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On November 20th, Google released a new feature called SearchWiki. This tool is meant to allow users to customize their search engine results pages (SERPs) by adding, removing, and rearranging the listings. Keep in mind that you are manipulating your personal search results, not the results of every Google user. With SearchWiki, you can:
-Move a listing up and down in your personal search results. Using the arrow icons, you can make a listing #1 or move it to the bottom of your results page. If you vote a site up, it will automatically become first in your list so it make take some finagling to get your results to appear exactly the way you want them to. Same goes for any results you vote down.
-Remove a listing from your personal search results. Don't like a particular site? You can delete it from your results page with a click of the "X" button. From that point on, that site will not appear in your results pages.
-Add a listing to your personal search results. Like a site but don't see it in your results pages? You can add a URL to your results using the "Add a Site" functionality. Then you can move it up or down in your results pages.
-Comment on the listings in your results pages. You can leave a public comment on the sites that appear in your results pages and they will be visible to all SearchWiki users. You can let the world know if a site was useful to you or not by simply leaving a comment.
For the full 411 on Google SearchWiki, read this article from Search Engine Land.
Also, watch the video below for a demonstration of Google SearchWiki:
So what does this mean for your real estate blog? Well, a feature in SearchWiki is the ability to review the notes pages for a particular keyword. These pages are meant to allow you to view the comments made on sites that rank for a particular keyword in an effort to let you know what pages are useful and what pages are not. In the future, SearchWiki notes pages may become popular among search engine users. At this point you can vote for and comment on your site's listing using SearchWiki. When you do this, you will increase your site's chances of being seen at the top of the SearchWiki notes pages. Depending on the impact of SearchWiki, we may see the votes and comments become a part of how Google ranks sites overall and it may affect your sites placement in the search engines for your keywords. So it may be a good idea to go ahead and comment on your site for all of your keywords to get your site noticed on SearchWiki now rather than later.
See what others have to say about Google SearchWiki:
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Method #2 - Submitting Your Blog Posts to Article Submission Sites Another easy way to build links to your site is by submitting your blog posts to article submission sites. Article submission sites are a great opportunity to promote your best blog posts. As an author, you submit your posts along with an author information box which contains information about you and a link to your site. These sites take your article and publish it on their site for use by webmasters and bloggers as content on their sites. When other people use your article on their site, they are required to publish it with your author information box completely intact. That translates to a backlink from every site that uses your article in addition to the backlink you get from the article submission site itself. One good article could garner you a multitude of backlinks! Here is an example of an article that has been submitted to GoArticles.com:
As you can see, the publisher guidelines are very visible at the top to remind those who would like to use this article that they must include the author's information when it is published on their site. Also note the "About the Author" area (this is the author information box) and how it contains a link to the author's site. Every time this article is published on someone's site, James Kobzeff gets a backlink to his site, www.proapod.com. He even gets one from here too since I just published his article. When you submit your articles to these sites, you want to be sure that they are added to the category that is most closely aligned with your keywords. Virtually all article submission sites have a real estate category and that is where you will want to add your articles. This will ensure that the right publishers find your article and that you get the best quality link possible from the article submission site itself. It is also important to change your article a bit before submitting it to these sites. You don't want to give these sites the same exact article you have published on your own site. I recommend that you change the article so that it is about 35% different from the post on your site. You may also want to tone down the use of your keywords so that your article appeals to a broader audience and is published by more sites. Try rewriting your article using your farm area as an example so as to keep some of your keywords without overwhelming the article with them. Lastly, vary the anchor text you use for the link to your site within the author information box. Don't just use "www.yoursite.com "-use your keywords and site title in various combinations to get the best backlink possible. Using your variations of your keywords as your anchor text increases your link's value in the eyes of Google and the other search engines. Here are 10 article submission sites to get you started:
As you do research into other article submission sites, you may come across services that claim to allow you to submit your article automatically to multiple sites in one click. Like I have mentioned in previous posts, do not pay for services such as these. If they do not offer their services for free, it is most likely a scam. Remember, the more articles you submit, the more backlinks you will get so try to do this on a regular basis. To start, try submitting one rewritten blog post to the directories listed above each week. Use this backlinking method as a part of a complete link building strategy and you will be on your way to search engine success!
Related Posts: Backlinks: The Key To Search Engine Success Basic Backlinking Methods That Get Results: Blog & RSS Feed Directory Submissions SEO 101: Choosing Your Keywords
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Once you have decided what keywords you will be targeting, the next step is to use them throughout your site. Using your keywords correctly is vital to ranking for them in the search engines. Now that you know why you need your keywords on your site, let's talk about how and where you should use your keywords on your site. #1 - Your Domain Name To Google and the rest of the search engines, domain names are important elements of websites. The search engines take into consideration the age of your domain name and the length of time for which it is registered. Secondarily, they register whether or not a domain name contains the site's keywords. Not having your keywords in your domain name doesn't severely harm your site's ranking potential by any means but having them in there will give your site additional value. Aim to incorporate your keywords into your domain name in a way that reads naturally. A good example is our client Marc Blasi's real estate blog, www.palmbeachrealestateandloans.com. The primary keywords for his site are "Palm Beach Real Estate" and "Palm Beach Loans". As you can see, he has created a domain name that is not only keyword-rich, but memorable and useful for marketing. Resource: Video from SEOBook on Domain Names and Search Engine Marketing #2 - Your Content Having keywords in your content is how you will attain good keyword density. This is needed on your site to rank for your chosen terms. Your goal is to weave your keywords into your site's content in a way that reads well and does not come off to the search engines as keyword spamming. Follow these three rules to achieve your goal:
Resource: SEM Bootcamp: How Search Engines See Keywords Next week, I will cover using your keywords in other areas of your site for additional SEO value. Check out The Real Estate Expert Network often for more helpful SEO and blogging tips!
Related Posts: SEO 101: Choosing Your Keywords The Buzz on Blogs and Why Your Real Estate Business Needs One
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So we have covered what backlinks are and the reason why you need them. Now it's time to start building some links. Back in the day, link building was a tedious and time-consuming process as the best way to get links was to solicit others in your industry and ask them to place a link on their site to yours. This of course was before blogging was popular so the web wasn't nearly as interactive as it is today. Link building is still the most challenging part of SEO but now there are more effective ways to obtain links to your site. Today, we will explore one of the top methods to get backlinks for your site. But before we get started, there are a couple of things to remember when beginning your link building campaign:
Now, let's build some links! Method #1 - Submitting Your Site to Blog & RSS Feed Directories Blog & RSS feed directories are like mini search engines. They allow a person to search through blogs and feeds for information on any given topic. Having your blog or feed listed in these directories creates a very valuable backlink for your site. When submitting to blog directories, you are often required to create an account, describe your site and submit your site's URL. Be sure to use your keywords when they ask for a title or description for your site so you get the best backlink possible. Here are 5 directories you can submit your blog to now-for FREE: DMOZ-PR 9 ZoomInfo-PR 7 Business Week-PR 7 Web World Index-PR 6 Illumirate-PR 5 RSS feed directories are a little bit different. Here you are not submitting your site's URL. Instead, you are submitting the URL to the feed of your blog's content. For Dev Element clients, you can get your feed URL by clicking on the RSS Subscribe button on your site. This will take you to your actual RSS feed. The URL that appears in the browser for that page is your RSS feed's URL. Simply drop that URL into the appropriate area when asked for it during submission and you are good to go! Here are 5 FREE RSS Feed Directories to check out now: Globe of Blogs-PR 7 EatonWeb Directory-PR 6 RSS Spider-PR 4 Read A Blog-PR 4 Blogarama-PR 4 Be sure to keep track of all of your submissions. This way you will know who you are listed with and can be sure not to duplicate submissions (directories don't like dups!). Directories do have rules that you need to follow when submitting your site so be sure that you follow them to ensure that you get listed as soon as possible. If at first you don't get accepted or listed, review the reason(s) why you did not make the cut and resubmit. This is especially important with sites that have exceptional PageRank-you want that link! Recommended Resources on Blog Directories: 20 Essential Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog To by Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal Submitting to Web Directories to Build Your Link Profile-Video from SEOBook Role of Directories in Link Building by Eric Enge of SEOMoz
Related Posts: Backlinks: The Key To Search Engine Success SEO 101: Choosing Your Keywords The Buzz on Blogs and Why Your Real Estate Business Needs One
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Blogging is no longer just the pastime of teenage girls looking to broadcast their daily drama for public consumption. Nowadays, blogs are created by people of all ages for a number of reasons. For some, blogging is a platform from which they can express their opinions and interests to the world. Others start a blog with the hopes of it becoming a source of income through advertisements and the like. For businesses, blogs are a new way to connect with people in order to market products and services. Consider the following statistics:
Regardless of the motivation to create a blog, it is clear that blogs are on the verge of taking over the web as we know it. Unlike static websites, good blogs constantly updated provide valuable information to their audiences on a regular basis. Blogs have the ability to elicit conversations between post author and reader, creating lasting relationships along the way. For this reason, many well-known corporations like Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, and GM now have blogs. They understand the value of relating to their audience on a more personal level-your visitors will become your readers, your readers will become your leads, and those leads will turn into sales for your company. This holds especially true for real estate professionals. Through a blog, you can become a trusted and respected source of information on real estate in your farm area. By providing valuable insight into the business of real estate, your readers will come to see you as knowledgeable and experienced which will then cause them to choose you over your competition when it comes time for them to buy or sell their home. You will also gain notoriety with your colleagues which can turn into a source of income through referrals. This makes blogging a powerful tool in building your personal brand and real estate business. You don't just want to appeal to people-you want to appeal to the search engines as well. Here are some interesting facts concerning the usage of search engines like Yahoo!, Google, and MSN in the U.S.:
Do you want to be found when people in your area are looking for real estate? Any sane business person would want to get a piece of the internet action. Good placement in the search engines is how you are going to obtain traffic to your site. Blogs are very attractive to the search engines because of the constant addition of content that occurs on a blog. Every time you add new information to your blog, the search engines are alerted that you have added something new and they come and visit your site. The more content you add, the more your site gets visited and if you are creating quality content, you will see your blog move to the top of the search engines faster than a website ever possibly could. Adding new content to your blog consistently takes dedication and time but attaining high placement in the search engines will unlock earning potential beyond your imagination. If you want to create an online presence that will create visibility and leads for your business, a blog is the way to go. Websites are becoming a thing of the past so don't wait another day to start a blog for your real estate business. Check out our Real Estate Blog Builder for an easy, quick, and affordable solution for your real estate blog needs.
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