RealTown's RealTalk

Bonnie Cox wrote -

"Our website has done fairly well with Google and this would be an attempt to improve the rankings further. We keep being told that the website is static and that the blog platform much more dynamic. Of course, there is added expense and labor that we have to consider."

Too bad you didn't include your email address here so I could respond more directly to you, but here goes. Yes... you rank fairly high for a number of keyword phrases in Google right now. That may or may not hold true by moving over to a blog instead, since those rankings have a lot to do with not only the visible content of each web page, but also the HTML coding of each page in the Title tag, Description tag and much, much more. So unless you make sure these same pages, along with the coding, transfer over, your rankings may actually suffer.

Furthermore, a web site is not really static and actually serves a different purpose to your visitors than blogging. Statistics from my clients' sites clearly show that the overwhelming majority of visitors who go beyond the Home page merely want to look at properties. That is really the dynamic section of any agent's web site... since those properties being displayed from your MLS are changing every day! Normally the other pages of an agent's site should be describing what YOU can do for your visitor in helping them to buy or sell... and that just doesn't change from day to day or month to month. So no wonder those are "static".

If you want to truly test your theory as to whether a blog platform will out-perform a "normal" web site, go to Google and do a search for Denver Real Estate or your other targeted search terms. Identify the top agent or brokerage sites that come up organically in the Top 30 listings and go visit each one. Is it a "web" site or is it a "blog" site? Keep track of the results. That will tell you.

As Dirk Johnson from Domain Drivers wrote here in response to "Social Networking Presentation"

"Google is still the 800 pound gorilla in the room. The traffic that search engines can drive to a site dwarfs anything else. An agent who is neglecting their basic SEO tasks is forfeiting their most vital source of traffic to competitors.

A fraction of the time spent blogging and commenting could be applied to focused SEO work, probably with dramatic results."

Regards,

Win

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Win Singleton, CRB, e-PRO
Summit Web Design
(703) 536-7631
wins@summitweb.com
http://Summitweb.InternetCrusade.com
an Internet Crusade Approved Vendor
"Custom web site design that gets results!"
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A fraction of the time spent blogging and commenting could be applied to focused SEO work, probably with dramatic results."

Regards,

Win

I somewhat agree with you Win except for a couple of points.

First, no matter how much SEO you do, there can be only one #1 ranking for a keyword, one #2, etc..

Second I have a lot of subscribers to my blog that apparently read most every post and comment back to me pretty often; I love that sort of interaction with potential buyers and sellers before they actually become buyers & sellers. Great top of mind awareness.

I personally still believe a properly optimized website is our best online tool but a great blog is a close second. I have my blog linked to my website and integrated into it for the best of both worlds.

Jim Lee, CRS, ABR, GRI, ACRE, NAR Certified e-PRO Trainer
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Visit my blog: www.KnoxvilleTennesseeRealEstateBlog.com
Realty Executives Associates, Knoxville, Tennessee
See all Knoxville area Realtor listings at: www.KnoxvilleHomeCenter.com
(865) 693-3232, My Personal Toll Free # 1-800-662-2488 ext. 163
mailto:Jim@JimLee.com

Hi Jim,

You wrote in part -

"First, no matter how much SEO you do, there can be only one #1 ranking for a keyword, one #2, etc.."

True... but you can gain rankings for mulitiple search phrases by following sound SEO techniques on different pages of your site. And as Dirk wrote, "A fraction of the time spent blogging and commenting could be applied to focused SEO work, probably with dramatic results." It would not be that hard to climb the organic rankings ladder into the Top 10 to Top 30 listings for various targeted keyword phrases if the time spent writing posts to a blog was spent instead on SEO.

You went on -

"Second I have a lot of subscribers to my blog that apparently read most every post and comment back to me pretty often; I love that sort of interaction with potential buyers and sellers before they actually become buyers & sellers. Great top of mind awareness."

Jim, I think your blog might just be the exception rather than the rule. Many agents spend a lot of time trying to build a blog that ends up not being as successful as yours. Oh, blogging can have it's place, as I wrote back privately to Bonnie below -

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For most major metropolitan areas (and Denver would certainly qualify), there are very few blog sites that rank as high as web sites.

I did what I recommended you do - test the theory. I just went to Google and did a search for Denver Real Estate. (I found your site at #18 today by the way). I have now clicked on every agent's site in the Top 30 (weeding out the sites like realestate.yahoo.com, realtor.com, trulia.com, etc.) There are 16 agent or company sites in the Top 30... and the only one that is a blog site instead of the web site is http://www.kristalsellsdenver.com. Can a blog site rank? Sure. But it certainly is a lot harder, as evidenced by this 5 minute look at Google, than doing it the other way with a wonderful web site.

While blogging can be a good adjunct to a very good web site and help to drive in extra visitors to it, I have found so far that most people really don't care about reading a real estate agent's blog posts. They just want to search for properties! That might be because many, many agents are just not good writers. ;-) We make our living by giving oral presentations - not written ones. If we were so good at writing, we would probably be in a different profession.

"Dynamic vs. static" has little to nothing to do with rankings in Google. I have many web clients in the Top 10 to Top 30 in Google for their targeted search terms and I can honestly say, some of them have not changed 1 word of text on their site in 3 to 5 years or even longer. (How would I know? I'm the one who puts up new content for them. My sites are not templates!) Yet these agents stay at the top of Google month after month and keeping getting terrific leads that end up turning into closed real estate transactions. These same agents who are doing all of this business don't blog at all! So from where I sit, and based upon the experience of my web clients, the concept that one needs to be adding new content all the time to their web site in order to get found or to achieve high rankings truly is an "urban myth"! And if that is true, it also then poses the question, "Why blog?" Unless you just like sitting in front of the computer and being a creative writer, my experience shows it just isn't necessary at all.

So whether you ever use me as a web designer or not, I just didn't want to see you fall backwards from the very nice rankings you already have by heading off to strictly a blog site instead of a nice web site and then possibly regretting it later.

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I agree that it can be nice to blog, if you can gain an audience, like you have Jim. But is it necessary? No.

Regards,

Win

************************
Win Singleton, CRB, e-PRO
Summit Web Design
(703) 536-7631
wins@summitweb.com
http://Summitweb.InternetCrusade.com
an Internet Crusade Approved Vendor
"Custom web site design that gets results!"
************************

" (keeping the URL the same and transferring all of the content)"

Hi Bonnie,

Just wanted to add that URL should be plural. You want to make sure that all of the urls on your old site still work. You can accomplish this by either keeping the same url structure or by using a 301 redirect. A 301 redirect is a way to tell the web server that a url has moved to a new location. This is especially critical if you have high quality inbound links to your website. If the destination url changes for any inbound links and there is no 301 in place, then you will lose all seo benefit.

The entire content of your website can be simultaneously optimized and made dynamic by converting it to Wordpress (this is the platform that RISMedia is built on, open source, all free). This puts you completely in control of your website, and, if it is done properly, your SEO and this will create rankings and traffic, and long term savings.

We have done this literally thousands of times succesfully, and we do it for only $479.00

There are complete Wordpress conversion and SEO guides here:

http://socialmediasystems.com/blog/