A Bold Move to Connect You With More Consumers

Since July of 2013 when ActiveRain became part of the Trulia family, we've been exploring ways to help even more people find the amazing knowledge being shared every day on ActiveRain. Trulia.com has over 35 million unique visitors coming to their domain every month. ActiveRain has one of the largest storehouses of real estate knowledge anywhere on the internet. You, our members, have written well over 3 million blog posts and continue to create over 25,000 new posts every month. 

So in a bold move, we are combining the ActiveRain.com domain with the Trulia.com domain. Our own SEO experts, as well as a number of outside experts we have consulted believe that the two domains combined will be stronger than either domain standing alone.

There are some very concrete benefits to our members from this exciting move. 

Make sure to watch the video above. Kerrie and Bob give you the details, some of the highlights and mainly, the benefits from this move. We tried to think through many of the common questions we believe people will have and have answered them below.

If you have additional questions, please ask them in the comment section and we will answer every question to the best of our ability. 

 

What, exactly, is going to happen?

Pretty simple. The ActiveRain website will move from www.activerain.com over to http://activerain.com. 

Your blog posts previously lived online at a URL such as:

http://activerain.com/blogsview/1135403/how-to-get-started-on-activerain

Now, your posts will live online at a URL such as:

http://activerain.com/blogsview/1135403/how-to-get-started-on-activerain

Other than that, there won't be any other visual changes on the site. 

Is ActiveRain Still an Independent Community?

ActiveRain is going to remain as an independent community of real estate professionals that encourages open discourse, sharing ideas and growing as a community. We will continue to abide by our founding principles that can be found here

http://activerain.com/culture/weltanschauung

What happens to all of the links I currently have on the internet that link back to my blog posts, my profile on ActiveRain or my blog on ActiveRain?

You don't need to change a thing. We will set up "301 redirects" on all existing content, which means our system will know to send a person to the correct web page.

Is this going to require additional work on my end?

The only thing you will need to do is update your Google authorship (You can't do this until the morning of Wednesday April 9th).  Once the final domain migration has been made, late on Tuesday night, we will include a link here of how to update your Google Authorship. Until that link is here, there is nothing you can do.....

Will my blog look different?

There won’t be any noticeable change to your blog with this change. The only differences will be 1) the additional text in the link to your blog (activerain.trulia.com/blogs…) and 2) and the legal disclaimer at the bottom of each page.

Is the home page still going to be www.activerain.com?

Technically, the home page will be http://activerain.com. If a person types www.activerain.com into their browser they will be redirected to http://activerain.com without even noticing.

Is this going to help or hurt my SEO?

Our SEO experts and consultants believe it will help, but it is all up to the search engines, so no one can predict the extent or when we will start to see the effects. We will be monitoring it closely. There might be some initial turbulence as Google re-indexes the site and figures out the new structure. This is normal when a website makes a change like this.

What does Trulia get out of this?

Our SEO experts and consultants believe it will create one domain with even more authority than the two separate domains on their own. 

Trulia also believes the content being created by the members of ActiveRain provides significant value to the consumer audience which Trulia has amassed. Remember, Trulia is focused on providing excellent tools and services to help home buyers and sellers through the process of buying and selling real estate. 

Will all of the links in my blogs remain 'follow' links now? 

Yes! Links out of ActiveRain blog posts will continue to have follow attributes.

The links in your blog posts and profile on http://activerain.com will be “follow” links, which means that the destination to which you link receives a full backlink from Trulia.com.

Most of the current links on Trulia.com are considered “no follow” links, which means they don’t count for SEO credit. That will not be the case for links from any content on http://activerain.com. ActiveRain blogs will receive the full SEO value on all outbound links.

What will happen to my outside blog?

If you have an outside blog living on a separate domain (e.g. www.rocketry.com), there will not be any change to your domain name.

If you have an outside blog on ActiveRain (e.g. http://bobstewart.activerain.com) there will not be any change to your domain.

Can I create an outside blog today so my content doesn’t include Trulia in the domain name?

Yes, ActiveRain still offers the opportunity to create outside blogs if you have a RainMaker account. 

Learn more at http://activerain.com/action/custom_blogs.

How accessible will my blog be from the home page of Trulia? 

Currently, there are a few links to the ActiveRain community from www.trulia.com. On every page of Trulia.com, you will find a link to the ActiveRain community in the 'advice' drop down from the main mega menu drop down (as seen below)

In addition, on every Trulia Q&A page, there is a link back to certain topic pages on ActiveRain. (as seen in the image below)

And then lastly, there is currently a link to ActiveRain in the footer of every page on the Trulia.com domain.

In the future, we will continue to explore ways to integrate content created by ActiveRain members into the traffic flow for visitors to Trulia.com. 

Will my content appear on the Trulia Voices section of Trulia.com?

We think there are some very clever ways we can get ActiveRain content visible on Trulia Voices, but there isn’t an immediate plan in place to integrate the two.

Who will own my content?

As always, you own your content (See our Terms of Service). ActiveRain/Trulia will continue to retain the right to republish that content in other places (example – Inman News, REAL Trends, etc.), but you as the author will always receive credit if that happens. 

If you ever decide to move your blog to another service, you are welcome to copy all of your content over to the new service and remove it from ActiveRain. The content is yours.

When people find my blog, aren’t they likely to click over to Trulia? I don’t want to lose traffic or leads.

The Trulia presence on ActiveRain is going to be minimal. A visitor to your blog would have to notice the URL (e.g. http://activerain.com/blogsview/4324581/i-called-you-why-did-you-send-another-realtor-to-help-me-) and then proactively find an avenue to access Trulia.com. ActiveRain has always aimed to give real estate professionals an independent blogging platform that will attract as much organic traffic as possible and generate leads for their business. 

We believe you will not see any loss of leads from this project.

Will Trulia have access to leads I generate through my blog?

Absolutely not. If somebody fills in one of the contact forms on ActiveRain to inquire about your services, that information is private to you. 

Your blog will continue to be a tool through which you can drive traffic back to your real estate website. The members of ActiveRain who are generating leads through their blog at a high level are doing so by driving traffic back to their own IDX websites. This will remain unchanged.

It is our belief that a stronger domain will actually allow you to generate more interest in the great content you create. 

Why would I help Trulia? Don't they get most of their traffic by taking my listings and then selling the leads back to me? Now they are going to take my content and find some way to sell that traffic back to me.....

As a blogger on ActiveRain, you have the potential to get more traffic to your blog as we leverage Trulia’s 35+ million consumer visits per month and its domain authority towards continuing to build the presence of ActiveRain. We believe that this relationship will bring more eyeballs to the blog posts you write.

The value of the ActiveRain community rests in the members willingness to contribute content to the site. Any attempts to disrupt the willingness of the members of ActiveRain to contribute their hard work would undoubtedly result in our members ceasing to share their content. Trulia and ActiveRain understand this.

What else is Trulia going to do in the coming months on ActiveRain? 

It’s important to Trulia that ActiveRain remain the vibrant, independent community that it is today, providing tremendous insight to both consumers and real estate professionals. That’s why the company supported the investments that have been made to the platform since the Market Leader acquisition, but does not currently have plans for any major changes to ActiveRain. 

This move is entirely about combining our two domains into a single, stronger domain. Any future integration between the two sites needs to be a positive move for both ActiveRain members and the Trulia community. 

How does this change ActiveRain’s relationship with Market Leader?

Both ActiveRain and Market Leader have been a part of Trulia since last July. There will not be any changes.

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Keep Up In the Rain!