SEO Monthly: 5 Cool Things You Can Do in Bing Webmaster Tools
Posted on August, 09, 2012 by Ivan Radford -Sorry, what? Bing Webmaster Tools? … Bing? Really?
Yes. That’s what we said.
Now, Bing gets a lot of bad press: Google is, of course, the daddy of search engines. But take a look in your Google Analytics. We had a glance at TheMoveChannel.com recently and 5.22 per cent of our traffic comes from Bing. That’s not a lot – but it’s still thousands of visitors each month. So it’s worth paying attention to Bing too. Even if it does have a silly name.
How do you do that? Bing Webmaster Tools. Any SEO expert worth their link juice will recall that Bing recently introduced a whole host of new updates to their free service. And to demonstrate just how useful it can be, here are five cool things we like in Bing Webmaster Tools:
1. SEO Reports
SEO Reports scans your site once a fortnight and gives it an SEO health-check using 15 different best practice techniques. A tool that lists (some, not all of) your webpages and tells you how to make them rank better? That’s a useful thing to have.
Does your image tag have ALT text defined? Are you missing an <h1> tag? Do you have too many? Those last two are what Bing ranks as “High” severity. How well do you know the code on your site? It never hurts to double-check.
2. Link Explorer
Head to “Diagnostics” and “Tools” and you’ll find the equally handy Link Explorer. It does exactly what it says: explores links to help you find where backlinks are coming from. And not just for your site: for your rivals too. Planning to sell property in Spain? Look at the big Spanish real estate portals and see who likes to link to them: learn what link building techniques have worked. Then beat them.
3. Disavow Links
Of course, if you’ve been a naughty SEO boy (or you’ve been a victim of a negative SEO attack), there’s always a chance of some bad backlinks coming to your site. Now this is where Bing Webmaster tools has beaten Google to it: head to “Configure My Site” and you can disavow inbound links that you don’t want, a vital way to cancel out shady associations.
4. Submit URLs
There’s nothing quite as annoying as waiting for a search engine to re-crawl your site and update its index. Luckily, Bing feels your pain: you can now submit URLs of new content to get it crawled as soon as possible. You can submit up to 10 pages each day – or 50 per month.
5. Schedule Crawling
No one likes it when a website stops working – especially a property website. One bad image or delayed loading time is enough to stop a lead going through. And leads cost money.
At the same time, you want search engines to crawl your site as regularly as possible. How can you limit the impact the crawling traffic has upon your non-robotic users? Bing lets you name the time of day when you have the least visitors – and then its robots won’t stop those leads coming through. After all, every little helps.
Have you used Bing Webmaster Tools? What’s your favourite thing you can you do with it?
How to build client relationships through the power of blogging
Posted on July, 19, 2012 by dj@themovechannel.com -Once upon a time, blogging was seen as just a hobby, a way that people could express their personal feelings on topics they cared about but in today’s property marketing landscape blogging has taken on a bigger role, becoming one of the most important and cost effective ways for companies to promote their brand.
It is estimated that there are now over 200 million public blogs in existence and unlike other social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook; published content on a blog can be far superior. On a corporate level, blogs humanise a company, educate clients, aid meaningful social interaction and separate brands from competitors and when it comes to the property industry, one that is fiercely competitive and relatively unpredictable, blogs can hold great power in achieving effective results.
Nigel Lewis, renowned property journalist and editor as well as prolific blogger for FindaProperty.com comments,
“Many people and businesses shy away from blogging because it’s a time consuming and a creatively taxing process, often opting for the seemingly obvious routes of Facebook and Twitter but in my view they are missing a substantial opportunity to get their website higher up in Google’s results rankings as well as attracting an audience that would otherwise would pass them by.
“Blogs are a win-win from several perspectives. Firstly, it is the easiest way to publish content regularly with free and easy to set up services such as WordPress and Blogger. As well as this, blogs are also more likely to be trusted by users because they have an ‘editorial’ look and feel to them compared to more traditional copywriting or posted press releases. Another point to remember is that good content will attract readers on a long term basis and create an informal but strong bond that can be difficult to otherwise generate. Lastly, remember that blogs have a lot of social potential where readers can post their reactions to your entries allowing you to gain greater insight into your audience.
“But be warned – blogs also need a lot of thought and hard work to make them successful. All of the advantages of blogs come to nothing if the content is dull, copy-cat or infrequent. I would suggest a minimum blogging rate of once a week, and that the content needs to have at least an element of exclusivity – republishing in-house or third party press releases more or less verbatim (as many people do) is almost pointless. You want people to read your blog regularly because it’s interesting and offers a new perspective on (or information about) a subject.”
In spite of the obvious advantages, research conducted by The Group has discovered that only 16% of FTSE100 companies have a corporate blog, compared to 73% using Twitter and 55% using Facebook.
Ray Withers, Chief Executive of leading property investment company Property Frontiers, client of property pr company AB Property Marketing and avid blogger remarks,
“Blogging is an essential component of our social media strategy and has really helped build our company brand. We wanted a different way to communicate with our clients and by creating what is essentially a company diary of news, market comment and activities, our clients have built a greater awareness of who we are and what we’re about. To give some insight into how well our blog has done, we receive on average 500 blog visitors each month with 32% returning month on month. As a result, not only do our clients know us better but they trust us – you can’t put a price on that!”
For more information on the power of blogging and social media, a service which AB Property Marketing offers exclusively for the property industry contact Charlotte Ashton on 0845 054 7542via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or at www.abpropertymarketing.co.uk
Recommended Solutions & Services
Agents and developers can list property for sale on our network of overseas property portals.
The multi-listing solution for private owner property listings – pay once and list everywhere!
Save up to 4% compared to high street banks on currency exchange for you or your clients.
If you’re getting a bit bored with property investment opportunities, then why not consider the alternative?
With so much of the print media focused on property, PR or Public Relations is a must for marketers!
SEO Monthly: The billion dollar eHow question
Posted on July, 05, 2012 by Ivan Radford -“How do I create a high quality content farm?”
That’s the billion dollar question eHow answers. More than changing a fuse or installing an operating system, the knowledge database, full of instructive articles targeted at specific Google keywords, tells the world how to build a network of SEO-designed content – without suffering at the hands of Google’s ever-changing algorithm.
Indeed, Search Engine Watch points out that eHow attracted 54 million unique visitors in May 2012, higher than their 49.8 million visitors from March – an increase that spanned the arrival of Google’s Penguin.
Demand Media describes their work:
“Our innovative studios listen closely to millions of consumers, then create the relevant content they’re asking for.”
But if a site can use a team of freelance writers to create a massive infrastructure of interlinked articles to generate traffic, which critics allege are of “low quality”, does that mean we can all get away with it?
Long before joining Lead Galaxy’s team, I myself tried writing some content for eHow. Since then, users have been prevented from submitting their own articles to the site, leaving the content creation to a (very large) pool of experienced writers, of which I am presumably still a member. Each piece of content is then revised and edited multiple times to ensure the quality is good – or, at least, good enough to satisfy Google.
As a result, the traffic figures keep pointing upwards. So is eHow pointing the way to a new SEO approach?
SEW did some interesting research into the area:
Web search interest in “how to” has doubled in the past five years, while web search interest in “news” and “reviews”, by comparison, has remained relatively flat, according to Google Insights for Search. And web search interest in “how to” is forecast by Google Insights for Search to continue growing over the next 12 months.
Whether or not you believe that “content farms” can have high quality content, it’s certainly worth thinking about writing a few more “how to” articles – and eHow have already got the first one all sewn up.
Best of the Web: Eye-catching property videos
Posted on June, 29, 2012 by Ivan Radford -Casting our eyes over the world of online property marketing, a couple of property listing videos really caught our eye this week.
Why? Because they were different, creative and professional. And as Sell My Property explained to us on TheMoveChannel.com’s podcast this month (“Why is my house not selling?“), being creative and using videos can make a big difference in selling your house.
The first video we liked highlighted the best feature about 782 Savannah Way: the kitchen.
What did Lincoln Crum do to focus on his unique selling point? He created a cookery show (Home Cooking with Lincoln) and taught buyers how to make a chicken dinner. Tasty.
The second promoted 218 Cottingham Street. Playing up the lifestyle of the Toronto home, Sage Real Estate thought about the kind of person who would buy the property – and then added in music. And characters. And a dog. Engaging, impressive marketing.
As you may already know, we at Lead Galaxy love the power of video in advertising property. We have a whole portal dedicated to it: TheMoveChannel.tv.
How can TheMoveChannel.tv help you to create equally effective real estate videos? Watch this space…
Publishers adopt “digital first” approach as print readership forecast to fall to 25% by 2020
Posted on May, 24, 2012 by Ivan Radford -“There will be no newspapers in ten years’ time” – these are the words of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, pointing to internet competition and government overregulation as factors leading to the demise of print media. Indeed, as a generation that relies on technology and the internet, utilising an abundance of digital media platforms be they smartphones or Kindles to access information, is print media gradually becoming redundant?
Johnston Press Plc, one of the top community media organisations in the UK thinks so predicting a significant decrease in its print media audience. Shrinking from 11 million print users down to just 8 million by 2020, Johnston estimates digital media will be king, growing its digital audience from its current level of 10 million to 20 million over the next 8 years.
Going one stage further, Johnston expects that around 75% of people will access its news content via digital products such as smartphones while print readership will drop from 90% to a mere 25% by 2020. It is for this reason that Johnston expects all of its titles to lead with a ‘digital first’ approach with only a few print products lingering in its future.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, Gannet, the publisher of USA Today as well as a number of smaller American newspapers displayed disappointing earnings for its old-media holdings seeing a 33% decline in quarterly profits while ad revenue fell 7% in the newspaper division over the past year. While the big players in print media such as the New York Times have experienced a long and fruitful existence, competition from online media such as AOL’s Huffington Post is fierce, stealing away traditional media users by offering easy to access bite size snippets of news information. With this in mind, Gannett reported a 9.4% rise in digital revenue in its most recent quarter further highlighting the growing popularity of the digital media platforms.
Charlotte Ashton, MD of leading property PR agency, AB Property Marketing Ltd, comments,
“While there is no denying the tactile appeal of holding a newspaper in your hand, digital advances have given rise not just to new ways of accessing information but how companies do business. There are now numerous ways we can share news with the world and as a result, information now flows more quickly and freely than ever before. Instead of relying on the morning newspaper we can access a constant stream of material via our PCs, smartphones or tablets anywhere and at any time.”
Indeed, there is no doubt that print publications have felt the burn from the steady decline in readership levels; even high profile newspapers such as The Times have set up online pay systems to view content as a way of ensuring success while a number of UK magazines have ceased their production completely or moved to the online world.
Ashton remarks,
“In today’s digital world of online pr it’s essential that businesses embrace this revolution to stay ahead of the game – we have already seen a number of property print publications move to digital realms with titles such as What House Magazine and Homes Overseas embracing the online world.
“Indeed, there remain a lot of people who want to keep print press alive and well. The sector which has sustained itself for hundreds of years will always have a following however the digital age has given rise to the way information is offered, perceived and experienced – it has a far greater reach so it is important that media agencies look at ways to convert written material into electronic form. Thankfully plenty of forward thinking print publications are already building their digital brands but it will be interesting to see what the print landscape will look like in the near future.”
For more information on e-news and online PR, contact AB Property Marketing on 0845 054 7524 or visit www.abpropertymarketing.co.uk.
Recommended Solutions & Services
Agents and developers can list property for sale on our network of overseas property portals.
The multi-listing solution for private owner property listings – pay once and list everywhere!
Save up to 4% compared to high street banks on currency exchange for you or your clients.
If you’re getting a bit bored with property investment opportunities, then why not consider the alternative?
With so much of the print media focused on property, PR or Public Relations is a must for marketers!
SEO Monthly: Feeding the penguin
Posted on May, 03, 2012 by Ivan Radford -
Welcome back to Lead Galaxy’s blog. We’ve had a bit of a reshuffle and, rather than give you something good five times a week, we’re now going to give you something great once a week.
On the first Thursday of every month, we’ll put our search engine hats on and bring you a column dedicated to SEO. We’ve cunningly called this monthly SEO feature… SEO Monthly.
May has, inevitably, been dominated by the arrival of Google’s much-feared update: Penguin. A short while after Panda terrorised webmasters, the search engine’s latest black-and-white animal is stomping through the internet, weeding out the good sites from the bad (or, “unnaturally optimised”).
Of course, there have been calls of unfairness from various quarters, with many small to medium businesses worried that their sites will suffer after resorting to SEO workarounds to try and compete with the big brands.
Worried that your links look “unnatural”? Hoping to take advantage of a supposedly more level playing field? How do you feed the penguin?
Start a brand
As we’ve discussed before, brands take a lot of time and money to build, but once your reputation is big enough, you beat Google where it counts: your ranking doesn’t matter for targeted phrases and related terms. The only keyword you need is the name of your company.
Socialise
If your ranking starts to drop, then be sure to make friends: shares between users make social networks more relevant than ever when it comes to generating traffic and awareness. Improve your social activity too: tweet more, post on Facebook more, pimp out your social network page using apps, such as YouTube for pages.
Finally, while looking at PPC ads for specific Google keywords, why not consider Facebook adverts to build up your presence away from the search engine?
Spread your content
You may have great written content on your site, with strong keyword density and carefully chosen headers, but do you have a podcast? Are you producing videos? What about infographics? These are not only easy to share outside of search engines and can bring you a new community to interact with and advertising within, but they also have the benefit of dedicated Google SERPs: we’ve noticed, for example, that TheMoveChannel.tv, our dedicated property video portal, is being featured more and more in Google’s video results. Why? Because the content isn’t on other sites.
Think locally
Targeting local users is a great way to cut out half the competition. If you’re targeting buyers in the Costa del Sol, create a specific sub-domain and tailor it to Spanish users. Ever heard of Real-Buzz? They worked on their overseas presence since launching this year and now they’re in the top 10 results for major US cities on international versions of Google, Bing and Yahoo. Compare it to those big brands, such as Zillow, Trulia and Realtor? “They were rarely among the first 100 search results,” reports Property Portal Watch.
Expand your circles
No, normal people may not use Google+, but with the influence of those social circles upon searches increasing with every update, it’s worth joining just for the boost to your page rank. Although, as always, the condition to joining a new network is this: you actually have to use it.
Pin it
Google may drive most of your traffic, but ever since Pinterest become the third-most-used social network in America, it’s become even more popular for people and businesses alike. Don’t forget that every share on Pinterest is another inbound link: and while the Penguin’s appetite may be more selective than the Panda’s, those black-and-white animals still gobble down links for breakfast.
For a good illustration of how to feed Google’s penguin properly, read on for an infographic collating various reactions to Google’s update from webmasters around the world…
You’re only ever 140 characters away from front page news
Posted on April, 12, 2012 by Ivan Radford -In today’s PR world, it would seem that social media is king with latest research from PR company, Text 100, revealing that a staggering 86% of journalists now use Twitter to source stories and information.
On average it is reported that a journalist will use 2.6 different social media channels every time they research a story with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn the most popular. No longer simply for keeping in touch with friends or family, over 40% of journalists now use a Facebook account to manage their professional relationships with PRs, companies and spokespeople with LinkedIn frequently being used as a search tool for industry experts.
For companies keen to obtain column inches, be they on or offline, it would seem that those embracing social media hold a distinct advantage. Quite often a 140 character news snippet, sound bite or statistical update can make front page news with today’s journalists constantly competing for the very latest story.
Charlotte Ashton, Director of leading property PR agency, AB Property Marketing Ltd, comments,
“Over the last 2 -3 years we have seen the number of journalists using social media, especially Twitter, to communicate with us and source news stories rise significantly. Often now the fastest way to distribute client news, social media has almost made traditional press release distribution techniques such as email and certainly post seem archaic which is why all press material we release is posted in real time on the most popular social media channels.”
Ashton continues,
“PR is push and pull and not only do we use social media to distribute newsworthy content we also use professional channels such as LinkedIn to engage journalists directly. According to the research 84% of journalists are happy to be approached via LinkedIn and we find it a very useful tool in connecting our clients with relevant journalists.”
Going one stage further, the research from Text 100 also highlights the importance to journalists of dedicated blogs when researching companies or products. Of the social media channels surveyed, the most useful, given a ranking of 63% were official company blogs with Wikipedia in second place with 60% and third party blogs at 58%.
Interestingly, the most recently launched mainstream social media channel, Google+, despite its heavyweight funding and promotion did not feature highly with journalists with only 29% maintaining a professional profile, less than half welcoming PR contact via the channel and being ranked the least useful tool when undertaking research for articles.
Charlotte Ashton concludes,
“With nearly half of our journalist database now active on some form of social media, the majority being on Twitter, an increasing proportion of our time is spent communicating with and pitching stories to the media in 140 characters or less. Whilst not a substitute for good old fashioned verbal conversation, social media is becoming ever more important to today’s PR and thus, in line with this, it is essential for clients to have an active presence on as many channels as possible to be heard.”
For more information on how to PR properties or using social media in property marketing, contact Charlotte Ashton at AB Property Marketing on 0845 054 7542, via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or at www.abpropertymarketing.co.uk.
Recommended Solutions & Services
Agents and developers can list property for sale on our network of overseas property portals.
The multi-listing solution for private owner property listings – pay once and list everywhere!
Save up to 4% compared to high street banks on currency exchange for you or your clients.
If you’re getting a bit bored with property investment opportunities, then why not consider the alternative?
With so much of the print media focused on property, PR or Public Relations is a must for marketers!
Insider Linking: The Low-Down
Posted on April, 02, 2012 by Ivan Radford -External links are the first port of call for any SEO-driven site, but what about internal links? Not only are they useful for highlighting relevant content to search engines but they’re also important in keeping visitors on your site and directing them to relevant content.
In case you’ve forgotten the basics, Search Engine Watch has the definitive low-down on internal links and how you go about inserting them:
Draw a sitemap
Sitemaps are crucial for any property portal, linking to the top-level pages on your site. An XML sitemap containing all your portal’s URLs is an effective additional option, offering the maximum number of internal links possible in one search engine-friendly chunk.
Use relevant text
Anchor text is more powerful than image links for navigation, so make sure your use relevant words for your links. Keyword phrases are great, but related terms or phrases are also acceptable. The bottom line? Don’t use “click here”.
Use your footers and breadcrumbs
Footer links and breadcrumb links appear throughout your site, so make the most of them. Why just have “Terms of Use” or “Privacy Policy” in your footer and give them all the link juice? Choose the pages that you want to receive the highest number of links and feature them evenly across all your main sections.
Calls to action
A significant part of internal linking rests in calls to action. If you want someone to browse your property listings in Spain, is your call to action above the fold of the page? Make sure your aim is clear and consistent across the page so that your user can easily follow through and lead to a successful conversion.
For more tips, read the full article here:
Internal Linking, the Other Linking – Search Engine Watch
Content Syndication and SEO – Get More Lift
Posted on March, 29, 2012 by Ivan Radford -Last week, we dropped in on a Webinar by Cision about content syndication and SEO. How can you use the internet to spread your property portal’s content and gain more traffic?
This is what we learned:
Back in January, sites around the world joined together in a mass blackout in protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act. It started with a YouTube video, which went undetected for quite a while until attention exploded and sites started to sign up for the plan. What caused it to go viral? Reddit, a link-sharing website.
What are link-sharing sites?
Link-sharing sites are an American phenomenon (each country doesn’t have its own unique link-sharing site) and are designed to find and promote the most popular content on the internet at any given time. These sites do not create content. The content is edited, curated by people.
Of course, your customers are probably not involved in link-sharing sites, but 2 million people use Reddit on a regular are basis. These people distribute content to other platforms: they are a small percentage of the internet population, but a powerful one. They are influencers.
How does Reddit spread content?
Like a virus, the distribution has several phases:
- Dormant phase / patient zero (not many people see it)
- Host / propagation phase (e.g. shared on Facebook)
- Triggering phase / carrier (Reddit – transmits)
- Execution phase / infected (reported on Wikipedia)
- Epidemic (everyone talks about it)
When does content go viral?
Timing is key. On average, content goes viral on Thursdays, at 3am Pacific time / 6am Eastern and 8am Pacific / 11am Eastern – this correlates roughly to when people leave for work, stop work for lunch, and leave work for home.
What kinds of content?
Most viral content tends to be humorous – specifically, images. Funny content is heavily weighted towards the end of the day, while serious content is at the beginning. Remember, after a stressful time at work, the last thing people want to do is go home and read about a mortgage.
What days are best for certain subjects?
(i.e. When is there a higher concentration of content producers?)
- Laptop topics – Monday / Tuesdays
- Tablet topics – Wednesday (mornings)
- Mortgages – Tuesday / Thursday (mornings)
Examples of good content:
“HP’s One-Year Plan” is a boring headline. But “HP’s One Year Plan” + 1st paragraph”? That’s much more interesting. On Reddit, this was rephrased to “Let’s say you were given a year to kill HP, here’s how you do it.” These kind of headlines generate comments and jokes, which can make the content even more popular.
Well-known brands are also popular with audiences, as is content that piggy-backs on a celebrity (e.g. Will and Kate’s wedding).
For trade-targeted content, B2B is no different to B2C. You can make it interesting no matter how mundane the subject is. You just have to be creative.
Key Points
- Know when your audience is online. Publish at optimal times. (Don’t do it on Sundays.)
- If it’s a humorous piece, publish it later in the day.
- Find the influencers and develop relationships.
- Find a platform (e.g. Reddit) and target the users, both with content and timing.
- Title content with a hook rather than a descriptive headline.
- Look and feel matter – if it looks like spam, they’ll ignore it.
- Know your audience – it’s not always the same as your customers.
- You’re not promoting this content to generate conversions. You’re doing it for exposure.
- Going viral = a bigger audience, which can lead to new customers.
- More links from other sites = SEO
10 Steps to Instant Instagram Success
Posted on March, 26, 2012 by Ivan Radford -If you have a smartphone, you’ve heard of Instagram. Since its launch two years ago, it’s become one of the most popular smartphone apps with over 15 million users. Well, we say smartphone app. We mean iPhone app.
Yes, Instagram is an iPhone-only app, but it has surged in popularity despite the large number of Android devices. How and what that means for the mobile web market is a debate for another blog post, but the important thing is this: Instagram is here. And it’s got a large audience that you could be contacting.
How? Here are some quick suggestions from Search Engine Watch:
Post regularly
As with a lot of smartphone apps, users are regularly active but do not constantly monitor the latest content. Be visible by appearing frequently – without excessively spamming, of course.
Post candidly
Behind-the-scenes pictures are popular and interest a lot of people. How does your property portal run? What goes on in your office? The Redfin Twitter account we mentioned recently that details embarrassing events from home tours is a perfect example. Try and do that. But with pictures.
For more pictorial pointers, read the full article:
10 Tips to Sell Your Brand’s Story 1,000 Words at a Time – Search Engine Watch