The Mortgage and More Blog

Archive for the ‘SERP’ Category

Keyword stuffing is the practice of creating ‘blog posts’ or ‘pages’ and literally stuffing it full with as many keywords as possible. A common tactic is to place excessive keywords in the meta SEO of a post or page, behind the images or videos, or repeating them ad nauseum in the body of a post. Stuffing can occur by using either keywords that directly relate or do not relate to the material. Though many individuals and webmasters still practice keyword stuffing, its effectiveness has been reduced because most search engines have dramatically lessened the overall weight given to keywords.

Whether done intentionally or unintentionally, keyword stuffing is considered a ‘black hat’ tactic. In the past keywords were the main things that informed a search engine what a site, page, and/or post was all about. With the changing in algorithms through the years this is no longer the case. In fact many modern search engine algorithms have functions that are designed to discover keyword stuffing as a practice by a website. Penalties for keyword detection are varied, but the most severe I have been informed of is a website being dropped to the bottom of all Google SERPs for six months.

In addition to the possible penalties that may be imposed by the search engines, keyword stuffing can easily be detected by your site’s visitors. If you use your website for business, I would venture to say that it would look less than professional to have the same words or phrases repeated on one of your pages. Keyword stuffing can also make a page virtually unreadable or seem like nonsense to a site visitor. Unintelligible pages, hidden text, and other deceptive practices also cannot say a lot positive about any profession where ethics is important.

In a nutshell, search engines no longer weigh keywords as they once did. Keyword stuffing is less than professional. There are more effective and ethical ways to achieve great SEO and SERPs.

Keyword Stuffing, Just Say No! is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

If you have never heard of the term siloing don’t feel bad, many web developers and most of the casual computer using public hasn’t.  Siloing is a common term among web developers that is used to describe a type of website architecture. Siloing is a linking strategy whose goal is to allow for multiple focuses on one website without diluting through the cross linking of subject matter. For the purpose of this post I am only going to illustrate Virtual Silos; there is also a Directory Siloing method that is accomplished very differently. If you have questions, please feel free to ask them in the comment section of this blog.

What is meant by ‘multiple focuses’?

Most websites have numerous topics that are covered by both static webpages and blog posts. Usually these topics are not separated but are jumbled together. There is a school of thought that says this jumble does not help your website’s rankings and in fact dilutes it.

How are ‘multiple focuses’ created for static pages?

Many website owners already create multiple focuses to some extent using multi-level navigation tabs. Siloing allows a website owner to organize their site’s static pages by using the ‘parent’ and ‘child’ hierarchy. The real benefit of this is to assist the search engines in indexing your site’s static page content. For example, if your site is about dogs but you have a lot of specialized information on various breeds you could create a focus (silo) for the various ‘dog breeds’. At the same time, you might create silos that focus on ‘travel requirements for dogs’, ‘various food options for dogs’, etc. The overarching or ‘meta’ focus of the site is dogs and this should be made clear on the landing page or about page. It is important that on this landing page the other major focuses of the website not only get mentioned but linked; this is in addition to the navigation tabs found on most sites. This could easily be accomplished on our dog website example through mentioning and linking your focuses, ‘dog breeds’, ‘travel requirements for dogs’, ‘various food options for dogs’, etc, in the text of the landing page.

Here is an easy to follow hierarchy of a narrowing focus for our dog website example:

Dogs

Dog Breeds

Afghan Hound

Airedale Terrier

Akita

etc.

Travel Requirements for Dogs

Various Food Options for Dogs

How is siloing accomplished for blog posts?

Just as with webpages, many website owners already create limited silos with their blog posts by putting related articles in the same categories. To avoid the jumble and create the most efficient silos for the search engines, it is best to have some categories dedicated to certain topics. In our example, a post you write about ‘common hip problems experienced by Afghan Hounds’ would go in a category dedicated to Afghan Hounds. This would also be appropriate for the ‘Dog Breeds’ category though it would help to create a cross linked jumble if place in the ‘Travel Requirements For Dogs’ category.

Are There Benefits To Further Narrowing Your Website’s Focuses?

The answer to this is yes…within reason. While more narrowly focusing a website might benefit site visitors and will benefit both SEO and SERPs, many web developers believe that you should not create a focus more than two steps beyond the site’s overarching focus; this should of course be tailored to your individual website.

One word of caution, do not break your existing links!

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

Siloing Is Smart Site Architecture is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

One of the daunting feats that we all want to do is to keep people on our page. One of the newest ways to do that is to embed Google SERPs (search engine results pages) in your site. This way, when someone comes to your site looking for your informative post and want to do research, they can with the click of the button and never have to leave your site. Now, before you all say that this is old news, let me go into it deeper. The picture to the right is actually OLD news. However, that is not quite what I am talking about here.

For those of you that do not know, Google now has a feature through Adsense that allows for you to have the Google search engine results pages show up inside your website. This way, a reader or consumer can stick around on your site for some extra time. The one thing that I am not keen on with this product is the fact that it has to be at least 800 pixels wide. For most people, this is a majority of your content display. For people that employ the 1200 pixel themes, this really would not be a problem if you have a single sidebar or two that are less than 400 pixels total.

In closing, it is still a great tool to add to your site if you want to keep people hanging around. If you click on the picture to the left, you will be able to view a site that has this in action. If you notice, the header is still active. If you want to see it in action for yourself, visit SEO Info Now. For any PREP member that would like to add this feature to your PREP site, contact our office at 865-951-0522 and we will help you walk through it.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

Embed Google SERPs In Your Site is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

PREP adds tool to speed up owner verification of sites today. Instead of having to get codes from Webmaster Tools, SiteExplorer, Webmaster Center and Siteowners and having to locate the section where you have to insert these codes, we have made it much easier. So, you are asking me how this might actually help you. Well, let me explain it all from the start and lets go over each and every one of the four search engine tools that are listed in this article. Also keep in mind that our real estate network is progressive when it comes to technology. Our goal is to bring our members and our readers the best in technology that we can.

First off, let’s take a look at Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! SiteExplorer, Bing Webmaster Center and Alexa Siteowners and how each of them can help us. For Google, their Webmaster Tools are designed to provide you with Google’s view of your site as well as help you diagnosis any issues or problems. However, it goes deeper than that by allowing you to provide a link to your sitemap so that Google bots can crawl the site more efficiently. You can also research internal and external links to your site as well as search for keywords that are driving people to your site. With Yahoo! SiteExplorer , you are able to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search. You can also view the most popular pages from any site, dive into a comprehensive site map, and find pages that link to that site or any other pages. With Bing Webmaster Center, you can use the Webmaster Tools to troubleshoot the crawling and indexing of your site, submit sitemaps and view statistics about your sites. Alexa Siteowners is really no different except that it allows for you to add detailed information about the ownership of the site.

The biggest question that I get asked when it comes to these four is “Why use all four if they provide almost the same info?”. The answer to that is simple. While they provide much of the same information, they provide it from their perspective. Hence, why you want to use all four. If you walked into your doctor’s office and he told you that you were dying from some serious untreatable disease, you would more than likely ask for a second opinion. With each of these tools, that is basically what you are getting; a second opinion. With that said, remember this fact: each of these webmaster tools provides information that is unique to them.

Lastly, the addition of the tool is simple to setup. For members of PREP, all you need to do is log into your dashboard. Then go to Settings on the left side and look for “Fast Verification”. Once there, click on the link. When it opens, there will be four large blanks. Below all four will be 4 different links to each of the respective sites. Click on each and look for the code that it is requesting in the examples below each blank. As always, if you have issues, please call one of admins. Unfortunately, this is not something that we can do for you. With that said, it is definitely something that I highly recommend that each person uses. In the long run, it can help you show up higher in SEO and SERP.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

PREP adds tool to speed up owner verification of sites is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

For those of you that are not aware, Google has launched Google’s Social Search and it is changing the face of SEOs and SERPs. The way this works is Google takes the friends that you have on and and uses that to personalize your search so that you can find the sites that are more relevant to what you are looking for. Also, Google will pull from your GMail account if you have one. Ultimately, you could end up with search results of many of your friends.

Now, with that being said, it will also have implications on your individual sites as well. Having a site that is integrated with Twitter and has just became seriously important in the scheme of SEO and SERPs. Below is a video that will be able to explain it a little more.

So, what does this mean for the average Joe or Jane Blogger. Simple. It is important that you work at networking Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, and Gmail more diligently. Driving consumers and readers to your site that will leave comments will also help you in gaining steam in the scheme of SEOs. The bottom line is that most of us use the internet to conduct business and the more visitors that we can drive to our sites, the better chance that we have in order to convert those readers to potential clients. Ultimately, it would do you well to have as many connections established as possible via various social networking sites and tools.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

The Ever Changing Face of SEO is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals