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ActiveRain SEO Upgrades and Downtime

By
Real Estate Technology with ActiveRain

SEOWe've been working hard behind the scenes to improve the SEO on ActiveRain. SEO is a funny little monster. Our friends at Google are never shy about keeping the target moving and in our effort to continue to hit the mark, we've been dedicating a lot of resources toward making site improvements with the sole objective being to get ActiveRain member content ranking better.

To that objective, we will have some scheduled downtime to push out an update to the site. Our downtime will begin at 10pm Pacific time on Wednesday, May 9th and last for approximately an hour.

What will be changing? Glad you asked............

Blog post snippets instead of ten full posts:

In our continuing effort to please the Google monster, we have made some changes to the way your main blog page displays content. In the past, if you were go to your main blog page on ActiveRain (located at activerain.com/blogs/(username).......mine is located at http://activerain.com/blogs/arbob because arbob is my user name) you would see the ten most recent posts and be able to scroll down and read every post in its entirety. After today, your most recent post will show as a full post, but the remaining 9 posts in your blog will only show as snippets.

Why? Because I said so..........haha, ok not really. The why has a few reasons. The first one is that showing the full post on your blog page means that the content is potentially being indexed on the same domain in two different locations. And continues to show on ActiveRain in two locations. It gets indexed on the direct URL, but also on the main blog URL. Now, your direct URL will be the main place that search engines will index the content. We're removing the chance that Google will see the content in two locations and potentially penalized us and you.

The second reason is this will allow your main blog page to load much faster. Google likes faster and has been using it as a variable in their algorithm since early 2010. It will also allow those main blog pages to load faster for any users accessing your content via that route. Granted, most of the traffic you get from Google is landing on direct pages, but this change will help load times across the entire site.

The third reason is this will limit the number of links that show on your main blog page. If one link is good, then 100 must be great, right? Well, not exactly. The more links you have on a page, the less benefit each additional link will provide.

Character Counter When Creating Blog Titles:

There is a best practice in creating page titles that suggests keeping your page title to 70 characters or less. To this end, we have installed a character counter when you create the title of your blog post. On ActiveRain, the title of your blog post becomes the page title of the URL at which your blog lives. The page title is also the clickable component of a Google search result. It's your main 'ad copy' so to speak in the search engine results. Google will show the first 70 characters of the title. So it's important that your page title relates what your post is about in the first 70 characters.

It's also important that you get your keywords closer to the front of the page title as opposed to later in the page title. We'll have a little ? mark that explains some best practices next to the area where you enter your title. Take a second to click and read it. Once you go over 70 characters we'll try to convince you to limit it to 70. Can you make it longer? Yes. Should you? In some cases maybe (like if the post is members only and you know it's not going to show in search results).....but generally you'll want to limit the title to 70 characters.

Channel Page Cleanup:

When we first launched channels, we allowed members to create topics under each channel. Since it's release, ActiveRain members have created over 600,000 topic pages. It's become unruly and from an SEO perspective it's just not adding any value to the site. In fact, it may be sending negative signals to the search engines. So we have taken a more limited approach in selecting topics when you place your blog posts in a channel. You will now see that any time you go to place your blog post in a channel, the topics will be defined. This is an effort to eliminate a massive number of links that were sending poor signals to the search engines and also attempt to make the channel pages more relevant for a predetermined number of topics. We'll be keeping a close eye on how this new design impacts traffic and most likely making adjustments to the topics which you can select when creating posts.

Stay tuned, more updates coming in two weeks!

~Bob

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Comments (78)

Debbie Gartner
The Flooring Girl - White Plains, NY
The Flooring Girl & Blog Stylist -Dynamo Marketers

These are great changes Bob.  I'm glad you guys are so on top of things and optimizing the SEO.  That's a win win for all of us.  Thx.

May 09, 2012 07:53 PM
Toni Weidman
Sailwinds Realty - Trinity, FL
20+ Years Selling Homes in New Port Richey, FL

Bob - this all sounds great but what happens with all our old blogs as far as the channels go? Are they going to be distributed by some sort of magical formula?

May 09, 2012 10:03 PM
Lisa Von Domek
Lisa Von Domek Team - Dallas, TX
....Experience Isn't Expensive.... It's Priceless!

Thank you AR....so much to keep up with, thank goodness that you are always working on new issues!

May 09, 2012 10:04 PM
Al Raymondi
Ocean View Realty Group in Ormond By The Sea Florida - Ormond Beach, FL
Ormond By The Sea Florida - Home and Condo Sales

Thanks ActiveRain, the changes look good this morning.  Keep the good stuff coming.

May 09, 2012 10:26 PM
Carol Fox
Allen Tate Company 704-905-3935 - Matthews, NC
Helping You Discover Charlotte's Best Small Towns

Bob,

The channel change with limited topics is going to ruin the organization of my outside blog.  I developed a set of categories for each of the localities that I blog about and used this set of categories to organize the posts.  I've been using my outside blog as an online relocation package and could direct leads to choose categories such as lifestyle, homes for sale, neighborhoods to find the information that they want.  The new set of topics just isn't a good way to organize the posts.

Do you have any suggestions?

Carol

May 09, 2012 10:47 PM
Karen Anne Stone
New Home Hunters of Fort Worth and Tarrant County - Fort Worth, TX
Fort Worth Real Estate

Bob... I sure wish I had seen this post before I woke up this morning at 6:30am, (Thursday), saw the changes, was surprised by them, and then made two comments on the AR Facebook page.  It is so fun making comments without the benefit of having full knowledge of what is going on.  Duh !

I described what I saw... and said it looked like a full first post, and then the following posts were all presented like it was a "blogroll" of sorts.  I thought it was a mistake... but no, it was these "Snippets" as you are calling them.

Presenting our posts in this way... the latest post fully, and the next nine as "snippets," may tickle the Google SEO monster in just the right place, (hmmm... tickling Google, huh ?  Should be be calling that the "G" spot ?)

It may make Google happier, but, in my opinion, it makes scanning a person's "body of posts" much more superficial, and much more time consuming when one is looking for a particular post, or a picture by which one could recognize that post.  Am I making any sense, here?

Also... once again, it would have been nice to have this post... explaining what to expect... come to us in an email, rather than simply on your blog.  Just a suggestion.  Perhaps it was in the Daily Drop, and I may have missed it.  I dunno.

May 09, 2012 11:37 PM
Holly Weatherwax
Associate Broker, Momentum Realty - Reston, VA
A Great Real Estate Experience

Thanks for the explanation. The changes caught me off guard, so I am glad for the explanation. 

Not sure the channels are working the right way yet. There was nothing in them that had anything to do with my post today (about a short sale, so nothing wacky). I will look forward to seeing the evolution.

May 10, 2012 04:51 AM
Rob Arnold
Sand Dollar Realty Group, Inc. - Altamonte Springs, FL
Metro Orlando Full Service - Investor Friendly & F

Thank you for the updates and continually working to improve the SEO rankings.  Always a moving target.

May 10, 2012 06:08 AM
Bob Stewart
ActiveRain - Seattle, WA
ActiveRain Ambassador

Toni Weidman,

Regarding old posts that were showing up in the channels pages. They are no longer showing up if they were not in one of the categories that was designated to stay. That means they are no longer showing up in the 'channels' area of ActiveRain. The posts themselves still live in your blog and nothing 'bad' happened to them. They just are not accessible through the channels area any longer. The reality is, because the channels were so unruly and there were over 600,000 topics inside the channel pages, they were getting almost no traffic through channels. This new effort is aimed at making the topics we have relevant to the degree they may begin to return results in the search engines. As I said in the blog post, it's probable that we will continue to make adjustments to the channels with the primary goal being to get as much traffic to our members content as possible.

Jill Sackler,

Regarding your question: "if I post something here on AR and then again on an online newspaper, do I get penalized by Google for duplicate content?"

This is one where Google is really moving the target (or has been for the last few months). My initial reaction would be, don't do it. There is the potential to get penalized for duplicate content and some of the recent (we're talking over the last year) algorithm changes seem to be moving in that direction. One of the main reasons we did the 'snippet' strategy was to stop showing Google duplicate content on the same domain (ActiveRain). That being said, our outside blogs use what Google used to tell us was the best strategy, the content is in two places, on different domains, so one version of the content links back to the other version of the content telling Google where the original source of the content is located. So article B has a link back to Article A saying 'originally posted on Bob's website' where the link is to the exact URL of Article A. Some SEO experts believe Google would prefer not to see this same piece of content across multiple domains.......but we still have many outside blogs utilizing this strategy and the domains for the outside blogs are ranking well. Generally this is because the outside blogs are very focused on a particular subject and there is no better domain online for queries related to that focus.

All of that to say......it's a little bit unknown. I would encourage you to possibly try to change up the article a little bit. Or even use a snippet of the article and then link from the online newspaper back to the full post on your blog.

Karen Anne,

You are making perfect sense. It will certainly take a bit of getting used to, and yes, you will no longer be able to scan someone's blog and get a good sense of the depth of their content. The alternative good news is that someone's blog that has a ton of images will actually load rather quickly, giving you a chance to be looking at their snippets much quicker, where before you were waiting for images to load. Probably not a good answer, but in many ways we are beholden to the Google beast and sometimes we have to make compromises.

I will take responsibility for not sending this out via email. As I mentioned to Donna above earlier, my goal for our next release is to have the post out 24 hours in advance and to include it in the daily drop the morning of the downtime.

Carol Fox,

This will be fixed in our next release. It was an oversight on my part as I mapped out the project for our development team. On May 23rd that functionality will return so that you can utilize the topics for the organization of your outside blog. I just had a meeting with the development team on the scope of fixing that and it will be included for next release. I apologize for the inconvenience for the next 13 days.

May 10, 2012 07:22 AM
Bob Stewart
ActiveRain - Seattle, WA
ActiveRain Ambassador

Jill Sackler,

Or the other way to do it would be to just include a snippet of the content on your blog and then link back to the full article on the online newspaper (I didn't want you to think I was trying to suggest one option was better than the other). Really it comes down to, at the end of the day, where would you like the traffic to end up.

If the online newspaper you are writing for doesn't want you using snippets, then you may need to determine where is the content more valuable and which location would you rather a person find the content. It could be that you decide to not post the article in your blog (or just do the snippet in your blog) if that online newspaper is getting you good traffic and recognition based on it's target audience.

For instance, if it was a small local online newspaper in your area, and you know it's being read by people around you that will end up doing business with you and it's getting you great visibility, certainly don't stop posting there.

May 10, 2012 07:26 AM
Carol Fox
Allen Tate Company 704-905-3935 - Matthews, NC
Helping You Discover Charlotte's Best Small Towns

Thanks for the clarification on outside blog topics, Bob.

May 10, 2012 10:16 PM
Karen Hawkins, MBA - Langley & Surrey, BC
Royal Pro Real Estate Network - Langley, BC

Wow, Bob, two week development cycles...sounds pretty 'agile' to me! :-)  Thanks for keeping us current on the Google-juice front! :-)

May 11, 2012 09:38 AM
Carolyn Roland- In Delaware and S. Chester County PA
Independent architectural histor'n - Wilmington, DE
Carolyn Roland, GRI, CRS

If I had not been scrolling down old blog posts I would never have known about the changes. Now I have to check them out.

May 12, 2012 05:47 AM
John Novak
Keller Williams Realty The Marketplace - Las Vegas, NV
Henderson, Las Vegas and Summerlin Real Estate

Hi Bob - Is it still good practice to repeat our title in the first line of the body of the post? If posts are only showing as snippets, it seems like it makes better sense to write really strong keyword openings instead of restating the title.

May 12, 2012 12:40 PM
Kim & Kristine Halverson
Sotheby's & Knipe ERA - Bend, OR
Sisters, Realtors

Thanks for keeping up with SEO!  Kristine

May 12, 2012 02:39 PM
Donna Foerster
HomeSmart Realty Group - Parker, CO
Metro Denver Real Estate Assistant

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my concern, Bob.  I will just assume that every other Wednesday night there will be downtime.  I can plan for that!

May 13, 2012 05:33 AM
Sheila Newton Team Anderson & Greenville SC
Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices - C. Dan Joyner - Anderson, SC
Selling the Upstate since 1989

hmmmm .... lots to think about... i generally duplicate my blog here on my website, maybe i need to change that!

May 15, 2012 01:37 PM
Georgie Hunter R(S) 58089
Hawai'i Life Real Estate Brokers - Haiku, HI
Maui Real Estate sales and lifestyle info

Whew, thanks for an explanation of what's happening. Would it be possible to include a method to expand the snippet view for ourselves into the full view, for when it's useful?  I like to copy and paste things from post to post and it's really easy when it's all laid out in full view.  Just sayin...

On the other hand, I appreciate all the changes which are meant to maximize our SEO and will keep it in mind that every other Wednesday night I can do something else besides last minute blogging.

May 15, 2012 01:40 PM
Mark Delgado
houses for rent, Solano County & Glen Cove - Benicia, CA
Benicia and Vallejo, Property Management, rental h
All I can say is "thank you" for continuing to look out for us by making these types of tweaks to help our SEO.
May 23, 2012 01:56 PM
Andrew Mooers | 207.532.6573
MOOERS REALTY - Houlton, ME
Northern Maine Real Estate-Aroostook County Broker

High quality content... somethings never change. Like where is a good place to eat? A worthwhile online dining experience. Bon appetit. Don't waste your busy buyer's, seller's time and your own either. Who in the audience can use what I am hunt and pecking? If not many, adjust, redirect your marketing media streams. To hit targets. Then study the further adjustments of the SE to have more pick up your signal.

Jan 10, 2014 12:37 AM