There’s so much conjecture on the subject of duplicate content these days we thought it made sense to discuss it a bit here. Particularly, with regards to Real Estate Education and Blogging.

Now search isn’t everything and a Real Estate Blog’s content can certainly be used as a valuable direct marketing [via subscription] tool; however, if you’re goal is search engine findability it’s important to understand how search engines like Google handle duplicate content. 

Google means to be the best conduit to answers it can be so that it has the most satisfied and loyal searchers. Serving up search results full of the same content would not support the user experience they’re shooting for. In the same respect, they’re aware that most duplicate content isn’t developed for nefarious reasons. They *do not want to police duplicate content* and they do not want to penalize for it. While there is reason to believe that excessive cases may lead to penalties or blacklisting, the typical scenario is the duplicate page [not the whole site] is held from the index. Also, many believe Google’s filters detect 50% or more duplication on a post. Any less and there’s probably not too much danger.

While the goal may not always be search engine indexing, we’re aware of at least one case where thousands of blogs have the same exact content in their posts and only one of those blogs gets indexed. The balance of those blog owners either have different goals, don’t care or they’re simply unaware. For the top producing Realtor® who does care and rather than some terrible penalty, the negative effects of duplicating content online are more about opportunity lost, including:

1) a wasted spider crawl,

2) the loss of keyword & key phrase indexing,

3) the loss of greater findability,

4) the loss of back links favorable to page rank,

In the end, it’s your time, effort and money that is at stake and these days search findability for the maximum number of key words and phrases is crucially important to business. In fact, if you’re not shooting to achieve it you’re not seeing the cost-effective advertising opportunity that is being served up for you versus traditional means. And don’t underestimate the value of a Google crawl, the depth of that crawl and the amount of content it takes into its’ index is where search findability happens.

PS: For what it’s worth I’ve written up the subject of duplicate content in three different places now. In each case, the context is the same but the actual content is slightly different… but it is never duplicated.

This post is presented by Chris Frerecks, Kinetic Knowledge/ Real Estate Blog Sites and is meant to provide useful real estate oriented education for the benefit of the Star Power audience. Kinetic Knowledge LLC and Real Estate Blogsites provide real estate professionals, including the STAR POWER organization, with leading blog solutions, blog writing content, blogging education and service. Chris is easily reached via email at chris@kineticknowledge.com.

The Top of the Search Engines

So, what is it that gets you to the top of the search engines for competitive topics and key phrases? It’s the million dollar question and while there are some proven strategies & techniques [currently], it’s a completely dynamic and advanced environment where more things are unknown than are actually known. And what is known may just change tomorrow.

In fact, Google readily discloses they are constantly experimenting with their algorithm. They say they tune it on a weekly basis in order to assure more relevant and useful results for their users. It simply means your top position for Real Estate Star Power or Top Ft Myers FL Real Estate Agent could be here today, gone tomorrow. Says VP of Search Quality Udi Manber, “…surprisingly little is known about ranking at Google. This is entirely our fault, and it is by design. We are, to be honest, quite secretive about what we do. There are two reasons for it: competition and abuse…"

So amidst all the search optimization conjecture, do we really know any short cuts or tricks to reach the top? Is it the back links that do the job? What about the rank of those back links? Has the Google Algorithm reached a place where it can evaluate the relevance of back links to your content subject matter? Does a search engine have the ability to detect, filter or penalize for paid or recruited back links? Is there some weighted combination of link structure, including outbound and internal linking, that gets you higher? Is an ability to track your RSS subscriptions an important metric? Is the amount of search activity directed to your site or blog an important competitive signal? Does your page load time weigh heavily? Has Google devised a way to ignore sidebar and creative load, focusing only on the content? How about the date of content creation stamp - does your being there longer matter? Does key word density make a difference? What about consistent content creation? And then, how good is the competition or those you’re being compared to and ranked against? How does the competition fare for each of the above [and many more] signals?

A Dose of Search Reality

What we do know is that Google scrutinizes, compares and ranks your web presence [site, blog, pages, posts, content, etc., etc.] in over 200 different ways. In fact Mr. Singhal, Master of Google’s ranking algorithm, has developed a highly elaborate system for ranking pages. His system is known to involve more than 200 types of information, or what he refers to as signals. Page Rank is only one signal. Singhal says that some signals on Web pages are words, links or images. Some are in the history of how pages change. Some are patterns found in trillions of searches that Google handles.

So, the fact is no one really knows… and Google has an interest in making sure of that. What we can all believe is Google must provide a great consumer search results experience in order to retain and to grow [search] share. Search is only getting bigger and loyal searching is what they must have, BUT it requires the most relevant and timely coverage of every subject in their indexes … all ready to go. In fact Mamber himself says,
"The goal is always the same: improve the user experience. This is not the main goal, it is the only goal.”

Meet the Challenge of Search Sustainably

Sure all of the above factors probably do matter to your competitive positioning, but none are certain. The only certainty is Google’s need for your knowledge of a particular subject. It’s a challenge; however, a challenge easily met when publishing what you know, see and hear about local real estate & community… to the web. With real estate blogs, several technology features will help, but even that is a moving target… so the most sustainable strategy is quality, focused and consistent content. Versus technology or link optimization strategies, which may get you somewhere temporarily, content is the logic in a world where search engines lose share without it. They are either the best conduit to answers about every subject OR consumers will move on, leaving pay per click models short of their click revenue targets. And by the way, approximately 10% of all searchers click on the pay per click advertisements… leaving 90% to organic search where content bloggers or publishers play

Related Posts:

• Are You Inviting Subscription to Your Real Estate Blog?
• Reviewing WordPress Blogs
• Business Blogging: What’s in it for You?

This post is presented by Chris Frerecks, Kinetic Knowledge/ Real Estate Blog Sites and is meant to provide useful real estate oriented education for the benefit of the Star Power audience. Kinetic Knowledge LLC and Real Estate Blogsites provide real estate professionals, including the STAR POWER organization, with leading blog solutions, blog writing content, blogging education and service. Chris is easily reached via email at chris@kineticknowledge.com.

With real estate blogs, there’s a lot of emphasis on generating topic and key phrase search engine findability; however, equally if not more powerful is the long term value proposition of direct subscription. With a blog, rather then email where you push, subscription is voluntary making it the novel offer these days. So, rather than wait for future customers to volunteer, consider inviting their subscription to your real estate blog!

How do they subscribe you ask? Well first, email registration is an obvious way- if your blog doesn’t offer this ask your provider to add it immediately! And then there’s RSS, which is an acronym for really simple syndication. The way RSS is used, via newsreader accounts like MyYahoo or MyMSN which pull content from sites and blogs, is folks make subscribe- connections to anything from the New York Times to your Real Estate Blog. From a MyYahoo account, the connection is made very simply by clicking those little orange RSS buttons you see on sites everywhere. It gets pretty obvious from there, but once the connection is made those soon to be ‘ready to buy buyers’ and ‘ready to sell sellers’ will be getting your blog posts… direct!

The next step is to leverage your database. Again, the difference is giving consumers the control to decide what marketing they’d appreciate getting versus email, which mostly offers them no choice. Not saying you shouldn’t use email for this, but what you might consider is sending a note to your database inviting their subscription, as follows:

Dear Client,

I would love to share our new blog site springlakeareablog.com, where we’ll be posting useful information to the Internet. It will offer a wide variety of information about Spring Lake NJ, including surrounding areas such as Seagirt, Manasquan and Brielle.

In this new blog, you can read and interact with us adding comments or questions. You can also subscribe directly via email or RSS, which you’ll find on the home page. Our first post will focus specifically on local pricing in the current marketplace.

We hope you, friends and family will join us by subscribing to our weekly journey and please don’t hesitate to participate or email me directly with questions.

Thanks

Jane Doe
Real Estate Agent

What could be more consumer friendly and is there a more inexpensive way to stay on the radar screens of future real estate buyers and sellers? Direct subscription can happen without people ever having to search; however, no matter how direct subscription is an important and cost effective sales channel! By all means, invite direct subscription to your Real Estate Blog!!

This post is presented by Chris Frerecks, Kinetic Knowledge/ Real Estate Blog Sites and is meant to provide useful real estate oriented education for the benefit of the Star Power audience. Kinetic Knowledge LLC and Real Estate Blogsites provide real estate professionals, including the STAR POWER organization, with leading blog solutions, blog writing content, blogging education and service. Chris is easily reached via email at chris@kineticknowledge.com.

Real Estate Blogs You’re probably aware that Real Estate Blogs are just websites; however, they’re different in that they allow a layperson or a non website expert to publish content to the web *at will*. It’s a big deal for a real estate business for several reasons. Particularly because

1. search engines desperately want to be the conduit to all the best answers possible, so logically they are attracted to active sites that offer more and more timely content;
2. sites that enable a layperson to publish are often, logically, more active;
3. the cost of publishing knowledge and information to the web has become negligible;
4. the means to distribute knowledge and information [search] for those who want & need it has been established;
5. search engines always connect qualified searching consumers with good answers/ information;
6. you have the ability to demonstrate knowledge & enthusiasm to many new leads that you would have otherwise never been able to reach;
7. those qualified, researching consumers can develop a feel for you and your service ;
8. and those same consumers can subscribe to you, enabling a direct, ongoing & voluntary connection.

WordPress Blogs Let’s take a look at WordPress Blogs and some of things it might help to know about them and open source software. There are lots of good blog solutions out there, but WordPress is considered by many to be the most universally used solution… so let’s take a closer look. With WordPress Business Blogs you have options, including:

1. You can create a free blog, which would be hosted as a sub domain of WordPress [i.e. janedoe.wordpress.com]. Free Business blogs have both up and down sides, depending on your business requirements. Do you need service or education?
2. You can download WordPress software onto a server and then host it via a domain you own. This a great strategy, but it requires some know how. Even if you pay for hosting, you’ll still need to develop some installation and ongoing management skill. Do you need service or education? 
3. You can hire an independent programmer/ designer at an hourly rate to set it all up. This is a great strategy offering a wide choice for options and design. Be sure to review the hourly rates, experience and then the total cost of service. Don’t discount ongoing service or education! 
4. Hire a comprehensive Business Blogging service for a fixed price. This should include hands’ on service, an ongoing educational curriculum and then blog technology management. For instance, managing software updates, reviewing and then adding features that are sustainable, secure and also safe from flaws and/ or a lack of upkeep. It’s a race and requires balance because search engines are changing and then one thing can slightly undermine the next. What’s more, what is most important [security, architecture, design, features, etc.] depends on with whom you’re speaking. Google certainly does not disclose how they evaluate your page[s] rank.

WordPress Blogs and the WordPress Open Source Community There are really two official versions of WordPress software [WP and WPMU] and then a variety of variants. WordPress software is managed by a brilliant development team and it is supported by an international ‘open source community’ of independent programmers & designers. Development manages software updates and the ‘open source community’ builds feature add ons, such as design themes and features that can be plugged in.

What’s incredibly powerful about open source software is it *leverages the power of many to develop, to evolve and to improve software.* In the case of WordPress, software source code is made available by the development team permitting collaborative use, change, improvement and modified redistribution. Many believe it’s the future of software development because of how it can enable rapid fixes, improvements and fine tuning. Now, by no means should this suggest proprietary software isn’t valuable. While proprietary may be slower to improve and less transparent, it may offer some advantages versus open source. For instance, the more people contributing to software code, the more difficult it may be to manage quality. Like any business, including with good management, things go wrong. You should know that the ‘open source community’ is voluntary participation. However and versus proprietary software, studies have shown that open-source software has a higher and quicker flaw discovery turn around. After all, even Microsoft and Google have had their issues.

Going forward: Software updates are the core WordPress development team’s domain! WordPress software is the their day job and, very much like with proprietary, they have all the incentive in the world to innovate and to improve. They earn a living doing it! The core team also discloses what is coming down the pike to the ‘open source community’, encouraging it to offer input and to update their features and themes. With the ‘open source community’, centered around talented independent programmers & designers, the work is partly for the love of WordPress and partly because it can serve as marketing recognition for their unique programming and/ or design skills. In other words, their incentive to innovate and to keep up is pay that comes from jobs that are a result of their great work.

Business Blogging Service and Management It’s important to understand that there is no formal open source theme or plugin evaluation process. There can be sloppy, insecure or obsolete code coming out of the ‘open source community’, but it is NOT the rule and most certainly the exception. Consider this recent business blogging case scenario: "I’m not familiar with what the protocol is for these matters but…many WP users have installed themes by XYZ. She has stopped updating her themes and her former website is down. I have tried contacting her w/o success. I was wondering whether protocol permits a theme developer adopting her themes and updating them (making them widget-ready for example) for the thousands of WP users who have wonderful themes like A, B & C. Many of us hope these themes won’t be abandoned." It is possible that open source programmers/ designers may not keep up with core software updates, but as in most cases there is a self policing and the issues was solved. With the frequent code updates, themes, plugins and a random hack there’s a lot to keep up with so consider good help. Keep in mind, problems occur with proprietary software too… so it’s mportant to have some knowledge of your choices and to feel confidant with your blogging software :-)

This post is presented by Chris Frerecks, Kinetic Knowledge/ Real Estate Blog Sites and is meant to provide useful real estate oriented education for the benefit of the Star Power audience. Kinetic Knowledge LLC and Real Estate Blogsites provide real estate professionals, including the STAR POWER organization, with leading blog solutions, blog writing content, blogging education and service. Chris is easily reached via email at chris@kineticknowledge.com.

Post on Business Blogging written for Star Power by Chris Frerecks, Kinetic Knowledge/ Real Estate Blogsites

As Marketers Why Must We Business Blog?
These days the landscape for reaching our target market has changed so dramatically that both business and consumer have been granted an incredible opportunity. Because of the Internet, Search & RSS consumers have the luxury of unlimited information: what, how much and exactly when they want it. And while search is critical to our online marketing, it’s only part of what we can leverage to be successful.
 
A Medium for Change
Very unlike the old days, where time and space for an advertising message was sorely limited, there are no limits to how much we marketers can share of ourselves. The message is always there, seven days a week and 24 hours a day. Traditional marketing sound bites and hype have faded as noise because the consumer’s ability to do online research is only limited by how much [we the marketer] have actually put out there. Do you wish to hunt for your next home buyer or make yourself available to them when they’re hunting for you? And by the way, having longer, more specific search phrases indexed [i.e. Santa Barbara CA Waterfront Home For Sale] demonstrates an intent to serve objectives, positioning oneself to convert better-qualified home buyers. Search doesn’t intrude, so it doesn’t look or feel like advertising. Trust can’t be outsourced to ads. We business bloggers must demonstrate genuine knowledge of our trade and, in Real Estate, of our communities. Home buyers don’t want to be told what to buy, how to think and they won’t tolerate having their view disregarded. The most effective amongst us will demonstrate consideration, sincerity, honesty and enthusiasm in order to engage.
 
Challenge vs. Opportunity
But how do we meet this challenge? Is it difficult? Is it expensive? Actually Business Blogging in is not only simple, but cheap! Rather than the old environment where we were limited to interrupting people while they consumed media, we actually have the means to become an available and timely source of coverage - no longer an interruption, but a valued resource. We can demonstrate our genuine sense of service by sharing all the useful and timely information we have. Blog what you see, hear, know and have to offer… simple!  Google doesn’t say it wants to organize the most technical, the most intellectual or the most eloquent presentation… only that they want to "organize and make the worlds’ information universally accessible and useful." Why?  So they can connect ALL searching consumers with the fresh, relevant and unbiased answers they want.
 
And why can’t we see ourselves as a form of advertorial trade media? Traditional media outlets might have you believe differently, but does a journalist possess the immediate real life knowledge we have? If we know our target is researching, why wouldn’t we publish our knowledge of our trade to the web?  In theory, search engines are an instant answer system, providing consumers with the right answers. So, in this environment where one’s knowledge can easily flow to where it is needed, what have you done to volunteer your expertise to the indexes? 

Sharon Simms of St. Petersburg, FL says, "More than 95% of our new business comes from the Internet, and it’s coming from blogs rather than websites. The bottom line of value is not comments or hits - it’s closed business that came because you blogged. Blogging has also raised my visibility and credibility in the community."

Blogs have reduced the cost for content creation and distribution to negligible lows. There are no longer limits to how much of ourselves we can share. In fact, very much like our consumer to us, we’re empowered with a giant opportunity to be there for them every day. The barriers between our daily knowledge and those who want it have been removed… so folks, as marketers, we must all Business blog!
 
Chris Frerecks, Kinetic Knowledge LLC and Real Estate Blogsites provide real estate professionals, including the STAR POWER organization, with leading blog solutions, blog writing content, blogging education and service. Chris is easily reached at chris@kineticknowledge.com.