Home : Blogs : Kay Frenzer-Zeeh ~ Real Estate SEO : Kay's Real Estate SEO Blog

Give Your Web Site a Huge Boost in Google

I realized I haven't covered this SEO strategy yet, after mentioning it to a commenter on one of my previous blog postings.

A great way to promote a web site that is languishing in the Google sandbox, or isn't doing well in the SERPs, is to:

Register a new, keyword rich domain name.

For instance GeorgeHouses4Sale.com, or even George-Houses-4-Sale.com.
Set up hosting for your blog.

I recommend Dream Host for blog hosting - you can have an unlimited number of blogs, they have 1-click WordPress setup, and their customer support is awesome. I've made arrangements to have the set-up fee waived - just click on the link above and use the discount promo code: DAZZLED0001.

Update: They are also offering a free domain name registration with signup.
Set up your blog (easy), choose a template that you like (fun), and start blogging.

Blog posts don't have to be long - a couple of paragraphs will suffice, a couple of times a week if that's all you can manage. In your blog postings, using keyword phrases, make links that go to your site. Only link once or twice per blog post. Link to interior pages on your site about 50% of the time.
Put a social bookmarking link on your blog.

Register with the various sites, like Stumbleupon and Digg, where you can be the first one to bookmark your blog.
Register your blog with Feedburner.

That will assure it gets pinged whenever you make an new entry, and is where you can also keep track of your stats.
Register your blog with some of the free directories.

Those with PR3 and above should be pretty reliable.
When you make comments on other blogs, link to your new blog, not your web site.

In a relatively short period of time, you should see your blog entries appear on Google, and your web site start to climb in the rankings.

Posted by Kay Frenzer-Zeeh ~ Real Estate SEO on 10/18/2007 09:19 PM

Comments (72)

google, blogging, social media, blog hosting, domain names, feedburner, directories, blog comments, seo, search engine optimization

72 Comments on Give Your Web Site a Huge Boost in Google

OCT

2007

Thanks for the good tips Kay. You are exactly right. I have seen this happening with my website & blogs. It's quite thrilling - especially b/c it's all free!

Kay, I am at a loss for words tonight so I bookmarked and rated a 5.

I am fixing to check out these sites..Thanks for the useful info

This is wonderful and I will check out your these sites and your blog.

I was unware of all of these sites. I have bookmarked this post and ranked it a 5 -- it would be a 10, but the ranking doesn't go up that high!

I have not registered my outside blog with any of the places you have suggested. I have bookmarked your article and I will put this on my to-do- list for tomorrow! Thank you Kay!

Ladies, I'm glad you've all found this helpful. Believe me, it works well!

Kay,

That's a great tip, I will try it.

Mike Lewis

OCT

2007

Thank you for the tip. I do appreciate.

Mike & Robert, you are welcome.

My thanks to everyone who rated my posting - I appreciate the votes!

Thanks. I'd heard of these sites, but never really used them [stumbleupon & digg], and didn't know they affected site rankings very much. I guess I need to get to working on my blog then. :)

OCT

2007

What are the directories you suggest submitting your blog to?

Kay, So that's why active rain works so well. I need to take some of your advice as it pertains to my other blog. Thanks.....

NOV

2007

Hi Kay,

I've looked at WordPress before I found it to be very confusing so I went with TypePad instead. I find TypePad very easy to use but I value your opinion and would consider switching. Is there an easy way to learn WordPress?

Could you expand on why you like Dream Host and is that just for hosting blogs or would you use it to host your web sites? I use GoDaddy for almost all my hosting; is this a mistake?

Finally, I use a Yahoo Pipe to "blend" my various blogs and show it on my home page. Have you ever seen a Pipe work on FeedBurner. I have not had any luck burning my feed. Suggestions?

Thank you very much. W

Raine - they can bring a lot of traffic your way, which helps your blog (plus you may get clients).

Carl - my blog post on directories has a link to a tool that has a list of them.

Doug - yep!

Will - if Typepad works for you (and you can host it yourself) then stick with it. I like WordPress because I can put it on my own hosting account (with its own domain name or as the blog on an existing site) and it has thousands of handy plugins. WordPress has lots of tutorials available.

Dream Host has worked well for me and for several programmers where I work. I started using them for blog hosting but am planning to move most of my hosting over. I like their interface, their customer service has been good, and I like their one-click installs. You can't beat the price, either. That said, if you have a blog(s) that you are using to refer links to a web site, you want the hosting to be with separate web hosts. The search engines can look at the IP addresses and will know if the blog is hosted on the same hosting account as the web site.

I've never heard of a Yahoo Pipe, so I'll be heading over that way to find out about it. Thanks for the tip! Feedburner is handy but it doesn't work for everything.

~ Kay

"Will - if Typepad works for you (and you can host it yourself) then stick with it. I like WordPress because I can put it on my own hosting account (with its own domain name or as the blog on an existing site)..."

I haven't moved the typepad blog to it's own domain. Is that important? I figured that even if I didn't put it on my own hosting account AND it was a subdomain of typepad that my web site would still benefit from the links (not unlike how we benefit from Active Rain).

Could you elaborate a little as to the importance of having our blog hosted on our own accounts with our own domain names vs. a sub-domain of one of the major blogs (e.g. typepad, blogger, etc...)? Thanks a lot. W

NOV

2007

I wrote a little something about Yahoo Pipes a little while ago. I spent hours figuring it out. Let me know if you need some help (I doubt you will) and I'll do what I can. W

NOV

2007

Blog Directories? Never knew about that. Must start submitting my url.

Thanks

NOV

2007

Will, it is much better to host your blog under your own domain. If you can do it I would simply create a subdirectory on your current domain to host the blog. It would be something like www.weknowurban.com/blog. The reason it is better is because you own the content, blogs are a great source of fresh content, and anytime anyone links to your blog it is linking to your site and not the third party vendor. That way you get all of the benefits of blogging attributed to your own site.

NOV

2007

Mark, thanks for leaving a great answer for Will.

Will, I'm still trying find time to check out Yahoo Pipes. BTW, Scott told me I'm not allowed to tell you all my SEO secrets LOL!

NOV

2007

Great info!!!! Thanks!!!!

Mark: Thanks for the response. But is it better to have internal links from a subdomain blog on my site or "external links" from a blog owned by me with a different domain? With the subdomain configuration we have to wait for someone to link to our article to get that coveted external link where if we create a separate blog, everytime we write something and link it to our primary site we get an external link (basically what AR does for us).

After reading Kay's article above for the second time I see that that is exactly what she suggested (I think) and my original question contradicts what I'm now saying (I hate when I do that :-) ). Anyway, I'm guessing that either one is fine and that the most important thing is that we blog, blog, blog and use some free PR3+ directories etc. to build links to our blog site. I first started doing this over a year ago, got some results, and then lost my mind and stopped for some reason. W

Will, both answers are correct. An onsite blog will give you ongoing fresh content, which the search engines like. Your site may be spidered more frequently, and it could give you a boost in traffic. However, you are exactly right, outside blogs (hosted on a different server) serve the purpose of giving you external links. Active Rain is wonderful for that.

My suggestion for a photo blog (which wasn't very popular) was to provide a relatively easy way to keep an extra blog going when there are time constraints. It would not only provide great text links, but if the alt tags and jpgs are named correctly they also add a lot of value. In addition, the photos could show up in a Google images search.

In the grand scheme of things it is much better to put the blog under your own domain. It is better to use a subdirectory (sitename.com/blog) and not a subdomain (blog.sitename.com) but either is preferable to a third party blog. With a blog on your domain you OWN everything. With a third party domain the company you are using essentially owns everything. If you decide to make a change at some point you will lose all of the content and link equity you have built up. If you own the blog and want to make a change you can bring all of that content and link equity with you in some way or another.

As far as links go if you do a third party blog you will have to start building links for the blog as well as your main site. If you put the blog on your main site you only have one site to build links for. Links pass PR to individual pages but the more links coming into various pages means the more PR internal links have to pass on to other sites. Blogs tend to attract links so if you have the blog on your site it will attract links and all of the link juice comes into your site instead of going to a third party site and then onto yours.

Mark, my suggestion regarding blogs that are not part of the web site, is to host them at a different web host than the web site itself, with a keyword rich domain name. This is an effective way to build external links to a site.

Google is blocking so many linking options it is becoming ever more important to develop new linking strategies.

Yeah, that makes more sense than using a blogpsot or a wordpress hosted blog. The problem with that is you are starting with a new domain and unless your domain is banned or penalized it will start out with less trust or link juice than your current domain. That means you will have to build up link juice for the new blog domain to get it to where your current site is. Instead I believe it is better to blog under your established and indexed domain. From my experience it is always better to blog under your domain instead of fighting to get a new domain indexed and ranked. You still have to attract links for the new blog to be able to pass any value onto your established domain and you are better served by putting the blog on your domain and attracting links there. That way those good links actually pass all of the link juice directly to your site instead of going to your blog and then having your blog pass on a portion of that link value.

Mark, I agree that there should be a blog on the web site. However, with some of the dynamic sites, I don't think agents can put a blog on those.

A good thing about new blogs is that Google loves them! They get indexed much faster and more frequently than regular web sites because of the ongoing fresh content, and attain PR more quickly, too. Blog postings show up super fast in the SERPs, even those that have only been around a relatively short time.

Yeah, Google LOVES blogs. Another great things about blogs is that they attract links like crazy. Which of course means Google crawls and indexes more often.

Kay: This might make it easier for you to find the time to check out my YahooPipe. If you set up a Pipe account you'll be able to "view source" allowing you to see the "structure" of the pipe, if you will, and also "clone" my pipe so that you can use what I did instead of having to reinvent the wheel.

Frankly, although I really like the service it's a real pain in the neck to set up (probably because I'm not very technically proficient with web stuff). My problems revolved around the fact that I was pulling from two different blogger accounts and a typepad account. Apparently they both react differently to YahooPipes so I had to dicker around with the pipes until i found a configuration that worked for me. What I like though is that I'm able to blend various blogs into one feed that can appear on my main site's home page. My hope is that I will receive more visitors to my individual blogs this way. Especially if I also promote them individually.

Also, don't let Scott bully you darn it. Keep sending us your SEO gems :-) W

Will, thanks for your suggestion. I really do want to check it out.

I forwarded your message to Scott, that bully!

Mark and Kay: I have always wanted to have a blog on my own domain as a subdirectory. My main site is hosted by GoDaddy. Is there any one you can recommend who I can hire to help me set up www.weknowurban.com/blog?

NOV

2007

Will, what kind of blog would you like to place on your site. If you want to place a Wordpress blog there I can help you with that. I took a look at GoDaddy and it looks like they now offer the option to install Wordpress blogs on existing domains if you have a compatible hosting package so you need to check on that. I really like Wordpress because it offers a ton of functionality, theme choices, and the ability to really customize. If you would like to explore the Wordpress option just send me an email and we can discuss it.

This is my Wordpress blog I just finished setting up a month or so ago, piloSEO. I actually use Wordpress as a CMS for my entire site but obviously you can just add the blog as a subdirectory to your current domain.

Mark, I sent you an e-mail via piloSEO this morning as that was the only way other than AR that I new how to reach you. I look forward to your response AND HELP :-) W

Weird. I just checked my email there and never received it. I ran a quick test to make sure the contact form was working and it seems to be functioning. If you have a chance could you please re-send the message (make sure you fill out the security question). I will be on the look out for your message.

If you want to send a direct email without going through the site you can send it to mark@piloseo.com

DEC

2007

Try Googling orlando civil engineer (BTW, my website has only been up for 61 days).

Keywords and a few other things are needful.

Hi Thomas - I did do a Google search for "orlando civil engineer" but your site didn't come up. Perhaps it's coming up in your local listings. The other possibility is sometimes when Google first indexes a new site (yours was indexed on 11/24/07) it shows up in the SERPs for a day or two, then drops out until it has been around for 6 months or so. Yes, keywords et al are needed, but if you read the blogs on SEO here on AR, you'll find a lot of tips you can use for your site that will help it.

Kay: Great advice! You mention to link to your site only one or twice per post. Why is that?

Rey - more links dilute the "link juice" of the post. One or two, directed to different URLs are okay, but with more than that the value lessens.

DEC

2007

I will follow, Lord willing, the first post advice and do just that.

Do have a question though...I have a website that is 65 days old and by looking at the search on Google. You are looking for McKeon Engineering on this search.

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&rls=GGLF%2CGGLF%3A2005-44%2CGGLF%3Aen&q=orlando+professional+civil+engineering+consultant

Seems like I should have a pagerank. Does it take longer than that to get a pagerank? BTW, that is a search for 'orlando professional civil engineering consultant' on Google.

Also, thank you so much to the originator of this particular blog.

Thomas - you won't see a pagerank for probably another 4 months. Google is indexing your site regularly, which is good, and it's great it's showing up already for lower tier keywords. A top tier keyword to watch for is "orlando civil engineer." You can go to NicheBot and do some keyword searches for both top tier and long-tail keywords.

Now it's time to start building links to your site!

I have started building links to my site. BTW, NicheBot has visited my site already. Also, for only being up for actually 62 days, if you search on Yahoo for 'Orlando Civil Engineer' I am in the top ten (and one of only two actual businesses).

I anyone has a reputable website that wants to reciprocal link, please contact me at tmckeon_PE@mckeonengineering.com and please visit http://mckeonengineering.com to see what has risen so quickly.

BTW, as an engineer, I am not in competition with anyone here, so don't get any feathers in a rough.

Thanks again!

DEC

2007

Kay,

This post was very helpful. I am trying to read all the posts I can so I don't ask stupid questions but I am anxious to get moving. I have read many of your posts today and am learning a lot. It seems like there must be a central place to create your blog have it syndicated out to all the places you would like your blog to appear. In this post you mention outsourcing the hosting of your blog to Dream Host but I can't seem to figure how to post the blog in one place and have it appear on all the sites you would like. Would Dream Host do this? It seems obvious that experienced blogger must not be manually posting their blog to each site. Can you offer any advice on this?

Thanks so much for your help.

DEC

2007

Al, if I am reading your question correctly you want to know how to write a blog post in one place and have the same post be added to multiple blogs? If I am incorrect please let me know. If that is what you are asking about it is not a good idea. If you have more than one blog you need to make sure each blog has unique content. That does not mean you can't write about the same subject matter but you should not write the same thing across different sources. If you want to write about the same subject you should do it from a different perspective. For example a post at Active Rain could be geared towards realtors while a post on your own blog could be geared to consumers. The content should be unique. If you have the same post across multiple blogs one of two things will happen. The first possibility is that Google would index one blog post (probably AR) and filter the others out. Or they could just not index any of them.

Mark - Thanks for the informative response. I guess I really need to read up more on this before pelting folks busy folks like you with questions. I thought the idea would be to post a blog in one spot and have some system feed it out to sites where the blog content might be relevant. Sort of like syndicating a newspaper column.

Al, are you thinking of RSS feeds?

Kay - I think so. I am just reading up on them now. I have a million questions on them but I guess I shouldn't waste your valuable time when I can probably get 80% of my questions answered by just doing my homework.

Well...maybe just one question.

If I set up an RSS feed for my blog would it do what I described? Is it worth doing? Do you do it this way?

Ok. I lied. That was 3 questions.

Thanks again for your help.

-Al

Al, it would show up on your sites if you put a widget on them, if that's what you want (like the one on my blog here on Active Rain). It's definitely worth setting up an RSS feed - you never know who will see it and/or subscribe. Yes, all my blogs are on RSS feeds.

DEC

2007

Kay - thanks for the feedburner tip.

DEC

2007

OK, I took your advice and had a WordPress blog set up. And we set it up as a sub-directory vs. a sub-domain which is something I had wanted for over a year. So far I'm very happy with it. I like that it looks very similar to the rest of my web site and I of course like that I control the destiny of any content I create and links that develop. I am also actively visiting the social networking sites you recommended in a previous post; all one hundred of them. Thanks again for sharing. W

Kay,

One other thing. Why did you say "When you make comments on other blogs, link to your new blog, not your web site." Wouldn't we also value from establishing these same types of links to our websites? W

DEC

2007

Jill - you're welcome!

Will - good job. The reason I said to link to your blog is that, if it is a separately hosted blog, you want to send it some "link love." However, if it's on your site as a subdirectory, it doesn't matter. Keep in mind, though, that wherever you link to, don't make it just your home page all the time - you need "deep links" - which are links into your site, as well.

Thanks again Kay. That makes sense. W

DEC

2007

Kay ~ Thanks for the education. This stuff is great, but it is amazing how much there is to learn!! Thank you for sharing. :)

I love all of your blogs Kay. I am still figuring out SEO and your blogs help me a lot. Thanks!

DEC

2007

Thanks for the advice good luck with your SEO. -cem

JAN

2008

Finally got the pagerank and got a 3 which is quite good for a web page that is only 2.5 months old and is an engineering web page (most of which either don't have a page rank or have only a 1 or 2).

Thank God!

I am the President of McKeon Engineering & Associates, LLC http://www.mckeonengineering.com/ ...please visit our site as well. If you would like to see more engineering problems, please visit http://www.engineertrades.com/ which is a forum for engineers to prepare for the Professional Engineering (PE) exam.

JAN

2008

Thanks Kay, I have been meaning to register with a feedburner, and was not sure how to do this.

FEB

2008

Hi Kay

i am the webmaster for a real estate company - http://www.hollowayandassoc.com
Our main target keyword is " Huntsville Alabama Real estate" . This
website has over 10,000 external links and 231 backlinks.

However, it does not rank in Google. I look up to page 40 in Google
and it is no where to be found.

The previous webmaster and hosting company was ADVANCED ACCESS. I
heard that this company was engaged in some preferential linking
technigues.

Four month ago when i took over i removed all the Advanced Access
material and create a new site on the same domain.

Please, what can i do to get the website back on track and ranking in
Google?

Huntsville - (sorry, I don't know your name) your link situation is not good...waaaay too many links that are not good ones, for example sitewide links and probably link farms, inherited from AA. Your keyword density for real estate is over 5% too, which is much too high. You do have a PR2, so Google has not banned your site, and it was recently indexed.

For starters, bring your keyword density down to about 1.5-2%. Include that tiny content (with lower kw density) that is at the bottom of the page higher on the page. Don't try to downplay or hide anything.

Submit the site to about 10 paid link directories, including Yahoo.com. Vary the title, keywords and description with each one. Put a blog on the site and have the real estate agents regularly write short articles. Write blog posts on Active Rain with varied keyword links to the site. Read my blogs (and others on AR) for a lot of info on how to properly optimize this site. BTW, it doesn't show up right in Firefox, so you need to work on that, too.

Hope this helps!

Brian, Michael, Chris, Thomas, and Mary - I'm sorry I never thanked you for your comments - you slipped by me! I really do appreciate the comments and questions people leave. It encourages me to keep blogging.

FEB

2008

Kay, this is just the information I was looking for today. Thanks for sharing the information. I've got it bookmarked now!!

FEB

2008

Ray - glad to be of help!

FEB

2008

Good Morning Kay!

This post is wonderfull, it took me a while to read through all the comments but it was well worth it. I think I've learned a lot of good information, which hopefully I can put to good utilization.

If you get a chance please visit my site and run your analysis? I would appreciate all the constructive criticism, you have to offer, and any suggestions you care to make. http://www.columbusareahomesforsale.com

I've now Subscribed to your Blog, and will be reading them voraciously. I hope you won't mind if I print some of the pages to use as reference while trying to impliment some of these strategies.

Keep up the great work, I look forward to reading more, a lot more!

I have printed plenty of Kay's blogs and I read then re-read them. She's my SEO hero!

I can belive that! Pam, Kay is definitely ranked way up there, as one of the Best I've read on AR.

Martin and Pam - Thanks! You're making me blush!

Martin - Read your description and content out loud. It doesn't flow because you're trying too hard to cram keywords in there. Also, you're missing out on long tail keywords in your content because of this. If you write it more conversationally, you'll do better. You only need a keyword within the content once or twice. That's my quick tip of the day!

FEB

2008

Thankyou Kay, I'll get right on that change. Don't blush you deserve the compliments.

This is a great thread, Kay. I was thinking about buying another domain for my website and was wondering if the keyword rich domain would make a difference, what with all the competition of people that pay a lot of money for SEO work (that I can't afford to do). I am going to try several of these suggestions. Thank you so much!!

FEB

2008

Thanks Martin!

Angela - If you can find a keyword rich domain, go for it...they're hard to come across any more!

FEB

2008

I bought buygainesvillerealestate.com and gainesvillehomesforsale.info, but I haven't had much luck as of yet. The first website I mentioned is in development, though, and is being manipulated to have really solid SEO work. Hopefully it turns out to be an okay investment (through homes.com). I really want to get on the front page! I did go ahead and set up a Word Press blog though.

FEB

2008

Angela - good luck with it! What are you doing with the second domain name?

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