Real Estate Forums

SEOWolf · 05-10-2007, 08:38 PM

Al there are many alternatives to increasing link popularity besides using reciprocal state link pages. HHI Golf Guy has preached this almost since this forum began.

After this all cools down we can go into some of the alternatives in detail. If anyone feels uncomfortable disusing these alternatives in the public forum then they should post to the private Advanced SEO Forum.

Jim gives good advice when he states "not to try a work-around".

Instead we all need to adapt and do a work-with IMHO.

Ten years ago we all raised hell when the local Board of REALTORS® told us that there was a better way to show the MLS and they were going to stop issuing the hard cover MLS Books every month. Aren’t we all glad about it now?

Change is not a bad thing and long over due in this instance IMHO.

~VegasMack

TheCSway · 05-10-2007, 10:23 PM

I haven't been in this forum for a while, and rarely post. I stopped even attempting SEO for Realtors OVER a year ago because of the rampant over-abuse of these perpetual SEO tricks/schemes that people are touting in what seems to be primarily isolated in this industry(plus mortgage). The best, smartest SEO's keep their mouths shut, plain and simple.

I love to read these forums, but not for advice/ideas. Rather, they prepare me to deal with phonecalls from my clients "worried" about the newest move by the search engines that will ruin their lives, and prepare a response.

To Jim Messengers credit, simplicity is key, and Jim, I respect your work a lot. But to give so much credit to the brilliance of algorithms is laughable. There will always be a way to manipulate serps. Period. There is no possible way that algorithms can become more intuitive than human thought. It just takes an elaborate, unconventional thinker to look at the puzzle and think - Hey, maybe there is another approach.

SEOWolf · 05-10-2007, 10:48 PM

Well thanks for dropping in and commenting TheCSway.

BTW – your links are broken in your signature on your Profile. Did you want them removed are will the site be back up soon?

~VegasMack

P.S.

I love your avatar.

TheCSway · 05-10-2007, 10:54 PM

VegasMack,

I removed my url's from any signature because I am not here trying to flame a thread. I don't need to answer responses as to my qualifications for making such statements. My intention was to brew a little intelligent thought into a mind-numbing, tail-chasing argument that seems to brew in this industry

SEOWolf · 05-10-2007, 11:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheCSway

VegasMack,

I removed my url's from any signature because I am not here trying to flame a thread. I don't need to answer responses as to my qualifications for making such statements. My intention was to brew a little intelligent thought into a mind-numbing, tail-chasing argument that seems to brew in this industry

Understood.

I was not asking for a resume I was just letting you know you had broken links in you signature. That’s all. Your comments are as welcomed as anyone’s are.

I only clicked on your links because your avatar design intrigued me. I was hoping to see more.

After all, any speculation about the search engines and SEO is just that… speculation.

As far as the real estate industry it is what it is. We just struggle to attempt to make sense of it all.

~VegasMack

glenng · 05-11-2007, 05:29 AM

I have an AA site and hit very hard by the Google penalty for having state pages.

Some history - when AA sites were hit by Yahoo, all AA sites were eliminated from the state pages (btw - the state pages were not the canned AA state pages). Formed a focus group (5) of clients and friends that are in executive search business as well as dealing with relocation and developed relocation pages that would assist people with resources and information about the state with links to the resources - newspapers, colleges, hospitals, official state pages, etc. After the focus group agreed that the pages were beneficial, each of the original 5 focus group members polled 5 people that were relocating. Based upon that input, additional information was added to the state pages. Reviewed the remaining sites to determine if they were linking back and complemented my relocation page. This activity took almost 2 months to accomplish. The end result was that a significant number of outbound links to real estate agent sites were eliminated.

The Google penalty hit.

Based upon input from Greg Boser (aka webguerilla) I eliminated all state pages and removed any link that was to a real estate related site. I received input from some other knowledgeable persons that pointed out some items that could have an adverse effect on my SERP's. Filed the reinclusion request with Google. Within 72 hours my site had improvements in positioning. The results or placements are fairly mixed from where I was originally.

I hope this experience will help others to determine a direction for their sites.

PS - I claim to very little SEO knowledge, and interested in hearing more from HHI Golf about RSS feeds, subdomains, and articles.

MarcinSarasota · 05-11-2007, 06:51 AM

Thanks for the invite Mack.

It looks like the bomb was dropped on my site yesterday from the dramatic decrease in traffic. I erased my state pages about a week ago. Apparently, it was not soon enough. I have used the "Remove URL" Google tool for all of the state pages.

Hopefully, this will be a short term set back. The sad thing is that I really do have an authority site on the subject of real estate in Sarasota and I am getting beat out by real estate agent websites in other parts of the country.

We will see what happens.

jasonbrown · 05-11-2007, 09:18 AM

I got wammied in the past 60 days or so by Google (not by Yahoo). I suspected that what you are addressing here in this thread may have been part of my problems, so I deleted the links on my state pages about a week ago, but NOT any of the information - including leaving the link info for each Realtor (with no live link).

Side note: Although I am still a page rank 4, Google has given me a -100 to -900 penalty in many cases.

This leads me to the following question of, what if you delete the links but keep the state pages in tact? Doing so would allow you to provide non-link info about other agents, without the links being present. This would allow you to keep 50 pages on your site, which makes your site bigger and also allows you to keep a state referral directory that should benefit your local clients to use in locating other Realtors around the country. There would obviously be no link benefit, but the benefits I just mentioned would seem to make it worth keeping the pages. Unless of course the SE's detect these pages as black hat irregardless of having links on them.

Do you think leaving the pages is alright or is deleting the pages in their entirety imperative?

SEOWolf · 05-11-2007, 11:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarcinSarasota

It looks like the bomb was dropped on my site yesterday from the dramatic decrease in traffic. I erased my state pages about a week ago. Apparently, it was not soon enough. I have used the "Remove URL" Google tool for all of the state pages.

Yes I saw that you JimJ and a couple other friends over at REW got hit. Sorry to see it. We all depend on these rankings to support our families and it is devastating when they tank.

When did you submit the pages to Google for a “Remove URL”? Was it before or after you got hit?

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarcinSarasota

Hopefully, this will be a short term set back. The sad thing is that I really do have an authority site on the subject of real estate in Sarasota and I am getting beat out by real estate agent websites in other parts of the country.

Yes is was and still is the “Authority Site” for Sarasota real estate IMHO. I am sure you will get back on top in short order. Our prayers go out to you JimJ and the others that were affected.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jasonbrown

This leads me to the following question of, what if you delete the links but keep the state pages in tact? Doing so would allow you to provide non-link info about other agents, without the links being present. This would allow you to keep 50 pages on your site, which makes your site bigger and also allows you to keep a state referral directory that should benefit your local clients to use in locating other Realtors around the country.

You are still thinking in terms of a work-around. From what Jim Messenger tells me it was a general consensus by the panel staffed by Search Engine representatives at the SES Conference that the state reciprocal link pages amounted to 50+ irrelevant pages per Agent website that were spamming the index.

As a group we need to collectively assess the situation calmly. The fact is the state reciprocal pages were created to manipulate the SERPS. PERIOD! Everyone can use any excuse about referrals or what ever they wish to justify the existence of these pages but the fact remains the same. It was done to manipulate results. It worked for a very long time but that time has come and gone. We need to adapt, conform and move on IMHO.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jasonbrown

Do you think leaving the pages is alright or is deleting the pages in their entirety imperative?

That is not my decision. I don’t sit “On High” and bless my disciples with advice and expect them to blindly follow knowing that if the advice causes damage I will charge additional excessive fees to correct it.

I am just like you. I am a REALTOR® and in the trenches everyday. While I now leave the showing and selling up to my Wife and Son I still go over closing statements, meet inspectors and deal with Title Companies on a frequent basis. I don’t tell anyone what to do with their sites (even my Clients). I give them all of the information I have available, what I am doing that works or does not work and let them decide.

As HHI Golf Guy has been preaching since Cat was a Kitten there are alternative ways to build link popularity but let’s not try to rebuild our house while it is still on fire. Let’s put the fire out, assess the damage and then rebuild.

If you insist on retaining your directories at the very least follow HHI Golf Guy’s suggestion and move them to a sub-domain.

I am a Real Estate SEO Consultant and NOT a SEO Guru.

As a Consultant I have advised my Clients to conform.

~VegasMack

HHI Golf Guy · 05-11-2007, 01:10 PM

For those of you that are getting hammered by this change and are looking to add some new links to your site, I'm going to put a new real estate Neighborhood Guide web site. The purpose of this site will be for agents to write articles about what it's like to live in the various towns and subdivisions in your area.

For each city there will be one main "City Neighborhood Guide" page. Most likely, the main page for each city will have one featured article on it as well as links to other articles about that area. I may initially choose to rotate the article that shows up on the main city page. Or I may just rotate snippets of a few articles on each main city page. I haven't decided yet.

The focus of each article will be what it is like to live, work, and/or play in each community - not about buying or selling real estate. That is secondary. If you submit an article you can link to different pages on your own web site including your pages on demographics, schools, specific neighborhoods, etc. Be careful not to violate FHA in your article, you never know who will end up reading it. The article can also feature your picture, a few pictures that relate to the article, your contact info, and a link to the home page of your web site.

If you have good articles about multiple towns/locations in your area, you will be allowed to submit them all. Either myself or a member of my team will review all articles before they are published. If the articles are "over-optimized" or contain too many links will be send it back to you asking for changes. How many links is too much? That's hard to say because it depends upon the size of the article and what you choose to link to.

Just focus on writing an informative article about your area. Don't keyword stuff or try and go crazy with bold text, KW driven anchor text, etc. Pretend it's a a print media piece you send out in one of your relocation kits.

It won't cost you anything to submit information to the site. It won't even cost you a link back to the site. I'll get my links from other sources. If you want to post a link to the site, you can post a link in a forum or somewhere else on the web.

What's the domain name? I haven't decided on one yet. When will the site be up and running? Hopefully within the next week or so. I just put together a rough site layout and hope to get it all finished soon. However, we are in the process of launching a new Atlanta city portal, and that site takes precedent.

The true benefit of this site is to help promote agents as experts on what it's like to live and work in their area. Let's face it - most of the general public thinks real estate agents are a dime a dozen. But articles like this can help brand you as a local area expert.

If you're interested, go ahead and send me a PM. Hopefully I can get a few people to send me some articles to post when the site goes live for the first time.

One more thing: Each article that is submitted will also be set up as a syndicated RSS feed. We will be blasting these feeds throughout the internet, and visitors to the web site will also be able to pull in localized RSS feeds from our site.