Week 9 Checklist

Article topic: “The Google Sandbox”

What is the Google sandbox, and how do you get out. The article this week covers the Google sandbox theory and action steps to insure a long life in Google.

The internet is littered with stories of the Google sand box and the techniques to get out. We have tried to compile an overall understanding of Google and we have developed to the best of our knowledge some basic action steps necessary to escape the sandbox, assuming however that one even exists.

It all started when people started launching websites for the sole purpose of creating one way links to other websites so the other website could achieve first page rankings for terms they were trying to achieve. To correct this black hat SEO tactic, Google created what people in the industry call the sandbox. Suddenly new websites were no where to be found in Googles’ search engine results.

This change occurred sometime in early 2004, meaning websites utilizing a new url were not achieving rankings in Google and it was taking upto a year before you saw any results in Google. It seemed that Google was looking for sites that were seasoned or had been registered and used activily on the web for a long period of time. Another theory was that the sites just simply needed to have a certain amount of inbound links from other validated Goolge websites before being released from this filter. What ever the theory, the result was the same…..no results in Google for upto a year.

Given these theories, what are the solutions? The easiest is giving what Google or any other search engine wants. A custom website offering custom content. We have seen clients using new URL’s and connectting the URL to a W3 validated custom website with custom content achive indexing in Google in as little as 3 months. Not necessarily first page ranking, but at least proper indexing in the searh results. Once you have been correctly indexed, it is only a matter of time before you can also achieve page one rankings for the terms you are targeting.

This 52 week program is designed to do exactly that. Once our clients site go’s live we then instruct our client to slowly develop a presence through directories, forum signature links and blogging, not to mention creating new articles with a minimum of 500 words of content each and every month. This insures your sites’ natural growth and will show Google and other engines that you offer quality content and should be free of any Google sand box.

Bi-Monthly Checklist For Success

Expand the number of forums in which you actively participate
Post in one 1 industry specific web blog
Post a minimum of 20 times in your chosen forum
Write 10 new blogs entries
Submit to 5 one way directories

Week 7 Checklist

Article topic: “Content is key”

We feel that appropriate and correctly formatted content is one of the most important tools a real estate agent can use is today’s market to achieve exposure through search engines. However content is the piece of the puzzle that is overlooked the most.

For example very few people have the time to write hundreds of pages of content regarding their personal real estate market. As a result, most of the content on the internet is just copied from other sources like your local chamber of commerce, local magazines or other real estate sites like realty times.

The majority of realtors do not realize how tightly they are binding their hands by copying and pasting content. This week’s article covers how important content is to creating a strong footing in this competitive internet world.

After years of research and the quest for search engine knowledge, we have acknowledged that creating as much unique information for your site may be the most vital component in achieving lasting rankings. Let us look at it from a search engines’ perspective.

Originally the internet was created as an information source. You typed in a phrase and the search engines provided you with sites which included those words. As the internet grew, search engines had to evolve to not just look for words but groups of words, then whole sentences and in the near future, the content of the whole page before deciding what results to provide their user.

By using copied content, a search engine can’t define the differences between one website and another website. For example, templated websites have tons of content on each website. However all that content is also on all the other templated websites. So from a search engine perspective, how would a search engine differentiate one site from another. The short answer is that they don’t. They may use it to index your pages properly, but they won’t give you top placement in the search results. Therefore having copied content on your website is a strike against you in regard to search engine rankings.

As search engines progress they are really cracking down on duplicate content. From their point of view all they want for their user is quality unique information for which their user is searching.

Real estate agents, by having a templated website are not giving the search engines the chance to showcase the real estate agents true understanding of their business. If your web presence has information that reflects your personal knowledge of your business, then you are providing them with a reason to give you top placement in their results.

Does this sound a little like all the offline marketing secrets you have been taught. You would be correct. Unique content allows you to separate yourself from your competitors. We feel that having a custom website is the first step to obtaining a long and successful life on the internet.

Lastly, There is nothing wrong with being inspired with someone elses ideas. If you have a custom unique presence which is based on other ideas you have collected, fabulous. There is no need to re-invent the wheel. Just make sure you present it in your own words with your own spin.

If you focus on making sure that everything from the graphics to the text are unique and you continue to grow out your website with resource pages and articles about your personal market, how could you not be a good resource for the consumer. As painful as it is, the benefits out way the costs at the end of the day.

Bi-Monthly Checklist for Success

Write 1 new content page for your website( 500 word minimum)
Write 5 new blog entries in your blog
Post 20 times in your chosen forums
Submit to 5 directories which provide one way links

Week 5 Checklist

Article Topic: “Reciprocal Linking”

Reciprocal linking, link farms, link exchanges etc…, we all receive emails from people saying how wonderful they think your website is and how they would love to exchange a link with you. Why are they doing this?

What is the value of linking? How did this come about? Well, you can blame Google for these emails. In the beginning, before Google, search engine algorithms were basing there results on website’s static content and their metatags. For example if the information you had on your site made sense to the spyder and your title tag matched the keyword the consumer typed in to the search engine, you may have received major rankings.

Then came Google and the world of web results was changed. Google wanted there to be more variables in deciding what results to display. In addition, they wanted the public to have a say in which websites received top placement in their search results.

To create this “equal playing field” they created a system which not only evaluated the content on your website but also started evaluating links. The links they reveiwed were the link coming into your website from other websites and the links that were on your website to other websites. How this worked was a bit of genius. What they had done was create a democratic voting system. By other websites linking to your website, that was considered a vote for your site.

Google had realized that with over 1 million web pages launched every day on the internet, there was no way one organization could keep track of and accuratley rate all these websites. However, by creating an automated system which is based not only on content but also on a democratic voting system, They would be providing the most relevant and up to date information to their users. For example from Google’s perspective it was like “we like you, people like you, you must be a good site’ and rankings you shall receive.

Website owners then realized in a short period of time that they needed to get links to their website and the more links they had, the better rankings they would receive. From this theory, reciprocal linking was born.

Reciprocal linking is a link exchange between two web pages. Let’s use real estate as an example. Bob in Florida has a website and he emails John in New Mexico and they agree to link to each other. This works because from their perspective they aren’t competing with each other and the resulting link benefits both agents. This all seems fine and appropriate but then people started creating products to serve the needs of the reciprocal marketer. Instead of analyzing the value of a proposed link exchange, people started trading links for links sake and the value of the links was decreased. Is bob linking to John because he likes his site or is he linking to John to get a link in return. In most cases people were just trying to get as many links as possible thus being self serving. People starting linking to anyone and everyone without caring what the site represented. This became a problem because it started to pollute Google’s results.

No longer could Google rely on the website owner to provide them with links because they liked other websites. So then Google decided to change the algorythm to better value the link voting system they had created. In order to fix the problem they started to primarily validate one way back links.

For example if John links to Bob and Bob links to John then they cancel each other out and are devalued in Google’s eyes. Now what Google wanted was for Bob to link to John because John offered information that Bob deemed good information to provide his customers, not just because he received a link in return.

This worked for awhile until after a short period of time online marketing companies tried to trick Google again using link farms. A link farm is a page with hundreds of links on it pointing to various other websites with no ryhme or reason. The sole purpose of the page was to create false backlinks to a website.

This strategy was easy for Google to discover and crack down upon and when they discovered websites using this technique, Google would then ban them which meant they would not show up in the search results.

Google then realized that since they still wanted to promote the linking strategy between websites, they needed to create a tool which would allow website owners to decide which websites would be the best for them to link.

This is why the Page Rank tool was created. The theory was that if you link to websites with a high PR(pagerank), then other website owners could know if it was worth linking to a third party website.

Click here to down load the Google toolbar in order to see your website’s page rank.

So what does all this mean….It means that linking is still very important and reciprocal linking has value but very little unless it is industry related. Your focus in regard to linking should be to get industry related websites to link to your website without having to give a link to the other website.

Bi-Monthly Checklist for Success

Create an article for your website
Write 5 New Blog Entries
Post minimum of 20 times in Real Estate Forum
Submit your website to 5 directories… Click Here for a Directory List

Week 3 Checklist

Article Topic: “To Blog or not to Blog, that is the question”

The term “weblog” was originated by Jorn Barger in 1997. A short version “blog”, was originated by Peter Merholz in 1999. Hence what we know as the blog. What is a blog? How does it work? How can it help you? All of these questions will be answerd in this weeks article.

A blog is a journal. A way to communicate via the internet without having to create a new web page every time you want to communicate new and current information to your users. For example it is a personal journal, calender ect. Controlled by the user. It gives the owner of the blog the ability to post a comment or entry on a daily basis in which the comment can be responded to by friends, or the random user that may find your blog via the internet. It is simply like having a personal diary that you can create and update on your website without the management of creating new webpages.

New info shows up at the top of the page, so visitors can read it on a daily basis. They can then comment on the information, link to the information, or even call or email you. In short, it is a communication tool which allows you to post new content to the web at your desire with out having to hard code it into your custom websites.

In the real estate industry we know that new information needs to be displayed to the consumer on a daily or weekly basis. You now have control and you can still gain rankings. In the past realtors were using content management systems or control panels provided by their template website in order to make changes and update there site. Unfortunatly these code intensive back end systems are hated by search engine spyders. In most cases these content management systems are connected through the back end of the website joining you to all the other templates provided by the company of which you purchased your template.

What this means is on a technical level is you are attached at the hip with hundreds and maybe thousands of other realtors nationwide. With a blog, you as an individual, have the ability to post info and get responses. With a content management system you may be able to post new info, but the info is not interactive nor is it developed in a format that is liked by the search engine spyders.

Bi-Monthly Checklist for Success

Log into Blog and Create a post
Submit your website to 5 directories Click Here for a Directory List
Post minimum of 10 times in Real Estate Forum

Week 1 Checklist

Discussion Forums

In the past, forums were viewed as places for geeks to communicate via the web. However, as the internet continues to grow and define itself, we have found them to be a very valuable resource to our clients.
Forums benefit your internet experience twofold; they allow for international networking, as well as providing a tool that benefits your site’s rankings.

In technical jargon, this tool is known as signature linking (a form of backlinking). Signature linking is when a link is placed at the bottom of your forum posts. (click here for example) How this is of value to our clients is rather simple. The link shows other users and visitors in the discussion forum what services you provide. This exposure is a wonderful tool to generate business.

Another way signature linking generates power to your website is by providing evidence to search engine spiders that you are actively participating in the online world. For example, every time you post, you obtain relevance to your website through this signature link. The spiders recognize the content of the post as well as the link and associate it with your website.

Active forums can be a great place to earn your site’s significance from the perspective of the search engine spyder. However, a forum with no members or visitors may not be as effective, because the spyders regard an inactive forum as invalueable to the average online consumer. As the industry grows, we are finding that forum posts and threads are starting to rank in search engines, driving significant web traffic to these online communities. Click here for example. In the end, traffic translates to exposure, which leads to business. With these tips in mind, happy posting.

Bi-Monthly Checklist for Success

Setup Signature link in RealEstateForum.com
Once Signature link is established post a Minimum of 5 times in Real Estate Forum
Submit site to 3 directories - Click Here for Directory List