Google and relevance

[Bulldog San]

How does Google determine what links coming to your site are related and unrelated? Do unrelated links count against you?

[Real Estate Forum]

I am trying to figgure out how I rank #1 for

Real Estate Webmaster
San Diego Webmaster
Real Estate Search Engine Optimization
San Diego Search Engine Optimization

and so on.

And my explanation is this: most of my incoming links are from San Diego sites and Real Estate Web Sites.

I believe that it is the noon-adverising on my end which makes it happen.

I advice you to get many ATL sites and Real Estate sites to link to you.

You can pollute the ratio by having random links coming in. I would only do natural linking right now. Create good content about GA and Real Estate and I will link to a few pages.

Don't pay attention to things that worked once ....

[SanDiego-RealEstate-Agent]

when you figure it out.. post it will ya...lol

[Canadian Realtor]

That is the one question, that if ever answered, will change the way the Google works. I believe on only L & S and a few others at Google have an idea...

[Las Vegas Homes]

I believe that even links that are coming in from other city + real estate websites that are not in your city pollute your ratio in some way. We are in the process of creating a site that is going to have nothing but links from our city to test this.

I would say that a site who has say 6000 BLs from its own city verses a site that has 12000 BLs from various cities, the site with 6000 will outrank the site with 12000 for your city plus real estate phrase in the serps. I have no proof of this yet but we shall soon see.

[judyo]

I believe that even links that are coming in from other city + real estate websites that are not in your city pollute your ratio in some way. We are in the process of creating a site that is going to have nothing but links from our city to test this.

I would say that a site who has say 6000 BLs from its own city verses a site that has 12000 BLs from various cities, the site with 6000 will outrank the site with 12000 for your city plus real estate phrase in the serps. I have no proof of this yet but we shall soon see.

That's disturbing news to me. I think it's much easier to offer a "Relocation" type links page to most sites as it seems like something to offer prospective web surfers; the ability to check out other areas. Plus it's easier to get reciprocal links doing this.

I can't imagine having to try to get links from my little city of Oak Lawn. Their own website is not updated very much with broken links and they don't link to businesses. There just aren't many real estate or area related sites to link to besides the competition.

[Real Estate Forum]

My advice would be good real estate sites and good city sites. Focus on those only and I believe your city real estate will be moving up strongly

[HHI Golf Guy]

I can't imagine having to try to get links from my little city of Oak Lawn.

According to the Hilltop (http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~georgem/hilltop/) papers, one of they keys to top G rankings deals with the issue of hub and authority sites. I won't go into too much boring detail, but here's the jist of this issue.

Let's say that you wanted to rank well for the term 'Hilton Head real estate'. According to Hilltop, your site would need to concentrate on both 'Hilton Head' and 'real estate' - meaning that you should have content and links relating to each of the individual terms. You should have links both to and from authority sites from each of these terms.

In my experience, authority sites don't always have to be at the top of G's SE rankings or carry a PR of 6 or 7. They can carry a PR of 3 or 4, but must have strict themes relating to the phrase you are targeting.

Of course, if you have enough relevant content, you can eventually turn your own site into an authority site.

Sounds confusing? It is. SEO, especially on Google, for competitive KW's is both a skill and an art. It takes a lot of time, patience, and experimentation to achieve consistent success - especially with all of the red herrings that you read all over the SEO forums on the net.

[Las Vegas Homes]

I do personally believe that unthemed links do delute your allinanchor within google verses themed links. As I have stated before IMHO google has a seperate algo for real estate sites. Real estate is a money word for google and therefore it benefits them to tighten the algo for those sites that seek those keywords. I would say unthemed would hurt you more than help if they are recip links.

[frobn]

I do personally believe that unthemed links do delute your allinanchor within google verses themed links. As I have stated before IMHO google has a seperate algo for real estate sites. Real estate is a money word for google and therefore it benefits them to tighten the algo for those sites that seek those keywords. I would say unthemed would hurt you more than help if they are recip links.

I agree. SEO is not my field, but the trends appear obvious, Google is giving higher weight to informational and educational sites (of course their content helps) as opposed to commercial sites. There is both a community and business aspect to this. Information is suppose to be what the web is about. If your service or product earns money because you have a high PR then Google would like you to pay for advertising. By adjusting their algos they adjust your PR. Think. Would a newspaper give a real estate firm free space to advertise their services, and not only give free space but free space on the front page? Google may very well be thinking "commercial sites have had a free ride and have created a huge SEO industry--shouldn't we (google) get a piece of that pie?"

[CTABUK]

Hi, we've been working on a thread over at WPW which may answer many of your very good questions here.
http://webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=39103

Hope it helps, Happy hair pulling out!!!

[Real Estate Forum]

6 page-thread with long posts ... yikes!

OK, I'll read it :D

[Real Estate Forum]

still reading, pretty informative but a lot of the people are way off with what is going on now, even though they all seem to have some good points to make.

The "Google Foolbar" lmao :D

[CTABUK]

Mike, I have just seen you are 'sitetutor' in WPW, so you knew me. I like your forum and I think I can bring a few MPV's over as you are doing just a bit more than RE subjects. Do you like the Breakroom over there and would you consider allowing similar postings here? & of course if can help I will. Cheers David

[Real Estate Forum]

Absolutely, Dave, anything Real Estate or Web Development related ... what the heck, post whatever :cool:

I like the posts there, very informative. Let them come, the them post, argue ... it's all good :cool:

Cheers,


Mike

[frobn]

6 page-thread with long posts ... yikes!

I started to read the thread, but could not get by the first page. Many of the posters are complaining because google results are inconsistent, i.e, their ad (disguised as a web site) does not come up first any longer. What many are doing is fire fighting because they are trying to guess how to increase their relevancy in the short term and loose sight of the long term (hey, the american way is profit today). Don't take me wrong a site manager must be concerned about today, however, you have to take a longer view. The web is not here for advertising, now you may have missed that so I will say it again. The web is not here for advertising. The web came about because people needed an easy medium to exchange information. Businesses have co-oped the web for their use. This may sound exaggerated but I believe google is taking that concept and changing their algos to make their searches relevant and informational. If you are having problems now wait until the search engines incorporate AI to determine if the content is relevant to the search. I know some are saying that people looking for real estate services need the web. I agree and I think google agrees, only google is saying something like "we are happy to make this information available but it is not community informaion it is advertising and should come from your advertising budget." Think. Why do we say content is king? Why does it seem google has fallen in love with blogs?

So what is the answer? I leave that to the SEO experts.

[Real Estate Forum]

Google is absolutely the number 1 information provider and I totally agree. I am often in the bind between providing something quick for clients, but long term is the ONLY way. If you seo, do it naturally. No yank, no quick fixes. Improve the overall quality of your site as well.

I have been doing this for 5 years and the pattern is so obvious. It is not what the seo's think or even the search engines. They simply want to provide the best results for their visitors.

my attitude is this: create something, believe in it and let the world know.


Google has a lot of kinks to work out but who's to blame for that?

[Real Estate Forum]

The bottom line is this, everyone has his/her own little agenda but to stay in the game, you need to see the bigger picture and see yourself thru the eyes of the search engines and the everyday web surfers.

Mike