Online communities with strict laws & enough police…

There are many parallels between a great online community and a great community that you live in. One of the BEST examples of that is the fact that in a great community, there are adequate an abundance of laws to protect the citizens and there are enough police to enforce the laws.

Let me show you what I am talking by talking specifically about the real estate community. Please realize that I mean NO disrespect to any specific community. It’s just that since I am going to be LIVING there online for a long time, I might as well choose the best fit for me.

Example 1: Bloodhound Blog–This blog has moderated comments and VERY little spam. Nice work Greg. Notice that the thoughts are typically cogent and the discussion lively. Blogs are easier to do than blog farms or forums and many do not consider them a TRUE online community. I beleive that they are.

Example 2: Real Estate Webmasters–Yeah. I am a bit biased. I moderate there. But aside from that, Morgan and the REW crew put much effort into keeping the streets of REW city free from spam. Users are limited in the types of links that they can insert and self promo is not tolerated. Hmm..is there a correlation between that and their steady growth into the most active community of web savvy REALTORS? Don’t think so!

Example 3. GAREIA–This is IMO, how NOT to do it. They have a private forum, but once you pay to be a member, you can post almost ANYTHING. If you are going to grow a community, would paying a bribe to the local constable be an acceptable practice? My opinion is “No.”

Example 4: Active Rain–These guys are great. BUT they have not managed growth and their members. Link spam is getting out of hand here. Their community grew like wildfire, and like many boomtowns, soon profiteers rolled in to AR-ville to loot and pillage. In my opinion, they need a new sheriff. (see the next example) BTW-In my opinion, they have one of the

Example 5: Squidoo–While they are definately NOT just real estate 9anyone can squidoo!) they are : An online community reclaimed. Congratulations guys..IMO you are the online urban renewal project of 2007 so far. With a limited staff (reportedly 4 folks??) and a willingness to take on challenges, TeamSquidoo handled a penalty earlier this year from Google and eradicated the majority of their spam issues and have bounced back to be a vibrant community that is back to its winning ways (at least for now on Google.)

Congratulations, guys on a job well done.

Communities need a plan. They need to grow. They need to breathe and they need good rules and enforcement to keep them on track.

Just My Opinion…

Eric

How to Stop getting hosed by REALTOR.com…

I read one of the BEST posts in recent memory on REALTOR.com and how they are screwing the REALTORS of the country out of MILLIONS every year. Kudos to the bloodhound blog for posting that. A picture TRULY is worth a thousand words!

Yet woefully, I started reading the comments….”We will leave R.com if they charge us more than $3,500 this year ” (paraphrase from one comment). Others were similar.

How about this comment! “We don’t negotiate with extortionists!”.

Then I thought to myself…Maybe the reason that folks are continuing to use REALTOR.com is a combination of ignorance and fear. They are afraid that they might lose one buyer (even though they cannot remember the last one that they GOT from REALTOR.com). So i figured I would share my recipe on ERADICATING the extortion pressure from our business.

Want the secret? Here it is!

Step 1: REALIZE that R.com is our competition!

They compete with US for exposure for OUR listings and then CHARGE us to ENHANCE them. Isn’t that the classic definition of extortion! Sure sounds like it to me!

Step 2: EDUCATE SELLERS (and yourself)

Well, it is actually quite simple. Take your customer to REALTOR.com and SHOW them that only a SMALL percentage of the listings are actually “enhanced”. The percentage is ONLY those who have multiple photos. (Check this out)

So in Louisville, just at 12% of the listings have multiple photos. Ask your customers, why do 88% of the REALTORS NOT use REALTOR.com’s enhanced services. (HINT: If they were attracting buyers in today’s market, they’d be all over it!) It DOES NOT WORK!

Go to Google (if REALTOR.com is not on the TOP of the search engines–which they often are NOT) and SHOW them that they are NOT getting traffic (at least in your location) from the search engines!

For the coup de gras, ask them if they would rather search for a home on a site where 88% of the homes have only one photo or would they rather go to (insert site at the top of the search engines here).

STEP 3: TAKE ACTION

Take the money that you would spend on going to REALTOR.com and use it to develop your OWN web presence. Even if all you did was to take that $3,500 mentioned in the comment of the Bloodhound blog and plunked it down on Pay per Click advertising, at $2.00 per click it would still bring 1,750 RELEVANT clicks to your site. Your odds of closing more business than what you are getting from R.com are MUCH better!

Talk to other agents and get them to get out of R.com as well! Explain to them that it is not benefiting them (this will not be a tough sell!).

Here is what we did…

We put our efforts into getting ahead of the interlopers. And they ARE in my opnion the KING interloper. We started going after the channels that THEY dominated like:

a) Getting to the top of the search engines with ALL of the photos and much more of what the customers actually want.

Seriously Errol and Alan…you cannot expect us to buy that the customer ACTUALLY wants to look at that presentation you call a site.

b) Teaching our agents the art of new advertising channels like Pay per Click (another favorite of interlopers) see above. Our agents are getting great results and making sure that we are staying ahead of the competition. We do not go there, because we do not want to bid against them.

The results? Check out your extortion eradication metrics in your town:

Metric #1: Percentage of multiple photo listings on R.com! You want this as low as possible.

Metric #2: Search Engine Rankings on Google and Yahoo for REALTOR.com for city real estate, city homes, city homes for sale type of keywords, etc.

There you have it. A simple recipe for focusing your marketing expenses in a useful direction, thoughts?

SEO, Online Marketing, Flak jackets and manners…

I moderate a forum on Real Estate, and (as you can see from my blogroll) , I consider Morgan Carey a friend. Interestingly enough a post popped up on his site that kind of intrigued me. But for a different reason than most might suspect.

The main part of the post is about a trademark issue over the term RELO. (I for one, think the issue is pretty stupid since there are MANY other sites that use the word “relo” as an abbreviation of relocation…BUT THAT’S NOT MY POINT. the courts get to decide that one. My legal opinion matters not at all. After reading Disco’s take on it and dropping a comment there, I have done some further thinking…

Let’s set the legal issue aside for a minute. Hell, set it aside COMPLETELY for all I care. It is what it is (to use an overused cliche…)

My issue is civility among the good citizens of Net-ville (grin)! I started off with the Rodney King approach (ummm…”Why can’t we all just get along??”). But I understand that relationships crumble sometimes. Can we at least make a case for civility? How ’bout some restraint people?

It was hugely apparent to me from the posts that this issue had been on the back burner of the stove, but the heat was turned up by a former friend with a grudge and an attitude.

From a more practical perspective, it is garbage like this that pollutes the internet. Yeah…the Search Engine world is famous for it, but let’s all grow up a bit. (just my opinion). I am glad that things get a chance to air out and forums like Morgan’s provide a public way to air out these things, but if people would be honorable, follow the golden rule a bit and be considerate and hey even mix in some manners once in a while, the whole world would be a better place.

For the record…if I put you down as a friend on this blogroll (or anywhere else for that matter…) you don’t need to worry about the conversations we have coming back to bite you in the rear. A handshake (even a verbal one…) from me and I consider that my bond.

Seriously.

I am not going to get a rash and go looking up anyone who might have an issue with you and dish any dirt I can think of to them.

Call it Karma.

Call it Ju-ju.

Call it the Golden Rule.

Call it the right thing to do.

Call it “what comes around goes around.”

Sure everyone has an agenda. Sometimes agendae. Sometimes conflicting ones…But friendship still needs to stand for something. the standard “You can trust me.” needs to mean something. and we should not have to wear flak jackets to market online and search engine optimize sites.

Although posts like this serve as a great reminder to choose friends carefully out there and treat them like friends. That’s the REAL take home message.

Just my opinion.

Very interesting and enlightening post on REW, Morgan.

Search Engine Optimizating a Small business site part 2 of 10

So now to the Keyword research part of things. There are many ways to research keywords for your site. First off, though, it is probably good to remember what keywords ARE…Remember when you went to the library for the first time and they explained what the Card Catalog was? You could look under TITLE, SUBJECT or AUTHOR and find the information that you wanted.

Yoiu can do the same thing with Google or other search engines–except for one interesting twist. You can search on them using title subject AND author (in any combination of the above!). So here is how I do it:

1. Take a piece of paper and make three columns Title, Subject and Author and write down ANY keywords that you can think of that would apply to someone searching for your site. Include EVERYTHING.

2. Look for logical combinations of these keywords and make a lists of them.

3. You can use WordTracker.org sometimes to find the relative search traffic of each. They have a paid version, but i usually just use the free one.

4. a more accurate approach is to set up a pay per click campaign with Google Adwords or Yahoo and put all of the keywords in (all of them). Then simply look for the keywords that have the higest cost per click. These will be the ones with a) the most traffic and b) the highest CTR or click through rate –these are the reasons that people would bid on the terms, driving their price up. Logical huh?

5. Prepare a final list of keywords by priority. This is your target list of stuff you WANT from top to bottom.

Final note: This list will change! Over the years people’s patterns in searching real estate (for example) have changed quite  a bit. Using city MLS was very vogue back a few years ago, but is NOT so now. City REALTOR, is the same way. DO NOT guess…keep an eye on what works and stay up with the times. you will be rewarded.

Anybody want to throw in other thoughts or suggestions? Feel free! I love new ideas!

The Focus of Your Blog- Search Engine Tunnel vision or not?

I have recently been inspired by two friends who consistently strive to keep the focus of their sites on CONTENT and RELEVANCE rather than Search Engine Optimization...David Smith and Morgan Carey. Both have very different online sites and presences. The key to it is that they both have noticed the trend and are trying to buck it in an increasingly Search Engine obsessed world.

If you are looking for Morgan’s thought on it, you can find it in the BLOGS board of his forum. David’s post about the SEO cult was solid work and recommended reading.

I purposely did NOT link to their specific post because I think you would benefit from reading some of their handiwork. One is a forum and social networking site for REALTORS and the other is a blog that serves as a lab and a great information source for those learning the craft.

Hmmm…craft vs business…There’s a useful distinction as well.

Are you generating content or are you writing a post?

Are you conveying thoughts and feelings or are you stuffing keywords?

Is what you write AUTHENTICALLY you?

I lived in Korea as a missionary for 2 years about 20 years ago…As I had the opportunity to view other missionaries during the last few months of them being in Korea before going home, one of the things that I figured out was that if they wanted the time to go fast, it did not. By the same token if they were enjoying their time and wanted it to go slow, it would not! No getting around it. It was what it was.

There is no way for me to diagnose 100% what SEO tunnel vision is, but I have created a self diagnosis test!

SEO Tunnel Vision Self Diagnosis Kit

If you ask me if you have it…THEN YOU HAVE IT.

If you ask me as an SEO consultant how many keywords you should put per hundred words of text in this post, THEN YOU HAVE IT.

If you are looking for the edges of the algorithm to find where the limits are, then you are not blogging. You are generating content. AND YOU HAVE IT.

Do you FEEL what you are writing? Does it SPEAK to you? If not, YOU HAVE IT.

Wierd, huh? and this coming from a guy doing search engine optimization! (but doing it right and building a long term asset and not just a site–that’s the key.)

If you try to blend too much science into your art, you can end up with a work of art that is GENERATED and HAS NO SOUL. Your blogs and sites and forums and communities must have SOUL in order to convert the traffic that Search Engines generate into RELATIONSHIPS and then into CLIENTS.

Thoughts?

Looking for (link)Love in all the wrong places…

Warning PG -rated post ahead! (grin)

Living in Southern Indiana, it is only natural to make fun of people from Kentucky (grin–they make fun of us, too.) and a classic country tune seemed to be a GREAT way to do it! When you are building links, we like in the SEO world to talk about building a DIVERSE link portfolio. This means that it comes from a VARIETY of sources that are all relevant to the subject matter of the site.

There are a couple of things that you can do to link that “just ain’t natural” in linking to other sites and not so coincidentally they correspond with what “ain’t natural” in the human side of things as well! Wanna see some?? Great I am going to take you on a tour of some typical scenarios lookin’ for link love in all the wrong places, Kentucky style (in my opinion, of course). Here it comes!

Paying for it ain’t cool (but it is widely done–wow, much like real life!). -An example of someone paying for a sitewide link to their site. They are buying sitewide links on this blog that has absolutely ZERO relation to them whatsoever. All of the anchor text on these sitewide links is the same.

AIN’T NATURAL.

Why do some SEO firms do it. Same reason people do–because it is EASIER, FASTER, and besides…everyone else is, right??

Getting your sister (site) to pay for it ain’t cool either. Here is the scenario. You don’t want to get caught paying for links, so you build a sister site to yours and pay for TONS links to them and then use that site to “launder” the links to you. You still are paying for it and it still…

AIN”T NATURAL..

And the most common Kentucky issue…INBREEDING! (Ok, stop throwing things at me…I am having fun here!) You don’t think it happens down here? Check this little number out. Search Google for Kentucky Horse Farms for sale. Notice that 5 or so of the top 10 sites all look kinda alike, and are all interlinked? Without naming any names here. That ain’t natural! (hehe).

No one like to have these dirty little relationships come to light! (Ok, NOW you can throw things!) Sooner or later, they ALWAYS seem to! It is the nature of the web!

Take a closer look. Their interlinking is so complete that there aren’t any branches in that family tree for a generation or two! Why, you ask, am I pointing to someone who is ranking in the top 10 as an example of what NOT to do? It is because many times the person who owns the site is TOTALLY unaware of the tactics that their SEO firm is using and may be entirely unaware of the consequences of those tactics….They may well be bumping along, thinking that things are OK. If they get banned from Google..it will be their assets that are worthless, NOT the SEO company’s. They often are risking your ASSet due to their incompetence or laziness. Then, when the penalties happen…OOPS…they are conveniently not around.

I am not sure of which is the case in this case, it was simply (IMO) one of the more blatant examples that fit my requirements (AND came from Kentucky!), so I thought I’d point it out. Unnatural linking CAN be effective (short term), but over the long haul you will see unintended consequences (like web feet, overly large head, looking like the cast of Deliverance…oh yeah and getting penalized and banned from Search engines !).

Don’t think that Google knows or can see this? let me ask you something…if Google can spot reciprocal links, 3 way links (more unnatural stuff!! grin)…why can’t they spot a group of 20 sites ALL from the same real estate office interlinking each other like it is ummmm…Kentucky? Please…

I could go on and on with the examples of things like this….but rather than do that…can we all just agree that there are some things when trying to SEO a site (in Kentucky or not–GRIN) that should not be done? I hope so. Work hard. Build online authority. Heck, build dominance! But build it diverse and build it DEFENSIBLE.

If Google asked you today why each person who was linking to you and why you built links the way you did, could you answer them honestly? Food for thought.

BTW-If you decide to comment on this post, PLEASE do not add further examples of sites that you think engage in risky linking behaviors. I am not trying to impune anyone here. I am simply pointing out some examples in my opinion only of risky SEO tactics being applied to (ostensibly) unwitting customers. I hate to see anyone hurt who was not aware of the risks of their behavior.

Using Search Engine Optimization Eyes to Prioritize Social Media Time Spend

Ok, we’ll get back to the online newspaper thing in a minute. Something else has been bugging me and a friend in the search engine optimization field pointed it out to me. Thanks Disco. (And by the way, there’s a reason he’s on my blogroll. He knows his stuff). Inspired by his thoughts and having a few minutes on hand, I thought I’d share with you my SEO view of how to prioritize your social media time spend. (Whether your objective is Search Engine Optimization of another site or Online Reputation Management will determine which social networking platform to target.

Here are my top principles when it comes to which platforms I use for what.

For SEOing another site:

1. Does the site rank WELL in Google for the terms I am after?

2. Are they policing SPAM better than their industry competitors?

3.  Do the TOS allow me to link to my site easily and on many pages? No follows? When and how soon do I get some link love?

4. Are there opportunities for me to interlink (forum to blog, blog to profile, etc)  so that I can add strength to my links over time by participating in the community?

5.  Can I create an HONEST and long lasting relationship with the owner of the site? Do I share their views? Are they in it for the long haul?

By answering these principles directly and honestly, I can spend my online branding time most effectively. I don’t comment on or participate on sites that I have nothing in common with. I also don’t participate without some (eventual) link love coming back. I take a long term view.

Typically, I want to make sure that they are not short term players or are allowing SPAM to run rampant on their site, Why? Because that means they will not protect the value of the links I have created.

I like my online “thank you’s” to have a longer shelf life than the milk in my fridge.

How do you prioritize where you spend your online time networking with others?

Eric

How to Search Engine Optimize a small business site (10 part series)

One of the challenges facing a small business owner that is trying to get their business online is that they do not know where to start. What I am going to do over the next 10 posts is provide a BASIC guideline of best practices for small businesses as they drive their businesses online. PLEASE notice that the planning for a site begins WAY before any code is ever written.

Most SEO companies ASSUME that you have this already done, but the truth is that most sites do not, so let’s start at the start.

I  also thoought “why not use a REAL example?”! So that is what we are going to do! I have been contemplating creating an online newspaper for Southern Indiana for LLOONNGG time.  I think it will be a solid vehicle to drive business into our community and help others in the process. I like the idea of using websites to garner revenue for our local, hometown folks!

STEP 1: What is your business? An online newspaper that provides LOCALLY focused, interesting stories, a positive outlook and derives revenue from the advertising of small businesses in the Southern Indiana area.  (25 words or less- you need to be concise here)

STEP 2: Who is the target audience for my site? Who do I want to frequent it?  The online newspapers target audience is 24-48 year olds in Southern Indiana who want a place to visit for current events, style, places to go, news, school events and news without the negative tone that the local papers offer.

STEP 3: What keywords would the target audience use to search for your site? Don’t know? In my next post, I will help with some links and resources to find out who is searching for what and how. Please keep in mind that we are looking for MANY different search terms. Rarely is there just one or two terms… For example, the real estate site that I work with locally, pulls only a VERY small percentage of its traffic from “Louisville Real Estate” (even though we are #1). The rest comes from the long tails (industry speak for smaller keywords that are searched infrequently, but are fairly easy to optimize for…). In part two, we will pick the KWs for our new paper.

See you then!