Real Estate SEO - What Color Is Your Hat?

Excellent approach @John, Focused content gets exactly the right lead in exactly the right mindset to do business with you. Don't overlook video for properties, street names and sometimes even community level names. A simple video with every available space for text filled in. Title should equal your target search term, the same term and a variation go in the description and don't forget the tags. This alone, or this with a link or two from other websites back to the video URL are often enough to produce a video thumbnail in organic Google results. More competitive terms require more links to the video. It may take some practice to get it right but there's nothing like a video on organic search results to get the right traffic.

@Ginny, the tactics and methods matter much less than the marketing strategies put into place once any visibility is accomplished. Maybe Google insists on handing over the lion's share of traffic to a few big box sites but nobody can beat the local agent for their own personality and value. Google is making a mistake by hiding most local agents on page 2 or lower of search. 

@Joan There really are no hats at all. It used to be that some were considered "white hat" and some were the "black hat" SEOs. Now Google has all but decided that people shouldn't do SEO at all. As if their results were perfect. You can count me among those who disagree with Google about that.

@Andrew, a quick review of links to your website illustrates my point perfectly. There are plenty of links that are in place where it is obvious that the only reason they exist is to increase search results placement. There is plenty of OK and good links too but nearly all of them are the result of an arranged and prescribed targeting of opportunities for a link first and foremost. 

Let's be honest. Why would someone on a skin care website suddenly decide to link to a real estate website in another state. Why would anyone want to visit a "directory" website that looks like it was constructed in 1999 and left to this day with nothing but a wall of links? 

I'm not saying don't create links. I'm saying don't pretend it's white hat just because it doesn't run to the outer limits of violating Google's TOS. Google wants links created in one circumstance only- when someone creates something so compelling that a blogger or webmaster finds it so remarkable that they want to link to it out of admiration and response to the awesomeness of the content they saw.

Does that sound like anyone's real estate website? Usually not.

In Google's eyes, these are not the links they want created. They don't want links from blogs created to link back to a website. They don't want links arranged with other real estate website owners- paid or not. They don't want links from "real estate directories" or "business directories." They don't want links from "related businesses" websites- all of them equally uninteresting to the average visitor. While all these links are unlikely to ever get you penalized and may help your ranking over time unless another algorithm dismisses them entirely, they're not "white hat SEO." Google has closed the doors on that definition to un-manufactured popularity, PR campaigns and big brand recognition. Hence the appearance of Zillow and Trulia everywhere.

As to what real estate agents are doing to rank in Google, including the links created here on Active Rain, in a defined sense, it's all black hat. It's not black hat because it's dangerous or illegal but because black hat is very loosely defined, actually undefined, and Google says that this activity, while claimed to be "white hat" is not at all.

@Nina Charlotte is a great example. I know there are plenty of great local agents in Charlotte, NC. Lots of hard working agents who do everything they can every day to get their message out to market and get business. Since 90% of homebuyers start online, you would think that all the agents in Charlotte would like to be visible as quickly as possible when people start looking for homes there.

The sad truth is that almost none of the local agents are visible early on. Zillow, Trulia, etc. and brand name websites that may or may not have a local office that deserves to get the business and provides the best service to buyers- they appear first in Google because no one has leverage SEO to meet the challenge. Charlotte is a big market and big markets default to the aggregators unless someone challenges them with a fight. (SEO)

Some people feel that the aggregators should be first in these kind of searches. I obviously disagree. 

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I just thought I'd point that out. :-)

@Michael, Remember what Bilbo used to say: "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." 

We are both long gone into "unauthorized" territory, Mr. George. I have seen the links to your website and you have probably seen the links to mine and Google considers all of them, according to their present guidelines on Webmaster tools, as manipulative, and indeed they are. We are in the business of helping our clients to be more visible to their clients. Google is in the business of optimizing their product in a way they see fit for their bottom line.

 One day, though I don't think it's a day that's anywhere near today, Google could turn off page rank altogether but then how would they make the behemoth they have built work? I believe you have an education in information systems so we both know how databases work. Google made a commitment in 2002 or so to use links as the basis for their sorting criteria. All of their stored procedures and indexes, etc. are built on this core concept. With over 1 trillion webpages depending on this construct, to simply unplug it would be the undoing of Google as we know it. Therefore, they are forced to tweak and tune their stored procedures to eliminate the worst of the spammers and they do a pretty good job of it. You and I are a long way from those folks who crank up SENuke and other tools on a daily basis. We all feel the effects of their dealing with those mass production spammers – when the tide comes in all ships rise.

I would love to see Google turn off links and you probably would too. We are both pretty competent writers and good writers would be the winners in such a scenario. We could both probably make a lot more money a lot faster by superior content writing alone but the unfortunate truth in business is that you have to do what works. In real estate, linking works. It's why Zillow (45.7 million links) and Trulia (7.7 million links) are ahead in the real estate SERPs game. Even with all the algorithms that attenuate the effectiveness of links, they still provide the most of force, so we have to build them in a way that is safe as possible. Rare indeed is the real estate agent that creates content so compelling that others naturally, in Google's "Kum Ba Ya" fashion want to link to it.

Michael, I think we're pretty close in agreement here. Low quality links like the ones typically used in negative SEO are probably mostly automatically dismissed by G. Most blog comments are nofollow as well so they typically don't do anything either way. Whatever may get through for anchor text overoptimization is easily outed in a disavowal but usually, it seems not to really do anything although some claim it does. I've never had time to bark up that tree enough to even form an opinion.

I haven't seen any authorship influence one way or another yet. The #1 position for our own industry top searched keyword, real estate SEO, is swapped nearly every day between Kevin Harper who has quite the content silo thing going and controlled links mostly from client sites, and realestateseopros.net who rely almost entirely on a controlled high PR network. Their (the latter) clients fare pretty well too from what I've looked at.

After all, it's a database not a brain and we're all small fish here. Just the same, I'd love to see a more content based algorithm but that has its perils for a search engine too, doesn't it? Validation is a tough challenge. Just the other day, a royal heir to the throne was born and a crier made an announcement that was widely reported by major news organizations as being procured by an "official crier." This embarrassment sailed right by every safeguard against false content and wasn't corrected until days later. We can't expect computers, even the smart ones over at Google, to do better at judging content without some kind of voting system, so the more they turn off the more they put at risk the quality of their search results. I don't think Google makes that much of a fuss over the kind of links that you and I build even though they are in theory outside of what is officially sanctioned as is most of what is here on active rain in almost every other blog. They are really after the big time black hat spammers and I think they are doing a pretty good job of it lately.