NealRM

I think we agree that better and more photos, more area specific listings, good information and easy navigation is what visitors want. These are all items that good real estate sites have.

However, from a SEO standpoint I do not see how Google will be able to judge any of these items. Google can judge how many photos you have on a site, but not if the photos are any good. Nor can it judge if information is well presented, or correct. It can barely determine if content is redundant. The same goes for easy navigation. A search engine can tell if pages are linked together, but it can not tell if that linking is easy for a human to follow. In short, many of the items that make a good website are not incorporated into the SERP.

Unfortunately the nationwide site rank poorly in what visitors want. Yet they rank well in the items that search engines like. They have 1000's of pages with descriptive text and all the proper keywords. They have listing in every major market in the US. Yet the market saturation in any single market ranges from fair to poor. However, the shear number of listings allows them to get top spots and the traffic that goes with those spots. While better local sites get buried.

So what is the SERP solution?? I'm not sure. I just feel that limiting linking will move the balance of SEO power towards the nationwide sites and away from local sites.

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