Home : Blogs : Bob Carney Licensed MD/PA Real Estate Agent : Bob's Blog about Frederick MD Real Estate

SEO Gurus where are YOU?

Ting I have a quick question. I am looking to drop my Advance Access website. It now has a PR of 3. See it at gotbob4homes.com. I really don't get much traffic but have built it up from page 50 on Google for my key words of "Frederick MD Real Estate" to page 1 see it here

Will I be penalized if I move it to say Point2Agent or make a new CMS website on my bluehost server?

Maybe if I mention Brad Carroll or Karen George their Google alert will go off. They have great insight to the whole SEO issue.

Has anyone done this before and how was your results? I appreciate your input.

Posted by Bob Carney Licensed MD/PA Real Estate Agent on 12/19/2007 05:39 PM

Comments (35)

seo

35 Comments on SEO Gurus where are YOU?

DEC

2007

Parked to learn...

I actually have an AA site I'm thinking of dumping and would like to know what the queso grandes think of that question too!

I have no idea, but Hi! I was here for you anyway.

(Good plan with the Google Alerts.)

Bob - I was going to tell you Missy just asked Karen George a similar question - parked to learn too ( plus through in Karen's name - maybe she'll be up to answering) :-)

Bob, this is your 100th post, did you notice? Congratulations!!!

Cyndee, I knew this post was coming, Bob and I have been talking about it.

I'd suggest making sure you target the same key phrase and implement a 301 redirect to your new site. 301 or permanent redirects will let Googlebot know that you've permanently moved the site and should move your PR along with it. Read more about 301 redirects here.

Bob - I am starting this with the disclaimer that I am NOT a SEO expert, but I do know quite a bit. If you are not getting a lot of traffic, then I don't think that you have a lot to lose. As long as you keep the same URL, I believe that your Google Pagerank should be safe (I wouldn't worry about the PageRank too much). Your back links should hold too. You could use a 301 Redirect, but I would just build the new site and drop AA when you are ready to make the switch.

I have never changed hosts with a URL before, but I have completely rewritten websites and replaced old one. From what I understand the Point 2 websites actually do a great job, but I understand you wanting to upgrade too. Never mind, I see you are with AA. If I were you, I would ask Real Estate Webmasters. They are running a special on template websites right now and they will know the answers. Morgan and his team at REW build sweet real estate websites and they typically rank very good in Google.

There in all likely hood will a drop off for a while. Most will be related to the google algorithms (who knows what they are) The biggest thing is how is the conversion rate of visitors. I am certainly no guru, But it better to close 1 transaction from 10 visitors than no transactions from 1,000 visit. Hope this is a part of your puzzle.

Visit my site www.RealEstateWorkHorse.com

Tell me what you think

Bonner

My support team...looks like we will get our answers. :O)

Cyndee, Missy was talking behind your back.

Rafiq, you have gained a new subscriber. Your blog has a lot of good information thanks. I will implement the 301 when I move. Thank you for stopping by

Ryan, Its not the traffic that I am worried about it's truly the page position. First page is almost everything in searches. You are saying the same thing about the 301 Direct as Rafiq (you are more of an expert than you know)

Bonner, Conversation rate is a whole new post... :) and you are absolutely right about that. I rather have quality than quantity any day. Nice site, I have an agent in my office that specializes in Horse farms and farmettes.

Missy, I have a 100 again...I never know what number to follow the one on my stats page or the one on the subscriber list. Thank you. :)

Bob,

The real key is are you keeping the current domain name or getting a new one.

PR is tied to domain not to who/where you are hosting

If you are moving to a new domain name THEN you would do what Bob suggested and implement a 301 Redirect

Loren

Bob - Sorry, I missed that you have a #1 City real estate SERP. If it is not your homepage, you can set up a 301 Redirect for just the ranking page URL too. (i.e. http://gotbob4homes.com/#1ranking.html to http://GotBob4Homes.com/newpage.html)

Also regarding 301 Redirects, they can be a real pain. I just set them up on my websites to redirect to non-www's (i.e. http://www.website.com to http://website.com )

Loren, Gotbob4homes.com is staying...it's the website that I am debating the change.

Ryan, Thanks for stopping back...I am going to dig into the 301 direct. It is my homepage. AA does the www. redirects automatically. I will have to inject a script or something on the new website.

Bob - Oh, I see that AA does redirect to www's. The type of 301 redirect that you need will depend on the type of servers that your new host uses, so don't spend any time on it until you know what your plan for a new website is.

Hmmm.... I wouldn't mess too much with the homepage if it is already getting high ratings and if you start a new website with a new URL, Google will put you in their sandbox. Good luck with this one. If you want to make big changes to your website, you might have to roll the dice. My gut tells me that if you improved the overall design and structure of your website, then better things will happen. You are going to have a tough time taking that #2 spot from Lenn. She is one tough cookie.

I can always think big! (Lenn knows I want that spot, but she's not holding off)

Bob - reading all this I have a question - have you hear people doing re-directs and losing their Page Rank or links - How do you prevent this? i understand once you lose it - it's now recoverable - that's what's always made me feel nervous. Interesting thread - and hey, tell Missy to quit talking behind my back :-) that rascal!!

Bob,

I've been happy with Myers Internet that has website services for agents and lenders. Check them out. They provide pretty simple site management features, SEO and a host of other services. Very good customer service, too.

DEC

2007

Hi Bob: I wish I knew what to tell you. I did see either in a post or a comment that some super whiz guy has just gone over to Point2 and taken control. From the comments that were made, most folks thought very well of him. I will try and send you a link on it. Take care...

Cyndee, This is going to take me some more time to dig. I think you will get a lot of information on Rafiq's website. I believe that if you maintain the same domain. (gotbob4homes.com) That all of your backlinks will still be there to give you creditability and help maintain your PR. All of your anchorwords might have a hiccup for a while but I believe it will all recover quicker that starting over. Over at the real estate lab they are talking about changing the domain and the ramifications

Esko, Its not that I am not happy with Advance Access. I am looking to reduce my cost where possible. I have webspace available and I have a free account over at Point2Agent. With the low traffic (due to the market) I don't feel the expense is justifiable. I am getting tons of traffic on my blog and have the ability to tie everything that the static site has to offer on to it.

Karen, Yes, I have read them on Jay's Blog, if that where you are talking about...he is very up to date on the repositioning of Point2Agent.

DEC

2007

Bob, do you think I got my answer ?

I'm like you want to keep the old domain but get rid of my number 1 site, I'm confused is a 301 in order and I can't see number 1 letting me redirect it or do I do this myself ?

DEC

2007

Hmmmm Bob, we are in exactly the same postion. I have an Advanced Access site that I am about to dump. New site should be up and running in about 2 weeks, design work is just about done (It's gorgeous) just have to start moving info over and figure out what info is going and where it is going.

I have learned a few things about this. First of all the domain is critical, the older it is the better. Mine is about 7 years old and has great page #1 rankings even though the site totally sucks. While it is certainly not the domain I would choose now, it has the benefit of 7 years of marketing and driving traffic to it as well as the rankings, backlinks and directory positioning, it is also on most of my static advertising and marketing pieces. As somebody else stated, the backlinks move with you, so will the directory listings. The older domain and the backlinks are critical and will help you hold your pagerank while you continue to build the new site and the pages get indexed. Google has been getting slower and slower with the page rank upgrades so I wouldn't worry about that. They just rolled through recently, it will probably be awhile before they roll through again. Mine just dropped on AA, the site is so bad, it can only get better when I move so that is not a major consideration for me, at this time.

The page rank moves with you. I have heard that 301 redirects are not good, but I am technologically bereft when it comes to this stuff, so I have somebody doing it for me. I would never tackle moving a page one site myself.

My only regret is that I didn't dump the AA site sooner. What a useless piece of crud! They used to be fabulous, since Dominion bought them and the problems with Yahoo it went straight downhill. I worked my butt off to get that site producing, it never did anywhere near what my LBREH blog & AR did in short order.

Just an FYI I hope you are not setting up another traditional web site to replace it with. Set up a blog with a static front page and comments removed (or not). Blog pages used in the same manner as custom pages on the web site. Bam - you have a web site with the SEO capabilities of a blog and you just can't beat that.

Good luck with moving the site.

Merry Christmas Bob!

DEC

2007

LOL...Thanks Laurie... The static page blog is exactly what I was thinking!!! Good luck with your move. I am still a while away from my move. Belated Merry Christmas back-acha!

Missy, I think soo.. :)

DEC

2007

;-)

hi Bob, I may be a little late to the party, but I thought I would chime in. As a couple people said, a 301 redirect is the way to go. You can see what pages google really cares about by doing a site: on your domain. To do this, simply go to google and type "site:www.yourdomainname.com" (without quotes) in the search box. It will then tell you all the pages google has indexed. Make sure you create a 301 document that includes all of these pages. This means that if your old buyers page is www.gotbob4homes.com/buyers.asp and your new buyers page is www.gotbob4homes.com/homebuyers.php then you need to make sure you tell google that the old buyers page has been replaced with the new buyers page. Think of a 301 as a change of address form you get at the post office. And while your domain name will not change (which is a good thing), your specific page names probably will. We have moved many sites in the past and never have a problem as long as the 301 is in place. You may "dance" for a couple of weeks but you should maintain your rankings.

Setting up a htaccess file (301 document) can get a little tricky if you are doing stuff like automaticlly redirecting pages but it's pretty simple for just 301 stuff. Here is the format...

Open notepad and paste in the following line for each page

redirect 301 /old_buyers_page.htm http://www.gotbob4homes.com/new_buyers.htm

While you are in there, go ahead and paste another line of code for a custom error page. This will make it so if someone goes to a page that doesn't exist on your site, they will get a friendly page instead of a 404 error page.

ErrorDocument 404 /404.html

Be sure you actually create a page named 404.html (or whatever you want to call it)

After you have created this notepad file, click save as and name it ".htaccess" (be sure you set the file type as "all files"

Then FTP into your site and upload your htaccess file. You can test it by trying to go to an old page. It should just redirect you to the new page.

One more thing to note, this information is assuming your bluehost sever is an apache server and you have FTP access.

I hope this helps!

Might as well have written that in chinese Brad. My eyes just crossed.

Luckily I understand Brad! I wondered about the individual pages before you explained this. If you had backlinks to pages that are moving will they be fine with redirects?

How long does the 301 redirect then need to stay in place?

Brad, that was awesome...Thank you. (glad to see you still breathing...seems you are very busy..which is good)

Laurie, You need to put on "Brad Googles" to read it.

Josette, Maybe he'll be back. ;)

DEC

2007

It doesn't matter who hosts it as long as you are keeping the everything else the same (domain name, content, etc...). Hopefully it is you that owns the domain name and not AA.

My PR has been dropping all this year. I was at 4 and now at 2. It seems that some reciprocal links hurt me. Or maybe I can blame it on Activerain since it has dropped since I starting blogging here!?

Happy New Year!

PR hit everyone this year Google made some changes. Link farms=bad. Mine has been a consistent 3. Theres really nothing on the static site that my blog doesn't or couldn't have. Now we are in the holidays I am down to about 100 hits a day on it while the static site is minimal... No big loss if it does drop during the move, but it would be nice that all the work to rank it was still there.

Happy New Year

DEC

2007

Josette: Keep your 301s in place until you see all the search engines have updated their information. To be safe, I like to leave them for about 30 days.

JAN

2008

Man am I glad to find this post. I have a similiar but different questions I've been bouncing around in my head. I'm thinking of using a different domain than I've been using the past two years. Will I totally screw myself on Google or is there a way to retain some credibility when I change to a new domain?

Ryan, there is a post by someone in this group that is aging her domain currently and has it redirected via a 301 to her mature site. You might check that out. I don't like to post links in someone else's blog :)

Brad, thanks! How about the above situation where we are aging domain names. Can they stay in place for long periods of time without penalty? I haven't had any experience with these yet so I'm trying to see just how they are used.

Interesting discussion you have going, Bob! Happy new year...

Leave a response…

Name:

Email:
(optional)

Comment:

What does the graphic say?