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 13 comments »Real Estate Net Gossip: Is Trulia black hatting and Overstock.com scraping listings from Vflyer?
Because I love TMZ and The Superficial and because I just thought it would be fun to have an occasional real estate technology gossip piece - so, here are a couple of SEO related real estate rumors making their ways across the blogosphere. Is Trulia cloaking pages?
Trulia Caught Cloaking Red Handed Eric Bramlett catches Trulia in what appears by all accounts to be a serious case of cloaking. Cloaking is an age old shady technique that based on user agent (i.e. GoogleBot, YahooSlurp, (robots) IE, Firefox (people)) serves one set of content to the search engine and another set of content to people visiting the site through regular browsers. In this case, Eric shows how Trulia is using a redirect and cloaking to direct Google to Trulia's own Seattle Real Estate landing pages when it crawls Seattle Weekly's real estate section. This could be one of the possible cataysts to Trulia's recent jump on the engines in many major markets. Basically, Trulia is boosting pageviews through partner sites and the techniques they are using while not necessarily evil it may be against Google's TOS.
Read also: White Hat, Gray Hat and Black Hat SEO Explained What is cloaking? A more detailed explaination.
Cloaking is a black hat search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different to that presented to the users' browser. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page. The purpose of cloaking is to deceive search engines so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed. Read more from wkipedia. How to fake a higer PageRank or How to steal PageRank |
1 comment »June 30: Real Estate Blog Training ScheduleLOGIN AS A PANELIST TO TALK
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/en_US/webinar/island/joinAWebinar.tmpl  Posted in Online Training Seminars |
9 comments »Comment Smart: 5 simple rules to commenting for backlinks to increase PageRank and SERPNOTE: TO THE FEW PEOPLE THAT USED THIS POST AS AN EXCUSE TO SPAM DOFOLLOW BLOGS, SHAME ON YOU! MY ADVICE IS TO COMMENT WHERE YOU WOULD COMMENT NATURALLY- JUST LOOK FOR NEW PLACES AND COMMENT STATEGICALLY SO YOU DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME. THE DOFOLLOW BLOG MOVEMENT IS IMPORTANT AND YOU SHOULD NOT ABUSE IT. For those of you that know me- you must know by now there are two things I hate. 1. Blogrolls Read also: Real Estate Blogs and Reciprocal Linking Penalties: Does Google hate your Link Love? 2. Commenting for backlinks (That being said, since many of you do this, here are some tips) Read also: Why commenting for traffic and backlinks to your real estate blog is a waste of time Backlinks are important. We all know by now that they play a part in PageRank calculations and search engine positioning. And while you can't rely on commenting alone, you certainly can use it as one of your many techniques for building backlinks. The key to commenting is to do it smart and effectively. This way you get the best bang for the time you spend doing it. By designing a clear strategy and spending time researching a list of places to comment, you can avoid wasting your time commenting on a page with no PageRank or a bog that uses the nofollow attribute on comments. Read also: Ultimate guide to building backlinks Planning a Commenting Strategy1. Comment only on blogs that do not have the nofollow tag. By making sure the blogs you comment on are do follow you ensure you are getting a backlink and not wasting your time. 2. Comment only on pages that have PageRank so you can pass good link juice back to your site. Research which pages on any given do follow blog that have the highest PageRank (PR3+) and comment on those pages. That is truly what will give you the juice to boost your PR and SERP. It takes many times the number of PR1-3 sites to get to the top of the engine than it does PR4+ sites, you concentrate your efforts on higher PR pages with a site. Read also: Advanced SEO tactics: What is PageRank sculpting and does my blog need it? RESOURCE: The PageRank Formula 3. Comment with varied anchor text and keywords. This means that you want to mix up what you place in the Name field of the comment as that is typically the anchor text used n the link back to you. Try not to always use the same anchor text. You also don't want to appear spammy so these are my recommendations for how to craft keyword rich anchor text in the Name field: Palm Beach Real Estate Girl Mary M: Palm Beach, FL Palm Beach House Chick Mary, Palm Beach Realtor Anchor Text. Anchor text is the textual content in a link. The more descriptive and keyword rich the anchor text, the more relevancy and value that backlink. For example, a link that reads: real estate blogs and real estate training to RSS Pieces is actually more valuable than a link that reads RSS Pieces or Click Here. 4. Never put links to your site in the comment itself -that is just spammy and you may get flagged as a spammer. 5. Comment consistently. Google likes to see steady increasing and consistent growth in backlinks (let's call this link velocity)- that shows that your site is building authority naturally over time at a steady and increasing pace. So, if you are going to build backlinks, you have to make a conscious effort to continue to build backlinks at a steady pace over time so you do not tip your hand to Google that you are actively link building. Basically, don't go nuts and build 4,000 backlinks in 24 hours if you can't keep that pace up over the long haul. Building 5-10 backlinks per day is a more reasonable goal. Over time your site should be able to grow links naturally as more people find your content usefull and link worthy. Commenting smart by following these simple rulesIf you are going to go out there and comment for backlinks follow these rules: |
2 comments »Advanced SEO tactics: What is PageRank sculpting and does my blog need it?Alright, I've been reluctant to post anything about PageRank sculpting but since I have received a bunch of questions about it recently, here goes: This is a three part series in how to sculpt PageRank so you have greater authority in Google and can increase your search engine position. The first lesson simply explores what PR sculpting is, the various methods you can use to achieve it and how to determine if you even need it. What is PageRank Leak/Bleed?PageRank bleed/leak is the theory that Page A will lose some of its Page Rank when it links to Page B. This happens whether the links are internal or external as far as concept and effects. Even when there is a direct link back there still is Page Rank bleed. The theory is that any single page can only pass up to 85% of its total PR value to any page it is linking to. The total value of the page given to any site it links to is calculated by dividing it's total value by the number of links on the page itself (links, meaning anything you can click that do not have the nofollow tag on them). Yes, that means the combined value of internal and external links. RESOURCE: Sculpting Your PageRank For Maximum SEO Impact RESOURCE: The PageRank Formula
FOR EXAMPLE: If you received a link from a PR5 page that linked out to 100 other pages, you would calculate the total value of that one link to your site as: (PR5 * .085)/100 RESOURCE: The original Bob Wakfer PageRank Calculation Table (while now quite old now this document is well worth a read) Read also: What is PageRank bleed Just a note on my favorite topic- are you beginning to see why you don't want to have a blogroll on your home page? You will leak too much PageRank and it it will make it harder initially for you to build rank. Basiclaly- a large blog roll dilutes your PR and makes more work for you. Read also: Does Google hate your blogroll? What is PageRank Sculpting?PageRank sculpting is the act of optimizing your pages to flow PageRank from your highest PR pages through to your most important internal pages while shunting PR from unimportant pages by directing Google to no longer crawl or index those unimportant or irrelevant pages. Why do you WANT Google to start ignoring some of your pages? Because as you flow your high PR through to only your other valuable Pages you increase the PR on those pages and as you drop the pages that have no relevant content or PR from your site- you leave Google with only high quality, high PR pages. Starting to see the value yet? You have now increased the ratio of high PR pages on your site and look like an overall more authoritative and relevant site. Basically, we have stopped Google from wasting its time with our loser pages and kept it circling our important pages. Read also: Whiteboard Friday the juice is loose Posted in SEO |
1 comment »June 23: Real Estate Blog Training ScheduleLOGIN AS A PANELIST TO TALK
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/en_US/webinar/island/joinAWebinar.tmpl Posted in Online Training Seminars |
