Real Estate Forums

Tony Sena · 05-26-2007, 01:00 PM

Its my opinion that AA and REW sites are getting the most negative publicity because they are one of the most recognized names in real estate website design. I have seen many sites drop from the top of google that are not AA and REW sites, so based on my observations, AA and REW sites were not the only sites doing things wrong in Google's eyes.

Website positioning is constantly changing, I have seen my site moving up and down in the top 10, rarely holding steady in any particular spot. SEO has become a science with only Google knowing exactly what needs to be done to get a site to rank and stick. So many companies made mistakes and we will all learn from those mistakes, but just because AA and REW made a mistake, which wasn't done purposely, shouldn't mean you should jump ship to a different seo firm.

Do your due diligence like you would for your clients in a real estate transaction and determine what company is right for what you are trying to accomplish with your website.

Good luck

Jared · 05-26-2007, 01:01 PM

Shane, maybe you didn't read it clearly. No one said they do it wrong. My post wasn't to point out someones wrongs just to say that the system is proprietary and people tend to lock into things like that. Guys that use MS FrontPage for years find no reason to change because they may be operating under the belief its the best. Its not bad of them, its just a mindset that is persistent and the person may not know that there are more friendly options.

Henry Ford once said that you can have a car in any color you want, so long as its black. Kinda bold, but such a mindset is great when you are the only kid in town and there are no other options. With Real Estate Realtor sites, there are options. I want people to do only a few things when they consider the above post and that is think about what they are getting into.

If you buy a car, are you honestly expected to buy your gas and everything else from the dealership or suffer punishment for stepping out. My motives were to let people know that hey, you like what you got but if you ever want change, be ready.

Shane, you send an email to any of the large vendors and ask these questions and then draw your own conclusions. I did this about a year ago when I wanted to do some research on what competitors offer after I did my first migration of an AA site.

Q. If I chose to move my site to my own server can I?
LMAO, good luck! If the answer is yes be sure to ask how much money it will cost you and then listen to all the reasons its a real bad idea. I don't say this based on speculation I'm TELLING you from experience in dealing with webmasters how psychotic they can be.

Q. Who owns my domain name if you register it?
I wont even reveal what happens until you look into this.

Q. Can I change service providers, MLS's, add my own blog etc and so on?
Some of these providers are pretty decent about such things so the answer is anyones guess. Some allow external SEO assistance and some even permit you to have a blog of their choice. I think you will find some of the answers as baffling as I did though.

Be sure to drop in a nice fair number of questions like I did. I only asked the same 5 questions to about 15 or so of these service providers and some where so rude all I got back was "go read our website".

Do you really want to do business with someone who wastes so little time to give you such a rude response when they could have spent just moments answering you intelligently. Even if by providing nothing other than links to the answers for your questions.

Choice is yours.

~ Jared

Shane · 05-26-2007, 01:15 PM

Thanks Jared for your lengthy response but that doesn't entirely answer my question.

I already know some webmasters can be dicks but I was pointing out that your post seems to accuse AA and REW for being difficult to work with yet so many people swear by them.

I mean I've read enough bad about both all over the web to agree with you more than I dont agree with you. I like to have all the answers before I consider a service provider.

Jared · 05-26-2007, 01:31 PM

Shane, in posts 4, 6, and 7 I make correction each the same nearly, no suggesting or accusing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shane

I already know some webmasters can be dicks but I was pointing out that your post seems to accuse AA and REW for being difficult to work with yet so many people swear by them.

As Tony said, companies make mistakes, we all do, we're people. Just be sure in your research that you find the company you feel will best serve you and your needs.

~ Jared

Shane · 05-26-2007, 01:42 PM

Well that makes sense then. I went back and read things, your right.

good post though.

Mert · 05-27-2007, 08:17 PM

Shane old REW client here. I used to be with them when their service was 50 bucks an hour now it is all 100/hour. And they do the same thing. The joke of it is they are the top resources but they put their link at every page you have with them. That is why they are the top resources and that is why they rank in google so high. Best and #1 in google are two different things.

Jared · 05-28-2007, 06:04 AM

Isn't that the truth!

I get more credibility from my blog at the community college where I teach Photoshop than I do on my personal blog where I discuss Photoshop in nearly all my posts yet my personal blog has a higher rank.

Rank and Indexing is a strange animal.

~ Jared

LVH · 05-30-2007, 01:50 PM

Here is my 2 cents on REW and AA. When it comes to Seo REW likes to push the envolope with the tactics they use for Seo. This can sometimes be good or bad. The good in being risky with Seo is that you will see high rankings and high rankings = $$ for agents. The bad side of this and each site owner must weigh the pitfalls, is that REW and AA again IMO is showing up on Googles radar more now which MAY lead to Google peaking in on their customers sites more.

If this is the case then those clients of REW and AA will only realize that earning potential for a short term and risk their online income futures. Just as Google can ban customers of a whole hosting provider, I would imagine they could any customer using a particular service provider.

When AA started to show up on Yahoo's radar look what happen there. What is about to come out of my mouth the debil...

is making me write. Morgan is a very clever Sem, sometimes maybe to clever, but not as clever as those people working for Google. The people at AA are clever, the people in Jays group are clever but again not as clever as those people working for Google. Now that these people/companies are on Googles radar only time will tell as to what the future holds for them.

The biggest problem I personally see with some of the tactics Morgan/REW uses is they are very risky and appear to be very unnatural from a linking perspective. This is not to say REW is the only group that uses its network to create link farms but over the last year I have seen Google cracking down on this type link farming more and more.

Remember only 4 years ago you could stuff hidden text and keywords all over a website and it would rank high. 3 years ago you could acquire thousands links from any themed website using your anchor text and you would rank high. 2 years ago you could acquire thousands of recip links in a short time and rank high quickly. 12 months ago for competitive real estate markets age of the site, age of the links, some onpage Seo and about 9 to 18 months is what it took to get high rankings in google if you are using white hat Seo. Now I believe recips are dead, link farms will soon be the kiss of death, template sites will hurt you, template content will hurt you and not keeping a site updated with links and content will cause a loss of trust with Google.

Real estate IMO again is now in the forefront of industries the search engines are watching for Seo practices that dont meet their guidelines. In the past SEs knew of these loopholes some SEOs were using in real estate but never took a long hard look at these providers and groups. Yahoo was the first to examine real estate sites and made an algo change. Google is now following suit with more changes I feel will come with their algo as it relates to real estate and link farms this year.

Sorry I am being long winded. My point is this. The SEs are cracking down on real estate related websites. Their reasoning is simple. All the major SEs are coming out with or buying their own online real estate portals that will generate them income/ consumer base. Some have even aligned themselves with some bigger real estate companies. From a business perspective it only makes good sense for them to make it very difficult for anyone to compete with them. Hense I believe what we have seen happen to REW, AA and other real estate service providers is only scratching the surface of whats coming for changes in the SEs algos for real estate sites. The dust hasnt settled yet so IMHO its to early to predict how harsh these coming algo changes will be and the type of Seo that will be required to get high rankings.

In the end I believe that the SEs will only count natural links. Recip links and those using link farms to manipulate Google rankings will soon find the SEs very unforgiving as they do in Yahoo. If the penalties that AA and REW sites received were only 30 days. I see this as a warning to those providers that Google has something on the horizon to be released that wont be as forgiving.

Jared · 05-31-2007, 07:35 AM

Good points. I've always believed that most of what google and the other SE's do is responding to abusive practices.

I read today that google is going to place a great deal of importance in the quality of the content in sites more so then the quantity. How? Who knows it may just be bull. I was under the impression google already did this to some degree..

~ Jared