RealTown's RealTalk

Frank Crowley said:
"Okay, I have my ...Blog, ...been posting to it for a few months. Not a single sign of internet improvement....does it not come up on Google? What am I not doing? Help, please."

Frank,

You've just another victim of the "wall of words" SEO theorists out here in the real estate community. You were told to blog, blog. blog. You were told that Google LOVES raw word count on your website(s). You were told that other website owners and other people with websites and blogs would link back to your content in a wild frenzy.

You've now wasted an enormous amount of time that can't be recovered, listening to this wholesale nonsense. However, you are not alone. I am betting that there are thousands of other agents out there who have spent the past year trying to create their "wall of words" web presence, yet they find that they have barely moved in the search rankings, they get very little traffic to their endless postings, and, at last, are FINALLY wondering what's up with this all of this.

Here's what's up...and I am going to be quite blunt, for your own good and the rest of the agent community that has bought into these theories for the last 18 months.

1) Google DOES NOT CARE how many words you post, here, there or anywhere. You get virtually no reward from Google for being prolific. The Google algorithm does not take into consideration at all that you might be the most prolific local agent, and thus, deserve to be rewarded for it. In the end, all of these words are just more content for Google to index and put into some "what is this all about?" category.

2) What site are you trying to get people to visit, from a search in Google? Your main website? Your franchise mini-site? Your blog(s)? Your ActiveRain or Facebook profile? If you want search results, then focus getting your SEO work in order on ONE site, whatever that is. Part of this "wall of words" theory advises people to spread it out, all over the place. That's dilution, not a focus.

3) This may be hard to come to grips with, but other site owners, for the most part, do not care about your content. Just like you probably don't care about theirs. Especially if they are in another state.

Frank, did you link to Judy Agent's blog post about the weather in Peoria today? Well, she's not linking to your post about house prices in Carlsbad, CA, either. Nor are your Carlsbad competitors linking to you.

So, who will link to your stuff? Good luck finding them, unless you finally actually decide to arrange a mutual link swap of some kind with another agent, which all the gurus will tell you NOT to do, even though they swap link on their own blogs. They just call it "cooperating" and citing other good content. In the end, it's link swapping.

The agent/gurus who are the cheerleaders for all of this get LOTS of links back to their miserable advice, without having to link back to their thousands of disciples. They've convinced all of YOU to link to THEIR advice! All of this works great FOR THEM!

Bottom line on links...Unless you are giving some kind of advice to other agents that gets them all to pee their pants over your content, then you are going nowhere. Otherwise, almost nobody is going to link to your content.

The gurus will never tell you that hard, cold fact. Doing so would expose what a hollow game this "wall of words" really is for most agents.

4) Most likely, you have not been fully committed to the "wall of words" SEO approach. You have probably not spent your mornings reading the latest social networking theories from the gurus, then downloading or installing the latest gadgets, gizmos, and tools. It's a geek's game, suitable for a certain personality, and you have to play it, every day.

Then, you have to spend your afternoons figuring out how to use this stuff, and your evenings writing more words. I am not sure when you'll have time to actually sell some real estate. Maybe during dinner hours.


Do I think you should have a Facebook and LinkedIn profile? Yes. I'd even suggest that you use them judiciously, to your advantage. use them to connect with people, IN YOUR MARKET or in your realm of interest or hobby. These are tools that have been proven to work.

But if the real goal is generate site traffic and leads from search engines, then most of this noise is a GIGANTIC waste of time. A COLOSSAL hoax has been perpetrated on the agent community for the last couple of years. Raw word count is, in the end, just more noise.

However, words that are focused matter.

Frank, I've been involved with search engine optimization for years. I still see examples where a very limited, laser-focused approach to SEO works well. It costs less time, less money, and less hassle.

You can then generate site traffic and client inquires off your site, while you spend your days SELLING REAL ESTATE and not typing more blog posts to pile on top of more blog posts that accomplish little.

Cover the basics first. That has become so completely lost in most real estate SEO discussions these days, since the advent of blogging and social networking. Here's a FREE eBook that was specifically written for real estate professionals, using real estate examples:

Search Engine Optimization Basics For Real Estate-Related Websites
http://www.domaindrivers.com/seobasics-realestate-main.htm

I hope it helps.

Best regards,

Dirk Johnson
Partner - Operations
DomainDrivers LLC
djohnson@domaindrivers.com
703-406-4698
www.domaindrivers.com