Remember when you were in high school, there was always that one guy that thought he was “all that and a bag of chips”? You know, the guy that cut corners wherever and whenever possible,-doesn’t study, doesn’t do his own homework and tries to copy off of your test paper? This is the guy that threw off the curve, {if your teacher did in fact grade on a curve} and ruined your grade.
Well the Internet has a guy like this too, only instead of one guy, it’s thousands maybe even hundreds of thousands of them. They are called content farms or link farms and they are exactly like the guy you and I despised in high school. They cut corners, they cheat, they don’t study, they don’t put in the work, they generate huge amounts of content which is specifically designed to game or cheat the algorithms for maximum indexing by search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Frankly-they SUCK. They hurt the little guy, {you and me} and they certainly ruin the curve, making it harder to get a good grade. The good grade in this context is good rankings in Google.
Achieving high rankings in Google is hard enough as it is and the battle for SEARCH is not getting any less competitive. Statistics show, most people (75%) that search Google will click on the 1st, 2nd or 3rd position on the 1st page for their desired search term. In fact, many times, being on the 2nd page is like being invisible – the majority of consumers now look for products and services on the Internet {instead of in their mailboxes or phone book}
I am a former business development manager for a national title insurance company in Phoenix AZ, I spent 10 years helping real estate professionals-real estate agents and lenders-grow their business. One of the ways I did this was to lead by example. Most of my competitors talked about {WHY} real estate professionals should leverage the Internet, I showed the {HOW}. Instead of walking into real estate offices with the typical spiel, {I’m a great title rep, I have great escrow officers, etc} I helped them find me online with dynamic, engaging keyword rich content-text, video, audio, pictures etc.
As I got better at creating content, I started to notice something interesting-Google Alerts was telling me that others were re-posting my content as their own on real estate marketing or title company marketing websites. I was like whaaaaaaaaaat?
he he he he he
Well Google has finally had it {and so have I} and officially brought the Smack Down saying, {essentially} “bring it!” To the cheaters that were taking away our precious Google Juice-our traffic. OK, well they didn’t actually say “bring it” in the press release but they did change their algorithm to reduce the rank of lower quality sites like content and link farms – sending them to the proverbial corner for a long timeout. {point finger and say, ha ha you got caught}:-)
At this point I would like to have a moment of silence for the cheaters that saw their traffic drop by 30-40% as a result of Google’s Algorithm change. {bow your heads}….yea right.
My wife {Aracely} is a Mexican national {she has the best sayings by the way} if I try and do something half assed, she says, “The Lazy Does Things Twice”, and I would have to agree. Getting found online by your ideal client is fast becoming the fuel that makes today’s business’ run, it can be very tempting to an alternate route on the way to organic bliss, Google’s algorithm change and subsequent press release should serve as notice: try gaming the system and you will be punished.
Takeaway: Want to get found online by your ideal client? Do the work the right way the 1st time. Create and distribute unique, interesting, dynamic, keyword rich content-don’t try and cheat the system, otherwise, you will end up as a “Zero To The Left” {another of her sayings-get it……0 to the left, as in negative, as in loser!}
Are you a real estate professional looking to get “found” online by your ideal client? We can help. Check out PRO-Found Marketing, we bring your clients to you.
Comments(3)