There's a legend that once upon a time (with apologies to the Brothers Grimm) that you could write a post here in the Rain, it would index within moments and you'd be on Page 1 of Google with a snap of the fingers!
Now maybe those magic beans really existed, or maybe they didn't. I know I often hear comments in this community that the Google Juice just isn't what it used to be. And it probably isn't, but for a host of reasons some of which may be attributable to ActiveRain and some of which have nothing to do with anything management could do.
So let's dig a bit deeper, what happened?
First of all, blogging has never been easier, at least for those agents that WANT to blog.
We've been actively involved in this community for about 10 years. When we first started, the opportunities to blog were fairly limited. You could pay someone big bucks to build a custom site (uh..nope), or you could find a place like ActiveRain that made it pretty easy. Over time, the ability to blog has gotten cheaper and more plentiful. Set up a Wordpress site (or equivalent), blog and not be side by side with your local competition. And you're also not side by side with content that dilutes the real estate message.
Attention spans have gotten shorter (or so I'm told).
Google is saying "give me 3000 words" and people are saying "give me 147 characters". The long form work makes it harder and harder to keep people engaged.
Other forms of social media draw attention away from your blog.
10 years ago, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. either didn't exist or had just gotten started. Your blog wasn't competing with them for attention.
ActiveRain is not an SEO platform.
Don't ask me to find the quote from Bob Stewart, but awhile back he dropped this nugget when someone was complaining about deterioration of SEO: "ActiveRain is a social community. Any SEO you get is just a perk". That's not a literal quote, but the gist of the comment.
ActiveRain is NOT trying to keep up with Google's latest algorithms or anything else to optimize SEO. The mission here is to keep the lights on, let agents find each other and learn, and maybe not officially, give Mr. Kinney a huge database of agents to sell Brivity and other products to.
The 800 pound gorillas.
Once upon a time, your blog wasn't competing with Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, etc. for web placement. Guess who owns the short tails? The gorillas with millions to spend on websites, advertising and everything else that comes along with running the portals. They have the consumer eyeballs and you've got an uphill battle if you want to go against their paid and organic search results. Long tails is where you can still beat them if you're willing to do the work.
Google doesn't like your content.
Google (and Bing) wants to sell ads and the best way to do that is provide solid answers for consumer questions. If your blog posts don't fit the definition of what Google and The Bots deem to be what the consumer wants, you're going to be buried so many pages back that you might as well turn your phone into a paperweight. It's key to write what the consumer wants and not what YOU want to write (assuming you're blogging for business and not just for fun).
There may be a lot more to it. I'm not a tech guru or SEO guru. I know what works for me and I blog to implement that plan and drive results. Some days I do better than others of sticking to that plan.
What I do know is if I want results, it's up to me. I have no expectation that anything significant will happen to boost this community's results with the search engines. That costs more money than management will be willing to spend.
Status quo is the name of the game, so evaluate what you want and how to get there.
Until next Tuesday, Ask An Ambassador if you need help.
Bill & Liz aka BLiz
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