I’ve written about our breadcrumbs philosophy before. Cliff’s Notes: If we build a single property web site for a listing — or a previewing site for buyers featuring dozens of houses — we never delete worthwhile work product from our file server:
We leave the pages and sites on our file server forever. If there were anything confidential in the pages, we would excise it. But there never is — because the web is not secure. So the pages live on forever, each one a detailed chronicle of a particular house at a particular moment in time.
This Sunday just past, a potential buyer was sitting outside 14179 West Shaw Butte Drive in Surprise, AZ. From her phone, she Googled the address. Guess who she found?
I’m not the lister on that house — and it had sold before she called me. But I stand a fair chance of selling her something else, with my client-acquisition cost being pretty close to $0.00.
Leaving breadcrumbs on the trail is not a strategy, not even a tactic. It’s a side-effect. We’re building the content for other purposes. But we sometimes get extra business simply by not killing those pages. This has always been good for us, going back years, but it promises to get better and better. First, we’re always building new pages, which increases our long-tail exposure. And second, there are more and more web-enabled mobile phones out there every day.
There’s more: I think it’s important to “triangulate” on pages like this from a weblog, this so Google finds the new content in a sprightly fashion. I talked about triangulation at Unchained in Phoenix, and I’ll be addressing it again in Orlando. (And if you buttonhole Brian Brady, he might reveal to you what I’m doing in this post as a side-effect of having written it.)
Bur even though this is all just a side-effect of other efforts, we still have a complicated, scientific name for this phenomenon: We call it free money.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, technology
Mark Madsen says:
I’m probably going to start on my real estate blog for Las Vegas in a month or so. Your listing / blog strategies have been a big influence – thank you.
My goal with the listing section is to get some good videos of our rehab properties and document the process from REO to flip to “New Home”
We’ll see, but I certainly see the value in keeping good content on a site for future marketing agendas.
Good post, Greg. Thanks – mm
October 7, 2008 — 4:34 pm
Brian Brady says:
The concept of triangulation is used to pinpoint a location when measured from the distance of three credible sources. Measure the distance from the subject to a fixed point, draw a radius. Do it again with another point, then the third. The location of the subject is where all three radii intersect.
In the web world, we link from three different sites, so as to lend credibility from those sites. Greg is targeting this page:
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundRealty_previewed_homes/
He linked to in this post, on the second line.
He also linked to this page, on his website, which ultimately linked to the targeted page:
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/?p=67
I couldn’t find the third link. It also helps if he receives an external link…so I gave him one:
http://delmar.typepad.com/brianbrady/2008/10/undervalued-pho.html
I went the distance an embedded text that I thought would be a helpful keyword phrase in the link I gave him (at the bottom of my post).
I don’t think he’s perfectly triangulated, though. If someone else figures this out and links from their site, to the targeted page, he’ll have “perfect” triangulation.
The SEO wonks will probably find something we’re missing. Building “link farms” will get you sandboxed by Google so you don’t want to do this with EVERY post. If you have something you really want to help in the SERPs, though, occasional triangulation may help.
October 7, 2008 — 5:53 pm
Teri Lussier says:
GAH!
This stuff just, just…Just rocks!!!
So (I hate thinking out loud here).
I have a blog, point 1? I link it to, an engenu site, point 2? Then to… What? Another site? Off site? A stoopid p2a site? OMG, I could put that dumb p2a site to use? Is that perfect? Or not so perfect because it’s still me? Am I close? What about a Real Estate Shows site? If it’s my listing, I put it on the brokerage site?
October 8, 2008 — 6:47 pm
Teri Lussier says:
And to think I almost didn’t read this post because I thought it was about iphones. Again. 😉
October 8, 2008 — 6:49 pm
Greg Swann says:
> I have a blog, point 1? I link it to, an engenu site, point 2?
You could just mutually link from 1 to 2 and from 2 to 1. That would tell search engines that the content is mutually relevant. Brian is right that the anchor text should point out that relevance.
But let’s add your Active Rain account as a third point. Now you can link 1-2, 2-3, 3-1. Add BHB as point 4: 1-2, 2-3, 3-4, 4-1. Or: 1-2/3/4, 2-1/3/4, 3-1/2/4, 4-1/2/3. There’s no guarantee that the search engine spiders will follow your trail of spider crumbs, but, if they do, the mutually reinforcing content should prove beneficial to every link.
Nota bene: I am not an SEO, nor do I play one on TV.
October 8, 2008 — 7:04 pm
Brian Brady says:
“But let’s add your Active Rain account as a third point”
Active Rain is a great platform, Teri and should be used liberally for this strategy.
“Nota bene: I am not an SEO, nor do I play one on TV.”
Ditto.
October 8, 2008 — 9:20 pm
Mark Madsen says:
I’ve never disrespected BHB by commenting for the purpose of self promotion, so I hope you guys know that I have pure intentions with this comment –
We created WannaNetwork with these specific link / text building concepts in mind….
I’m not openly saying to conduct blatant link spam on our site, however, we are extremely liberal about how people perform their own SEO campaigns.
Basically, we have our own mortgage and real estate blogs that benefit from our activity on WN, and we encourage the members to follow our lead.
Thanks.
October 8, 2008 — 10:12 pm
Teri L says:
>Active Rain is a great platform
A ranty tangent:
Brian, I’m not seeing it, and I’m not feeling it. I don’t understand Active Rain or Localism. I saw some strange and unexplainable things happen to my profile and my posts over there. Something shows up on a google search, but it’s not there when you click over, but hey! two other Dayton agents are there. Why I would use my time and talent to promote my competition is something I’m not grasping. I’ve since pulled everything but member’s only and a profile post directing people elsewhere. AND, the content is not mine, as in I have no control over it. If I was a lender or a vendor I’d be all over it. But for me? No. No. And No.
I will come up with a Plan B.
October 8, 2008 — 10:21 pm