Archive for the 'Social Networking' Category
Just Write Relevant, Compelling Articles About Real Estate and/or Mortgage and You Won’t Have to Worry About Page Rank and SEO
March 1st, 2008 Categories: Real Estate Technology, SEO Tips, Social Networking
Hat tip to Todd at Blog Fiesta for pointing out that Google reshuffled the Page Rank deck. This post started as a comment and question for Todd, then it got to be really long, then I decided to make it a post.
For anyone who finds themselves struggling to generate new content (bloggers block), this is a great way to push through the plateau–taking a comment into a new post.
My comment/question:
Hey Todd…
Question:
Can you explain what Page Rank means in tangible terms? As in, what are the demonstrated differences and/or advantages between a site that is a PR4 and one thats a PR5 (and 6 or 7 for that matter).
In your experience, are proper SEO tactics (whatever they are) and Page Rank closely affiliated?
Then I got to thinking (although I’d still like to hear Todd’s answer)…It doesn’t seem that PR has much to do w/ SEO.
I don’t follow status-quo SEOnomics advice but my site is a PR5, has been for the past few Google PR shuffles. A PR5 supposedly requires some hard core, intense SEO-Fu to achieve…except I don’t practice SEO-Fu. The one time I did, I got the beat down.
Wrote a post titled ‘The Best Mortgage Blog‘ in September 2007. 72 hours later I searched Google and Yahoo! for ‘The Best Mortgage Blog’ and *bang* #1 on page 1 of the organic results on all three SERP’s. This post resided in top position for this term for quite sometime (I stopped looking in December).
Today, if you type in The Best Mortgage Blog on Google, you cannot find the post, even if you extend the Search to ‘The Best Mortgage Blog xbroker’. Can’t find it via their Blog Search page either (the post is still #1 on Yahoo). So it appears The Google hath punished me. How they flesh this out is beyond me.
I don’t know how they do it, but I believe that Google pays very close attention to how you ‘build your blog’. If you try to implement crafty SEO tactics based on what pundits say will increase your PR, you’re more likely to be penalized (or marginalized) than rewarded. I’m not talking about black hat stuff (sure way to get penalized and even banned from the SERP’s), but rather any strategy thats designed to try and manipulate Google’s mysterious omnipotent algorithmic brain.
From Googles site regarding Page Rank:
Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.
Google’s complex automated methods make human tampering with our search results extremely difficult.
In other words, don’t even try to figure this out.
My lone SEO practice resides in a plug-in for WordPress: The All-In-One SEO pack, which prods me for keywords, a short description and a title. Thats it. The only time I’m even remotely ‘SEO conscious’ is when choosing a title, trying to pen the verbiage as to how a human may search for the content within a particular post, which may be a back asswards technique for all I know.
Other ‘SEO sins’ committed here, deemed counter intuitive to achieving a higher PR:
- A big blogroll and too many links on my home page (so they claim…)
- I submit some duplicate content to ActiveRain (because I enjoy the feedback from inter-industry professionals) and many Splogs scrape my content, increasing the apparent damaging duplicity.
Just write relevant, compelling articles about real estate and/or mortgage and you won’t have to worry about Page Rank and SEO
So that’s my $.02… improving Page Rank and ‘SEO Strategies’ are often disjointed and other times damaging to one another. But I’m still interested in what anyone else (especially an SEO-Fu artist or Page Rank guru) has to say, cause I’m no expert…
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Active Rain and Move.com, Bloodhound Unchained and Zillow, Inman News and…
February 27th, 2008 Categories: 4realz, Active Rain, Inman News, Social Networking, dustin luther, re.net
ActiveRain, I fear, faces a pricey uphill battle against Move.com due to their steadfast commitment
towards a full blown trial. The attorneys must be licking their chops as this looks to be a battle of attrition. Move definitely has the pockets burn and turn this into an expensive endeavor for the guys in Seattle. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pulling for Jon and Matt vs The 800 Pound Gorilla, but the economic (im)practicalities and ramifications of a lawsuit this size cannot be ignored.
One would think that Housevalues recent $2.75M investment in AR must have come with a high degree of comfort considering this pending lawsuit. I don’t know of many investors who put money into a company that is facing potentially expensive litigation. Then again my insight is near-sighted.
In what has to be one of the oddest couplings in recent memory, The Bloodhound crew has announced that Zillow will be the primary sponsor for the Bloodhound Unchained conference in Phoenix May 18th-20th…Nearly spit up my coffee when I read this, I don’t get it, I mean I get it, it is about breaking Benjamins…and Zillow has them to break.
BHB is unapologetically the most in your face, tell you where you can stick it blog community in the re.net space (thanks mainly to it’s proprietor) Greg makes no bones about it. Zillow on the other hand is about as nice and cordial as anyone in this space. They have more customer relations people than I do fingers. I guess I personally expected BHBU to ride the independent route in lieu of going with a corporate sponsorship. Will Zillow take any heat for Gregs public undressings of other influencer’s in the space? In any case, BHBU should be worth the price of admission, if only for pure entertainment value. *Envisioning hecklers and taser guns* ‘Don’t tase me dude!’
Speaking of the conference circuit, it’s really been heating up recently. 4RealzED, Domus Consulting, as well as BHBU have pushed into a crowding arena. I’ve experienced Domus’ enlightenment (which is top notch) and have attended the past three Inman Connects, which are filled with the who’s who of Real Estate 2.0. I’m
looking forward to seeing what the 4Realz and BHB workshops have to offer…can I get a press pass guys? If any of these groups come to a town near you, drop the coin and attend. All parties are brilliantly in tune with whats going on in the future of real estate. Just noticed Zillow is also sponsoring Dustin’s 4RealzED events…hmmm, David G. is a pimp…and his Facebook picture is about 10 years old 
j/k David…
Moving on to Inman’s Beta site.
I’m a contributor to their blog network, so they get automatically get props for this brilliant move (Joel is no dummy). Otherwise, they’ve really evolved the look and feel of their 1998 website, it’s taken on a nice (and BLUE) look and feel…very ‘Web2.0′ My understanding is it’s still a work in progress (hence the beta tag), which explains some of the minor bugginess and slightly cluttered look. I’ve tried to post suggestions to the designated Wiki page, but it won’t save my changes 
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Dustin Luther, Social Internet Marketing Guru, Hits The Road
February 20th, 2008 Categories: 4realz, Social Networking, dustin luther
Not because he asked, but because I admire him and his work.
If you’re a real estate or mortgage professional and looking for top internet marketing advice in a ‘Web 2.0′ world, one may now receive it from one of its founding fathers.
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Open Social Evolves with Social Graph API
February 11th, 2008 Categories: Open Social Applications, Social Networking, widget the web
Open Social begins to spin with Social Graph API.
Tim O’Reily writes about the future of Social Networking Optimization (SNO) and an ‘Internet Operating System’. Googles effective proselytization continues forward as Microsoft and Yahoo! dance in a circle.
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Google, The Core Driver Behind SEO Strategies, Looks to Become the King of Social Networking Optimization (SNO) Too.
January 21st, 2008 Categories: Open Social Applications, Real Estate Technology, Social Networking
I penned this post on another site back in November, alas I want to continue the thread of this conversation here on The XBroker. Hopefully the big G doesnt penalize me too bad for duplicate content…
Google, the core driver behind SEO strategies, looks to become the King of Social Networking Optimization (SNO) as well.
“The web is more interesting when you can build apps that easily interact with your friends and colleagues. But with the trend towards more social applications also comes a growing list of site-specific APIs that developers must learn.
OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.”
‘Learn Once, Write Everywhere’ is the core message of this ‘new’ architecture proposed and fostered by Google. Using the most general of statements, Googles latest release will have broad reaching effects regarding how the web ‘works’.
According to Google, OpenSocial is a set of three types of API’s that allow programmers to access core functions and information that are common to ’social networks’:
- Profile Information. Info about you.
- Friends Information. Info about your friends.
- Activities. Whats everyone doing, reading, buying, looking at, playing with..?
Although the three API’s above look pretty ‘So What-ish…’, thats really the beauty of it all, they’re blatantly vanilla yet almost infinitely scaleable considering the amount, quality, and how information can be shared. There are little to no restrictions from a programmers standpoint, it’s a wide open and flat playing field to develop under.In the real estate and mortgage verticals, today the question is:
‘Whats the big deal?’ since there are no succinct applications or service providers amongst the initial group of partners that clearly look to benefit ‘Real Estate’ or ‘Mortgage’. I’ll reserve specific examples for the next posting, but I do have some general broad canvas thoughts…
In a past post, I spoke of the evolution of Widgetry (or Gadgetry) or, shareable applications designed to increase the functionality and share-ability of a web-site via SNO. I’ve also touched on the importance of SNO.
Google has kept things ‘Really Simple Stupid’, allowing the collective brain power of programmers with almost any skill level to develop an application or widget using OpenSocials API’s. With just a few tweaks as to how applications/widgets are developed, programmers who choose to integrate OpenSocials API’s won’t need to learn or develop new (mark-up) languages to make their shareable wares work on…pick your web-platform…
As stated above, OpenSocial isn’t ‘just another social network’, it creates a common platform that allows independently produced applications/widgets to work on and connect with multiple platforms.
This should allow for very rapid development cycles as well as much faster adoption rates for popular (and useful) applications. If you’ve used FaceBook you have seen the dynamic of rapid application development in action, which is also why Facebook is the rage in IT (and VC) land. OpenSocial one ups Facebook by not restricting such application development to only their platform. Just think, you could soon be able to throw sheep at your peers outside of FaceBook! (OK, bad joke.)
What becomes possible using OpenSocial relevant to Real Estate service providers? Ponder for a second the richness of information that could be called upon, seamed together, and shared between ‘network hubs’, or like groups of professional peers, running relevant applications (widgets et.al.) using OpenSocial’s framework. Listings, potential consumers, existing clients, vendors, mortgage rates, broad demographic data, hyper-local opinions and information…
Today, real estate agents, mortgage professionals, brokerages et. al. are powerful and robust information network hubs, however, they still remain fractured and relatively disparate from each other….Applications designed to seam these hubs together for the benefit of the professional end-user as well as the ever discerning long tail driven consumer are already in the works, OpenSocial looks to have shortened the learning and adoption curve of such applications substantially.
Also See:
Social Networking Maintenance Made Easier
What Does OpenSocial Mean to Real Estate?
Why Google Turned into a Social Butterfly
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