant forum for the topic.

#5. REW will not tolerate any other member stealing (Borrowing) intellectual property or website content without expressed written permission of the owner of said property. You will be given the opportunity to provide such documentation of permission however failure to provide such proof is subject to lifetime ban.

#6. Member poaching - There is to be no diverting members of this forum to other competing real estate forums to answer questions or have discussions that can easily be facilitated herehere. Recruiting our members to other forums is strictly forbidden. If you are simply here to promote your own forum, then please leave as you will be banned for doing so.

#7 - Linking policy - Real Estate Webmasters (REW) will not link to any websites that violate any search engines terms of service. If you are posting about a website that is violating the SE's terms of service for discussion purposes do not make it a live link. If you are linking to your own sites that violate these terms of service, in posts or in your signature, your linking privelleges will be revoked

#8. No link exchange posting out side of the approved members link exchange forum, you will be warned once (And the post will be deleted) if you do it again, your account will be banned.

#9 - Do not create multiple accounts, only one account is permitted per person

#10 - Have Fun!

We ARE MONSTERS AND DICTATORS I TELL YOU! :)

Some select member responses from the thread (I love our community and how we support each other)

Jason Crouch - AustinTexasHomes.com

Joe - Best of luck to you. I think the reason that I enjoy this forum is that I have not seen another forum where everyone was so respectful of each other. Maybe it's because many of us have our real names (or websites where you can find them). I have been doing SEO for my site since 1998, and this is overall the best forum I have found.

Neal M - houseviewsonline.com

I must be fortunate, all the differences in option I have had with the forum members have been polite and professional. In most cases they were posted as "here's another way" or "try this way" and not "your way is wrong"

I like that REW stays on the white hat side of SEO. As far as where the line is between white and grey, that may be hard to determine. However it appears that REW uses a light touch when it comes to the light gray topics.

Now, does anyone know where I can get a KC Chief's Red SEO hat?

And perhaps the best response and testament to our great members comes from:

Lydia Taylor - northofsavannah.com

A forum is a place where we all share opinions, and I think that as such there really aren't any 'predisposed' ways of doing things here. However, please understand that the staff here have a duty to keep the discourse from veering too far in certain directions. I think they've done a good job doing so. It may be that you've just come up against those restrictions. If that frustrates you, you can always visit other areas of the net to learn more.

Every forum brings something to the table, this one more than most IMHO. So please accept that REW is just doing a job protecting themselves and posters on the website, and they weren't attacking you personally.

I'm disappointed that you see the forums in such a light and hopefully you will rejoin us again soon...

I mean what a great bunch of members and great community. Even though this person is complaining about "the rules" which are in place to ensure continued benefit and high quality discussion, members are still urging him to stick around because there is so much he can benefit (And I would imagine over time this person like everyone would have helped many others as well)

Sure this post is a bit self indulgent, but seriously our members and community just kick ass and I am extremely proud of every single on of them.

One final quote from Markz

Long live REW!

Cool RSS widget for AR members - Spring Widgets RSS Reader

Morgan Carey (Real Estate Webmasters) — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:56:47 -0500

Hey guys,

I have just implemented a new widget on the blog for reading the RSS feed from my REW Blog. It is provided by Spring Widgets, and can be accessed here: http://www.myspringwidgets.com/widgets/view/23

I have seen a lot of nice RSS reader widgets but this one is simply top notch. To each their own I guess, but you can see mine on the right hand side of this blog post and it is just sweet lookin!

What I really like about it is it's quick and easy customization - just plug in a width, height, and even choose some colors - grab your source code, post it in your description section and BAM! wicked cool widgetness.

SEO Tunnel Vision: The blind leading the blind.

Morgan Carey (Real Estate Webmasters) — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 17:07:42 -0500

I have just finished reading Brad Carroll's blog post on "Optimizing your active Rain Profile" and skimmed through all of the comments and I am AMAZED that there was not a single post questioning his suggestions regarding what Active Rain members should be doing with their profiles - He suggests a keyword loaded username so that your URL has keywords in it (Which has not had an effect on search engine rankings in several years) and even goes so far as to suggest that you put your full name in the first name field just so you can use the last name field to stuff extra keywords in your profile - I am sorry Brad (And I am posting this to help educate those 148 users who left comments and the countless others that read and may have taken this advice) not to pick on you. Later on in the post you do actually give some decent advice for descriptions etc but your SEO advice in this post is very poor and will IMHO make users look less professional

Your first suggestion:

"Select a username that is the keyword you are trying to optimize. For example, if you are trying to optimize for Sheridan Wyoming Real Estate, then make your username SheridanRealEstate. If you have already signed up for Active Rain, then keep this tip in mind as you join other social networks."

Your justification for this is that your user name becomes the URL and "I think" you are under the impression that keyword stuffed URL's are a benefit to search engine rankings. This is simply not the case - while it is important to have search engine friendly (Clean) URL's in order for spiders to be able to traverse your pages, making your user name a keyword so it shows up in the URL will not do anything for AR members profile rankings. And what if they choose wrong? These are permanent right? What if someone is trying to show up for "Area Realtor" and makes that their user name, sooner or later they will learn the hard way, that using "Area Realtor" as their user name is a violation of the NAR's membership mark, and they will be forced to delete that account or at least change the URL (Which means they start from square one)

What really floored me though was what you suggested next: In effect inappropriately spamming the last name field.

You posted and I quote:

"You may have been tempted to simply enter your first and last name when you signed up. That’s the obvious process, but your name will be seen on every comment you make, every blog post and more. So use this as an opportunity to include another keyword. This is important - Don’t use the same keyword as your username. Using the example above, if your username keyword is SheridanRealEstate, your Name keyword may be Sheridan Wyoming Real Estate or even Sheridan Wyoming Properties. To do this, simply enter both your first and last name into the First Name field. Next, enter your keyword into the Last Name field."

Are you kidding me?

Here is a quote regarding keyword stuffing (A form of spam) from Google's webmaster center that I hope everyone after reading this post decides to go and read - I am going to bold the most important part for emphasis

"Keyword stuffing" refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site's ranking in Google's search results. Filling pages with keywords results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site's ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context."

Ok so that addresses the search engine misinformation and spam issue, but think about what you just suggested

Active Rain has created this resource based on best practices and the fields they provide a user are not to be abused - you just suggested to a bunch of people to use the last name field for search engine spam instead of what it is labeled and meant for. Each person that takes this advice reflects negatively on the community as a whole and will inevitably invite more and more poor quality members who post with the intention of spamming search engine indexes.

Next think about when the result you are going for happens to be achieved - you get your profile ranked highly in Google and all of a sudden people are seeing it - under first name, they see your first and last name, a under last name they see a bunch of keywords - people are going to think you are stupid and can't even fill out your own bio properly. You spoke very well later about how you want to have your profile make a good impression, yet at the beginning of your blog, you tell them to do the exact opposite.

What we have here is a clear case of SEO tunnel vision - usability and professionalism are tossed aside because they are not given due consideration in conjunction with one's search engine optimization efforts.

I hope this isn't taken as mean spirited because it really isn't meant to be - but hopefully it does serve as a reminder to all AR members, that they should take everything they read with a grain of salt and apply common sense to it. I got a little concerned when I saw over 140 comments on the post all saying thank you, and not a single person seemed to have read it.

Choosing the right visibility on Active Rain Public VS Members only

Morgan Carey (Real Estate Webmasters) — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 13:14:39 -0500

As you can see, I am writing a post to my active rain blog as I should do more often and I have a question:

When posting to AR Blogs where should I set the visibility? This is really regarding public VS members only

I have the options of:

Public
Associates Only
Draft
Members only

Now I understand Draft, that means it won't be seen by others and it is a work in progress.

Associates Only - I am guessing this means the only people that can view my post are those flagged as my associates and are logged into their AR account, this makes sense to

But here is my main question:

Public VS Members only where does it go?

Take this post for instance. I am asking a question that is specific to Active Rain technology - my first thought is to post it in members only, because really I am asking the opinion of AR members and staff. But then I think - what about those thinking about signing up for Active Rain? Would they not benefit from this post as well? I mean shoot - this post might get featured, and will likely have tons of comments either way - isn't it a benefit to Active Rain to showcase how helpful the community is, and the great feedback members and staff give to one another? - Think about it - if someone sees the great support that I get for this post (And I already know I will get great support because I always do) wouldn't we want the public and those considering AR to see it? I think it would mean more members signing up - what do you think?

Now because I am still relatively new to the whole system, I don't even really know whether the public or those not logged in can even see this post, so I might be underestimating the system - so perhaps someone can fill me on that as well. When posting what is the difference between choosing members only VS public?

I appreciate all your responses and lets show how helpful the Active Rain community truly is.

Incidentally, I am going to post this in public because I am still not sure where to post it - I am also choosing For real estate professionals, because that is who I think this post applies to - I am choosing the sub categories "Active Rain Community" as a sub type because that is who I want to address this to. Did I do this correctly?

thanks in advance for all your help and comments.

[Addition from comment below]

Thanks for the comments so far, some great feedback!

I think I am coming at it from a different angle though. (And this is not meant to sound cocky at all) but I don't really use or need Active Rain for Google juice, and our existing efforts provide more customers than we could ever want - my involvement in Active Rain, is more about continued learning and understanding of my customers and prospects (Namely real estate professionals) and also participating in a great social networking website - (I am a huge geek, and I actually do this for fun as well as work)

Now getting to the point - the reason I asked is actually more of a "how should we label visibility so that our internal development and promotion of Active Rain is maximized while not clogging up the public side of Active Rain with things best kept members only" - I guess there are a lot more things to consider than just the few I have posted, and I really could have written a lot longer post about it. But here are my thoughts on the Google and AR promotion issues to start with:

Choice of public VS private posting should NEVER been decided based on the potential of link juice or Google rankings, if you are posting with SEO instead of your audience, you are posting improperly.

Choice of where to post should take into account the public perception of Active Rain as a community, if we all think about what we say and how we say it (And in this case where we say it) we can effect the reputation and usefulness of this great resource (What's good for Active Rain is good for everyone) - so showing off how helpful we are as a community, such as the great feedback so far I think is a good thing to show the public, whereas airing dirty laundry, complaining about some part of the system etc might be construed as negative to a new visitor who hasn't seen any of the great stuff yet, so might best remain private (This should really be moved into my actual post now that I think about it)

Anyways - keep the comments coming, it looks like the answers have helped one other member who was newer (And have helped me greatly already) just out of the discussion, so I think it's worth exploring some more.

Realtor in usernames in blogs and forums are you in violation?

Morgan Carey (Real Estate Webmasters) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 21:33:32 -0500

As many of you know (And those that don't really should) the term "Realtor®" is a registered membership mark belonging to all members of the National Association Of Realtors. As a membership mark, it is used to identify a member as belonging to the NAR and has very specific rules in terms of how it can be used on the web - (In domain names, email addresses etc)

What many of you don't know (And until I had a chat with the NAR's trademark administrator a few weeks ago neither did I) is that these same rules still apply when it comes to their use in forums, blogs (Weblogs) and any other situation identifying or being associated with a user.

Instead of explaining in my own words how this effects you, I am going to post (As she has given me permission to do in order to educate NAR members) the email that Mary Newill of the NAR was kind enough to draft up for me.

You can read the letter from the trademark administrator and some implications in terms of how it effects those of you who are also members of Real Estate Webmasters here

Now I am not a policy maker here at Active Rain, however I would urge the AR staff and membership to comply with these same guidelines as doing otherwise may have consequences for members who simply are not aware of this situation. The guys at AR understand that they serve the Realtor® community, and I am sure will address this issue as best they can.

Ya learn something every day huh?

Active Rain Banned By Google : Link spam ruins great resource

Morgan Carey (Real Estate Webmasters) — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 01:04:24 -0500

Active Rain Banned By Google : Link spam ruins great resource

I would imagine that got everyones attention - It's not true, but it could happen and unless some changes are made, it may very well become a reality.

This will be a very long post, but if you would like to see Active Rain stay in Google's good graces like I would, I think it's important that you read this.

Active Rain is a social networking / blogging community that has opened it's doors and very graciously allowed it's users (Realtors and other professionals servicing the real estate industry such as myself) to post unmoderated user contributed content. Now I do realize there is a flagging system in place and there are in fact moderators who respond to flagged posts and profiles that may violate the terms of service of Active Rain, but where are the search engine spam guidelines? Did I miss them?

I decided to research and write this post following the recently reported Google penalty of Squidoo another high quality (Although not real estate related or niche specific) social networking website that allows user contributed content to be published without manual review. You can read more about the Squidoo penalty here

Before writing this post, I read every guideline and FAQ I could get my hands on at Active Rain, and to my surprise there was not a single mention of search engine spam, or link farm creation. Now I cannot pretend that I am aware of the level of knowlege the owners and moderators have when it comes to search engine spam, but because they are not search engine consultants, and do not make their living from working with search engine algorithms, I highly doubt that they have ever had to deal with a search engine penalty, or ever had to concern themselves with search engine spam - Don't get me wrong, Active Rain is great, and the people behind it have done an excellent job - I just think that because the whole social networking and user contributed content thing is so new to them, they may need some help from those of us a little more familiar with search engine algorithms, and have run forums or blogs for long enough to encounter some of the serious consequences that can come about from not having the proper checks (rules, guidelines, education, enforcement and moderation)

So what are you talking about Morgan? What do you see at Active Rain that could cause problems with the search engines?

There are quite a few things I see as "potential" issues, but for the purpose and scope of this article I am going to focus on link spam or link abuse.

The first case I am going to point out (Has already been dealt with, thank you Active Rain) and that is an active rain member who had created a profile on both Active Rain and Localism that links to TONS of spammy cookie cutter websites, his intention was to attempt to create a link farm which he could hopefully increase his main websites rankings (He is wrong btw, this is not a good search engine technique) - in fact, this spammer had a whopping 303 outbound links to 303 different doorway pages with cookie cutter content - Link farms, doorway domains and cookie cutter content are all violations of the Google webmaster guidelines. For your convenience I have quoted Google and provided a screenshot of the spam links below:

Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links. Active Rain was doing this without their knowlege as this user was creating a bad neighborhood right on Active Rain. This user has sinse been reported and the link spam removed (Thanks again)

Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content. (Yup this guy was doing that to, and then of course using Active Rain to link to them.

Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content. Three strikes, I could rip this guy apart some more, but by now I hope you are starting to paint a picture. (The above quotes were sourced from the official Google webmasters guidelines.)

Here is the screenshot so that you can see how rediculous this looks (I can only capture so many links with a screen cap, but trust me there were 303 different links on one page to 303 different domains!

Now you be saying to yourself, well this isn't the majority of users at Active Rain, we care about our content and try our hardest to maintain quality posts, how could this one guy spamming get us into trouble? In truth just one person doing this sort of thing would likely not be able to earn Active Rain a penalty in Google - but what you must understand about spammers is that when there is an opportunity (Such as there is at Active Rain) they flock to it. Soon your website is overrun with spammy profiles and articles, and Google is receiving thousands of spam reports daily, reporting the link spam their competitors are implementing via Active Rain, in order to gain them an unfair advantage. No matter what reputation a website has guys, if enough of these happen, Google will respond - and when they do Active Rain will have to deal with a very unpleasant situation which can (I believe) be avoided by implementing appropriate (rules, guidelines, education, enforcement and moderation) - We as Active Rain members can help as well by flagging any spammy post or profiles we see, so as to help the moderators out doing their jobs - I am sure they do their best, but they can't catch everything, with our help I think they can.

Ok - I was really planning on writing more on link spam, and providing some more examples of link spam, but it is getting late - and hopefully I can continue this article as a Part 2 - In the meantime, please share this article with your friends at Active Rain, or anyone who cares about conserving the great place the Active Rain staff have created for us.

Some initial suggestions for the Active Rain support staff and moderators.

Allow no more than an average of 1 outbound link per 150 words of content posted.

Implement a no follow algorithm - If a particular user was reported a certain amount of times by other AR members, apply a rel="nofollow" to all outbound links in profiles and posts on their account. This is an attractive alternative to suspending or banning because it would provide the user the opportunity to clean up their act and request removal of algorithm - I would imagine a one shot deal is enough - if they do it again, the algorithm becomes permanent, or suspension or banning may be required.

Limit of maximum 5-10 outbound links in side navigation of blogs and in user profiles (Does anyone really need more than 5-10 websites? If they do, they are likely attempting to game the search engines.

No hyper linking of keywords in text to websites irrelevant to the subject matter of the article posted.

Apply nofollow to all new user accounts (Blogs and profiles) - This could removed after a user has at least x amount of blog posts, could be small - like 5 or 10 blogs. This would help discourage fly by spammers just interested in links, or at least stop them from getting credit for the link dropping they are doing. As a positive note this would also encourage new users to post.

Outbound link abuse when blogging

Morgan Carey (Real Estate Webmasters) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 16:28:33 -0500

I originally wrote this for you REW Blog users: Posted at http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/morgan-carey/2143/show/ but I Thought it would be quite relevant and helpful to AR bloggers who are looking to improve their blog posting and want to stay on the good side of search engines (And help AR do the same)

There are a few REW specific references in here, which I have decided to leave in as AR and REW Blogs have many common bloggers - so if you REW Bloggers missed it, here it is:

Outbound link abuse in REW Blogs

Ok, so not everyone is a search engine expert - I need to accept that, and I do, I really do. I also cannot expect people to know what is not acceptable when publishing an REW Blog unless I spell it out for them so here it goes -

Unacceptable REW Blog linking practice #1: Irrelevant outbound linking

I come across this one particular situation quite a bit and it just flat out bothers me. What I am referring to is the practice of hyper linking keywords within a blog post to your websites that are not relevant (Or so loosely associated) to the phrase being hyper linked and more importantly the context of the article - THIS IS NOT GOOD SEO and quite frankly it makes your blog post look spammy, and provides your readers with a very negative user experience.

Let me break it down for you: Example below

I am going to write an article on the City of Nanaimo in an attempt to promote the natural beauty and features of the area. (Let's keep in mind, my website is http://www.realestatewebmasters.com a website that sells real estate related products and services and that I try to rank for all sorts of real estate related keywords it has nothing to do with Nanaimo, except for the fact that it is located here.)

So I start writing this great article about why someone would want to move here and I write the following paragraph (I am writing this quickly and for example purposes only, so don't gripe if it ain't good :))

The city of Nanaimo, located in beautiful British Columbia, Canada is a very popular tourist site, and attractive to people looking to relocate to the area for low cost of living and affordable real estate.

The design of Nanaimo's downtown core is a web of intricately laid out cross streets and an old city charm that provides a very unique and pleasurable shopping experience for visitor cruise ship patrons.

Does everyone see the problem with this?

Well just in case you don't - let's take a look at this article:

Presumably, I wrote this article to appeal to an audience that is looking for information on the city of Nanaimo (It is safe to assume anyone reading this article is NOT looking for a real estate website) so what am I doing linking keywords I can find in the text to my real estate website?

It's a rhetorical question: Obviously I do not understand latent cemantics or other content and relevance matching algorithms and I have been given some bad SEO advice. I think that any old link even out of context with anchor text is a benefit to my rankings, and so I should spam links every chance (And on every website) that I can.

A few problems with this:

It looks like crap to your visitor - clicking on a link that is out of context completely disrupts the user experience and they are going to leave your blog and not come back. What if this person interested in Nanaimo also happens to be a Realtor needing a big web project? I have just lost the opportunity to engage him / her and present my business in my about me page, or other "APPROPRIATE" medium for promoting myself and my website on my blog. I tried to think SEO instead of my user, and it cost me. Doh!
It looks like crap to your visitor - Did I say that already? This sort of thing really does make for a bad first impression and is a disservice to your reputation (I know, I know, it's just a link who knows the difference or even cares?) - I care, and so do many other webmasters who may be evaluating you for representation, or a strategic marketing partnership (Or maybe even some creative social networking for the joint benefit of your mutual websites search engine rankings) - If you engage in spammy tactics, you will never have me as any sort of partner online, and I have said it many times before - true SEO (From a link building side) is more about the relationships you build than any website that you can steal a few links from.
It will get your account banned: Yup, that's right! I am not going to let a few bad apples ruin REW Blogs for the rest of our great contributors who are making an active attempt to constantly learn and improve the quality of their blogging. It is not a one strike and you're out thing, I always try to send new bloggers who are on the wrong path a friendly note first, pointing them in the direction of the blog forum and the many resource sections and posts our admins, mods and members put together (See those are appropriate links within an article do you see the difference?)
It's out of context: Sure I got a link with "web" or "site" or "Design" or "real estate" in pieces, but Google and other engines are not so dumb that they do not know how to make a topical distinction here.

Here is that same paragraph with some examples of what "could" have been hyper linked, and "would" be acceptable.

The city of Nanaimo, located in beautiful British Columbia, Canada is a very popular tourist site, and attractive to people looking to relocate to the area for low cost of living and affordable real estate.

The design of Nanaimo's downtown core is a web of intricately laid out cross streets and an old city charm that provides a very unique and pleasurable shopping experience for visitor cruise ship patrons.

Now if you were reading a short article on Nanaimo, and you wanted more information, the two websites that I have hyper linked are just about the most relevant websites there are given the subject matter - First I linked "City of Nanaimo" to the official City of Nanaimo website. I was talking about the downtown core, and we happen to have a great and resourceful website representing the Downtown Nanaimo Partnership which promotes that very sector - once again: great, helpful and RELEVANT information pertaining to the article.

I didn't get any back links to my web design site, or any precious (like fools gold) anchor text - so what! What I did was create a positive user experience for my reader by providing a great article, with very helpful links to extended information should my article entice them so much they want to learn more. More importantly I made a great first impression which I can build on in the future when it comes time for this reader to require my services.

(What the hell was a Real Estate Website Developer doing writing a great article on Nanaimo for you might ask) - It was a good example leave me alone :)

It's late and I know this comes across as bitching a little bit - And it is - I have been up moderating blogs all night and I just needed to get this out there #1 to get it off my chest and #2 (And after a good nights sleep this will be much more important) to teach you guys best practices so you can continue to improve on your REW Blog posts, and make that great first impression, build that authority and credibility with the online community, and heaven forbid impress a reader so much that they actually retain your services for their next real estate transaction.

I hope this has helped members understand that when blogging and linking within blogs, you should always think about your users and the usability and relevance of your linking - links should support the content and help the user, they should not just be arbitrarily place in an attempt to inflate your own websites link popularity.

A basic optimization checklist for AR members.

Morgan Carey (Real Estate Webmasters) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 01:38:32 -0500

For a real estate website to succeed it needs to fulfill the basics requirements of the visitor. I have created this page to outline a basic checklist for realtors to follow if they would like to succeed online.

Lets start with some initial ideas.

Access to MLS Listings (Homes for sale)

A successful website needs to provide the visitor with access to the available real estate inventory within your area of service. The majority of web searchers (Search Engine and PPC) are buyers. A simple query of one of the many online keyword suggestion tools will generally reveal the following major terms:

Area Real Estate (Agent)
Area Homes (For sale)
Area MLS (Listings)
Area Realtor

A great tool for checking on these search terms any others is the Digitalpoint Keyword Suggestion Tool.
Other than “Area Realtor” and “Area Real Estate Agent” the rest of those common terms will generally be searching for a home to purchase, in other words they are buyers. So it just makes sense, if you want to stimulate the interest of a buyer, you have to be able to provide them with access to the available homes for sale. In addition to MLS listings you could also feature your own listings in a separate section for even better commissions.

Prominantly display your contact information.

How leads become leads. Your website needs to provide a method of contact (Easily accessible) for the visitor to interact with the agent. They want to ask questions, interview you as their listings or buyers agent, or enquire about a property listed on your site. I recommend the following as minimum requirements to have on your website:

A contact us link or botton (Accessible and visible from every page)
Telephone number (Accessible and visible from every page)

The contact us link or button should go to a page that offers multiple options for contact. You should have your full name, all phone numbers and even your office address listed. You should also provide your email address and a contact form. Your contact form should require at minimum a valid phone number or email address however you may want to provide them with extra fields to mine more information such as:

Are you buying or selling?
When are you looking to buy or sell?
Comments

You can get creative and create sections for buyers and sellers with specific questions like “how much are you looking to spend” “what area are you selling in?” etc.

Unique Content is a Must!

Your website needs to represent “you” and your business. Real Estate transactions (Buying or selling) are generally the largest trasanctions that your website visitors will ever participate in. They need to feel confident in you as a professional if they are going to allow them to handle this all important task, so make it count!

Generally a website will have the following main pages:

Homepage - Generally the first page a user views. Introduces the realtor, the areas in which the realtor services, the features and functionality of the website and offers personal assistance via telephone, email or contact form should the visitor require it.
About - Introduces the realtor, their qualifications, and provides an opportunity for the realtor to make an impression and appeal on a more personal level to the prospect.
Contact Page - See notes on contact pages above
Home Search Page - Showcases Listings (MLS / VOW and or office listings)
Buyers page - tell the visitor how you will find them their perfect home and what success and resources you posses to accomplish this
Sellers page - showcase sold listings and testimonials. Focus on your strengths in terms of marketing and elaborate on the process as well as resources you have at your disposal for getting that listing noticed and more importantly, SOLD!

Social Networking Online creates real life re-union

Morgan Carey (Real Estate Webmasters) — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 01:45:41 -0500

So I am on Active Rain today, posting comments on the AR vs REW who has more juice thread and out of the blue I get an email from another member of AR and to my surprise it is Ilona Beedie someone I have actually known for probably 12 years now but have not seen or spoken to in forever. Total shocker and a very nice surprise. It turns out she is now into home staging, and I am in Real Estate Web Development - Cool!

Just because I am so stoked about it, let me share a little history.

I first met Ilona when I was 15 years old - I worked at a local gas station and her husband Bill (Super nice guy) was a mechanic at the subaru dealership next door. At that time, we only saw each other once in a while when she came into the store for something, was visiting Bill or wanted gas etc - she was always super friendly to talk to and very nice.

I left the station when I was 16 and did not see her for a while.

Some time later when I was in college, I got a job in the warehouse at Sears to help pay for school and support my family. To my pleasant surprise there was Ilona - she was working for the credit department signing people up for sears credit cards and the like. Once again, I got to see her and chat occasionally and still very much enjoyed her company - (I even ended up dating her boss who was MUCH older than me at the time, that was an interesting twist)

Later on she ended up leaving (Before I did) - and about a year later, a friend of mine shows up with this very pretty girl and is seeing her - I find out a few weeks later that she is Ilona's daughter Moia (I don't know if I spelled that right)

I know I know - small town lol

They didn't last long, so once again my pleasant encounters with Ilona were at an end.

I know it is hard to believe but there is MORE!

A few years after that, my mother started renting a home downtown, and guess who her landlord is! That is right Ilona! It wasn't until today that I realized just how many times our paths have crossed.

Ok, end of a long story I promise - back to the email.

Turns out she is not far from my office and she is coming in to visit me tomorrow at REW headquarters - talk about some weird fate! I am very excited to catch up and see what she has been up to, and who knows we may even be able to work together.

Either way, I think this is a great testament to social networking in general, and I am especially thankful for my association with AR, without which I likely would not have crossed paths (At least not as easily) with someone I always considered a friend.

It also goes to show that all this chatting, blogging etc that we do online is not just about increasing SERPS, or making long distance contacts - social networking online translates into real life relationship building and is a tool that reaches far past the confines of a 19" monitor.

Thanks again AR

Nanaimo Home for sale, Hospital Area Thunderbird Drive

Morgan Carey (Real Estate Webmasters) — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 21:07:29 -0500

Forest Park Classic! This Family Home Is Beautifully Maintained And Cared For. Features Large Bright Rooms With 3 Bedrooms And 2 Bathrooms. The Main Bath Has Just Been Totally Renovated And Features Heated Tile Flooring, A Very Large Double Jacuzzi Tub And Separate Shower. The Kitchen Has Also Been Recently Updated And Shows Like New. There Is A Very Large Games Area And Rec Room On The Lower Level Along With A 2 Piece Bathroom A Wet Bar And A Workshop Area. The Home Has Had Upgraded Electric And There Are 2 Gas Fireplaces That Heat The Entire Home As Well As The Electric Heat System. This Is All Situated On A Large Private Property That Is Neatly Landscaped And Fenced. The Rear Yard Features An Ideal Deck For Summer Bbq's And A Patio Area As Well. There Is Even A Garden Shed Out Back That Might Make A Cute Play House For The Kids. Plenty Of Parking For All The Vehicles Including An Rv. A Must To View In The Price Range And Area. For more information, photos or to schedule a showing please visit http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/listings/369/details.html

Diverse Linking introduction

Morgan Carey (Real Estate Webmasters) — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 04:51:20 -0500

I originally posted this at REW Blogs but I thought I would share it with the AR crowd as well as it got a lot of comments, hopefully those doing your own SEO will find it useful.

For those real estate webmasters that are trying to improve their natural search engine rankings, this link building blog post is a must read. Here I will cover many of the link building strategies that will help you increase your pagerank and link popularity, which as we all know will help improve your search engine rankings.

Authoring for authority websites:

This is one of the hardest yet most effective link building strategies there is. Basically the premise is to manage to get yourself on as an author for websites considered authorities in the real estate industry, or your local market. Examples would be http://www.nytimes.com/pages/realestate/index.html or your local chamber of commerce website, REW Online news etc. As an author, these authority websites will publish articles that you write, and often times (And the only ones we really care about for the purpose of link building) will allow you to have a signature linking to either your website, or your author bio (Which again to be valuable in the link building sphere must link directly to your website with a clean link)

There are other positives to this type of authoring, you show yourself as an authority in your market and by doing so, the readers of your articles may also link to you from their websites. Also, these articles may be picked up via syndication and that means (You guessed it) more one way backlinks.

Directory submissions:

This is an oldy but a goody, submitting to directories (Paid or free, but should be one way unless they are REALLY good) - By submitting to directories relevant to your website topics you gain valuable backlinks and pagerank. I made a note about not linking back to directories unless they are REALLY good, the reason for this is that there are so many directories out there (You can buy a script and put one up in a day) and most of them have little to no unique content, no traffic or search engine rankings and not worth giving away your valuable pagerank. However if a directory is high quality, meaning it has traffic, rankings, and provides a great backlink, it is sometimes acceptable to provide a reciprocal link. Just be choosy. Examples of good directories for real estate are:The Real Estate Webmasters Directory, Real Estate ABC and DMOZ Real Estate

Article Submissions:

Writing great articles and distributing them to the right article distribution portals and websites is an amazing way to build backlinks. Not only do you get backlinks from the article submission portals and websites such as www.ezinearticles.com you also get backlinks from the many websites that "hopefully" pick up your content for re-publication on their own websites.

Hopefully you say? That is correct - you see many webmasters are looking for great content to use to supplement their own content on their websites. IF YOU WRITE GREAT ARTICLES webmasters will go to these portals, find your content and publish it on their own site, with a juicy backlink to your website of course.

Press Releases:

What have you done that is newsworthy lately? Submitting a press release is not only a great way to drive traffic to your website and increase your exposure to both peers and prospects, it is a great way to build backlinks. If you choose a decent press release service such as www.prweb.com and you pay at least $80 (For PR Web that is) you will be able to place backlinks in your release.

Press release syndication: Not only do you receive backlinks from your actual press release website, these press releases are syndicated to many other websites backlinks and all. Thus you can end up with quite a lot of one way backlinks especially if your press release is of great interest. The more newsworthy the more websites will pick it up and publish it.

*Note - only submit press releases if you have actual news. New technologies, awards or high accolades received, business mergers are all examples of newsworthy topics for a release. I sold a house today / I am a great Realtor and other self promotional dribble is NOT newsworthy and will not be picked up by anyone and you are wasting your press release budget.

Note: I am the original author of this work and own all copyright and intellectual property rights to this content. If you would like to post any or all of this content on your own website, you MUST PROVIDE PROPER CREDIT including my full as the author: Morgan Carey, and a clickable link to the original located at http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/morgan-carey/409/show/

Using Google Analytics to capture more leads

Morgan Carey (Real Estate Webmasters) — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 04:03:24 -0500

Blogalytics: Let your traffic guide your topics

Originally posted by me at REW Blogs: under Blogalytics

Ok so what is blogalytics? Blogalytics is a term I just made up by combining the word Blog and the word analytics - Make sense?

Ok seriously though, this blog post is TOTALLY worth reading to the end, so keep reading. (Especially for you REW bloggers)

Blogalytics is a technique I have practiced, and selectively shared with friends that helps alleviate the annoying task of trying to decide what to blog about while at the same time being guaranteed that your blog posts will receive the kind of targeted visitors that you are trying attract to your website.

The analytics part: There are 2 requirements

1. In order to practice this technique you have to have "some" traffic from search engines.

2. You must have a web analytics program installed that provides data on which searches are currently bringing traffic to your site.

Ok so here is what you do:

Step 1: Login to your analytics program (I use Google Analytics and highly recommend them) choose your favorite search engine (Once again I choose Google) and select the option that shows you which keyword searches have brought you traffic via the Google search engine (Or whichever one you chose)

*Be sure to set your date range to a decent amount of days / months so that you have a nice sample of keyword searches that have brought your website qualified traffic during that period

Step 2: Now that you have done step one correctly, you have a list of keyword phrases that have brought you traffic during your chosen time frame. Here is where it gets weird, set your display to it's maximum amount of viewable results and head for the bottom. The bottom you say? Absofreakinlutely! The reason you head to the bottom is because you are looking for keyword phrases that you are ranking for, but not ranking well enough to send you enough traffic to be at the top of the list. So let's say your maximum was 100 phrases, copy the bottom 30-50 and paste them into an excel spreadsheet, word doc or any other editor. Now start deleting! Go through the list and delete any keyword phrases that may have erroneously come to your website or are just not keywords you are interested in. What you should have left is a shortlist of keywords that you truly are interested in receiving more traffic from.

Step 3: Check your rankings - this part is easy, go to Google and copy paste each keyword phrase that is on your shortlist into the Google search bar. (To make finding your URL easier set your Google preferences to show 100 results because you might be on page 2, you might be on page 9)

If you are already ranking #1 for any of your phrases, take a look a look at the page that is ranking for that term and ask yourself, will visitors searching for this phrase find this page useful, or is there a better way to appeal to this traffic? If you are satisfied that the page your #1's are landing on is a good match for the search, delete that phrase from your shortlist (You can't rank any higher AND the page they are landing on is suited to the phrase) - However! If your #1 ranked page is ranking for that phrase purely based on change (It wasn't all that competitive and Google ranked you based on a very minor mention of the phrase and the fact that your site has authority) put these #1's in a new column of your spreadsheet called re-target (Call it whatever you want, my names are dumb sometimes, shoot I came up with Blogalytics ) - I will tell you what to do with your re-target phrases list in a minute.

Step 4: The whole point of this article

Ok - now that we have finished steps one through three, we have two lists, one of keyword phrases we are already number one for but with pages that aren't properly targeted, and one for keyword phrases that have brought us qualified traffic but don't rank #1 (And likely aren't that well targeted)

This is your new list of suggested topics for your blog. You already know that your site has enough authority to compete in the rankings for these phrases and you now have the opportunity to properly optimize a blog post for both maximum search engine rankings and conversion.

The trick with writing these blog posts is the same as every other trick - there really isn't one. You don't want to just throw up some spammy blog post of a paragraph or two with no real value just to get a blog post on your site with that phrase in the title, because even though occasionally this will increase your rankings for that phrase, it won't convert the visitors once they get there, and I mean seriously, you already eliminated all the phrases you weren't interested in, so this is traffic you feel you can convert so put as much thought and effort into this blog post as you would any main page of your site. As a rule, and absolute MINIMUM of 20 minutes should be spent to plan and write a great blog post. But don't cheat, give your blog post as much time as it takes to make it the kind of quality post that will cause that visitor to become a client.