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This post was sparked from an article I read on ActiveRain called: Beware of Duplicate Content Penalties on your Blog by Roberta Murphy

Based on the comments in the article, there seems to be alot of confusion about duplicate content. There is a huge difference between onsite duplicate content vs. offsite duplicate content

Many of the commenters on Active Rain seem to have blurred the lines a little bit and neglected to make the distinction between the two. They are really 2 different issues.

What Roberta was referring to in her blog post is an onsite duplicate content issue. When you create a blog post and add it to multiple categories, you are creating duplicate content on the blog. Allow me to explain…

An Example of Duplicate Content with Multiple Categories:

When you write a blog post and include it in 4 categories, you are in effect creating about 7 pages on your website with the exact same content (article).

1. Blog home page
   
2. Individual blog post page
   
3. Archives page
   
4. Category 1
5. Category 2
6. Category 3
7. Category 4
   

You can see how adding a post to multiple categories creates onsite duplicate content… Ask yourself, would you ever create a website and include the same article on 7 different pages of the site? Probably not. So why would you do it on your blog?

Will Adding a Blog Post to Multiple Categories Create a Duplicate Content Penalty?

This is the biggest question everyone has… The short answer is NO. You will not be penalized by google for having duplicated content on your website.

But… some of the pages with the dup content may be de-valued in the search engine index. Google is not about to rank 7 pages well for the exact same content. Can you imagine what the search results would look like if it did???

The primary reason to avoid multiple categories for one post is to make sure that Google doesn’t de-value any of your pages. That is the real issue.

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What are Google Alerts?

I’ve heard some talk lately about Google alerts, and I was interested to find that there seemed to be quite a few people that have never used them before or didn’t know how to use them properly.

If you do have Google Alerts already set up, don’t tune me out yet! There may be a few ideas in here that you haven’t tried yet…

Google alerts are notifications that you receive by email when a particular search query you have pre-set gets found by Google. The most common is a URL alert. For example, I could tell Google that I want it to notify me every time it finds a new mention of: http://www.hismove.com/blog anywhere on the internet.

To set up an alert, go to www.google.com/alerts

You’ll immediately notice a few options for the type of search you can perform although I usually suggest just choosing the “comprehensive” search so you cover all the bases.

The most common searches most bloggers enter in are:

1. Their own URL(s)
2. Their full name (usually in quotes)
3. A keyword they are targeting

Those are all great alerts that every blogger should have set up… but let me suggest to you a few more ideas that may help:

How to Set Up Unique Google Alerts

1. Treat the “Search Terms” setup on the alerts like it’s a real Google search box. It can include operators that will help you find specific things you might be looking for. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, try this page on Google Search Operators. An example would be an alert like: [keyword site:www.wikipedia.org] this alert would notify you every time a specific keyword was found on wikipedia. Play around with some of the different operators… you may get some interesting results.
2. Set up an alert that focuses on the keywords you want to rank for. Such as: ["port orange real estate listings"]. Make sure to put quotes around the phrase so you don’t get unrelated results. You can immediately see the value in a search like this because it will let you know who else is writing about that particular phrase, essentially identifying your competition. You may want to consider excluding your domain name from this search so your results don’t get skewed. Here is the command: [port orange real estate -www.portorangejuice.com]
3. Set up an alert for a phrase about your community like: ["port orange schools"] or ["port orange local events"]. This will allow you to keep tabs on what is going on in your community, and can often turn into ideas to write about on your blog depending on what is popular within your local community.
4. Search for customers. This one is the most undervalued of them all! What are your potential customers looking for? Are they asking specific questions online about your market? Take some time and think through this… then set up a few test alerts. Here are some examples for the real estate industry: ["how do i find foreclosure properties in port orange"], ["how much is my port orange house worth"], ["where can I find port orange homes for sale"], ["looking for new home incentives in port orange"]… In case you haven’t noticed, buyers and sellers are online. And they are actively asking questions about real estate in their area. The hard part is how to find them… that is where Google alerts comes in. It will do the hard work for you. Once you find someone that is asking a question, or needs help, simply go to the page and respond to their inquiry. Sometimes this might be a question on a Yahoo Group, or a question on Trulia Voices, or maybe even a question about a specific property on Zillow.com. Don’t be afraid to set up 50+ alerts for specific search phrases. These are real leads, and because of the specific nature of the query, you probably won’t get more than a couple alerts per week.
5. When setting up an alert for your website, don’t just put in your home page, try putting in specific URL’s for popular articles you’ve written so you can see who is writing about those specific topics.
6. For less important searches, choose the “once a week” notification option so you aren’t inundated with emails every day at random.
7. Spy on your competition. Try some alerts like this: [link:www.mycompetition.com], ["keyword" site:www.mycompetition.com], [allintitle:"keyword" site:www.mycompetition.com]
8. One last tip… this tip exploits the fact that most popular bloggers have Google alerts set up for their website and name. Start linking out to some famous bloggers and see what happens. In most cases you will see that person you linked to come around to your blog within 24 hours to check it out. It’s a great way to introduce yourself to people you want to connect with. You can build quite a reputation for yourself in a short amount of time by linking out to other bloggers you respect. This is hugely important to the new blogger trying to make a splash in the blogosphere.

I hope some of those tips helped. If you have any other ideas, please share them here!

This post was stirred on by a post from Joel Burslem over at FutureofRealEstateMarketing.com. He was writing about the death of the multi author blog, and it really got me thinking about local real estate blogs.

Joel pointed out that he is often overwhelmed by the multi author blogs simply because of the large amount of content. And to some extent I agree with him. One of the reasons I’m not a frequent visitor to the RainCityGuide and the BloodHoundBlog is because there is simply too much to read… it’s information overload. Sure it’s fun to visit every once in a while, but I would never consider putting either site in my RSS reader. Just way too much!

But, on the other hand, you have to consider the fact that most new readers to blogs come from search engines. And what is the best way to drive more traffic to a blog from search engines? Lots of keyword rich content.

A balance must be struck — between writing a consistent amount of posts in order to attract search engines, and also being careful not to turn off your current subscribers with too much content.

I tend to agree with Joel that the large group blogs won’t have the staying power of individual writers… but for all intensive purposes, we are still in the adolescent stage when it comes to real estate blogs. It still remains to be seen which will be more successful in the long term.

Danger #1 – Focusing too much on search engine placement. I see this with many bloggers. They unnaturally stuff keywords into every title and every post possible. They are obsessed with search engine ranking, and completely ignore the subscribers they do have. Sheer volume of content is not always the best thing when it costs you subscribers. Be careful

Danger #2 — Focusing too much on Subscribers and ignoring search engines. Just as dangerous as the first. I’ve seen many bloggers that fall into this trap simply because they are frustrated with the search engines, or are overly obsessed with subscriber counts. They completely ignore sound SEO advice, and seem to shy away from using SEO tactics for fear that they will lose a subscriber or two.

The Balance — Of course, both of these positions are extreme, but I meet people on a weekly basis that fall clearly into one camp or the other.

The Remedy — Keep writing consistently. Keep building subscriber counts with quality content and SMO. Pay close attention to your SE placement, but don’t become obsessed. The rest should take care of itself… and if not, just call me.

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Syndicating your content is pretty important these days. My students often get overwhelmed when I tell them all the places they need to submit their blog to including social bookmarking sites, activerain, carnivals… the list goes on and on.

Things can get more complicated when you try to market your blog on and offline, and you can quickly get burned out with manually adding your blog to hundreds of different places.

Well, here’s an easy way to get your blog out to everyone that you converse with on a day to day basis through email. A banner in your email signature that shows people your most recent posts, and provides them with a link to the blog itself.

First, you should have a feedburner account. If you don’t, get one.

Second, login and navigate to Publicize, then Headline Animator

Then, choose a clickthrough URL. By default, this will be your feedburner RSS feed, but I recommend changing it to your blog URL. You can also choose a theme, and customize it however you like.

Once you have customized it to your liking, click activate, and you will have a nice looking banner that rotates with your most recent posts.

At that point, you have a number of options. Feedburner will provide you the code to post the banner on blogger, typepad, wordpress, and a number of different email platforms. It works well for most applications because it simply renders the banner as a graphic, and so any email program that lets you add html to your signature will work.

Alas, there is no support for html in gmail which is my email client of choice. But there are a few work arounds.

Adding a banner feed like this to your email is a great way to build awareness of your blog. There are a number of other ideas to create calls to action within your email, like providing a link for people to subscribe to the blog via email, or an RSS of the most recent comments on the blog. The possibilities are endless. Be creative, and drive traffic to your blog!!

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As we enter into the golden age of blogging, and the maturity of social media websites like Facebook, Linkedin, ActiveRain, and others.  I’ve begun to see a trend emerging among real estate professionals.  Many of them simply don’t care about social networking, reading other blogs, participating in a community, or contributing in any way.  Does anyone else see that?

In some respects I even see that happening in my own online experience.  The hundreds of feeds in my Bloglines reader just don’t do it for me like they used to.  I broke my addiction to points on ActiveRain, and I’m totally bored with websites like myspace.

Maybe it’s just me… but there seems to be a similar sentiment with other bloggers that I talk to out there.  The focus has shifted more towards lead generation, and monetization.  Gone are my 2004 blogging days where I was simply excited just to receive 1 comment.

As we usher in a new generation of hungry bloggers, what will we see?  Will they spend alot of their time in social media or jump straight for the money and bypass all the time wasting sites out there?

Maybe I’m just growing weary of the number of options.  Who is able to manage 50 different profiles anyway?  The People I’ve seen that do it effectively are the full time guys that make a living from it based on advertising or some other model…  That’s great for them, but what about the real estate agent that only has 2 hours per week to develop an online presence?

Waste 30 minutes on facebook customizing your profile, take 15 minutes on Activerain to make a couple of comments, take another 15 to invite 2 friends to Linkedin, take 30 minutes browsing your rss reader, another 15 minutes reading top stories on digg… and what does that leave you?  15 minutes to actually spend time writing a blog post.

As I see it, there are a few solutions to this problem…

Define Your Goal:

How will you achieve your goal?

Here are some strategies, assuming you want to generate leads through blogging:

1. Be diligent to write 3–4 new posts a week.  Most of these should be about a local market
2. Put yourself on a strict regimen to blog.  Look at it like an appointment with your computer
3. Block out your time:  1 hour writing, 30 minutes reading, 20 minutes commenting, 30 minutes researching, etc.
4. If you want to network with other bloggers or real estate professionals, only do it to generate referral business
5. There is nothing wrong with enjoying your blogging efforts, just stay focused on your goals.

How will you avoid getting sidetracked and wasting time?

1. Don’t visit Myspace or Facebook during business hours (unless you have an exact strategy for generating business from them)
2. Don’t waste time on Digg, Reddit, and other social bookmarking sites looking for something interesting to read
3. Don’t use your Stumble toolbar unless you have a clear strategy to use it properly to drive traffic
4. Don’t wander aimlessly around on the web looking for content… instead, set up an rss reader and block time out for reading
5. Don’t waste time participating in Active Rain only for the points
6. If you want to harness the power of the internet to generate business, cut out those time wasting activities that sidetrack you from the important stuff.

You have to ask yourself, “am I doing this for money, or is it just a hobby?”  The focused person who can answer that question definitively will be successful.

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I’ve heard some talk lately from discouraged real estate bloggers that can’t seem to rank well in the search engines. They try blogging for a few weeks and then give up often times assuming that there are simply too many competing blogs and websites in their market area. In most markets, this is simply not the case!

Yes, it is true that there are a few places around the country that have fierce competition. Those would be in places like: Seattle, Phoenix, San Francisco, Florida, and a few others…

But for the most part, there are very few markets that are saturated with multiple blogs. In many cases, there are some fairly large markets that aren’t even represented.

What does this mean for you, the beginner blogger?? There is hope!!

Don’t get discouraged when you see other more experienced bloggers rank ahead of you. There is plenty of room for you.

I can’t tell you how many real estate bloggers I’ve met that have started blogging without even considering their target audience, what they are looking for, or how they are finding it. Often, when I ask a new blogger what their core target is, they just shrug their shoulders.

Understanding your target, and your keywords is key to outranking your competition.

Start researching!
* Decide on 5 primary keyword phrases

* Search for those phrases on Google, and catalog the top10 results

* Take those results and research them with this Page Strength Tool, or the Website Grader

* What do you find? Keep track of your results

* Try Wortracker.com or the free SEO Research tool I offer on this blog

* Try to find those specific keywords that have little competition

But… I’m a blogger in Seattle, and I don’t have any hope of ever ranking well… Nonsense! Here’s what you do:

* Start going niche. Forget the term: “Seattle Real Estate”. You will waste time and energy trying to rank well for that term.

* Choose instead: “Redmond real estate listings”, or “redmond condos for sale”. Yes, they do get less searches, but the competition will be much less.

* And here’s a secret that not many people will tell you: the more specific the keyword phrase, the better your chances will be of converting that searcher into a customer.

* Forget trying to be the top blog in Seattle, start researching and looking for those terms that you can rank well on.

* In my experience, the person that chooses to go niche with their keywords will triumph over the competition that is fighting an uphill battle to rank for the the most popular real estate related keyword in their market.

The quickest way to failure as a blogger is to not know your target.

Here’s your SEO Quick Tip of the Day.

Are you Meta descriptions compelling to your audience? Don’t forget that your descriptions aren’t written for the search engines, but for your potential customers.

• Each page of your site should have a unique description
• Include a call to action within the description
• The description shouldn’t just describe the page, but compel searchers to click
• A well written description will bring more qualified customers and get more clicks than other SE results with no description, or poorly written ones.
• If you do not include a description, the search engines will take text from the page to try to describe it for you. This is undesirable because it may be completely irrelevant to your page.
• When possible, include your keywords in the description. This won’t help you with ranking, but it will make your listing in the SERP’s more relevant.