Real Estate Marketing SEO Blog

Traffic Battle Plan 2012

Check out my Traffic Domination Plan for 2012 I announced the war with Google and Facebook over a year ago. Did SEO Just Die Since then many have said that yes SEO is dead. As Google has changed time and time again. Over the next few weeks I will be chronicling some of these deep changes that are effecting your website and your social graph right now. » Its a Social World In a nutshell Google blinked. And much of that has do with the velocity of content being created in the social media. Facebook, Twitter and more. And now the new kid on the block Pinterest is digging into the Facebook Traffic. » Its about the data. Google's and Facebook's business is not search and Social. It is datamining. While Google has been changing many have complained that Google is no longer relevant. That is the point of search relevancy isn't it?   Google's job is guessing at your and my behavior such that they can serve us relevant advertising.   Google grabs that data through all the data it gets from your cookied searches, visits to websites with adsense, analytics etc, your signed-in behavior, and your Google Plus behavior and your Android phone locations and behavior.   Facebook gets to know you through their graph of likes, follows, friends, clicks, etc and of course your profile you create when you sign up. In effect Facebook wants to be Google, Google wants to be Facebook. » The world just got smaller. Do a search in New York and chances are real good that Google will serve you local results having to do with services in New York. Google Places dominates the local searches with at least 4 results. Often times number 1 of yesterday, is now possibly 8.   Littered within that search will often be images and videos. We ran a post years ago that some day Google will be the new Yellow Pages. That day has come. » Disinformation. Google has succeeded largely from incredible public relations to compliment their just good enough search engine. With their online personalities, they have been able to spread vast and complicated concepts to misinform what is/was actually going on.   The more things change the more they stay the same. Google has always been about links, then the title tag and matching h tags. This concept has not changed. Its just that there is less of the same coveted prize called organic search results for you to grab.   Less competitive terms are easy as they have always been and the super competitive keywords will continue to be difficult to get.   Links have expanded in their definition. Links are 80% of the game. But now you have likes, Google pluses, and other social markers that Google desperately is trying to track. I call these social noise makers.   One reason Google has moved forward with Google Plus as an answer to Facebook, and recently adding SearchPlus Your World is that they were being blocked out of tracking social graphsof the biggies Twitter and Facebook.   Additionally local citations, or your business name, address, city, zip and phone weigh heavily for your Google Places (local) ranking. They serve the equivalence of links in local search. » To make things more crazy. Your website will need to adjust for mobile phonessome day soon as more and more searchers are using mobile phones to search the web. Soon to out number desktop searchers.   The long term answer is to get strategic and hire a firm like Spider Juice Technologies who can help you get your arms around the changes, while not getting swallowed up by all the marketing hype.   Step 1 is to embrace the fact that you must become a publisher of your own unique content, ghost written content, curated content, and collaborated content if you are to survive in this ever changing online environment.   Because the fact is. Google simply doesn't need you anymore. The only medicine is to get big on publishing. More on all of these changes and tactics soon.   We are here to help you.   Tim O'Keefe http://www.spiderjuicetechnologies.com/ 310 533 9145

What is an RSS Feed?

Image via Wikipedia

RSS is most commonly defined as "Really Simple Syndication" but sometimes "Rich Site Summary". It is a way for a webpage, most commonly in the form of a blog to syndicate either as a partial or full representation of the pages content.

RSS can allow you to quickly check your favorite blogs or often updated sites in an easy to digest format. It also allows a publisher to aggregate their content and repurpose it into other platforms and websites.

Originally, feeds were pulled from the source into desktop readers like Feed Deamon and others. More recently feeds are pulled into browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer as well as online readers such as Google Reader and My Yahoo.

Originally heralded as the great email replacer, I personally find RSS more interesting as a way that websites syndicate into other pages than as a way to independently read content. My attitude is if I really am tired of the email I unsubscribe or create rules whereby my categorized email goes into folders. Of course free email like Gmail can always keep my commercial email separated.

An Example of Grabbing RSS into Firefox

Ideas with SEO and Real Simple Syndication

Image via Wikipedia

Uses of RSS and SEO

External Sitemapping: A new website has new pages and a new page needs to be indexed into Google before it can be ranked into Google's top pages. So what is the best way for Google to find a page? From an external link. RSS syndication can be used to link back to your own unindexed page.

Content Repurposing: Reuse your valuable posts by posting your RSS into other webpages. You can do this through mashing several RSS feeds together. Or just place your feed URL into your favorite Social network like Facebook (the notes section makes this easy)

Rev Up Your Own Content: Sometimes you may want to give your page more relative content. You can mash an RSS feed of your favorite posts and provide it on a webpage.  Be sure to provide proper attribution as copyright laws require.

RSS and Real Estate

34 % of global respondents to a March social media survey from Universal McCann said they had "ever" subscribed to an RSS feed. That represents a large jump from the previous year's findings, when the agency found just 15 percent said they had subscribed to a feed. The data were gathered from 17,000 Internet users in 29 countries, aged 16 to 54.

The Big but is that the U.S. ranks far down on the RSS useage list, with penetration of only 18.6 %.

RSS is heavily accessed in Russia (57 %), Brazil (55 %) and China (54 %t). Only 25 % of U.S. respondents who use RSS said they access feeds daily while  35 % get them weekly and 16% monthly. 

Predictions for Online Real Estate 2006

Get the insider track on 2006
....online real estate marketing predictions

Happy New Year! everyone. I just posted my predictions for the new year. Check it out.

Reasons to Compete

A blog is a website.  To an SEO expert, a page is a page is a page.

So why does a blog seem to do so well in the engines compared to a regular website?

It doesnt!

"Blasphemous!" I can here the Blogger world cry out. But the fact is, it is true. I have a buddy who I consulted with a couple of years ago. He ran a not very impressive looking, yet very profitable mortgage application website.

I told him all about the reasons a blog could help his traffic. I told him about RSS, Syndication, Natural Linkages, Content, etc.

So he basically added hard coded articles (content), and archived his articles (posts). He even hard coded syndication into the site. He added content to his website. He never did build it into a blog. Or did he? What is the difference? Long story short he is taking some time off from his hard work after selling the site for more than most people make in 5 years.

A page is a page is a page.

There are many reasons the engines love a blog. The same reason they love a regular page.

However, even if you don't buy my reasoning. Understand this.

"The number of Blogs has been doubling every 5 months for the last 3 years" CNET, Oct 2005, referring to a Technorati quote.

Thus, competition is here and getting more fierce. The same competitive tools are necessary to compete on a blog as is neccessary for a conventional realtor website. And those tools after content, are off page optimization called Link Equity.

Spider Juice Technologies offers one way link programs without the ugly link trades that lose their value the minute you stop trading.

We offer one way links that help get your conventional or blog website the link equity needed to compete in a competitive marketplace. We can also consult with you to help you use your current blog to benefit your existing site. Contact us at 310-533-9145

RSS and You

In the rapid world of real estate, agents jump on trends enthusiastically. Sometimes, without concern for hype.

RSS-or as many call it; Real Simple Syndication is a method whereby your content is pulled by readers of your content. When syndicated onto other websites, we call that website an "eater" of your content, whereby your blog is the "feeder".

In a recent article from NAR, titled "What's RSS and How Can It Help Me?", the author describes what RSS is and how you desperately need it. As far as I am concerned RSS is the real benefit of having a blog. It allows your content to get easily syndicated across the net. The author finishes by declaring, " Do your homework so that you’re not left behind on this next big thing in online marketing technology."

Realtor: Keeping up with the Joneses

This statment is exactly what causes Realtors to waste money on every gimick out there. It is clear to me that the author does not clearly get why RSS is important, nor does he make a very good case for what it can do for you.

Is RSS important? Yes. Is blogging important? Yes. But just because you have a blog and RSS does not mean you will be successful.

In our article earlier today, we end the piece by offering you the ability to get on our RealtyBlogger.com site. We pull your RSS feed. This gives you a link back to your site. Pretty cool heh? Plus your news is syndicated on our directory. This is part of the power of RSS.