Mary's Blog

Whether you love Greg Swann or you love to hate Greg Swann, one thing is clear... he engages people.  He knows something most people don't.  Humans are emotional junkies and the more outrageous you are the more people will flock to you.  Why? Because engaging is sometimes enraging!  People love to be happy, mad, sad.  It is one of the first things you learn when studying sociology.  Don't believe me?  Just look at how many people subscribe and read his blog daily.  Look at how many people kill themselves to write on Greg's blog so they can experience just a sliver of his popularity fallout. 

So, what did I do to stir up some Greg Swann fallout?  With my coveted invite to Unchained (I'm not stupid, I never would have done this if I didn't have that yet and yes, this blog is a shameless plug for the event), I thought I would do what I do my best, stir up a little controversy.  And where better to do that but on Real Estate Radio?  So, with the Barrys in tow and my Unchained invite in hand, I said the most outrageous thing I could think of about the most contentious celebrity of the real estate blogosphere.  I said, "Greg is my favorite fremeny, he is the Nicole Richie to my Paris Hilton." Then to add more fuel to the fire, I called out my compadre in crime, Brian Brady by disagreeing with him about who really needs a blog!  Why on earth would I do this to these two respected guys? Because it drives traffic back to me.  It gets me read, it gets me subscribed and moreover, it gets me trust. People trust people who are not afraid to speak their minds and say unpopular things. 

"I consider myself the Ann Coulter of the real estate blogosphere - outrageous and thick skinned.  Are you an Ann Coulter or a Princess Diana?"

You are not a dog, you don't need pats on the back or behind to keep your tail waggling.  You need traffic and leads.  This is a lesson many a Realtor or real estate tech pundit needs to get their head around.  You can't always be loved.  To be popular and I mean wildly popular you have to have a few dissenters.  Hold fast to your opinion even if people disagree with you.  I'm sure you all remember my first rails against blogrolls and single property websites. (and YES NikNik, I have changed my mind on SPS')

Read also: Google hates your blogroll

Read also: Does Google hate your link love?

Want to hear me call Greg Nicole Richie and possibly tell him I was bringing a leash to Unchained?

 Mary McKnight from RssPieces.com [44:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

And Greg, you know I am just pulling your chain, right? 

For anyone who wants to know more about the Unchained event, get all the info here:

From my keyboard to your ears: You are not anyone if you are not at Unchained.  Get your ticket now because I'm pretty confident this event won't be an industry circle jerk.  It will be the real deal.  Technology presented by people that speak their minds, know their stuff and give you solid knowledge on how to improve your business with it.  Real Estate Radio and BrokerIPTV will also be there to make this a total multi media event.

 

Social Media Marketing Conference
for real estate professionals
May 18-20, 2008, Phoenix, AZ
Click here to learn more

 

 

<!-- <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:trackback="http://madskills.com/public/xml/rss/module/trackback/"> <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://www.rsspieces.com/mary-mcknight-calls-greg-swann-aquot-nicole-richieaquot-seriously-i-did-that" dc:identifier="http://www.rsspieces.com/mary-mcknight-calls-greg-swann-aquot-nicole-richieaquot-seriously-i-did-that" dc:title="<a href="http://www.rsspieces.com/mary-mcknight-calls-greg-swann-aquot-nicole-richieaquot-seriously-i-did-that">Mary McKnight Calls Greg Swann "Nicole Richie", seriously, I did that!</a>" trackback:ping="http://www.rsspieces.com/trackback/8570" /> </rdf:RDF> -->

http://www.rsspieces.com/00217A

It's true, I hate your chiclets almost as much as I hate your blogroll... and not surprisingly, for almost the exact same reasons... the reciprocal linking, the ego stroking (AKA industry circle jerk), lack of usefulness to visitors and large on-page link count. Now, don't get all sensitive, you can be reformed. Even the best of bloggers succumb to the occasional chicklet or two, but 10, 20 little icons in your sidebar or footer, it's a little excessive, don't you think?

What is a chicklet?

A small icon adjacent to a blog post, article or web page to indicate the availability of an RSS feed, however sometimes they can be directory badges (reciprocal links) and other website awards and affiliations.

Why do I hate your chiclets?

1. Reciprocal linking: most chiclets are nothing more than a cute little reciprocal link. Outside of the chiclets for feeds, your general directory and award chiclets typically require links back to the directory or award site. Not exactly something Google looks favorably upon.

Read also: Google slaps real estate blogs for reciprocal linking

2. Too many links/chiclets can bloat your page beyond the 120 links acceptable to Google: a chicklet is a completely wasted link. Remember you only have a total of 120 on your home page to give away and wouldn't you rather use them on navigation, internal links and useful external links? Think the 120 limit is bogus? Go ask some of the bloggers struck down in the blaze of glory that was Google's last two PageRank Updates. You bloat your page past the 120 link threshold and there is a good chance you will be penalized because you look like a link farm to Google.

Read also: Google hates your blogroll

Read also: Does Google hate your link love?

3. They are nothing but ego strokers: most chiclets are simply ego strokers that say "hey I'm a somebody in this directory and rank #5 out of 240" or "I graduated from this class that has absolutely no value to you Mr. Consumer, but makes me and my webmaster feel good." Not exactly a very valuable icon or link for your most important visitor... the consumer.

4. Not useful to visitors: unless a chicklet or a widget is a useful addition to your real estate blog and you legitimately believe that a user is likely to click on it or use it, it is useless.

5. Chiclets have no relevancy to your content: oh yeah, doesn't Google like to see links and image tags with relevance to the overall content and theme of your real estate blog? Most chiclets are completely irrelevant to real estate and do not contain any useful anchor text that would help to boost your keyword density.

What are useful chiclets:

Social Bookmarks like Digg, Technorati, Del.ici.us, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc. We like the "share this" tool for social bookmarks.

RSS/ATOM feeds

 

Week of February 25: Real Estate Blog Online Training Schedule

OK, I am going to try something different this week.  Since WebEx only holds 30 people (and they were always full), I'm trying out Go To Webinar where we can get up to 50 users in a single seminar!  So, register now to reserve your seat and let's see if this service works better.  If you are a regular attendee, let me know what you think about this new service.  Thanks.

Monday 12 PM: The Devil Teach SEO: White Hat with Horns SEO Training

Join me for a 45 minute real estate blog training seminar. Learn how to outrank a competitor with some sneaky yet totally white hat shizzle. Do you feel me? This is not for the feign of heart so, attend at your own risk.

By invitation only.  This is the last time I will be running this session and seats are sold out. 

Monday 1 PM: SEO Training

Join me for a 45-minute SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Seminar.  Learn how to optimize your real estate blog for better placement in Google.  This seminar focuses on basic on-page and off-page optimization techniques that will help your blog place for prime short tail keywords in 90 days or less.

Register to Attend this Meeting Today:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/en_US/webinar/island/joinAWebinar.tmpl

Webinar ID: 270203026
GoToWebinar Conference Call Service:
United States
Organizer: (641) 715-3399, access code 570-599-945
Panelist: (641) 715-3399, access code 514-416-895
Attendee: (641) 715-3222, access code 452-126-863
Webinar Password: Not required

Tuesday 1 PM: PageRank 5 Club

By invitation only

Wednesday 1 PM: Blogging Training

Join me for a 45 minute real estate blog training seminar.  Learn how to write focused scan-able and engaging content that both readers and search engines will come back for.  This course focuses on proven SEO copywriting techniques and provides a system for writing blog posts in 30 minutes or less.

Register to Attend this Meeting Today:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/en_US/webinar/island/joinAWebinar.tmpl

Webinar ID: 129767495
GoToWebinar Conference Call Service:
United States
Organizer: (605) 772-3322, access code 374-460-872
Panelist: (605) 772-3322, access code 521-351-666
Attendee: (605) 772-3434, access code 195-780-782
Webinar Password: Not required

Thursday 1 PM: Lead Generation Training

Join me for a 45 minute lead generation session.  Learn how to structure your blog properly so you generate leads daily through your real estate blog.  I will also review various lead generation systems from 1 Park Place to WolfNet

Register to Attend this Meeting Today:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/en_US/webinar/island/joinAWebinar.tmpl

Webinar ID: 227788772
GoToWebinar Conference Call Service:
United States
Organizer: (605) 772-3322, access code 193-476-244
Panelist: (605) 772-3322, access code 391-588-655
Attendee: (605) 772-3434, access code 468-459-979
Webinar Password: Not required

Friday 1 PM: RSS Pieces client Training

By invitation only

 

 

According to Technorati there are now 70 million blogs out there. The most concerning thing about all that competition is that Technorati also reports that only 55% of people who start a blog today will still be blogging 3 months from now.  That being said, consistancy is the name of the game when it comes to real estate blogging, you need to be consistent in your topic, keywords, posting frequency and article formats.

Read also: 45% of all Blogs Sleep with the Fishes

Why do real estate blogs fail?

1.       Lack of Results

Results are all I care about.  I don't care that you are a great writer because I don't want to help a Realtor that is nothing but a failed journalist.  I want to help a Realtor that wants to be a successful Realtor, not a writer.  So, results to me are landing your blog on page 1 of Google and generating leads daily.  Can you live with that?  Most real estate blogs fail because they the blogger doesn't see any results and that is generally the result of their not knowing how to blog successfully.

Read also: Formula for a Successful Blog Post

2.       Lack of Commitment

I see a lot of real estate blogs that start off strong with up to 3-5 posts posts per day, then trickle off into nowhweresville.  If there were an orphanage for abandon blogs, maybe Angelina Jolie would adopt a few and give them a better life.  You need to write at least 3-5 blogs per week at around 250 words each.

3.       Macro-psychotic/Bi-polar Blogging

A lack of focus on real estate is cancer causing for a real estate blog.  I was at a real estate blog recently that published a recipe for a lemon drop martini.  Can anyone say "inappropriate?"  Your real estate blog is for one thing, real estate.  Don't stray from the topic at hand if you want to be searchable by terms related to real estate in Google.

Read also: Avoiding the bi-polar blog

4.       Failure to create internal link relevance AKA a flat architecture

Google is lazy and prefers to visit and crawl sites on which it never has to make more than 2 leaps to get to any internal page.  How about them apples?  So, any site without a readable auto generated sitemap accessible from each page of the site is doing themselves a huge disservice. Other ways to create internal relevancy is to use the most views, related posts and recent posts widgets in your blog platform.

Read also: Real Estate Blog SEO Tip: Internal Link Relevance

5.       Not knowing what to write about

It's easy to go off the reservation and get lost in writers block when putting your real estate blog together.  I mean, there are only so many real estate topics you write about, right?  Well, fear not, I and many others have put together a comprehensive list of ideas for real estate bloggers to write about. 

Read also: 365 ¼ Ideas for Realtors to Blog About

 

Week of Feb 18: Real Estate Blog Online Training Schedule

Sadly, I will be in San Diego on business until Wednesday, so I am only running blog training on Thursday and Friday. And Thursday's SEO class is going to be the bomb so get there early if you want to get in.  The good news, is I will be turning over my blog to my sardonic witted husband tat will fill you with so much geeky knowledge that you will be begging for me to come back earlier!

Thursday: Blog Training

Join me for a 45 minute real estate blog training seminar. Learn how to outrank a competitor with some sneaky yet totally white hat shizzle. Do you feel me? This is not for the feign of heart so, attend at your own risk.

Also, since this is nothing I want my competition to have a hold of, you have to ask for an invitation by emailing me at mary@rsspieces.com.  This class only holds 15, so get your invites early.

Date: Thursday February 21, 2008

Time: 1:00 PM EST

Friday: RSS Pieces Client Training: By Invitation Only

RSS Pieces clients can feel free to login to this private seminar where I give one-on-one assistance to help you improve your search engine placement, use the RSS Pieces system and build a solid foundation for your blog. This is a great place to learn the basics of blogging and a great place to refresh your knowledge.

 

A study conducted over the course of 20 years followed Harvard grad incomes and found that while 90% of grads made $X annually ($X was not defined) after 20 years, the other 10% made 10 times $X. What separated the 90% from the selected 10% was that the 10% wrote down their goals, made specific plans to reach them and checked in with those goals each year. So, what separated the millionaires from the average Joes was their ability to set and track their goals. The same thing holds true for your real estate blog. You must set goals and track your progress in order to reach your blogging potential.

Baseline:

When you start your blog, you are starting form a baseline of 0. You probably don't have any backlinks, PageRank or vistors.  Basically, you can't find yourself on a search engine with two hands, a flashlight, a compass and a map. And, honestly, that's good. You know where you are at. So, let's look at what types of goals you should be setting, how to plan to achieve them and how to track your progress.

GOAL 1: Establish credibility and create a voice for your real estate blog. Put a face to your business. The first truth of the real estate industry and blogging is that you, as a Realtor, are selling the same product to the same audience at the same price as you Joe Blow Realtor down the street. You should use a blog to somehow differentiate yourself from the other Realtors in your farm area. People have relationships with people not organizations. Blogging can give you a face and voice into your marketplace- it is a powerful tool that allows to connect with your audience.

Here are some other articles I wrote that can help you develop your "personal voice"

Learn to blog for local traffic

Humanizing a blog: how blogging is like bodybuilding

Blog Writing 101

GOAL 2: Blog frequently to drive RSS subscriptions and traffic. While most bloggers say the minimum post frequency should be 6 articles per week at no less than 250 words, that isn't always feasible for a Realtor. I feel a more reasonable minimum is 3 articles per week (350-500 words). Just make sure that those articles are indeed information packed and useful. If you don't have the time for quantity- go for quality.

Add a minimum of 3, 350-500 word posts per week or 6, 250 word posts per week

GOAL 3: Build backlinks to build credibility with search engines. Backlinks (those links form other sites back to yours) are essential for building credibility with engines. However, you need to grow them slowly to get the most out of them. A reasonable goal for backlinks to add around 10-20 per day. That results in a natural growth of 1200-2400 over the course of 6 months. I am writing an article on backlink building right now, so stay tuned for an Ultimate Guide to Backlink Strategies.

Read also: Guidelines for a successful real estate blog launch

Add between 10-20 new backlinks each day for 6 months. (directories and blog commenting are the easiest ways to do that)

GOAL 4: Track your traffic so you know if your are reaching your goals. Most of you have a back-end tool to your website that allows you to track hits, unique visitors, Robot crawls and XML feed usage. Use the tools your webmasters so graciously provided. Check in with them weekly and track your progress. If you have to plot the progress on a spreadsheet, do that. You want to see your traffic increasing. If you don't it is an indication that either your content isn't written well enough or there is a serious SEO issue with your site. There could be other problems but those are two most common.

Track your traffic weekly to ensure that it is climbing. Adjust your strategy if it is not.

GOAL 5: Comment on other blogs to drive traffic and backlinks an facilitate relationships/referrals. Make a commitment to yourself to make at least one useful, education-packed comment on another real estate or local blog at least once a day. Those will help drive your backlinks and traffic.

Read also: Pimp my blog: becoming the guilty pleasure

Read also: Commenting for traffic

Comment on at least one other local or real estate blog each day to drive traffic and backlinks

 

Enough already... I have read this post or that post that claims this real estate blogger or that one is keyword spamming.  Let me set the record straight, to keyword spam in content is pretty hard- it would make your text almost unreadable.  What is more likely to be caught by engines is keyword spamming in the HTML. This happens when you or your web developer load your link, image, heading or other HTML tags with spammy "alt" "title" or other attributes.  While that was a great way to manipulate search positioning in 1999, it is a sorely outdated, dare I say, embarrassing way to do it today.  This is the most common type of keyword spamming caught by engines today.

So, before we get into the what, when, where, how of it all, let's find out who is keyword spamming:

Use This Tool to Check for Keyword Spamming:  spam detector tool

***FYI: CSS attributes with visibility set to none are very common today as more and more sites are CSS driven, this is not always indicative of spamming and should be ignored like the tools own disclaimer notes.

Read also: Keyword Stuffing by Laurie Manny

Let's break down the types of tags and attributes and what you or your web developer SHOULD place in them.

What are HTML tags and their attributes?

You probably know by now that your website is written with a combination of tools called HTML and CSS.  (You may also have other technologies on your site like DHTML, XHTML, FLASH, PHP, JavaScript, etc.)  But for simplicity we are only going to focus on HTML and CSS.  The HTML is what gives your site the layout and the CSS is what provides the styling of text, images, elements, etc.    Below are the most common HTML tags that can be used for keyword spamming.

Reference: W3C's HTML Attributes Glossary

Heading Tags:

ID or Name: a unique identifier for the element

Title: text to display in the tool tip when you roll over the element

Heading tags can have title attributes, but they are somewhat unnecessary as an H1, H2, H3 should have text inside of it.  I recently ran across a website where the web hack put 3 images in H1 (yes, three H1s with images... I can barely wrap my head around this one).  Then, to compound the issue, they placed both alt text in the image and a title attribute in the H1, all of which were just chock full o' keywords.  And lo and behold, Google caught this website for keyword spamming.  The unfortunate thing is, the real estate blogger is the one that got hurt not the web developer who caused it.

Read also: Only use one H1 tag on each page of your site

Recommendations for attribute use: In the case of heading tags, since they are mostly text, there is no need to use attributes

Image Tags:

Alt: Alternative text used when an image does not display for accessibility

ID or Name: a unique identifier for the element

Title: text to display in the tool tip when you roll over the element

Recommendations for attribute use: Alt and title text s generally used to help index the image in Google images, so while you can include keywords here, only use them if applicable to the image.  Try to be as descriptive of the image as possible, because you DO want that image to be index properly in Google images.  For example, you would devalue the indexed images if you were to tag an image of the Equal Housing Opportunity with "Lake Park Real Estate."

*Image tags are the most common place where webmasters spam in HTML.

Optimizing images is becoming more and more important in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for websites. The ALT attribute is a critical step that in optimization. This can be a lost opportunity for better rankings but it can also be a place where devious webmasters keyword spam.

In Google's webmaster guidelines, they advise the use of alternative text for the images on your web site:

    Images: Use the alt attribute to provide descriptive text. In addition, we recommend using a human-readable caption and descriptive text around the image.

Why would they ask us to do that? The answer is simple, really; search engines have the same problem as blind users. They cannot see the images.

Many webmasters and inexperienced or unethical SEOs abuse the use of this attribute, trying to stuff it with keywords, hoping to achieve a certain keyword density, which is not as relevant for rankings now as it once was.  The funny thing is... high keyword density in the "alt" tag can, on some search engines (Google), trigger spam filters, which may result in a penalty for your site's ranking. Even without such a penalty, your site's rankings will not benefit from this tactic.

What is an ALT attribute?

An alt attribute should not be used as a description or a label for an image.  The words used within an image's alt attribute should be its text equivalent and convey the same information or serve the same purpose that the image would.

Some Alt Attribute Guidelines:

    * Always add alt attributes to images. Alt is mandatory for accessibility and for valid XHTML.

    * Remember that it is the function of the image you are trying to convey. For instance; any button images should not include the word "button" in the alt text. They should emphasize the action performed by the button.

    * Alt text should be determined by context. The same image in a different context may need drastically different alt text.

    * Try to flow alt text with the rest of the text because that is how it will be read with adaptive technologies like screen readers. Someone listening to your page should hardly be aware that a graphic image is there.

Please keep in mind that using an alt attribute for each image is required to meet the minimum WAI requirements, which are used as the benchmark for accessibility laws in UK and the rest of Europe. They are also required to meet "Section 508" accessibility requirements in the US.

Link Tags:

ID or Name: a unique identifier for the element

Title: text to display in the tool tip when you roll over the element

Recommendations for attribute use: While most links on a page will be textually based, you typically do not need to use the title attribute.  However, the title attribute is recommended when you use an image as a link (for example in the case of a button).  This is a good way to provide Google with the intention of the link.  For example, if you have a button that links to your lead generator- you might want to include "Lake Park Florida Home Search" in the title attribute.  See how that works in the keyword and the intention of the link?  You never want to just put "Lake Park Florida Real Estate" in each title for a link or image - that would be what we in the industry call KEYWORD SPAMMING.  Be sure to only work in the keyword when it makes sense, so you would nix the keyword in a link to say an accreditation board, because that simply wouldn't make sense.

 

This Week's Online Training Schedule

Monday: SEO Training

Join me for a 45-minute SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Seminar.  Learn how to optimize your real estate blog for better placement in Google.  This seminar focuses on basic on-page and off-page optimization techniques that will help your blog place for prime short tail keywords in 90 days or less.

Please click the following link to join the meeting:

https://mwmus.webex.com/mwmus/jm.php?PWD=seotraining&MK=941483788

MEETING PASSWORD: seotraining

Date: Monday February 11, 2008

Time: 1:00 PM EST

Teleconference: Call-in toll number (US/Canada): 1-408-792-6300

Meeting Number: 941 483 788

Tuesday: PageRank 5 Club Training: By Invitation Only

PageRank 5 Club is a select group of bloggers invited to a weekly seminar and strategy session that helps them achieve a PageRank 5 within two Google PageRank Updates.  This is where I share the secret SEO strategies I don't share on my blog. These bloggers will learn high level backlink building strategies, on-page SEO techniques and viral marketing campaigns.

Wednesday: Blog Marketing and Social Networking

Join me for a 45-minute blog marketing and social networking Seminar.  Learn how to easily market your real estate blog through social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit and Technorati, build community through social networking sites like ActiveRain, Zolve and WannaNetwork and market your blog through aggregation sites, press releases and other sites such as Squiddo.

You have been invited to join a meeting on the Web, using WebEx MeetMeNow.

Please click the following link to join the meeting:

https://mwmus.webex.com/mwmus/jm.php?PWD=social&MK=943079587

MEETING PASSWORD: social

Date: Wednesday February 13, 2008

Time: 1:00 PM EST

Teleconference: Call-in toll number (US/Canada): 1-408-792-6300

Meeting Number: 943 079 587

Thursday: Blog Training

Join me for a 45 minute real estate blog training seminar.  Learn how to write focused scan-able and engaging content that both readers and search engines will come back for.  This course focuses on proven SEO copywriting techniques and provides a system for writing blog posts in 30 minutes or less.

Please click the following link to join the meeting:

https://mwmus.webex.com/mwmus/jm.php?PWD=blogtraining&MK=942114644  

MEETING PASSWORD: blogtraining

Date: Thursday February 14, 2008

Time: 1:00 PM EST

Teleconference: Call-in toll number (US/Canada): 1-408-792-6300

Meeting Number: 942 114 644

Friday: RSS Pieces Client Training: By Invitation Only

RSS Pieces clients can feel free to login to this private seminar where I give one-on-one assistance to help you improve your search engine placement, use the RSS Pieces system and build a solid foundation for your blog.  This is a great place to learn the basics of blogging and a great place to refresh your knowledge.

BY: JOHN MCKNIGHT: 3 Way Links are just RECIPROCAL LINKS AND THEY ARE BAD!

Introduction: the template letter 3 way link request

I just received an email forwarded from one of our large resellers where a client was asking their Internet marketing consultant (our reseller) if he should engage in 3 way links.  This client had received a template email requesting that they engage in a 3 way reciprocal link program to "boost" search engine credibility.  Funny thing is... the person who sent the email didn't BCC the list so we went through every single email address, looking at every single domain asked to participate... not a one of them was over a PageRank 3 with most of them in the PageRank 0-1 range.  Hmmm... a whole bunch of loser sites linking to each other in a ring of deception. Yeah, that is something we really want to recommend...  This linkster was so desperate to make his request seem legit that he even tried to add credibility to the letter by mentioning a respected real estate coach. The plot went something like this: The student of a Real Estate Coach enlisted a webmaster to request that you (along with a group of other bloggers) put 10-15 links on your home page and then another group of sites put 10-15 links on their sites and then, get this... a third group links 10-15 domains back to the first group.  Imagine, all that work for 10-15 low quality backlinks...  My brain hurts just thinking about this scheme.  It's not like a resourceful webmaster couldn't just submit to Dmoz, Yahoo or other high quality directories for solid, valuable backlinks that do not require cluttering your homepage with junk links. 

Resource: Search Engine Land's Cult of Reciprocity

3 Way Links = Reciprocal Links: You can put pierced ears on a pig, but at the end of the day, it's still a pig.

You can always smell desperation in the air when someone starts talking about reciprocal linking, link exchanging, 3 way links or Amway.  So what is the smell exactly?  It might be the lovely fragrance of "Oops.  My real estate blog and website are doing poorly."  Or it could be "Wow.  People have figured out that my other tips are BS so this will surely help!"  Or my personal favorite which is "I don't really know what I am saying but if I use big words it will impress people."  No matter what size, shape or brownish hue - this is a recipe for disaster.  Way back before many of the current crop of "experts" had a day job selling advice on web matters, a little thing called link farms came and went and just like all great moments in history they were quickly forgotten.  Link farms, reciprocal linking and showing other sites "love" through blogrolls are all the same thing just dressed up in a different wrapper and the arguments that fly around the latest bad advice stink of "It's not a pyramid because we have turned it upside down." 

Resource: Aaron Shear, 3 Way links are spam

Remedial Course: What are backlinks and why are they important?

Backlinks, links from other sites to your real estate blog, help to improve your credibility with search engines, online visibility, content reach and traffic. Therefore, building quality backlinks is just as important to the health and well being of your real estate blog as the content that you write. So, let's take a good hard look at not only why and how search engines value backlinks but now you go about building quality backlinks through an easy to follow link campaign.

Why do search engines measure backlinks?

In simple terms, search engines consider each backlink a "vote' for your site. It is a way for Google to determine the overall authority and popularity of your site.

Tool: See how many backlinks your real estate blog has

Not all backlinks are created equal

Here is a simple example of how Google does not value all links the same. One of my competitors has around 10K backlinks pointing to their site. RSS Pieces, on the other hand, only has 3.5K. However, both sites have a PageRank 5 and both sites show up well in the search results for our prime keywords. While, my competitor, should have greater authority with Google based on the volume of backlinks, the quality of most of those backlinks is so low (multiple sitewide links from client sites with PR 3 or below with low quality anchor text) that Google de-weights the overall value of those links to the point where they are meaningless. So, the lesson to take away from this is that it is not the quantity of the backlinks that matter- it is the quality. Shoot for fewer backlinks from quality sites (PR 4 or above within the same industry or geographic area) with solid anchor text.

Read also: Explanation of Google's link algorithm and why you only want to actively build high PageRank backlinks

What are 3 way links?

The brain child of Jonathan Leger, 3 Way Links are links where website A links to website B which links to Website C which links back around the ring to website A. The claim, which for the short term may work, is that you can build backlinks quickly and rank better because of those backlinks.  Praise Google, this guy has discovered the holy grail of linkage... Ywah, right.  This is nothing more than a new twist on the old reciprocal link scheme.  Check out the example Jonathan Leger uses to "prove" his method works: he tells you about a site he created (no link to it so who knows if it exists) and shows you some pretty graphs.  Why wouldn't he want to give the link out- probably because the site received a penalty or doesn't really rank well for an expected key term. Now, I am not going to call this trick black hat SEO (there are many more devious and fun ways to black hat your way to the top than this) but it certainly falls into the realm of gray hat SEO and I recommend protecting your domain by not engage in this type of link program.

So, you think you can trick Google with stupid SEO tricks?

The brilliance of the latest version of a link (3 way links where website A links to website B which links to Website C which links back around the ring to website A) is the assertion that having a large enough ring of links that interconnect in unique ways will confuse and befuddle Google.  Seems plausible right?  Except that the last time I saw a count, Google had indexed over 8 billion pages and you can find results for any kind of query in under a second.  Oh, and this is also the same system that can crawl itself and send updates to you whenever it finds key terms that you like.  And it can weed out duplicate content on different domains.  But, apparently, Google is too stupid to see a trend like linking back and forth or linking here, then there, then back.... and if only it could see those patterns it could punish link farms.  Wait a minute.  Didn't that already happen?  I guess the latest chain mail must obviously be a clever way around the system of servers that Google has established all over the world and spent more money than you and I will see developing a robust and cool search engine.
Still buying into their theory?  Let's break some of it down.

Linking raises PageRank...

Linking is supposed to raise your PageRank by showing that you are known and respected in the web community.  While this is true, here is where the latest link scheme falls apart.  Your trust value is based on the value of the link that comes to you and most likely you are sharing a link with another site that has a poor PageRank.  Why do I make this assumption?  Because if they are sharing a link with you they are also desperately looking for a PageRank boost so their site will mean nothing to you.  Doubt this assertion?  Look at the following quote from Wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank)
"The PageRank theory holds that even an imaginary surfer who is randomly clicking on links will eventually stop clicking. The probability, at any step, that the person will continue is a damping factor d. Various studies have tested different damping factors, but it is generally assumed that the damping factor will be set around 0.85.^[4]

The damping factor is subtracted from 1 (and in some variations of the algorithm, the result is divided by the number of documents in the collection) and this term is then added to the product of the damping factor and the sum of the incoming PageRank scores."

Look at the last portion of the last sentence which I have put in italics.  Yes, it says sum of the incoming PageRank scores so if the site that links to you is a dog with a PageRank of 0 guess what you get?  If you said "0" you passed math at a first grade level because 0 = 0 and 0 + 0 is still 0.  Hmmm.  So what was the advantage?

PageRank means everything...

Sorry to say this but the PageRank that people refer to is typically the one that is part of the Google Toolbar update and is nearly irrelevant because it represents a trust but does not necessarily correlate with search traffic and the reason is simple.  You can have a billion pages link to you of various qualities and you will still get no appreciable traffic if no one cares to search for something on your site. 
The PageRank that does matter is instantaneous PageRank and it is updated on a daily basis.  It is also the one that is most closely related to SERP and at the end of the day that is what matters to site traffic.  But since it cannot be directly measured, it is hard to say if the incoming links will help but let's say for the sake of argument that they do and that puts you smack up against the first item.   Am I saying that PageRank, old-fashioned PageRank, is useless?  Yes, except for one little detail.  It can tell you what Google really thinks of your site.  A PageRank 5 or 6 for a typical site puts you in high orbit but a 0 puts you 6 feet under.

The slippery slope
If you put one snake oil link on your site, you will put two.  If you put two, you will add three and so on.  Once you do that, you will run into the too many links on a page issue.  I have said it before and I will say it again, too many links is SEO death and I have been able to prove this using analytics and not just theory.  Sites with fewer that 120 links on a page will be crawled more often and more consistently that sites with excessive linking.  If you have ever wondered why that is the case, here is the answer.  Link farms.  Spammers.  They have excessive linking and other sins on their sites and Google has decided that too many links may mean that you are trying to pervert the search algorithms by loading up pages with links in the same way that spammers would.  Down here in the south we call that guilt by association or a family reunion but it is a fine line.

Read also: The 7 worst pieces of SEO advice for real estate blogs

What happened to content?

One of our guaranteed SERP tricks is writing quality content that has contextual information and here is the simple way to prove that theory.  Do a search for someone's link.  Did that seem natural?  I hope it didn't because it is a wholly unnatural act.  What is natural is looking for words and better yet looking for words that mean something and a link just doesn't cut it. 
A site with a PageRank of 0 can still be found if two criteria are met.
1.  Google indexed the page.
2.  You wrote something that people wanted to read.
Seems rather obvious but it may have sneaked in under the radar.

Praemonitus, praemunitus = Forewarned is forearmed.

What is the quickest way to get ripped off in the world?  Knowing nothing about something when you have to make a critical decision.  Read, alot.  Ask questions.   Attend one of our WebEx conferences or call and ask one of our team.  We will not shamelessly pitch our products to you because we are busy enough as it is.  The training and tips are free to all because we believe that knowledge should be freely shared. 
My personal challenge to you:
The first person to guess who was the template of our free knowledge ideals will get a free blog.

What kinds of punishment can you expect when you get involved in a link scheme?

You know, this 3 way link thing will probably work for a while, just like reciprocal links do, but be assured that somewhere down the road, you will feel the sting of Google's hand across your well linked real estate blog.  Google don't play with cheaters.  Just check out what happened to Advanced Access and other realtors that thought link schemes would work for their sites... They were struck down in a blaze of glory, stripped of PageRank, yanked from search results and left dazed, confused and back at square 1.

Read also: Real Estate Blogs and Reciprocal Linking Penalties: Does Google hate your Link Love?

Read also: Google slaps real estate blogs in latest PageRank update

What is the solution?

1.  Good SEO
2.  Common sense
3.  Good content
4.  Wash, rinse, repeat

Read also: Ultimate Guide to Building Backlinks

In closing

When I see these new link strategies I can't help but picture a Rube Goldberg invention that ends in something being burnt and someone being hit over the head with a hammer.  Is that someone going to be you?  If you can connect the dots between the latest linking scams and the scams of old, you have just passed step two of the Nutshell SEO course.

Read also: NUTSHELL SEO: why redirecting keyword rich domains to your vanity domain doesn't do a lick for SEO

While debated, it is generally accepted in SEO community that most search engines analyze text inside heading tags and use it to rank Web pages. They assume that anything important enough to put in larger text is also relevant to the page's content.  The <H1> tag is by far the most important: it describes the purpose of the whole site. Search engine spiders will use it to score your page's relevancy. Make it a more succinct version of your page's TITLE tag and include important keywords. The sub headers decline in importance relative to their size, but they're still useful: be sure you include keywords there too.

Read also: Heading tags and search engine optimization

Do not use heading tags as only a way to format text

Heading tags are not just about font size, Google uses them to determine what text is most important in a document.  If H1s are most important followed by H2s, H3s, H4s, all the way down to H6s, then it would only make sense that you ought to only have one H1 on a single page.  Think about it, you can't tell Google you have two things that are MOST important.  A superlative means you can only have one!  Your H1 tag is generally the title or tagline of your site and this tag is usually built into the template of your real estate blog.  So, you should never use an H1 in your posts.

Never use header tags as a substitute for the FONT tag. Use FONT tags or Cascading Style Sheets to emphasize words on your site. A search engine spider that finds this code:

<H1>Contact Me!</H1>

would assume that your blog page is about "Contact Me" and not about a real estate.

The hierarchy of your heading tags is important

The hierarchy of tags is also important for proper site structure and W3C compliance (FYI: W3C is standards that good web developers try their best to comply with).  For example, W3C says that a well formed site would have an

H1

H2

H3

H2

H3

H4

But never

H1

H3

H2

See how the second set of headings are out of order?  It all matters. You need to decrese and increase tags in order and cannot skip from an H1 to an H3 without putting an H2 in between them.

Resources:

As always, don't take just my word on this, check out the words of SEO experts and their opinions of H1 tags.
Search Engine Ranking Factors
SEOmoz.com Date unknown
Blog SEO Tip #7: Heading tags
Stephan Spencer.com Feb 2006
What Attribute Ranks Better Bold or H1 On A Page?
seoroundtable.com March 2005

Real Estate Blogging: How to write SEOed copy

Learn the ins and outs of writing search engine optimized copy for your real estate blog. This seminar will focus on how to write post titles, posts and select keywords that Google will reward with higher SERP.

Please click the following link to join the meeting:

https://mwmus.webex.com/mwmus/jm.php?PWD=blogging&MK=947142509

MEETING PASSWORD: blogging

Date: February 4, 2008

Time: 12:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time (GMT -05:00, New York)

Teleconference: Call-in toll number (US/Canada): 1-408-792-6300

Meeting Number: 947 142 509

 

 

Real Estate SEO: How to rank for your keywords in 30 posts or less

Learn how to rank for your keywords in 30 posts or less by staying laser focused with content and using simple on and off page SEO techniques.

Please click the following link to join the meeting:

https://mwmus.webex.com/mwmus/jm.php?PWD=seotraining&MK=941428215

MEETING PASSWORD: seotraining

Date: February 5, 2008

Time: 12:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time (GMT -05:00, New York)

Teleconference: Call-in toll number (US/Canada): 1-408-792-6300

Meeting Number: 941 428 215

 

First things first. One of the things that I find annoying is when people couch marketing advice as SEO advice - make no mistake, these are not the same things and they shouldn't be assumed to be. The first SEO myth I want to dispel is the theory that redirecting a bunch of keyword rich domains to your primary site that is possibly a vanity site (i.e. yourname.com) will improve the overall SEO value of your primary site. If you want the SEO value of a keyword rich domain, then use the keyword rich one as your primary domain and redirect your vanity domain to it, so you can use the vanity domain on your business cards!

Call a spade a spade: vanity and single property websites are just MARKETING DEVICES! They have no intrinsic SEO value

Let's use vanity websites for our first example. You can call them single property sites or any other thing that you may like but they are simply vanity sites and as such should be regarded as marketing devices and not SEO tools. Why? Because a vanity site has to live with the same SEO challenges as a conventional website and these include things like proper domain name selection, general SEO, solid content and the dreaded Google trustbox/sandbox. It is the trustbox that will prevent most single property sites from being truly effective from an SEO standpoint. After all, how can a site that is largely untrusted and seldom viewed for the first 3 or 4 months be of any benefit to your client? How can it help them if it can't be found with two hands and a flashlight in Google for an extended period of time? Are you willing to admit to your client that they will see no benefits at all for months on end and then eventually, maybe, you will see some results? Probably not, but if you treat single property sites as a searchable, and therefore an SEO-based product, you will be doing your client a disservice. It is better to take them for what they are which is just a domain name that is easy to remember because its name has something to do with the home and little else unless you plan on listing a house for a year or two which I am sure will go over very well with everyone you meet. It is just a marketing device and nothing else. Obviously this post is not meant to be about single property sites so refrain from making comments about them because it is not relevant to what we are here for today which is busting an SEO myth that people fall prey to and that is vanity domains that are *redirected to a primary domain.

Read also: Myth: single property websites are good for SEO

What are the 6 elements of good SEO on a website?

Let's take a look at some of the principles of SEO and see why vanity domains and redirection are not terribly helpful.

What gives a site SEO value?
1. Keyword rich domain names.
2. Keyword rich **URI's
3. Good content.
4. Good meta tags and descriptions.
5. Inbound links of value.
6. Good structure and tagging of content.

Which of these items in our admittedly abbreviated list applies to a domain that is being redirected to another domain? If you said just number one you are correct and can skip the rest of this paragraph. However, if you think the others apply you need to sit down, drink more or less coffee and read that list one more time because a redirected domain has NO content and NO pages and cannot help with items 2 through 6 at all. So, no content and no pages lead to a domain name that is filled up with a whole lot of nothing and surely cannot help people find your site. Now if you believe that the domain name alone is worthy of redirecting to a domain from an SEO standpoint then you have apparently found the illusive Holy Grail of SEO. Why? Because you would be saying that a domain name alone can carry so much weight that it can offset the obvious lack of true and meaningful content and therefore relegate quality content and structure a distant second and third.

Read also: Top 5 on-page SEO techniques

Redirected domains do not have content or pages, so they add NO SEO value to the site they are redirecting to

OK, now you have a domain name that is loaded in keywords but no content. What will people find? What will they search for? If they are looking for your domain name they will find it but it takes a lot more than that to be valuable and that is content, content, content. The biggest bait for search engines is good content and the best bait for visitors is also good content and by good content I do not mean fluff pieces about cookies or your personal rants or a daily schedule because between you, me and everyone else in the world, we don't care. Got it? We don't care. The personal content is great for friends and family but it will not attract new clients. The best you can hope for is a few rubber-neckers that stop to look at the accident you call a website. Your site is a business site and needs to be treated like a business so you need to write good and engaging content about real estate or you are wasting your time. So they are SEO-useless but does that make vanity domains really useless? Probably not. Will you get traffic from people? Possibly. Will you get traffic from search engines? Maybe. If you get 5 hits a day from one, then you can get 500 a day if you have 100 domains right? But at what price? $8 a year per domain? $35 a year per domain? Wouldn't that money be better spent on advertising? Or better yet to craft truly valuable content for your site and drive that extra traffic to your domain.

Read also: SEO tip of the week: Keyword use in domain names

Redirecting too many domains to a single place can make you look like a spam site in Google's eyes.

While you have your thinking caps on, take one more look at many domains redirecting to one domain. Who else does that? If you said spammers and porn sites you are correct Sir and if you think Google and other search engines don't notice that, then you underestimate them. One day soon, if not already, you will discover that your sites will take a big and bad hit when Google notices that you have a ton of site domains and one site because you will look like a spammer. After all, you are the company that you keep. In a nutshell. Vanity domains with redirects have little SEO value, they are marketing tools and nothing else and may bite you in the not too distant future.
* By way of background, a redirect is a little tool in the web world that can take a person from one site to another without requiring any action by your visitor. It can be accomplished in a lot of ways but the preferred method is called a 301 redirect and it is the one that Google likes and the only type of redirect that I will talk about in this post. A 301 is so amazingly simple in that you just tell the browser "Hey, I don't live here. Go to this site instead." and the browser follows your command and moves on. Something to keep in mind from this point forward is that a 301 redirect is usually sent out by itself and is not part of a webpage but is instead just a directive.
** A URI is the part after the http and after the domain name and a URL is the whole thing that you normally type so it is more correct to refer to the URI when we talk about good link structure.