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Bigdaddy Has Arrived - Part 2

Last week we talked about some recent search engine changes and how those changes can have an impact on the success of your website with search engines.

This week we will give you some tips and info on how to continue with your website marketing strategies in a productive manner.  This week, focus on moving forward in a more productive direction with your links.

Imagine a user visiting your website in hopes of finding more information about homes in Anaheim, California.  They come across a link that says ‘Visit my Agent Directory’ for other real estate agents.  On the off chance that they click on that link (considering the fact that they are looking for info on Anaheim, CA) they would find a list of states, and if they click on a state, a long list of links appears.  What value are those links to that user? Additionally, what value is that information to a search engine spider for their search engine?  There is no unique value for that search engine.

Consider instead that a user is visiting a site located near Camp Pendleton in Southern California.  If they were to come across a link that says ‘Find out More Info Regarding Other Military Bases around the Country’, this might be interesting and pertinent information for the consumer.  Even more valuable would be a unique directory of specialized real estate agents in those military locations who could help in their search for the perfect home, along with content about the military base itself.  This would be helpful information for the user and for the search engine to find and rank.

The difference between the two scenarios posted above is content.  One example is content driven with a goal to stand out in a crowd. The other example is not unique and created only for one purpose, which is not to benefit users visiting a website.  Create unique content about military areas, waterfront communities, retirement communities, golf property; there are so many ways to create a unique twist to add value to your online presence.

In a past Marketing Tip, we announced that we stopped publishing a weekly list of agents who were willing to link with other fellow agents.  Why? The simple answer is that type of mass linking no longer provides enhancement to your search engine rankings.  In extreme cases, it could potentially hurt you.  As we explained, the Update started as a way to show off other authoritative websites in the real estate industry and simply snowballed into a weekly list of agents.  While these links may have helped you in MSN a great deal, Yahoo and especially Google do not see these as valuable to you at this time.  Over the years we have continued to remind you that unique content about your subject (your areas of business and real estate) and inbound links from quality websites are the factors that are truly important.  Now more than ever we need to reassure you that search engine optimization is a changing industry.  However, if you continue to create information for your users, you will always succeed.

Yes, this is hard work. We never said it would be easy!  If and when you need guidance on very technical issues, we encourage you to visit our Advanced Access Forums for specific help.  The forums are filled with helpful individuals who have been down this same path and are succeeding in the online world.  You can easily find our AA Member’s Only Forums in your ‘Support Center’ in the Virtual Office. You will automatically be logged in so you can participate.  We also have our Premium Marketing Package division for specialized one-on-one service if your area is available.

If you have made it through this whole article, we thank you for paying attention! You may have some questions about some of the issues presented.  We know it was very easy for you to simply go down the past weekly list and link with those agents who were willing.  The main problem was that while it may have been easy to do, everyone else was doing exactly the same thing.  You need to be unique in your content and also unique in the inbound links you find.

“Are those reciprocal links from other agents hurting me?”  The reciprocal links from other real estate professionals are not helping you.  As shown in Matt Cutt’s blog, those types of links (long lists of links without any valuable info for the user) are not advantageous to your search engine rankings in Google. It must also be noted that Yahoo finds agent-to-agent links completely bogus, especially any homepage-to-homepage agent links, and has been known to ban sites entirely from their index for them.  While we are not sure about MSN’s stance, MSN is still a growing search engine and it is better to be safe than sorry.  Plus, with all of the outbound links you have on your website, those links might be slightly penalizing you with the new Bigdaddy Update from Google.  How?  We talked about how outbound links on your site are analyzed by Google in many different ways.  If you have not checked where your links are going, you may be linking to bad neighborhoods.  Plus, if your pages are simply a long list of links, Google may have already concluded that they were of no interest to their search engine and deindexed those pages.

“What should I do about those links?”

First, if you have pages and pages of only links and no other unique content you will want to consider adding some relevant content to the pages.  This means to all the pages.  For example, if you use the 'States Pages' you have a main directory page, 50 state pages, and additional territory pages.  That's nearly 60 pages of unique and quality content you would need to write.  This is one reason why we suggest going in a more productive and effective direction.

Second, make a goal to start reviewing the outbound links on your page.  See if they still work.  If they are bad links, you need to delete them.  If they do work, evaluate the sites you are linking to.  Are those sites worthy of a link? Be sure to check to see if some of their pages are indexed, especially the pages that are linking back to you.  If the site is not worthy in your opinion, we encourage you to delete the link!  Instead of just a long list of sites in California you may want to focus adding content on specific areas (such as waterfront specialists, golf properties, etc) and find a select few high caliber sites in those areas that you can link out to. Contact those agents personally and start up dialogue to see if you can work together.  Keep thinking quality for your user.

Third, stop focusing your efforts to link with other real estate professionals.  Your efforts will be better spent on creating community content on the areas you specialize in. By creating such content, adding ‘hot listings’ to the page, links to available listings on the market, helpful contact forms for your users to fill out, you will gain valuable leads. Also, links will still be important for bringing in targeted traffic.  You will need to still work on inbound links but from quality sources.

“So… How do I get to the top of the search engines?”

Whew! It takes hard work, doesn’t it?  But the good things always do.  Vidal Sassoon is quoted as saying, "The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary."  And how true that is!  The results of your hard work will pay off tenfold! If you have read all of our past Marketing Tips on quality content and inbound links you should have a good idea.  We also encourage you to visit our Advanced Access Forums which are for our members and esteemed partners only (you can catch our newest member, Search Engine Optimization "guru", Greg Boser of http://www.webguerrilla.com/).  Our forums can get very technical on these details and help you make the most of your online presence.

For the next few months, be on the lookout for periodic updates on how to ‘boost’ your quality inbound links with good ideas posted in our Marketing Tips by searching for them in your own local community!

As always, thank you for your business and support.

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