SEO and the Future of Internet Real Estate and A Digression Into...
Misty,
The other day, October 6, 2008 on your AR Blog: http://activerain.com/blogsview/726623/How-you-can-dominate, I wrote, Very true, but you are then helping the big realty sites push you down in the rankings...a true dilemma...be prepared to have take referrals from these big real estate sites in the near future...nothing is free forever...
Today, October 9, 2008, you wrote, Hello Brett - I guess I see it a little differently. Spending countless hours on SEO for your own site (a single site) or paying SEO specialists hundreds of dollars isn't free either. Plus those countless hours and big bucks in SEO fees will only get your single site in 2 spots for the same search phrase. Yes, I agree that if you can achieve 2 of those top 10 spots for your own site then that increases your chances of capturing leads. Utilizing other services (blogs such as AR, directories, etc.) helps you dominate more of the 10 spots and helps increase your chances of capturing a lead even more. Ultimately I want to show up in the search engines in as many spots as possible to bring in more leads to my business. If my services/products show up in the top from another directory I used and it brings in leads and untimely sales then that to me is gold.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. With all due respect, I was agreeing with you...completely. I was stating what I've surmised from doing SEO for awhile (and I am no expert!)...I believe the future is what I stated in my entry: basically, we will be paying in some manner for these free leads we are now receiving from Trulia, Zillow, etc. HomeGain and others already charge...
Look at Active Rain. It has patiently built itself up with our content (and links), which is really no longer our content because Google, et. al., index it to AR. ActiveRain/Localism has begun charging us to write its content, which I don't really mind; it's not hard to write decent content, and all of us do get these good tips, great real estate camaraderie from people like you, and, yes, excellent exposure for our businesses, but nonetheless...
Though not a very good analogy, you could liken it to this US financial collapse: while many saw it coming, no one seemed able to do anything about it...no one wanted to believe it, I guess; I, like some others, am simply drawing some attention to it. I hope I'm wrong...when today's page-oners get pushed to page three by the competition of thousands of real estate websites (only takes 21 powerhouse websites, driven by our content and links to drive a site to page 3), who'll click on us...?
PS: This is actually fascinating stuff and not that difficult; Google explains what to do to get ranked...follow the Google rules, write good content, and Blog, advertise like you stated, etc., etc. Heck, and guys like "Randfish" (Algo below) have put the basics into a pretty simple form from which anyone can cull enough info in a few minutes to keep her/himself SEOing for months: (KW Usage Score * 0.3) + (Domain Strength * 0.25) + (Inbound Link Score * 0.25) + (User Data * 0.1) + (Content Quality Score * 0.1) + (Manual Boosts) - (Automated & Manual Penalties) ...[I struck the math stuff and left all one needs to know to "begin"...one has to patiently and methodically work the tail off getting up there on the web...play by the rules...
algorithm above courtesy of: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-little-piece-of-the-google-algorithm-revealed
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