Do you like helping your competition when it comes to search engine optimization? I personally don’t like to.
However, it seems that many uninformed agents looking to increase the nifty features of their website are inherently harming their chances of doing well in search engine rankings.
How is this so? Eric Bramlett, Austin Real Estate Broker has brought it to my attention that the widgets that Trulia offers also include a keyword targeted link back to their site, which intentionally helps improve their search engine rankings.
Why do many agents still use the widgets? I believe that it’s simply them being uninformed about the real intentions of the widget feature. That is why I’ve decided to increase awareness by posting about this here at TechForAgents.com.
Trulia is truly kicking butt in the SERPs (for big time terms, and for long tails) because they’ve cooked up some solid linkbait in the form of widgets.
If you are currently using their widgets on your site, I would either:
- Discontinue the use of the widgets all-together.
- Take Eric’s advice, and modify the script to use the widgets without hurting your search engine rankings. You can see an example of this modification by following the source link below.
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9 Comments on "Trulia Widgets Help Their SEO, Not Yours"
Google definitely frowns upon this practice. I believe placing a link on a widget is okay, as long as there’s a big sign on the page that says there will be a link, and the link should not be as keyword rich as they are now. A good read about a similar case can be found here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/widgetbait-gone-wild
How funny, I don’t go to their site very often, but decided to take a look tonight. I had to chuckle when I saw those tools on their website….. Thanks for taking the time to make other agents and website owners aware.
Yeah, I’m really ticked about it and will do my best to inform other agents to not screw themselves on this….
j
I never really got around to adding the widgets to my site, thank goodness. I had another site with Trulia Widgets that were put there by the vendor and I noticed that they were quickly removed shortly after these cyber discussions started.
Estate agents have got to realise that in the present market these sites are gaining valuable ground that will end up undermining the future rankings of all estate agency websites.
The internet search engines offer smaller estate agents the chance to level the playing field with marketing so targeted that the big players can only dream of it.
We advise our estate agency clients on how to out perform all of the property portals and try to acheive blanket coverage at the top of searches relevant to property and the agents location
Wow, they are sure thinking outside the box. That is pretty interesting and seems to be working quite well.
The trulia iphone app is amazing, however most the listing are REO’s and have already accepted an offer by the time they are listed!
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