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.
-SC-
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May 8th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
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
May 9th, 2008 at 12:52 am
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.
May 11th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Yeah, I’m really ticked about it and will do my best to inform other agents to not screw themselves on this….
j
May 14th, 2008 at 8:34 am
[...] the bottom of each of these sites/templates is a Trulia Widget, which also contains a backlink with the appropriate anchor text of “Houston Real [...]
May 14th, 2008 at 10:41 am
[...] Trulia Widgets Help Their SEO, Not Yours - Steve Castaneda, TechForAgents.com [...]