Real Tech for Real Estate

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One of the most popular forms of exercise among many search engine optimizers—both the third-party firms that do it for others and the advertisers who spiff up their own Web pages for better natural search rankings—is a periodic workout called “chasing the algorithm”. The race begins when Google or Yahoo! updates some portion of the software that determines how they look at Web pages and decide which are most relevant and valuable to a searcher. The engine makes that change; Web operators see their rankings rise or fall as a result; and they, or their outside search engine optimization (SEO) firm, scramble to get back the old rank by providing the new elements the search engine now needs. After a few months, the engines make another change, and it’s off to the races again.

Well, optimizers on Google are lacing up their running shoes for another race. Only this one promises to be more a marathon than the usual sprint. Google is testing a new data center infrastructure, a feat much bigger and comprehensive than an algorithm change. Dubbed “Big Daddy” both in the search marketing blogs and forums and by the friendly folks at Google, this new data center—still in shakedown mode—will reportedly add new ground-level capabilities into the Google search function and drive those powers deep into all the algorithms with which Google searches, studies and indexes the Web.

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First Impressions Count in Website Design

Web designers have as little as 50 milliseconds to capture the interest of potential customers. Through the halo effect, first impressions can influence subsequent judgments of website credibility and buying decisions.

Web users form first impressions of web pages in as little as 50 miliseconds (1/20th of a second), according to Canadian researchers. In the blink of an eye, web surfers make nearly instantaneous judgments of a web site's "visual appeal." Through the "halo effect" first impressions can color subsequent judgments of perceived credibility, usability, and ultimately influence our purchasing decisions. Creating a fast-loading, visually appealing site can help websites succeed.

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Matt Cutts, the 'Net's resident Google Doctor of deciphering crazy rank changes has confirmed that we are in the midst of a heavy duty Google algorythm change. For the first time in over three years, our very own website ranking has veritably disappeared for all but our main homepage keywords. Our inbound links according to Google have dropped by 50% and as a result, many of our clients websites have also dropped off the map. Some dropped from the top ten at Google to below 10,000 and are slowly climbing back up - several now in the low 40's.

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You've been approached by an amazing search engine optimization team that promised they can give you top ten placement for "Your Seattle Real Estate," and you can't wait to sign up! But, you have a little nagging doubt in the back of your head... Would anyone really search for "Your Seattle Real Estate?"

That's a really smart question! Absolutely, it's very important that if you try to get great ranking that it be for phrases that real people would use to find your services! And yes, beware anyone who promises to get you in the top ten or top five for ANY keyword phrase, because there are NO guarantees in search engines.

Google is doing one of their algorithm updates this very minute and it's a mess for some sites and an amazing boon for others.

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A search engine spider, (also sometimes called a robot or crawler) is no creepy bug! It's simply a small program that the search engines "send out" to travel, or "crawl", from link to link throughout the 'Net, reading and saving content from websites and adding it to search engine indexes (also called the "cache".)

Spiders, while great, aren't too smart. They can only travel from link to link, from one page on a site to another page, from one website to another site. It can't "guess" at where your site may be, nor does it automatically know when you put a website up on the Internet. This is why inbound links to your website are so very crucial in generating results in the search engines.

 

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Have you been trying to get your site to the top of the search engines, but you're confused about just how to do it? Don't worry, you're certainly not alone. Even within the SEO industry, experts argue quite frequently about the real 'how to's' of good ranking.

So, why would you want to try and figure the whole mess out? Because the benefits far outweigh the pain of wrapping your brain around the concept of SEO.

You can take some of the pain away by simply trying to understand the mind and needs of your target consumer and building a site that delivers those needs. The goal of any good search engine is the same.

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Google is experimenting with a new feature that lets someone block unwanted sites from showing up in their search results.

Now "with one click you can drop that URL," Google software engineer Matt Cutts wrote in a recent account on his blog. The new feature was developed to sate Google users that wanted to "block unwanted sites," he adds.

The feature is available to anyone with a Google account and can be activated through Google's My Search History/Personalized Search. The offending site must first show up in search results.Only then will the feature stop it from showing up in the future. Google also allows users to block domains' worth of Web pages, Cutts wrote.

Before Google began testing the remove site feature, the only options users had were to ignore the dubious-looking listing, or report the Web address to Google via its spam report form. 

The feature is in line with the commonly held belief that most search engines' success depends on more easily letting users personalize search results. The new removable site effort, which is similar in intent to one from Google rival Yahoo, is in line with those core beliefs. But it's not without problems, according to some of those with knowledge of the feature.

"This may be a good way to get rid of spam in your search results, well, after you find it, which is a little too late," blogger wrote on the site Googleblogscoped.

 

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If you're anything like me, you spend countless hours in front of your PC answering email. Have you often found yourself typing some of the same messages or phrases over and over? Have you ever tried to automate the process a bit by having a word document open where you could cut and paste some of your oft used phrases?

While that can help speed up your email composing time, I found it a bit cumbersome and usually I would forget to even pop open that document, especially when I was in a hurry or under a time crunch. So, I went on the hunt for a software utility that could somehow help.... and found it!  

Robo Type is an amazing and small utility that you can program to memorize your repetitive phrases and it will easily add them to any email, website or document you're working within. You define abbreviations for the words, phrases, and paragraphs that you frequently type and RoboType 3 does the rest, replacing your abbreviations with the expanded text.

Check it out here!

 

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Are you avidly seeking good ranking at Google and other Search Engines? Then you may want to pay close attention to your web host or website provider and ensure you have only one chief domain assigned to your site. It's fine if you have other domains that point to your site via a forwarding feature, but if they're all assigned to the same folder or to the same template account, you could be "telling" Google that you have multiple websites, all with the same exact content.

How can you avoid the Google "Duplicate Content" penalty? Simple... Contact your website administrator and ask them how your secondary domain names work - are they assigned to your main website with a 301 redirect? Are they pointing to your main site with a forwarding feature? If not, then your webhost should be able to adjust your domains for you. If you manage your own website, what you'll want to do is create a separate folder from your main website and 'assign' your secondary domains to that new folder, then create a simple plain text file called htaccess.txt - all it needs to contain is a line like this for each secondary domain:

Redirect permanent / http://www.yourotherdomain.com

The performance of your other domains won't suffer in the least, but this way Google will realize that you only have one main website and several other domains pointing to it. Good luck in all your SEO efforts!

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