Archive for March, 2007

Here is Today’s Tip: 

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A popular term in the SEO industry is Link Baiting.  It is the act of trying trying to get other websites to link to yours through various means.  It could be anything from a popular story, a contest on your website,  a controversial topic… anything that will encourage other people to link to you.  It can often become viral in nature, creating a community buzz around a certain topic.

There are many creative ways to link bait… we will cover many of them in this series, but I wanted to familiarize you with the term.

One of my favorite link baiting tools is the “informational hook”.  Write about something really interesting… what are you an expert in?  Are you saavy to secrets you are willing to share in order to create some buzz and links to your site?  Some of the most common are top 10 or top 50 lists.  If you don’t have any ideas, borrow from some of your favorite blogs or news sites and redress it to make it interesting.  Lets face it… there are alot of boring blogs out there.

We’ll talk about some other ideas in the near future.

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I’ve come across some interesting articles lately about mobile websites. It is actually a blossoming industry at the moment, and supposedly there will be some 300 million people by 2010 that will be using mobile phones and PDA’s. Have you been to your local cell phone shop lately? It’s hard to find a phone that doesn’t offer access to the internet. There is definitely some room for growth, but many experts seem to think that it will become a very competitive marketplace.

So what does that have to do with the real estate industry? Alot I think. There are 2 vital tools that real estate agents already use effectively, that adapt perfectly to a mobile environment: Maps & listings

Maps are already wide spread on mobile phones on many different levels. You have the stand alone mapping apps, the mobile versions of mapquest & Google maps, and even gps enabled phones that point the way.

But, to my knowledge there isn’t a solid surefire way to get access to listings on your cell phone. Of course, you could visit the local IDX, or MLS website, but do you really want to scroll through 30 screens for one page of content that probably won’t render properly anyway???

The only site I know of that is formatted as a mobile website is Trulia. They have a pretty decent tool to search for listings.

You could also use a tool like 411 Sync that will send you trulia listings:

text the word”trulia” with the zip code, and they will send you all the listings in that zip code. Or if the phone is web enabled, you can go to their site and search. A neat little Mashup…

• text trulia 80104 to
  415-676-8397 Or
• Mobile Search for trulia 80104 on wap.411Sync.com

Send Keyword to Phone

Wouldn’t it be a thing of beauty to tell your clients that your website is cell phone friendly, and that they could go to your website from their phone to look at your listings, or browse the MLS from your site? That would impress me as a client.

Since I’m admittedly not an expert on the subject, I want to refer you to some great articles I found:

• Search Engine Optimization for Mobile Phones
• Great little website that converts websites to text while you are browsing on your phone. (making them much more mobile friendly)
• Steps to format your site to be mobile friendly
• Create a mobile website from scratch
• Similar to iyhy.com a Google site that converts websites into an easy to read mobile format

This is one of those things that you could probably hold off on doing for a while, but might want to put in the back of your head. There are many web design companies out there that have just unveiled mobile website design, so there is obviously something afoot. The mobile SEO article I linked to above points out some key issues, one being that mobile search engine results can differ from the regular SERPs. I’m not sure if this is true or not… many of the searches I’ve done on mobile.google.com on my treo seem to show the same results. But there seem to be quite a few “experts” out there that claim that sites that are formatted for mobile web will automatically rank higher.

Something to think about…

 Here is Today’s Tip:

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Try to steer away from reciprocal linking… It is soooo 2004.  There is plenty of evidence to show that reciprocal links have been discounted in recent months by search engines, and may even get you penalized.  In the eyes of the search engines, they want to see natural linking practices.  This means a nice steady stream of links to your site from a wide variety of domains.  Reciprocal links are a natural part of a site’s linking structure, but when the search engine starts to see that over 20% of your links are from sites that also linked back to you, it may look a little fishy.  They might suspect that you are trying to manipulate the system…  keep in mind, these aren’t actual people reviewing your websites, they are complicated algorithms that check for all of these factors.

Anyway… that was a long was of saying that you really shouldn’t waste your time with reciprocal linking scemes.  They are wrong on so many levels:

1. Search Engines don’t like them
2. Most link exchange programs are useless because they link to you from poor pages, or completely irrelevant pages
3. Most of the time, your link will be removed after a short period of time anyway
4. Many link exchange strategies include spamming websites to get a link.
5. There are hundreds of other ways to get quality incoming links without wasting your time exchanging them.  (remember the old banner exchange programs?  They are extinct.  Link Exchange programs aren’t far behind)

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Here are some related articles:

• Why good content is the best way to create incoming links

• Reciprocal linking is dead 

• Healthy Website Linking Practices

Well… unfortunately, Inman news beat me to the punch, by just a few days!!! But I’m still going to post this. It’s an interview with Roldan (Dan) Aquino, the founder of GooTube.net, a fairly new mashup combining real estate video with google maps.

Here it is…

When did you found GooTube.net?

I started GooTube last August 2006 as a mashup of Google Map and YouTube videos, hence the name GooTube. It has since evolved into a video-sharing site where members can directly upload videos via the VideoEgg platform.

What are you trying to accomplish through the services of GooTube?:

 

My goal is to make GooTube an easy to use site for realtors and small business owners where they can showcase their videos and self-made commercials online. A lot of real estate agents and developers are starting to leverage the Internet to have their services and Inventory closer to the masses and GooTube can be a valuable tool for them. I want GooTube to be the home for Local Ads and videos that never took off on cable.

I notice that many of the videos are from the Real Estate Home Show Website. How did this relationship with REHS come about?

 

I found REHS on Youtube while I was searching for videos related to real estate. I sent an invitation to the provider to post videos on Gootube and I got a positive response, hence the presence of their videos on the site. GooTube takes pride in being used as a real estate promotions platform by the Real Estate Home show. I am thankful to REHS for providing the site with video content.

When you first launched, weren’t you using Youtube for your videos? I notice that you’ve switched to Videoegg.com Why the switch?

I’ve switched to VideoEgg to comply with YouTube’s demand to cease and desist from using YouTube’s video for commercial purposes. Legal representatives of Youtube sent a letter stating that YouTube’s Terms of Use prohibits usage of YouTube’s service for non-personal, commercial purposes. I have asked for permission when I started the mashup last year. Much as I disagreed to their claims, I complied to avoid any problems. I’m glad I found VideoEgg. It is a great tool because it allows users to upload videos from different devices.

Where is GooTube headed? Are you marketing to agents as a free place to post real estate videos?

Yes, I am marketing GooTube as a free place to post Real Estate videos. I am continuously developing GooTube with SEO in mind, leveraging on User-Generated Content. Users add relevant content to Gootube thereby optimizing the site’s visibility on Search Engines.

I am also planning to add community features and get widespread viewership. I am working on integrating Zillow’s API that will provide Real Estate data like historical sales and comparable homes soon.

It is a great idea. This is one of the better real estate mashups I’ve seen. Thank you for your time.

Thanks Justin for this opportunity. More Power to the Christian Real Estate Network

At the risk of stepping on a couple of toes, I’m going to post a quote from a comment that was made recently in a real estate community website. I was in an argument about reciprocal linking, and the commenter with the opposing view had this to say:

“Let’s not go down the road that “good content” will generate large numbers of one-way links. By and large, the world is not standing at the ready to link to the content of an agent broker site, based on some sort of remarkable content. Anyone who promises that is misleading their readers. It rarely happens that way.”

Those of you who read this blog regularly, will know immediately that I couldn’t DIS-agree more with the above comment. Frankly, I think it’s ridiculous… but I wanted to use it as a spring board to talk about something. Namely, blogging… and the SEO benefits that naturally come with an active blog.

Do you have a blog yet? Are you actively writing articles and posts? Why? What do you hope to gain? The standard answers are: “to generate clients”, “to network with other real estate pros”, “to brand an online presence”…. but how often do you hear someone talking about blogging purely for the SEO benefits? It is widely known in the blogosphere, but I don’t here it talked about that often in the real estate community.

A few years ago when I started taking notice of search engine marketing, I read everything I could get my hands on, I asked questions, I subscribed to special newsletters, read e-books, and studied religiously. Because of that time put in, I can truly say that I look at the Internet differently… through the eyes of a search engine.

The first thing I do when I look at a new site is look at the titles, the internal linking structure, and the text based content. I immediately start thinking about how a site can be improved and modified to rank better. When I first started noticing blogs as a marketing tool back in 2004, I was immediately struck with the Search engine friendly nature of most blogs.

In case you didn’t know, blogs are like candy to search engine spiders. Why is this true?

1. Spiders love new content. The faster you post, the faster the spiders will return.
2. Blogs present this content in a very easy to read, and easy to index fashion.
3. Most good blogging platforms place the title of your post in the <title> tag of the page.
4. The title of the post is also a link to that post that includes the keywords in the anchor text.
5. By listing posts in categories, you are basically creating an easy to index site map.
6. Each post has it’s own individual page.
7. Search Engine’s simply love fresh content and keyword based links.

In short, weblogs were designed with search engines in mind.

Now, in response to my friend that I quoted above… I plan on completely contradicting the comment, and making a bold statement of my own by saying: Creating quality content is one of the fastest ways you can consistently grow incoming links.

That is a bold statement I know… but it is true. Yes, there are hundreds if not thousands of great ways to grow you link popularity… and I encourage many people to use these strategies. But some of these popular ways to grow links include unnatural linking strategies like reciprocal linking, and purchasing links. These practices are considered by the search engines to be unnatural, and there is a very real possibility that you could be penalized if you are caught.

When you write a popular article on your blog or site, and it gets picked up by other blogs and sites, you are instantly creating quality links, and at the same time, are driving traffic to your site. What could be better?

Why would you want to waste your time spamming random websites with reciprocal link requests when you could be creating an online following by writing about an interesting subject that you love, and creating great incoming links at the same time??? To me, it’s a total no brainer.

So, if you are a veteran blogger, or are just getting started, don’t dismiss the value of your blog when you develop your SEO strategy. It is one of the best tools you have. And if someone tries to tell you that good content isn’t all that important in search engine marketing, just try to keep the snickers to yourself…

I just found an interesting new startup via programmableweb called FusedWorld.com.  (BTW, programmable web is one of those great sites that you’ll want to have in your rss feeder… anytime a cool new online tool or mashup is created, I’m the first one to know about it.)

Anywho…  fusedworld looks to be a very cool new international RE website.  They were stared in December, but are just now getting a decent amount of daily traffic.  The site is essentially a property search website that allows visitors to list their own properties and search for free.  They are currently claiming over 8,700 listings which also include rentals.

The mediterranean and EU currently claim the most listings, but interestingly enough, over 1,500 properties are ascribed to middle eastern countries as well.  Currently, all listings are free.  Here is a quote from the site:

Submit an unlimited number of listings with an unlimited number of pictures, videos, 360-degree presentations and other media;

On the site, I also noticed another interesting tidbit.  They are trying to get people to contribute articles about certain locations, and foreign countries, all with user generated content.  Kind of like an international localism of sorts.

I plan to watch this new site with interest.  They seem to be getting some things right in the niche world of international real estate.  Up to this point, I don’t know of any site like it.

They also have an impressive SEO game…  15,000+ incoming links according to Yahoo.  That isn’t too shabby for only 4 months in the business.  Their titles and internal link structure also look very good.  I wouldn’t be surprised if we started seeing their pages in local search results.

Since when did we have official blogging coaches?? This is an interesting phenomenon that has spawned only recently. There have been a plethora of “how to” blogging blogs out there for a while, but since when did it turn into legitimate business?

Project Blogger, is a contest that was started by Jonathan Washburn & Jim Cronin that is a essentially a contest between blogging coaches. Each coach will pick a blogging beginner, and coach them into blogger-stardom.

The “potential” list of judges includes:

* Matt Heaton, CEO ActiveRain
* Robert Scoble, famous ex-Microsoft blogger: Scobleizer
* John Battelle, Federated Media - Author of The Search
* Errol Samuelson, new president of Move, Inc.
* Rich Barton or Lloyd Frink, CEO or President of Zillow
* Galen Ward, Shackprices.com
* Matt Mullenweg, Founding Developer of Wordpress

If this can actually be pulled off…it could be huge. It could potentially catapult the “real estate” blogging category into the limelite. I personally think that it is going to be nearly impossible to get judges like Rich Barton or Matt Mullenweg, but you never know.

The criteria for judging also seems to be ambiguous at best. I mean, it’s one thing to judge the quality of a blog post a-la Carnival of Real Estate, but it’s another thing altogether to judge the effectiveness of a blog. I mean… that’s what we are all going for is it not??

Blogging effectiveness is a very difficult thing to judge because everyone has different expectations and goals. One real estate blogger might focus on national RE news, while another may focus on hyper-local news, and yet another on RE marketing. How do you judge something like that?? I guess the goal for most real estate agents is lead generation, but even that is hard to get a handle on.

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I’m going to predict the front runners here:

Jim Cronin is a natural pick as one of the starters of the contest, but also as an experienced coach. His Tomato Blogs coaching and design service has been up and running since late last year. The guys over at the Sellius Blog also have an edge as very experienced bloggers that really think outside of the box.

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I’m amazed at how many gimmicks are out there to drive traffic to blogs. Maybe “gimmick” is too strong a word… I mean, there is the RE carnival, the AR carnival, the Yankee Blog Swap, the 101 Challenge, the Meme Exchange… the list goes on and on. This seems like just another in a long line of contests and buzz marketing tricks. I hope that some beginner bloggers actually learn from the experience, and generate some good leads.

Contests have always been the secret weapon of successful bloggers. And there are plenty of good ideas out there that haven’t been tried yet.

Back during the Yankee Blog swap, we had changed over to a new URL for our blog, but then at the last minute decided to keep the blog on our main directory at the URL that it is now. But during that short time that we ran the blog on that address, we participated in the Yankee Blog swap, and because of it, formed a ton of new incoming links. There wasn’t even any content under the blog itself! But just by participating in a single blogging event, we got 50 or so incoming links. That old blog still ranks fairly well for the keywords that we targeted it for, and we didn’t even do anything…. it just goes to show the power that contests and blogging events can have.

Anyways, I’m interested to see how this contest will pan out…