RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by John Reilly, e-PRO September 11, 2007

Good job, Hector. Thanks for including one of my favorite features, the ability to mark or star  'keepers'

I'm anxious to hear what the group feels about the ability of the commenter to mark the comment Private.

jr

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Maureen September 12, 2007

Are we able to switch to the new RealTown template now? I could not find that on my blog. Or not until the official launch?  When is the official launch? Excuse me if it is here and I am just not seeing it.

Thanks

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Hector Virgen September 12, 2007 Maureen,

You will be able to switch to the new RealTown Template from your Blog Manager after we officially launch the new RealTown Blogs. We don't have an official launch date but I'm personally aiming for less than two weeks.

-Hector

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Mary Pope-Handy September 12, 2007 Hi there (Fran? John? I'm not sure who's getting this!),

Thanks for the info on the blog changes. I wholeheartedly welcome the SEO help as I have had such huge issues with being invisible to Google and I really, really, REALLY hope this works. It can't happen soon enough for me.

I think the "look" of the new blog is awful (I hope you don't mind my being blunt) and I think it's a bad change to only have a few lines of the blog and then "read more" - maybe this is ok on the RT site so folks can skim a lot of topics but within someone's blog it's pretty bad looking and I don't think there's a good enough reason to do it. I'm not sure what the blog gurus think but I really don't like it.

When my blog migrates over, please keep my custom template with my header etc. That matters a lot to me. I do not want my blog to look like the new formatting you are putting out there.

Thank you for working so hard to resolve the SEO problem. I do very much appreciate it.

Best regards,

Mary

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Hector Virgen September 12, 2007 Thank you for your feedback, Mary. This is exactly the type of constructive criticism we were hoping to get from our top bloggers like you.

We have opted to use the entry snippets to help boost the SEO value. In our experience, we believe that multiple pages on the same web site containing the exact same text (word for word) are seen as less "valuable" to search engines. Here in the office we call it "duplicate content" and displaying just a short clip of the entry is our "quick fix" to prevent it.

Based on your reaction, this "quick fix" could be better.

Would you be more comfortable with the new RealTown Template if we allowed you to write your own entry snippet? Or if we gave you the option to display the entire entry?

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Mary Pope-Handy September 12, 2007 Thanks Hector. Yes, if I could write my own snippet I would be happier.

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Hector Virgen September 12, 2007 Sounds great, Mary. I'll bring up your suggestion in our next Blog meeting.

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Chris Little September 12, 2007 Hi Hector - the template looks good.  I noticed when my info migrated over that below my name Sacramento has actually become the capital of Illinois instead of California.  As a fifth generation California and a 3rd generation Sacramentan you can imagine my surprise!  -Chris

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Hector Virgen September 12, 2007 Good catch, Chris! You're right -- the system matched you up with the wrong Sacramento (apparently there's more than one). I updated your profile and placed you back in California. I'll look into preventing this kind of mixup in the future.

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by John Reilly, e-PRO September 12, 2007

Gosh, Chris, you mean you didn't hear about the deal that Arnold made? ;-)

 

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Andi Durbin September 12, 2007

Hi Hector et al:

I'm with Mary about really disliking the look of the new page.  I really, really, really, really dislike that my blog is being used to advertise other things - like Lowes or Best Image or Get Your House Sold or Advanced Access or anything else. (Do you get that I don't like this?)

It also appears that some of my favorite things - like links to my favorite blogs whether they are real estate related or not - are not appearing.

I don't like the snippets either.  I could see a compromise maybe.  Have the full text of the current entry and have the others appear as snippets.

OK, I know that I'm old and I don't like change and it took me long enough to get my blog to where it is.  But for now, I'll keep what I've got.  Thanks for giving me that option.

Andi

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Hector Virgen September 12, 2007 Thank you for your feedback, Andi.

As mentioned in the article, your custom template will be carried over. We are planning to include all of the new features (such as starred messages) in the new custom template so advanced bloggers like you will get to enjoy the latest technologies of RealTown.

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Hector Virgen September 12, 2007 If you're not logged in to beta.realtown.com, please log in and check out some of the additional features you get, such as starred entries.

For more info on starred entries, click the "My Starred Entries" link on the left-hand navigation panel.

You should also check out your own blog while logged in.

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Hector Virgen September 12, 2007 I have updated the RealTown template to support full-entries when viewing a blog or category page. This will become an option in both the Entry Editor and General Settings of the Blog Manager.

You will be able to choose on a per-entry basis whether the entry should appear:
a) as the entry's META description,
b) as "teaser text", or
c) as a complete entry.

The META description is going to be added as a new field for those who want to control their META descriptions for each entry. You can choose to display this description when the visitor is viewing a list of entries.

We are also adding a new "Teaser Text" box to create a complete HTML-based teaser to display instead of a truncated version of your entry. You can choose to display this "Teaser Text" when viewing a list of entries.

The last option, which is what Andi and Mary were asking for, is to always display the entire entry. Keep in mind that if you choose this option, your Blog could end up very long so we would suggest reducing the number of entries per page to 5 or less.

Currently, all Blog entries are set to display the entire post so you guys can check it out. We will be adding the META Description and Teaser options later this week.

-Hector

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Saul Klein September 12, 2007 This is moving forward in a very positive way Hector. Keep up the good work. We will keep building the RealTown Blog Community.

Saul

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Mary Pope-Handy September 12, 2007 Hector that's good. I liked the idea, proposed above by Andi, of having the most recent post be full and older ones be snippets. That seems to be a good compromise.

re: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Maureen McCabe September 13, 2007

re: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Mary Pope-Handy September 13, 2007 Maureen hit the nail on the head. If we have to have all of those horrible ads and showing (and ugly format) in order to get SEO benefit, that is a lose-lose situation in my estimation.  I hope that the SEO issue is not tied to having this new format.

re: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Maureen McCabe September 13, 2007

I think it is.  I think having a "template ...maintained entirely by RealTown, including SEO, graphics and stylesheet. SEO is automatically handled with intelligent META tags and proper HTML syntax. For example, each Category page will consist of META keywords based on the most popular tags of the entries within the category. Any changes made to the new template (bug fixes, style changes, etc) affect all blogs using the template, meaning every blog using it will always have the latest version." is going to be important.   

I don't think the default template  has to look the way it does though.  Personally other than the third column (showing Lowes Ads etc. on RealTown and showing links to RT on the version that the public arriving from a search engine, etc. will see if I am understandint this correctly...I don't have a problem with the look... obviously I have bad taste.

I don't think most members are going to give up their individuality on "their blog"  for SEO.

If the "the SEO issue is not tied to having this new format." if it is just a matter of a new url, great then I will have saved my custom template and can do back after a test. Not that my custom template is all that great.  I have not spent the time and effort  to make my blog pretty like Mary has.

I have a lot of content on my blog.  I want it to show up to search engines, if it has to mean using the default template, it is worth it to me.   If I switch it back to a custom format at some point and lose the SEO benefit, I'll have to make another decision about what to do with it.

I believe we need to have Google Analytics or something very similar to it built into the default template too so that we can see whether there is an improvement quickly, where the traffic on our blogs is coming from and where it is not coming from to see that the changes are working. 

 

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Hector Virgen September 13, 2007 All of the SEO changes that we are applying to the default template will be applied to the custom templates as well. We are automatically inserting the same intelligent meta tags and title tags even if you decide to use the custom template. I'm sorry if I caused any confusion.

You can still have a customized blog on RealTown while letting us handle the basics of SEO. However, please keep in mind that SEO is less about technology and more about content and inbound (not outbound) links. We will be doing our part in making sure that your content is indexable by search engines no matter which template you choose.

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Andi Durbin September 13, 2007

Wow!  I wish I could get this much action on my blog ;-)

DISCLAIMER!  THE FOLLOWING QUESTION WILL TOTALLY SHOW MY IGNORANCE OF THE SEO PROCESS.  PLEASE BEAR WITH ME.

Hector, I am a survivor of the Advanced Access Yahoo wars wherein Yahoo banend all Advanced Access web sites due to improper SEO procedures.  I am aware that most of that involved link farms, however my understanding is that the issue was that the links all came from the same basic URL.  In other words,  the way that Advanced Access is currently set up, all sites have a similar URL look to the search engines.  I know it's more complicated than that, but you get the idea.

Is the way this new blog setup being designed in any way the same?  It sounds similar in that we will all have a similar URL and all SEO will be applied across the board. 

I am still very pleased that we get to keep our custom templates and receive the benefit of any SEO that comes our way.  I'm just trying to raise any red flags through the benefit of my past experience.

Thanks for all you do, Hector.

Andi

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Hector Virgen September 13, 2007 Thanks, Andi. You're on the right track when it comes to SEO.

One of the problems we faced with RealTown Blogs was that each blog was on its own 3rd-level domain. This caused search engines to see each blog as a "seperate website" instead of part of the bigger website, www.realtownblogs.com.

Moving the blogs to RealTown.com was the first logical step in improving the overall value of RealTown and its pages. We are also upgrading the meta tags and title tags, which is not a "magic bullet" but just part of the overall solution to SEO. We still believe that heavy keyword density within the entries is important.

Let's say your blog is about San Diego. Consider the sentence "This is a great place to live." Perhaps your readers will know what you're talking about, but search engines have no clue what the words "this" and "place" mean. If you use a more complete sentence such as "San Diego is a great city to live in", it will be more likely to be picked up as an entry about living in San Diego.

We suggest titling your entries with sentences that contain the keywords and letting the Blog Manager software automatically generate the URL for you (just leave the Entry URL field blank). We also suggest that the keywords appear in your entry several times. Tag your entries with the keywords, and place the entry in a descriptive keyword-based category.

Doing all of the above will help us create the intelligent meta tags for your entries and is likely to yield positive results.

PS: I removed the right-side panel from the Blogs tab and made a few other slight changes. What do you guys think?

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Hector Virgen September 13, 2007 Just added
Visitors of your blog can now subscribe themselves to receive e-mail notifications whenever you update your blog or new comment is posted. This works similar to the "Notifications" checkbox below the post-comment box, but doesn't require the visitor to post a comment.

Visitors can subscribe by entering their email address in the "Subscribe" side-panel under the Categories.

This feature is currently only available in the RealTown template and will be available in the Custom templates soon.

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Jeff Dowler September 13, 2007

I like the custom look but not the standard one particularly - I like something with a bit more individuality.

And none of my photos or graphics are showing up. Hope I don't have to try to reload everything. That would NOT make me happy! :)

 Is there solution, or did I miss something here?

I like the subscribe feature.

Thank

Jeff

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Hector Virgen September 14, 2007 Jeff,

Thank you for your feedback. Is there anything you'd like to see different about the RealTown template? I know that our advanced bloggers would prefer a custom template, but if you could change anything about the RealTown template, what would you change?

BTW your images are back up. No need to re-upload them :) The fix involved replacing relative URLs with absolute URLs. This is all done for you automatically now, so no need to change anything on your end.

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Maureen McCabe September 14, 2007

I agree with Hector that it is so important to have a default template available for newbies, even if none of US (those who have been blogging and already have a custom template) ever use it.  I think the changes that they've made based on the feedback here will help.

I had misunderstood the post  / email orignally and was ready to use the default template because I thought  using the template was tied into getting good SEO.   I even blogged about it the other day, that the look on my blog would be changing.  Oh well. 

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Hector Virgen September 17, 2007 Thank you all for your excellent feedback. Maureen is right -- the feedback here has been a tremendous help in the development of RealTown Blogs.

The RealTown Blogs Team is meeting this Wednesday to go over the latest changes made to RealTown Blogs. If all goes well, we should be ready to push these changes to the live server by next week.

Please remember that RealTown Blogs is an ongoing project for us and we are always looking for ways to improve your blogging experience. If you have any thoughts/suggestions, please let us know.

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Chris Shouse September 17, 2007 Thank you for including me in the beta test. I will try the new template. I have 2 other blogs one for sellers and one for buyers but I would like to take my best articles out of the other two and move them to Nevada blog and shut the other two down. Is that possible?
Chris

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Hector Virgen September 18, 2007
Yes, we can merge your accounts for you. I will have RealTown support contact you to go over the merge details.

re: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Mary Pope-Handy September 23, 2007 Hi Hector,

When does the migration happen? I tried the new URL on my blog and it is not working at this time.

Thanks,
Mary
PS is there a way to pick a default "font" for our blogs? It has a default font that I don't like and each time I have to select Arial. It'd be great if I didn't have to do this every single time I posted. (Thanks :)

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Hector Virgen September 23, 2007 Mary,

We will be migrating the Blogs over to RealTown tomorrow (Monday, Sept. 24th).

Your entry's default fonts are based off of your current template's stylesheet. However, the entry editor doesn't reference your template for the correct fonts and sizes (which is why it defaults to Trebuchet MS). I have an idea on how to make it default to your current stylesheet so it'll be easier to compose. I'll look into this more later this week.

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Julie Ryan September 24, 2007

I am completely lost. My old blog still shows up, which is great, but when I try to go to blog manager (either from my old blog page or by logging into Realtown.com) it tells me that I don't have a blog and need to set one up.

If I set up a new one, what happens to my old posts? Do I need to copy them into the new blog?  Shouldn't I already have a blog set up?

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Hector Virgen September 24, 2007
Julie, it appears you have two RealTown accounts. Please log in to RealTown with your "JustAskJulie" username to access your Blog.

RE: RealTown Blogs BETA

Posted by Maureen October 1, 2007

One week into the new URLs on RealTown Blogs!   The urls make a difference according to  Google  Analytics:

Top 5  

google (organic)
   
    32.84%
yahoo (organic)
   
    27.81%
(direct) ((none))
   
    9.17%
ask (organic)
   
    4.73%
columbusbestblog.com (referral)
   
    3.25%

I guess comparing it to the week before would make sense.  There would not be 33% on Google... below is the week before (Sept 14 - 23, 2007) 


Top 5

yahoo (organic)
         36.98%
(direct) ((none))
         11.24%
realtownblogs.com (referral)
            7.99%
reblog.mariah.com (referral)
         6.80%
google (organic)
         5.03%

Thanks