Why SEO is Dead

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Off Page Equity?

Huh? Have you ever thought about what that means? Going back to its roots, SEO meant to optimize a page so an engine like Alta Vista would like it and rank it higher than the next guy or gal. Words like density, proximity, metas all were part of optimizing a page.

Then along came Google at a time when the web was getting more and more tangled. Meaning it was ginormous!

Realtors started building two and three websites in some cases. And non Realtors-SEO guys like me were building real estate websites for affiliate money.

So what makes your site any better than your competitors?

• IDX. Check
• Community Data. Check
• School Data. Check
• Crime Data. Check
• About You. Check

So what makes your website so unique? Every website has this stuff to some degree or another.  And honestly can we expect a machine  (Google, MSN/Live, Yahoo) to act human and judge the quality of your website? Seriously what makes your site any better than the next agents?  And honestly do you even want a machine actually judging what you offer?

So the engines in all their wisdom have come to rely on links to your real estate webpage to act as judge and jury.

Oh sure they have other quality scores to make sure your stuff matters over the other gals stuff. But when the main main SEO levers are in place, links are everything. I even know people who have made blank-empty pages rank high in the engines by just linking to them.

So ........Get Your Link On!

Comments

[Charles Heflin]

Hi Tim,

SEO 1.0 is dying a slow miserable death. SEO 2.0 is strong on the scene. Gaining links to your website/blog has become automated through publishing high quality content to an audience that respects it.

There should be no focus on off page SEO in this new age. Link building is a matter of human vote and should not be manipulated as we have done in the past with old school link building tactics.

With SEO 2.0 you build links through interacting with others in social media and building relationships ... relationships foster links and enhance search engine visibility.

I agree "get your link on" but do it right.

What do you think?

[Tim O'Keefe]

Charles-
Thanks for visiting HouseBlogger, I am honored:-)

Yes I think one should focus on high quality content. But to say no focus on off page(basically meaning links) is short sighted IMHO.

Additionally, I do not believe and have yet to see where Google is smart enough to judge a quality site based on content. First of all taking our webhead hats off, your idea of quality and mine may be very unique. As an example many people love G maps on websites. I hate them. And those nuances are impossible to measure. And unfair in many cases.

I think what you are saying is the good content will get people to link to you naturally, and I have to disagree.Not in volume anyway.

There are industrys and niches that simply do not have enough people online to give a darn about their site in order to link to it.

And in the case of Realtors who is going to link to it? Other Realtors? The customer isn't going to do it. Maybe Realtor.com will do it. Nope. Wont happen.

So then who? Realtor enthusiasts? (Do they hang out with the online used car salesmen enthusiasts? )That can happen to some degree but not enough to compete. So I gotta believe that pushing the process along is neccesary in most cases that are competitive.

However, overtime (and you Realtors reading Charles comment, he is shooting a warning shot over the bow) content is very important. Or the links will fall on their face.

I believe the real estate industry is in for a shock soon. As their main plug n play content mashups are used up. Thus, commodity websites and mot very unique in content.

Leaving the industry in a state of crisis. But not like the market now, but what I call a content crisis (the subject of a future book of mine). And those Realtors and Mortgage Pros that find a way to extent their brands message textually and also thru other mediums (podcasts/video/ Sequential marketing) will succeed and continue to enjoy rank.

[Brandon]

I couldn't agree with you more. We spent some time designing our site to be search engine friendly, but now we focus on getting links and participating in online conversations.

[Spruce Creek]

Links are almost everything in Google's algorithm. The original algorithm devised by Sergey actually penalized for having a site linked more than once by another site. No one really knows how they figure page rank anymore... Some obscure low-traffic sites have actually higher page rank numbers than sites with ten times the traffic - go figure.