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It’s Your Market, or Is It? Real Estate SEO in 2013

On January 27, 2013 By Dave Keys

Real Estate SEO in 2013

Everyone virtually without exception is telling you content marketing is where it’s at in 2013 and generally they are correct but where are you putting that content? Who is benefiting most from what you do online? Syndications are rolling out more and more schemes with a front end that looks like a great benefit to real estate agents but these schemes tend to work like inverse Trojan horses gathering many elements of the work of individual agents and amassing all those small pieces of effort and energy to themselves to create massive powerhouses that dominate search results.

Trulia [...]

Likes, Plus Ones Social Media and Actual Engagement SEO Signals for Real Estate Agents

On December 10, 2012 By Dave Keys

Likes and plus ones are a game by-in-large but have you looked at the Search Engine Optimization section of Google Analytics lately?

There’s an entire section that measures traffic coming in from “Social” and that “Social” is very broad ranging from Disqus to Linkedin to of course, G+.

What is being reported and measured is traffic that engages by clicking through the social media curtain to your website. That is a challenge most people don’t like and don’t want to take on, but the rewards I have found to be high for that very reason.

If you’ve seen my SEO experiment on Google Plus, Most of what I have done has involved attracting people to visit the website. Social isn’t the end all [...]

Godaddy Website Down on 9/10/12? Front End and Millions of Websites too – Anonymous Responsible?

On September 10, 2012 By Dave Keys

It’s noon on the West Coast and Godaddy is still down as I write this. Godaddy hosts one of my clients’ websites and a typical database error message greeted me when I began to work on the website this morning. It didn’t take long to find out that not only was his hosting down but the entire GoDaddy website is down too. That is a definite 1st in my experience. A tweet from an alleged member of the hacker group, Anonymous claims responsibility for the outage on behalf of the group.

I have no idea if GoDaddy’s security is any better or worse than other hosting services like Bluehost, Hostgator, iPage and many others but I have never been a fan of GoDaddy hosting. [...]

Orange County SEO Weak Strategy (But They Do It Anyway)

On August 10, 2012 By Dave Keys

Let's build a dumb spammy link wheel! Orange County SEO

You can see for yourself who is behind it, but there is a link wheel appearing to promote a page on Switchlabel.com. Right now the Switchlable page has some chalkboard scratching painful to read if at least grammatically correct article espousing the wonders of hiring “Orange County SEO professionals.” Only problem is, gee wiz, the rest of the website is in Latin. One category link is named “Epic Winning.” Yeah, just like Charlie.

The link wheel wanders all over the low quality spectrum and finally ends up there at the site that who knows what will happen with it. A 301 redirect? Who cares. [...]

Free Web 2.0 Sites – Part Of an Effective SEO Strategy

On July 13, 2012 By Dave Keys

I spoke yesterday at the Upland Claremont Real Estate Professionals meeting about leveraging specific high PR posts and videos for search engine visibility. Sometimes a few links are needed and most real estate agents are not aware of the many resources where new content can be created and new links from new sources can be embedded in your content that point to your content on a video site or other high domain authority sites.

SEO for real estate can be enhanced by use of free websites.

While posting on, and linking from web 2.0 sites are useful, don’t rely on them for your whole strategy. Sometimes, however, when you need an equalizer against some competition, they can provide the tipping point to get [...]

Google, Freshness And Your Business SEO

On June 12, 2012 By Dave Keys

Set it and Forget it? Forget it!

One day soon, somewhere, someone will wake up and check on their local business listing and find it has disappeared. Google will have removed it without a trace and without fanfare. No, they didn’t take a punitive action against an offending product or behavior, but rather the lack of one.

One thing Google loves is freshness and change. Something new to offer its searching audience. The BSO (bright shiny object) is what people like and Google knows it. They want a steady stream of them to hand out on their portal. You could make a case for the different as a marketing strategy. There are lots of opportunities in niche content creation and page one, even #1 [...]

What Happened To Google Places? What is a YAGA Update? SEO News Flash!

On May 31, 2012 By Dave Keys

Google Places Has Been Canned! read one email I received in a breathless announcement of the inevitable. Google continues to consolidate its channels into one: Google Plus.

So the frenzy in SEO circles and search related media is all about Google ending the use of Google Places in favor of Google Local. Sort of. Google has started a transition toward its unified console, adding Local to the lineup. Places isn’t gone so much as its functions have moved toward consolidation of Google’s user control panel or whatever you wish to call it. What’s important at this stage is to remember that most of search starts in Google’s core organic search engine. As I overheard Steve Wiideman say, “The #1 search on AOL is ‘www.google.com.’” [...]

What I Did Not Do To Get This Website On Page One for Orange County SEO

On May 21, 2012 By Dave Keys

Yep, a position #5 ranking for “Orange County SEO” which is like some kind of coup de feat in SEO because of all the traffic it’s supposed to generate according to the Google Adword Keyword Tool

See below, broad, phrase and exact match search volume:

So, whatever, I don’t get near the percentage of traffic that you’re supposed to get according to the 2006 Cornell Eye Tracking Study. Position #5 is supposed to get a few points worth of traffic but it doesn’t because I think most of that traffic is other SEOs checking their position. We’ve all inflated the search volume out of the stratosphere. In fact, [...]

SEO Case Study B & B Site

On May 19, 2012 By Dave Keys

I participate in a forum for SEO advice. Mine isn’t always in the professional vernacular but I focus on clearing up major issues fast for websites. Real estate websites are close neighbors of Bed and Breakfast websites so I thought I’d share some observations on this particular website just for people in real estate to gain some perspective into what should and shouldn’t be happening on their sites as well. I hope you gain some benefit from this review of a B&B website.

I have a client at http://www.shorecrestbedandbreakfast.com/ with a blog at http://www.shorecrestbedandbreakfast.com/blog/ I could use some advice on how to get this site up in rankings.

… I want SEO recommendations for [...]

Orange County SEO No Spin Zone

On January 17, 2012 By Dave Keys

I’m as much in favor of article syndication as the next anti-Panda advocate but thin content is thin content. I’ve seen competitors in recent months for keyword Orange County SEO expend resources on creating more and more spin content and thin and even unintelligible, out-of-control so-called article marketing that is really just spam, trying desperately to rank for the old OC search optimization keyword but my site rises in the Google search results to page one with just the creation of a few original posts and links from a few of my blogs- not the boilerplate anchor text kind but natural links. Why?

Quality still beats brute force- maybe not immediately but over the longer term, it’s going to win. Google can sort it [...]

Google Boilerplate Anchor Text Over-Optimization Filters and Penalties

On November 28, 2011 By Dave Keys

This article is syndicated from my real estate SEO blog and Activerain, but I wanted to add here that the website observed here has moved in and out of the top ten pages of SERPs. Today, it’s at the bottom of page four. It may yet recover but the obvious takeaway here is that at the very best, overoptimizing anchor text doesn’t help your cause.

In any SEO campaign, whether for real estate or anything else, best results correlate to best practices and what’s demonstrated here is poor practice indeed.

If you want to fall from Google page one to page five in search results, follow this example. Otherwise, follow some real estate SEO expert advice and avoid [...]

Goodbye to a Long Fading Freebie – Yahoo Site Explorer and Link Counts

On November 22, 2011 By Dave Keys

Today the lights went out on Yahoo Site Explorer and the free alternative to analyze and evaluate back-links. This may come as bad news to a lot of DIYers but the quality of this method of evaluating the SEO clout of a website leaves a lot to be desired as Google continues to scale down the influence of links to make room for other ranking signals.

This removal of the Yahoo link checking tool and a host of freebie tools and sites that depended on it means that white hat SEO and building of a site by contextual material that isn’t lame becomes even more the standard of website promotion and ranking.

There are still tools available to evaluate links that are of good [...]

Tough Market- unless you long tail | Orange County Homes with Hawaiian Maui Style Back Yard | Visit This Page Now

On October 23, 2011 By Dave Keys

Buyer intent. Commercial intent. Those kind of terms are tossed around marketing circles like dwarves in a 1930s circus. It’s regarded as just a tired trick by some who know that SEOs like to use the long tail in their marketing. What they completely miss is the power of the story and emotion that, in the right kind of message or presentation, converts the one or two or few leads that find your long tail keyword web page into a where do I sign? customer.

I’ll tell you a story about a house I bought. It was raining that spring in a record year of precip. Everything was as green as the hills of Maui here in Southern California. It was 2005 and we [...]

October Surprise From Google

On October 18, 2011 By Dave Keys

Google Will Break A Lot of Tracking Tools and SEO Hearts With This One

Google eyes

October 18, 2011: Announcement on the Goog-O-Blahg-oh in the name of “Making search more secure”:

We will stop all third party tracking services in their tracks, or more mildly put, “we are encrypting search for signed in users and websites won’t be able to see the keywords that brought them there, but don’t worry, we’ll send you a summary if you register your site with our Webmaster Tools where we can control your behavior.”

Google will use SSL technology to further obscure the process by which people find your website, just in case you were [...]

Short Sale Fail | All The King’s Horses and All the SEO in the World Can’t Help This

On September 20, 2011 By Dave Keys

This is definitely not the way to market a short sale. I have passed this house for several months on my morning walks and said to myself, this house is going to go into foreclosure. Today was the day.

Failed short sale in Murrieta Too unfriendly

Every time I came by, that sign just nearly punched me in the face with “go away!” What this picture does not show is that for almost the entire time until about a week ago that this house was listed, the grass was 3 feet high and everything seemed to say, “Keep moving. Nothing to see here!” it may have not been intended that way at all [...]

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It’s Your Market, or Is It? Real Estate SEO in 2013

Likes, Plus Ones Social Media and Actual Engagement SEO Signals for Real Estate Agents

Godaddy Website Down on 9/10/12? Front End and Millions of Websites too – Anonymous Responsible?

Orange County SEO Weak Strategy (But They Do It Anyway)

Free Web 2.0 Sites – Part Of an Effective SEO Strategy

Google, Freshness And Your Business SEO

What Happened To Google Places? What is a YAGA Update? SEO News Flash!

What I Did Not Do To Get This Website On Page One for Orange County SEO

SEO Case Study B & B Site

Google Boilerplate Anchor Text Over-Optimization Filters and Penalties

Goodbye to a Long Fading Freebie – Yahoo Site Explorer and Link Counts

Tough Market- unless you long tail | Orange County Homes with Hawaiian Maui Style Back Yard | Visit This Page Now

October Surprise From Google

Short Sale Fail | All The King’s Horses and All the SEO in the World Can’t Help This

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Orange County SEO Projects

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