Panda 4.1 has rolled out, and websites that once ranked well are now ranking poorly, and websites that once ranked poorly are now ranking well. This is great for smaller businesses that haven’t had the ability to drop large amounts of money on marketing, online ads, etc. but have focused on content like quality blogging. Why is blogging so important?

You’ve heard the phrase, “Content is King.” Well now, more than ever, Google is focusing on relevant and engaging content. Prior algorithms had ranked blogs well if they had a certain percentage of keyword phrase density, if the blog contained a certain number of words, if keyword phrases were placed above the fold and in other strategic areas of the blog…but with Panda 4.1 we’re seeing less of a focus on that and more of a focus on (here comes that word again) quality. In other words, write blogs that people will want to read, and be clear about the focus of your blog (without stuffing keywords).

Now that we’re on the topic of content, let’s talk about duplicate content. So you’ve found a great article online that you want to share with your website visitors, social media followers, etc. but you want the traffic to come to your website, so you copy/paste the article to your blog. This won’t penalize your website ranking, but those pages probably won’t rank. The GoogleBot will crawl your duplicate content pages, but will probably drop them once it gets to the indexing phase. If you write the same blog (or similar blogs) but post on multiple sites of yours, Google will index all but will probably only show one in the search results (which makes sense if you think about it).

And last, but certainly not least, these new changes will allow websites to be crawled faster than ever. For this reason, new and fresh content is critical. If you can add new quality content to your website daily, that is ideal. However, if that’s not possible for one reason or another, at least make the commitment to post new content twice a week, whether this is done through blogging or something else. Stale websites aren’t generally great for ranking.

So right about now, you’re either nodding with engagement or nodding off from boredom. If that latter sounds like you (and probably will be for most people who aren’t SEO enthusiasts) then you might want to leave your SEO and blogging to the professionals. Fortunately, REVStaffing has bloggers with SEO knowledge who can write quality content for your website. To learn more about blogging and other services we offer, complete a Needs Analysis Survey.

Thanks for tuning in and happy blogging!

No matter how attractive and information-packed your site is, your target audience still has to find it. A fantastically written page can be buried in the search engines just as easily as a poorly written one. To get more targeted visitors to your website, you have to employ sound search engine optimization (SEO) strategies along with all of your other efforts. With the majority of website traffic coming from search engines, good SEO is a must.

The Right Keywords

Keyword research is a key part of SEO. You can probably come up with a long list of keywords and phrases that apply to your real estate business, but they may not prove the best for getting prospects to your site. Instead, the best keywords are those that draw a high level of searches yet have less competition. Such keywords provide a better chance of ranking higher with the search engines and getting more visitors to your site. Of course, it’s critical that you choose keywords that are relevant to your content as well. Just think how frustrated visitors will be if they land on your page from a luxury home keyphrase and find commercial property information instead.

SEO Keyword Incidence

Figuring out how to use the keywords you choose can be confusing. We’ve all seen pages that are 90-percent keywords and only 10-percent valuable content. These pages may spend a little time at the head of search results, but eventually they get slapped down by the search engines. And the visitors who do see the pages? They are often so annoyed by the lack of valuable information and poor writing that they get off the website as soon as they can. Many SEO experts recommend including your keywords just a few times per page. For example, you might do well to focus each page of your site on one keyword and include that keyword or phrase once every 100 words of content.

Keyword Positioning

Besides the body of your page (your article, blog posts, listings, etc.), there are others areas that need well-targeted keywords. Use them in your meta tags and description, title, subheadings, and image tags. For example, write a title that includes your keyword and then add the keyword to one subheading on your page. Add keywords to the anchor tags of your links and in your page URLs. If you can include your keyword in your domain name, that’s even better.

Company or Custom Website

Company-provided websites are easy to set up, as many only require you to upload an image, contact information and a short bio. They often boast clean, attractive design elements and simple navigation. The problem with these sites is that they don’t show off your unique style, and it’s your unique attributes that set you apart and make you attractive to clients. If you can design a website that is uniquely yours or hire a designer to handle it for you, you can better demonstrate the reasons a prospect needs you rather than the agent down the lane. Likewise, you may find it easier to optimize your custom site for the search engines.

Let REVStaffing boost your productivity. Take the next step towards better organization and exposure for your business. Shoot us an email or give us a call for a free needs analysis.