Many of you may have seen this seo “competition” for who can rank for the phrase: “greatest real estate agent in the world”. I’m officially dropping out. It was short lived.
I’m just really sick of people giving me a hard time and claiming that I’m using spamming to get the results I’m getting.
One of my so called “spam” techniques was to include the keyword: “greatest real estate agent in the world” in some anchor text on comments I left at a few blogs. I immediately got an ear full from other commenters that I was spamming. But the ironic thing is that 24 hours later, I started seeing about 10 other competitors doing the exact same thing. It just cracks me up… I even saw 2 people in particular that did it after telling me it was spam!
Sometimes these competitions just bring out the worst in people… so, instead of creating a bad name for myself because of people’s misconceptions, I’m simply going to bow out of this one.
I went ahead and removed many of the incoming links to this post, and made significant changes to the page itself… so I assume that my ranking will drop in the next 24 hours. It’s just not worth it to me to tarnish my reputation simply because some people have an extremely loose definition of spam. I have been open and honest about the techniques I use, and the people that know me know that I only use and teach white hat seo. The people that are crying spam and black hat have simply never been exposed to what REAL black hat seo is.
The whole contest is really kind of silly anyway. Once I thought it over, I should have realized the kind of techniques that would be brought out. With such a short time frame, you almost have to use some short term “run and gun” seo in order to get ahead. I highly doubt that we’re going to see any revolutionary new seo methods being used by the participants anyway. One of the purposes of the contest was to share ideas, but I have a really hard time believing that is going to happen. My prediction is that it’s going to turn into a “spam fest” and only lend further to the growing opinion in the real estate blogosphere that all seo is spam. This could have been a really great contest… but I just can’t see it benefiting the real estate community. It is however a great link bait idea (wish I would have thought of it), even if that wasn’t the original intention.
This is what I propose for a future contest:
- Lengthen the time frame (at least 4-6 months). This will weed out the competitors that aren’t serious, and give people time to use some regular long term seo techniques. This will also make it more fair to the website that doesn’t already carry a high trust rank.
- Don’t just choose 1 keyword to compete on, but 5-10. This makes it more realistic if you’re trying to use the contest as a teaching tool for other agents trying to get better rankings.
- Create a more comprehensive rule list. What is, and isn’t allowed?
- Document the success of the leaders on a regular basis (once a month), and reverse engineer their techniques and publish at the end of the contest in order to help other real estate agents learn about real life successful seo techniques.
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In regards to “spam”, I can at least respect the position that Ardell has taken. She has come out openly to say that SEO in general is spam. And I can understand how she feels to an extent. There are so many snake oil salesmen out there, and so much false and misleading information. I see real estate agents fall victim to it everyday. Even though I don’t agree with her on her definition of spam, I can respect it. And believe it or not, Ardell: if you’re reading this, your comments have had an impact on me and I’m going to be very careful from now on with some techniques I use. Namely, respecting the blog authors out there and not over using keywords in my comment anchor text.
So, even though Ardell isn’t even in the race, I’d like to see her come out on top of the results. She is a very opinionated lady, and we don’t see eye to eye on alot of things, but I respect her honesty. Here is my vote for you Ardell: Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World
Good luck to the rest of the participants… 
Related posts:
- THE Ultimate Guide to TOP ranking in Local Real Estate Searches
- Are you Worthy of a Referral??
- Long Tail Keywords vs. Short Tail Keywords
- Google, Yahoo & MSN Reps Talk About Search Spam
- SEO Quick Tip of the Day —> #16
February 14th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Justin,
It looks like for now, you have the top spot! It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next couple of weeks…
February 14th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
LOL…You Go BOY! I think you popped over me this morning.
February 14th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Those Squidoo pages may rank, but they won’t pass any juice.
February 14th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Hey Bob,
From my research, the squidoo links do pass some juice. But after giving it some more thought… with the competition the way it is, those hub pages probably won’t do very well unless I spend time working on them individually… and I’m not planning on spending a great deal of time with this.
February 14th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Looks like this site is kickin in the race. I am surprised at the viral buzz around this project. Makes the race more fun. I have joined team Blackwell in this endeavor.
February 14th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Thanks for the post. I never heard of hub page creation but it’s an interesting concept. Keep it coming!
February 15th, 2008 at 1:03 am
You are winning today!
February 15th, 2008 at 2:21 am
So will this help to drive a blogsite to the top of the search engines by linking to it from the hub page or something like that? This is a very interesting concept. Awesome!
February 15th, 2008 at 7:35 am
Justin,
If you are planning to go to Inman in San Francisco this year, I’d like to meet you.
February 15th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Sorry to see you drop out Justin, but I totally understand.
I like your list of improvements to the rules if it was to be done again.
Says a lot about a person when they are #1 and quit.
Best,
February 16th, 2008 at 1:06 am
Just a quick note - this contest was NOT started by REW (Real Estate Webmasters) it was started by Eric Bramlett (http://www.ericbramlett.com) - I simply blogged about it because I was asked to so that I could help him get the word out to more people and contributed a prize to make it more fun. So for people who “are” participating and “do” like the contest, give the credit to Eric as it is his initiative.
February 16th, 2008 at 4:02 am
I’d have to agree a big part of the SEO that I see and unfortunately use reeks of spam. Blog articles packed full of keywords, links from anyone who’s willing to give them to me, Digg, Stumble, paid Google CPC and yahoo directories, but fortunately for me and many others it gets people to our sites to buy from us rather than the millions of other salespeople out there. On a brighter note, it’s a hell of a lot less intrusive than cold calls and door knocking.
Anyway, sorry to see you drop out. Take care.
February 16th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I hope this contest does not turn into a spam fest as you say. Maybe I am being ignorant, but I still think this will be a good learning experience.
February 17th, 2008 at 5:42 am
I don’t think it will be any bigger than the spam fest that already existed in real estate.
Justin, come back in!
February 17th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Justin, there is nothing wrong with this being what it is. A spam fest. Real life imitated by art (or something like that).
Nobody cares about the prize, but everyone will get a lot out of it.
Would you rather have this in a perfect world type of setting which doesn’t reflect reality?
February 18th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Sorry you dropped out, but understand your reasoning.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:36 am
Justin;
Sorry to hear that you are bowing out. I agree with you that a longer contest would have a more “educational” benefit to it. I don’t think it would generate the enthusiasm this one has to date if it was that long.
I respect your decision.
Best
Eric
February 19th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Justin - I too have decided to watch this one from the sidelines. My rationale was that first & foremost, I sell real estate, and if I were so inclined to spend my time optimizing a webpage / blogpost, I’d be far better off spending it on pages that give me a ROI. Not to mention that the big G has a microscope on real estate websites & blogs, and flying under the radar has always served me well.
I wish all competitors the best of luck, and will be watching carefully as the contest closes ….
February 19th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
How can something be Spam, when it is just for a silly competition? What SEO technique wouldn’t be SPAM when the only reason your trying to do it is for a competition. Nothing would be real, but everything would be just to try and get that term “greatest real estate agent in the world.”
February 20th, 2008 at 3:44 am
Justin ~ You’d be better off spending your time doing something of value, like teaching agents how to write good content.
February 20th, 2008 at 4:50 am
Not a chance. Most don’t know any, and those that do won’t give them up or subject themselves to the scrutiny that Boser mentioned. All these guys are doing is telling the world what they do know, which pretty much defeats the purpose.
Agreed, but there is a bit of a silver lining to that if you think about it.
Probably your most important point, IMO. Greg Boser wins if he chooses to, regardless of what anyone thinks, if for no other reason than his domain has more authority than any of the others by far. The only way to trump that is a ton of links, which would likely dwarf any amount they would have acquired in a similar time frame. But hey, if you want to take a money making site that many use to feed their families and play a meaningless game while waving a flag at a search engine, then all I have to say is - I wish more agents in San Diego would jump in.
February 20th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Comment spam FTW!
I highly admire the fact you decided to drop out of this competition.
I really agree with your idea of using more keywords in a competition. This would really be useful in finding ways to do SEO for several keywords at once.
February 21st, 2008 at 4:04 am
I can’t blame you for dropping out. The way this contest was setup it looked like anyone other than a select few, would have to do some very questionable things which Google would likely not like very much, and who needs those kinds of issues.
February 21st, 2008 at 6:54 am
Morristown, How questionable is a firefox extension and a youtube video? You don’t have to do anything questionable, just think outside of the box;)
February 21st, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Quote: “It’s just not worth it to me to tarnish my reputation simply because some people have an extremely loose definition of spam.”
I think yo’re missing the point here. It’s not worth, rather, to tarnish your reputation becasue of some silly worthless ‘contest’ that makes otherwise level-headed estate agents rush out and post spammy comments all over the place like a herd of cows trampling the daisies.
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:49 am
Why is everyone so cynical about this? Running a race for a “worthless” blue ribbon can still be fun. It’s a contest, if it isn’t fun don’t do it but putting down the race because you don’t like to exercise isn’t fair.
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:22 pm
It’s not that I’m cynical about it… I just view it as a waste of time, and can’t see anything good coming out of it. I don’t doubt that some people are having a good time such as: the greatestrealestateagentintheworld.org guys…
I just don’t see it as being valuable for my business. I hope Eric and Morgan don’t think that I am bashing their idea in any way. I just personally think that it could have been thought out a little more, and have better guidelines.
February 26th, 2008 at 10:19 am
I’d like to get involve with the greatest website but the new NAR code of ethics may actually prevent me from competing in the long run as I use MLS in my domain name!
if I win my ethics violation I’ll be trying to win the greatest agent prizes
February 26th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Speaking as a newbie, I think that I have actually learned quite a bit about SEO from the contest and related controversy… even though I’m just watching from the sidelines.
March 5th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
The ideas that you propose for a future contest are great. I agree with you that this contest is turning into a “spam fest”. Could you share with us what are the other keywords you would suggest for a future contest?
March 6th, 2008 at 10:04 am
wow i’m from the UK and didn’t even know this competition was running. unfortunately (or fortunately!) i’m not a real estate agent, but i think if i were i would probably opt out of a comptetion like this. i’ve not sure that the benefits of winning would be positive anyway. it may lead to a lot of headache for the winner and detract from your main business, which is real estate!
March 6th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
My compliments to you Justin for dropping out of the competition and calling it what it was, a “spam fest”.
There is no way that a contest like this can be run without implementing unsavory SEO techniques. And with as much scrutiny as the real estate industry is under with Google I am amazed that anyone participated.
I like many of your ideas about a proper SEO Contest. I would add to your list;
a) A new domain must be created specifically for the contest.
b) The new domain may NOT have city and state within it.
c) All contestants to create a site for the same city and state.
d) No Agent, Broker or Company may be named as owner of the website.
e) At the end of the contest the winning domain will be auctioned off to any real estate Agent, Broker or Company with proceeds to go to the Designer/SEOs favorite charity.
Ardell really did make many good points about real estate and the SEO industry and perception is everything.
And yes Bob I agree that Greg Boser could have easily won if he had chosen to do so. It appears that he intentionally threw his chances of winning with Part 2 in his Blog. But I can’t say that I blame him for obvious reasons.
~Mack
March 6th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
@Mack: Thanks for the comment. Very interesting ideas… any number of those would make a contest like this much more valid.
@Mount: See Mack’s ideas
March 9th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
ps. all ‘Realtors’ that are participating in this are using the term ‘Realtor’ in a way prohibited by NAR.
There can be no descriptive terms before the word ‘Realtor’.
i.e. Best Realtor, Greatest Realtor, etc etc etc etc
The word is trademarked by NAR. A simple email to the right person will get your site canned. have a nice day.
March 11th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Which is why it’s the “Greatest Real Estate Agent In The World” Contest… not the Greatest Realtor.
March 31st, 2008 at 5:44 am
happens to me all the time. just because you use a good anchor text they automatically tag you as spam. IMO, as long as the comment is relevant and adds value to the discussion then it’s not spam whatever anchor you may use
April 4th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
The hub page part was really interesting. I will have to for sure try it on my blog. Thanks.
April 8th, 2008 at 8:45 am
Hey Bob
Those Squidoo pages may rank
I think google loves squidoo , so many squidoo pages have a high page rank
April 10th, 2008 at 2:41 am
I like the idea of a longer time frame like a 2-3 months, the idea of the 5-10 keywords is interesting as well. I just found out about the current contest.