Home : Blogs : <i>Mike Stankewich, MBA, e-PRO - ZipRealty, Inc.</i> : Mike's Huntington Beach, CA Real Estate Blog

Tips for Your Self Promotion

Are you listed on DMOZ.org, the Open Directory Project. If not you are missing an opportunity and there is no cost nor a link back requirement.

For information on DMOZ click here. To see what a directory looks like click here.

To submit your website URL, your title, and description click on "Suggest URL" on the top of the webpage for the Real Estate catagory in your City or town. Here is the example for Huntington Beach. As you can see there are 77 real estate agents listed for this city.

To get to the Real Estate catagory for your city, use the DMOZ directory. For example REGIONAL > US > CALIFORNIA > LOCALITIES > H > HUNTINGTON BEACH > REAL ESTATE.

The DMOZ real estate directory for Huntington Beach appears on Google, Yahoo, and MSN searches for "Huntington Beach Real Estate" It probably does for your city or town as well. For Google they are #9 for this search at the time this was written.

A note of caution, the directory is maintained by a group of volunteer editors. You can only have a listing in one city, so choose your primary one. If you submit more than one, they consider it spam, and you will be deleted from participating in the directory. Also note that you listing will not appear automatically. It must be reviewed by an editor first and this usually takes several weeks. It can be modified in the future, but again it takes several weeks for the changes to be made. You can only submit one URL, so if you have more than one website only submit one or they will consider it spam.

NOW FOR THE GOOD PART. This will get you exposure on the GOOGLE DIRECTORY and the ALEXA DIRECTORY.

Google maintains their directory from the actual data on DMOZ.

There is also a directory maintained by Alexa.com, an Amazon company. They evaluate website traffic statistics. The directory entries are taken from the DMOZ lists and then sorted by popularity (ie. traffic and page use).

To get to the real estate section for your city you follow the same route that you did on DMOZ. Here is the example page for Huntington Beach.

My website appears as the most popular website for real estate in Huntington Beach out of the 77 sites listed.

Since most of us are into internet marketing, I thought these two tips should help you.

Mike Stankewich, Realtor, Huntington Beach, Orange County, California

ZipRealty, Inc.

Huntington Beach Real Estate

Your Huntington Harbour, SeaCliff, and Seabridge Real Estate Expert in Huntington Beach

Surf City USA

Posted by <i>Mike Stankewich, MBA, e-PRO - ZipRealty, Inc.</i> on 05/12/2007 10:52 AM

Comments (22)

dmoz, listing, marketing, alexa, internet, real estate, huntington beach, california, orange county

22 Comments on Tips for Your Self Promotion

MAY

2007

Thanks for the info. I am checking it out now!

Thanks Mike. I'll check it out. Thank you also, or the Terms of Use tip! It's tough to decide on only one city when you know you work several. Especially in this area, where every city is only 2-5 miles wide.

Thanks for the tip. I need to get registered. Goin there now.

Lisa,

I know the one city restriction is limiting, since I work several cities as well. However those are the rules. It is the same here on AR. You might be able to add your other cities in the description, like some do on their AR profiles.

I forgot to mention that you can only submit one URL. If you have more than one website, you need to select the one you want to promote. More than one URL submission is considered spam by them as well and would result in you being barred from the site.

Mike,

I listed a site three some months ago on DMOZ and haven't heard back from them yet. I understand it's a good one, but I'm not so sure any more. There are others who are saying the same. Any insight why it's taking so long?

Mike,

You are so right about it taking a while. I submitted last fall and then the DMOZ directory had some kind of issue and it was 4 months before they fixed it and I got my site listed. Definitely worth it though you get links to your site from a bunch of other directories that take information from DMOZ.

Rita

Esko,

Since sites are added by volunteer editors who work on it on a part time basis, the process can be slow. Sometimes an editor leaves and it takes quite a while until someone volunteers to cover a city or area on the site.

I forgot to mention that Google's Directory obtains its information directly from DMOZ. So if you want Google exposure it is worth doing.

Thanks Mike Checking it out now.

I did that last week and I am anxiously waiting for an acceptance. This is another reason why Active Rain is awesome.

Thanks for sharing Mike! This is a great tip for professionals and consumers.

Mike, I submitted my site several weeks ago and haven't heard anything. Should I just wait or resubmit?

If you say, wait should I then wait to have their URL on my web site.

Thanks for the post. This is good information.

Missy,

I submitted my site one and had to modify it twice, once for a URL change and once because I changed brokerages. My experience was that it took about 3 to 4 weeks each time.

I would not recomment resubmission until afer a month or they may consider it spam. Resubmissions should have the exact same title, description and URL as the origional submission.

You could send a follow-up email to webmaster@dmoz.org however their reply to emails is also slow.

You do not have to link back to them, unless you want to. I do not because I do not want to show my prospects a long list of Realtors in my area.

MAY

2007

"You can only have a listing in one city, so choose your primary one. Unfortunately the RE categories of DMOZ got spammed to death early in the projects life, and there are now specific guidelines on listing these sites. That information is publicly available at http://dmoz.org/guidelines/regional/realestate.html , the bottom line is that an agent/agency is listed once, at the location of their office.

There are some comments that I'll expand on

"It's tough to decide on only one city when you know you work several. " Regional listings are based on location, not service area. (most RE sites are listed in Regional, only huge multinationals are elsewhere)

"If you have more than one website, you need to select the one you want to promote. " Very true, make sure it's also the site that contains the most unique information. Thats the stuff that actually decides if a site is listable or not.

"submitted my site several weeks ago and haven't heard anything." Site suggestion do not 'expire' so resuggesting the site is generally unnecessary. That said, suggesting the site a second time after sveral months will preclude any technical problems. More than twice is pointless, and can, not will, act against you - repeated suggestions to the same category overwrite each other and reset the suggestion date, which may make a difference if an editor is working in date order (many don't).

"I submitted my site one and had to modify it twice...My experience was that it took about 3 to 4 weeks each time" I'dthink that is within the mean for an update request, which are flagged internally, and processed by many editors as a priority (incorrect listings are viewed as important for directory quality)

"You could send a follow-up email to webmaster@dmoz.org however their reply to emails is also slow." No, you should not. That address, if it exists at all, would get you to AOL support staff who do not edit. You could send a message to a category editor (named on the bottom of a category or parent category) but do not expect an answer, ever.

Hope this clarifies some issues.

PS for anyone suggesting their site, please make sure it has real, not syndicated content. Some template sites are never moodified - the exact same testimonials, agent information, even agent photo with only the name and location changed appear on many sites. MLS search is not considered unique (everyone has it) and anything that is copied from another site, or is a link offsite, is also discounted as not unique. Anything that is written by the agent, details of the agent, featured listings, examples of previous property sales, local interaction (BBB, sponsor local sports, that type of stuff), and last, but not least, the actual place of business (I have no clue why people leave that off their sites)

I am not sure who Gimmster is, but it sounds like he associated with DMOZ. He has provided a lot of good advice.

Mike, well if he's not he sure know's a lot. So I guess my Number1Expert template site, ( however with tons of relevant added content) won't pass their test.

In fact all my 4 sites are templates: Number1 ( primary site for 8 years ) Point2Agent, ( MissyCaulkTEAM and Remax.com ( BuyAnnArborRealEstate) and SearchAllListingInAnnArbor.

I was under contract to have a custom site built, but after 3 months they could not get the FTP programming right. A waste of time and back to square 1.

Missy,

I think he means template sites that are stock and never modified by the agent.

My site that is listed on DMOZ is a template site from Advanced Access. I know of another agent who has her site on DMOZ who has a template site from Point2Agent.

Do not get discouraged. Since you added tons of relevant content, it will probably be accepted.

Check DMOZ for Ann Arbor and look at the sites that are on the list. If you go down to the bottom of the home pages it will usually identify the site provider. I am sure you will find a lot of template sites.

Missy,

To further verify what I said, I went to Ann Arbor on DMOZ. Under residential real estate there are 67 agents listed alphabethically ny first names. The first on the list was Alex Milshteyn. I opened his site and it is a Number1Expert template site.

By chance I scanned down the list and found you, Missy Caulk and your Number1Expert site. Check Here!

Congratuations, Missy, you are now on DMOZ.

Missy,

I am just passing some time here early on a Sunday morning, while my wife sleeps in on Mother's Day.

I checked Alexa, and they already have you listed. Check Here!

Congratuations. You have the 4th most popular real estate site in Ann Arbor.

Mike, I sure am glad you left your wife sleep in. Just got home from church and what a surprise. Thanks so much. I must not have been searching DMOZ correctly.

I really appreciate it. Have a great day !

"I think he means template sites that are stock and never modified by the agent." Yes, exactly what I mean. Many RE sites I see have one of the set of default 'about me' sections, no actual detail of the agent themselves.

Templated content is the same, it's the same on nearly every site - pick a site and google any phrase from the 'real estate tips' section, or click the local schools information section - it will 99+% of the time be an off site link to a shared database.

Yes, I'm a Regional editor at DMOZ.

As for DMOZ search, its a small, rather arcane search facility designed to locate categories, not specific sites (although it can do so). It runs on a database generated approximately weekly, and thus always lags the current listings by a few days. To use this facility to locate a site, search for the domain name and tld only, do not use the www - ie search for domainname.tld not www.domainname.tld

MAY

2007

Thanks Gimmster,

It is great that an editor of DMOZ would participate with us at ActiveRain and provide additional information to our members.

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