(Tweet this article!) It’s resolution time! And despite the sudden irritation you feel from your gym being over crowded by all the “resolutioners,” there is something special about the idea of starting fresh. It’s empowering! This month SEO Juice will dive into 2012 SEO resolutions: Getting organized, getting fit and making new friends in order to improve your SEO.

After all, just as it is so with every holiday season, it’s far more important what you choose to do between New Years and Christmas than it is between Christmas and New Years. So let’s start the year off right!

Getting Organized:

It’s on just about every New Year resolution list. In 2012, with the mix of social media, content creation, content promotion, relationship building and staying on top of the changing industry, being organized can seem overwhelming. With search becoming more and more social, it’s no mystery that blogging and engaging in social media can be one of the most valuable tools to improve your SEO and develop a stronger brand.

So how do we make getting organized less overwhelming?

Create a Content Calendar – A content calendar can be created in an hour or two and can ease the stress in the long run. Make a plan for when you will post articles to your blog or have an article ready for a guest post. Take into account all the different holidays or events on the horizon and be thinking of how you will capitalize on them with your content.

Social Media Plan – Write down your social media goals, how you want to engage with your fans and what types of links/articles you want to share with them. Create guidelines for the types of statuses and links you want to post, keeping them in line with your goals. But remember, your social profiles need to be more than virtual paperweights. Give your fans a reason to come back to your fan page and click through to your website again and again. Be engaging! Ask their opinions and answer their questions. This is the key to building their trust, building links and becoming an authority online.

Contact List – Keep a running spreadsheet of your opportunities online and your contacts to get your content published. Jot down their information and the types of articles a particular website publishes. As this list builds up, you’ll be much more organized and ready when it comes time to guest post.

Getting Fit:

When it comes to content we’ve all heard the saying “content is king,” and likewise, “quality is better than quantity”. Strengthening your content and adding muscle to your pages is still going to be one of the best SEO resolutions you could make. But like all fitness regimes, it’s important to vary your strategies.

Lose the dead weight- Getting SEO fit in 2012 is going to take losing the dead weight content and/or pages and adding the muscle! Go over your old, outdated content or blog posts and revise (or do away with). If your blog tends to have recurring topics, be mindful of duplicate or repetitive content.

Go Fresh - Naturally, search engines won’t be able to keep their hands (crawlers) off you if you’re posting fresh content! Try something new this year. Get a team together and brainstorm some “fresh” ideas for a blog series.

Vary your routine – Your SEO fitness routine should be well-balanced and varied between strategies. Include everything from updating your websites old content, researching new keywords, guest posting, expanding social networks and link building. The mix of strategies will make the difference.

Making New Friends:

Building relationships online can be a very powerful New Year’s SEO resolution. When it comes to building your brand, networking within your industry can provide valuable links, opportunities and expand your knowledge base.

Guest Posting – I scratch your back, you scratch mine. Guest posting is a great way to expand your audience and influence online. Not only is the article a valuable link for you site, but by guest posting you are also establishing yourself as an authority for the topic. What are the benefits of allowing someone to guest post on your blog? Well, it’s free, fresh content for your site, which will only increase traffic coming to your site from search engines.

Get out there – If you want to make yourself known in your industry, you need to get out there! Whether you’re building relationships with potential clients on social networks or contributing to discussions on forums or blog posts with other professionals in your industry, branding yourself online starts online! So are you there?

Next Week on SEO Juice: Stay tuned next week for a deeper discussion on 2012 SEO Resolution #1: Getting Organized. (Tweet this article!)

By Katelyn Wheaton

Before people started home searching online, they would first go to their realtor to help them find homes based on criteria other than the number of beds and baths, price range, etc. Customers would discuss what was important to their lifestyle and the realtor would then be able to help them find homes that matched all of their needs.

However, since more and more buyers are starting their search online before talking to an agent, we need to provide better tools that mimic the experience they would have with an agent. Through search, mobile and social networking, we can achieve this goal.

Search
Our latest search releases strive to bring the personalization that customers have come to expect online to the home search process. We have expanded the search parameters that customers can search by and built new technology that lets them find homes close to work or school. We also developed a lifestyle search engine that helps customers find communities that match their lifestyle. Our next step in search is natural language search which will allow customers to search for homes using natural language.

Mobile
The advent of SmartPhones has made the world more mobile. It has also given us greater opportunities to interact with customers who are on-the-go. We already offer members mobile-enabled sites and soon we will be adding a mobile app. The goal of this mobile app is to personalize the experience even further by giving our customers the opportunity to find homes based off of their current location through augmented reality and much more. Be sure to check back with us in a few weeks when we announce the launch of our new mobile app.

Social Networking
We have already taken the first step in integrating customers’ social networks into their home searching process. One Click Login was implemented earlier this year, allowing customers to sign-up for a home alert account using their existing Google or Facebook login information. As a result, we have been given access to more customer information that can help us further personalize the search process in the future.

Related Posts:

• Major Trends in the Real Estate Industry: Search, Mobile and Social

• Active Enterprise Network Hosts Annual Conference

At this year’s Active Enterprise Network Annual Conference, members had the opportunity to hear about the emerging trends in SEO from Rob Ousbey, VP of Operations at Distilled LLC. During his presentation, Rob discussed how to leverage our search rankings with Google’s recent authorship markup and how it can help your brokerage remain the authority of your content.

The Authorship Markup

The authorship markup links a picture of your face to your article. The image appears in the search results and creates a more personal experience for users. The emotional attachment can influence the amount of traffic that is being generated from that search as people love to associate what they are reading with a face, especially a face that has become well-known.

In all of search’s history, an author could write anything he or she wanted, whether it be factual or relevant. Now, if an author chooses to be a verified author with their image attached to their article, they have the opportunity to build a reputation by face. This change should only breed better content! The image will hold an author accountable for what he or she is writing, and place a personality behind each article.

During his presentation, Rob Ousbey talked about how the author attribute has the ability to direct more traffic to an article, even if that article is ranking #3 or #4 for that particular search. As you can see in the example above, Rand Fiskin’s face is attached to the article in the search. Rand Fishkin is well-known in the SEO world, and a user would be more inclined to click on an article written by him than an unverified author, despite the fact that the article is ranking #2 on the list. The trusted author’s image makes all the difference.

With the amount of duplicate content on the internet, the authorship attribute will offer a way to reach genuine, trustworthy content, written by reputable authors. It will also provide a way to find more articles written by an author you already like. Best of all, authors will have an opportunity to build a reputation and expand their influence in their industry.

What This Means for SEO

Much like creating a personal PageRank, as an author gains authority, you’ll see their articles begin to rank higher in the search results. Google can use the authorship metrics in their algorithm for rankings, interpreted by an AuthorRank. As reputable authors become known, Google plans to make attempts to factor their strength and authority into the results.

This has a powerful impact on evolving your brand awareness and growing your online presence. Your brand is much more than your logo – your brand is everything; from the way you communicate, your strategy, to the level of expertise you exhibit in your industry.  When your brand and face is associated as a trustworthy source, you will see your SEO grow.

Many have already added the authorship rich snippet code to their websites, and many have not seen their image in the search results yet (myself included). It is unknown how long the process takes, or why some websites are showing the author attribute and others not. Google provided the rich snippets testing tool to check that your markup was placed accurately. That being said, Google has already taken steps to add this markup to everything hosted by YouTube and Blogger, so in the future, both platforms will automatically included the authorship attribute when you publish.

The Future

In the real estate market where content is often duplicated, the authorship markup may be a determining factor as to where the content originated from. The impact of this on syndication is unknown, but hopefully this will help determine the REAL author of content.

There is one thing we do know: Google is God and Google blesses those who follow the published guidelines. It has always been the goal of Google to provide the best possible search results and promote websites with the most authority. While it’s too soon to know the exact effects, Active Website will continue to monitor the evolution of the authorship markup and other advances in SEO.

SEO Juice – Video Series

To ensure members stay up-to-date on the latest SEO trends, Active Website has created a new video series for The Active Enterprise Network entitled SEO Juice.  This series is designed to be very easy to understand and apply SEO strategies for the agents in our network. On a monthly basis, agents will be able to see a new video about a specific SEO topic, complete with supplemental reading material to dive deeper into each subject.

Topics will cover beginner to more advanced subjects, including: the importance of fresh content, the importance of unique content, link building, incorporating social media, etc.  The video series was created in part of our recent training initiatives and will continue throughout 2012 with the lasted trends in SEO. For members wanting more information on the SEO Juice video series, contact your project manager.

By Katelyn Wheaton

Broker → Market

Gaining a Competitive Advantage: How to Better Position Your Brand Through Market Intelligence
In order to remain successful in your local market, you need to know how your brokerage stacks up against the competition. Recently, Active Website created a Market Intelligence Report for an Enterprise Network member to help them better understand their position in their local market when it comes to technology, marketing, lead management and more. During this session, Managing Partner, John Sable, will be joined by a guest speaker to provide an overview of the Market Intelligence Report and how it will help give members a competitive advantage.

Speaker:
John Sable
Managing Partner
Active Website, LLC

Syndication State of the Union: What’s Next for Syndication?
At last year’s conference, we wanted to increase awareness on several of the syndication issues we were seeing in the Real Estate Industry. By engaging in an open discussion, it was our goal to educate members on the pros and cons of syndicating listings to the major outlets. This year, we’re taking this discussion one step further in order to present a plan of action for positioning syndication in the future.

Speaker:
Panel Discussion

MLS: Who Owns Your Data?
The MLS is an integral part of the Real Estate Industry by giving us access to listings and important information about each home. However, with the creation of some MLS consumer facing sites, it leaves us with the question: Who owns your data? During this discussion, a panel of Network members will shed light on this issue and how it could impact your business in the years to come.

Speaker:
Panel Discussion

Related Posts:

• 2011 Active Enterprise Network Annual Conference: Bridging the Gap Between Active and Broker
• 2011 Active Enterprise Network Annual Conference: Bridging the Gap Between Agent and Customer
• 2011 Active Enterprise Network Annual Conference: Bridging the Gap Between Broker and Agent
• 2011 Active Enterprise Network Annual Conference: Bridging the Gap Between Broker and Customer
• The Active Enterprise Network Gears Up for 2011 Annual Conference

Why is Google so obsessed with the social space?
We have seen Google make quite a few attempts at breaking into the social space without success. With the recent launch of Google+, you might be wondering why they’re so persistent following so many failed attempts (Google Wave, Buzz, Dodgeball, etc.). The reason is that both spaces are slowly converging into one. A good search engine provides quick and accurate results (weeding out the masses of clutter, spam and “black hat” sites). Social interaction plays a very interesting role in the “accuracy” of results.

In the earlier days of search engines, very few factors were considered outside of the terms you were searching for. Since then, search has evolved to take into account as much external data as it can gather. For example, once Google realized it can decipher your geographic location, they started basing results on sites that may be more relevant to your search based on your location.

The same is now true for social sites. As social platforms evolved, the search industry realized that not only could you acquire all the same data about users via these sites, but that other important data can be captured including users’ opinions, taste and circles of influence. A dynamic profile for every user (and other entities) exists with all their personal details and interests. Search engines can now factor a searcher’s likes and preferences as well as their friends’ opinions when delivering results. This makes personal data extremely valuable and a significant motivator for investing so heavily in social platforms.

Seeing that most of the valuable data relates to opinions and taste, one of the most important features of a social network is the “like” button. Google realized this and has recently released the Google “+1” button. It’s really quite surprising that it took so long for Google to realize the importance of the “like” feature. For years Google has placed significant weight to the quality and number of domains linking to a specific site when determining its rank for a specific term. These inbound links are in effect acting as a “like” feature.

What can we expect for the future?
New social networks try and make their way online regularly, each offering a new spin/angle for their network (e.g. Twitter allows you to follow users’ short comments, LinkedIn focuses around business, etc.).

While some users make use of multiple networks, the majority stick to a favorite. This is often determined by a mix of the best functionality/fit for their needs as well as the platform most used by their real life connections.

To acquire significant market share, Google will have to get a substantial and fast adoption rate. They will also need those users to stick and recommend to peers. With over 10 million users already on the platform, it seems Google is on the right track. It also seems that this time round that Google really thought this through. They analyzed Facebook’s list of features and realized areas in which they lack. As a result, Google upgraded their platform to include such things as peer circles, multi-way video chatting and much more in the hopes of bridging the functionality users are missing from Facebook and allowing them to use their platform in multiple different formats (e.g. separating your business circles from your personal circles and thus merging LinkedIn, Facebook and others into one malleable platform).

The question is, will this be enough to convert the masses? The good news for Google is that they went about marketing this new platform the right way this time. Following in the footsteps of Facebook’s success, they made the initial entry point by invite only. As expected a tremendous amount of users lined up for this invite only registration. These users quickly invited many of their friends, ironically some of which happened via Facebook posts.

Another factor that favors Google is all the free services they offer including emails, search, analytics and all the apps in between. If both platforms matched in everything else, Google could better integrate it into other aspects of daily life. For example, imagine your social analytics tied into Google Analytics seamlessly and with as much detail as analytics typically offers. Imagine the search we are already so used to (Google Search) factoring our likes, and weighting our friends’ likes based on recent posts and interactions.

One decision I am not so fond of is Google’s naming for this project. “Google+” just doesn’t seem right. I would focus on the major strength they have over all other networks currently, “Google Circles”. More than that, the “+1” is even worse. As mentioned above, it is the most important portion of a social network from a data gathering perspective, but the naming is just not catchy. “I +1’d you” doesn’t sound as great as “I LIKED you”. I would think “I G’d you” could end up as popular as “I Googled you”.

My prediction is that one of these two giants will take a major percentage of this space, while the other takes a far second, leaving the smaller networks of today (e.g. Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) a very distant third. Who will take the top spot will very much depend on how fast they can make moves right now. If I was Zuckerberg, I would be taking apart the Google platform and making sure Facebook has every new feature covered and then some. While Google leads the search industry, Facebook has the current social loyalty of the masses; it’s their immediate war to lose.

How does this impact our industry?
New social networks appear regularly, the difference is not many of them are powered by a giant and likely to make major ripples. Gaining more exposure via these new mediums is important. Wasting your time making sure your voice is heard on each and every network might be overkill, but focusing on networks with your target demographics and any that have a substantial user-base are worth the effort.

The great thing is that this is not cost prohibitive like placing ads on older mediums like TV, newspapers, etc. Using a handful of apps, you can repeat your message and increase your exposure very inexpensively to a multitude of popular networks.

Bottom line, if Google succeeds this time around with breaking into the social space, we will all likely be preaching our messages through both (and some of the smaller) networks. We will also see the “+1” button appear on more of our sites, allowing users to “plus one” our sites and content.

By Ido Zucker

Who are these new domains aimed at?
It is a pricey investment, and as a result will reduce the potential buying pool to the larger corporations and resellers.

What main uses should we expect?
Larger corporations will utilize this opportunity to further enhance their online marketing campaigns.

We can expect to see gTLDs for trademarked brands like “.apple” and “.cnn”, with sites such as “buy.apple”,” iphone.apple”, etc.

With opportunities like these, you can always expect to find resellers chasing new income. In these cases, the main focus will be around generic terms (e.g. markets, business types, geographic areas, activities, etc.). These entities will register a new gTLD (e.g. “. golf”) and sell/lease sub portions of that domain (e.g. “pro.golf”).

How will this affect the Real Estate Industry?
Outside of specific brand names, the main point of interest will be the resellers that offer terms relevant to our market (e.g. “.realestate”, “.homesforsale”). You and your agents will be approached with offers such as your-broker-name.realestate or denver.homesforsale and many other variations. Area-focused suffixes will also be attractive to our market, giving us the ability to form slogans as our site addresses (e.g. thebestluxuryhomesin.tampa).

From an SEO standpoint, we know that Google gives credit to sites when ranking them for specific key terms if those key terms are present within the site’s domain. We predict, however, that as it becomes easier to control the use of these new gTLDs, Google will place less weight on this factor.

Is it worth the cost?
Owning your own gTLD without the intention of reselling subdomains is a very expensive proposition, one that I don’t think many of our readers are going to consider.

Buying with the intention of reselling subdomains, especially for terms that are relevant to your direct industry, may be a viable option and a wise investment for those interested. The risk is the rate of adoption of these terms by the masses. New gTLDs typically battle against the value of the prestigious “.com” suffix.  If priced too high or users do not see the value in your chosen gTLD, you risk getting stuck with a very expensive domain. If you are considering this option, make sure to act fast as many entities worldwide will be hoping to take advantage of this same opportunity.

When purchasing a subdomain from a reseller (e.g. “homes.forsale”), ROI should always be an important consideration. Estimating the increased exposure via sticky marketing campaigns and utilizing this new domain versus the costs will help in making this decision. With time, estimations will become statistics aiding us in making better decisions.

The Process
For companies interested in acquiring their own customized gTLD, it comes at quite a cost; $185,000 for the application fee and an additional $75,000 annually for this privilege. There is vast potential for those who can afford it, but it is expensive for a reason – to prevent domain squatters from grabbing gTLDs.

Applications for the new gTLDs will be accepted from January 12, 2010 to April 12, 2012. The application evaluation process could take nine to 20 months depending on the application, intended usage and other issues.  We will stay on top of this developing news, but are unlikely to see these new domains in action until 2013.

Further Reading
For further reading on the application process and what this means to the industry, check out these articles we found useful.

• 9 Things You Need to Know About ICANN’s New Top Level Domains
• Web Addresses Enter New.Era
• Global Internet body to unleash  domain names
• Google, ICANN’s Dot-Anything-Goes and Its Possible Effects on SEO

The +1 button, similar to the Facebook “Like” button, will allow users to recommend Google search results with friends and other web browsers. Users that click the +1 button give their “stamp of approval” for a webpage or ad they found useful. They will then be associated with that link “in search results, on ads and across the web,” according to Google.

A Google account is required to use this new feature and allows users to share their recommendations through Gmail, Google Chat, Google Reader and Buzz. Currently, the button is only available on the search results page, but in the future Google has plans to provide this button to companies so users can +1 their site without ever having to leave the page.

To see more details about the +1 button, Google has released this video highlighting the new feature:

So what is the potential impact of Google’s +1 button?

For businesses, this button could directly influence their Google search rankings in the near future as acquiring recommendations may soon be more important than acquiring inbound links. As peer recommendations become more and more mainstream, brands will be held more accountable and will be expected to maintain higher standards of quality. This feature will likely reduce the number of content farms that appear in search results as well since people are less likely to recommend those sites.

“When someone recommends something, that’s a pretty good indicator of quality,” said Matt Cutts, Google’s principle search engineer. “We are strongly looking at using this in our rankings.”

Maintaining a commitment to quality, The Enterprise Network integrated a login for Google or Facebook last year through our One Click Login feature which allows customers to login or create a Property Alerts account without having to remember another username or password. As the +1 button gains in popularity, it will add further value to members through One Click Login by providing additional user data. With this data, members can provide customers with customized information that fits their specific needs and interests.

While it’s too soon to tell whether or not this feature will have a lasting impact, we’re excited about the potential the +1 button can have on social marketing and personalized search.

Early adaptors wanting to try out this new social search feature can do so by joining the +1 button experiment . (In the future, this will be available to everyone whether you opt in or not.)

Related Posts:

+1’s: the right recommendations right when you want them – in your search results

By Amanda Stephan

Through this partnership, Kentwood is able to provide unparalleled real estate search capabilities to the Denver.com website. Denver.com serves as an online city guide and provides the latest information about the city of Denver, including new restaurants, hotels, transportation and now a much improved real estate search. Denver.com is part of the Boulevards New Media Inc. family of 30 city guide sites, reaching 5 million viewers each month.

Kentwood Real Estate has trademarked itself as being “Colorado’s Premier Real Estate Company”, but with their recent domain acquisitions and now this partnership, Kentwood is showing why they are one of the best in the industry. Through their aggressive domain strategy, Kentwood has gained additional exposure and improved their overall SEO efforts. In fact, Kentwood’s goal is to attract more than 100,000 visitors per month to their official website, DenverRealEstate.com, of which they are already averaging over 50,000 per month.

The partnership bodes well not only for the two parties involved, but, “especially for our clients and prospective clients” says CEO of Kentwood Real Estate, Peter Niederman. It allows users to explore the city of Denver and discover areas that fit their lifestyle preferences. The partnership makes the process of finding a home fun, easy and personalized to each client’s needs. Rich Tancredi, National Real Estate Director at Boulevards, said this in regards to the partnership: “By working with Kentwood Real Estate to deliver industry-leading real estate services, Denver.com will provide its visitors with top-tier real estate resources, local information and client services from a top local firm.”

In addition, Kentwood is able to track the inquiries made on the Denver.com website through LifeCycle – Active Website’s inquiry management system. LifeCycle allows Kentwood to track and monitor online leads through their established business rules. The system also makes it possible for Kentwood to manage their new flow of customer inquiries obtained by this partnership in a timely manner.

The partnership became official on Friday, March 18. You can view the new real estate search engine by visiting Denver.com and clicking on the Real Estate tab at the top of the homepage.  Or to learn more about Kentwood Real Estate, visit their website at DenverRealEstate.com.

Related Posts:

Enterprise Network Member, Kentwood Real Estate, Acquires DenverHomes.com

By Johnny Shinnick

With their users wanting to see fewer low quality sites in their search results, Google will now reduce rankings for sites that provide little value to consumers and copy content from other sites. At the same time, the new algorithm will reward sites with unique and relevant content (more so than before). These changes attempt to cut down on websites utilizing content farms – a technique often used by spammers and Black Hat SEO writers that produce large amounts of content, but with irrelevant information, that are written to satisfy the search algorithms – not the consumer. These sites often direct customers to advertisements as well rather than the useful information they were searching for originally.

Google is excited about the new improvements to their algorithm– and we are too.  In the Real Estate Industry, we continue to fight the battle for page rank when it comes to our content. Optimizing our sites in order to rise to the top of Google can be a struggle when duplicate content is so prevalent. With properties being listed on multiple MLS sites, syndication outlets, etc., what can we do to establish ourselves as the authoritative source?

Understanding how to set our listings apart from the competition through content will help increase SEO and traffic to our sites. You’ve heard this from us before, but one of the best resources we have as real estate professionals is to utilize the wealth of knowledge we have about our local markets.  We need to make sure we’re writing engaging content that is different than the content we share on 3^rd party sites. What is the neighborhood like around your listing? What characteristics distinguish the property from others? How are the schools in the area? These are all simple questions you can answer about a property to help you stand out from the rest.

Be sure to host this information on your site and limit the amount of content you share with other sites. By only giving them a small teaser, users are encouraged to visit your site for more information. Not only does this show customers that you’re the expert on that property, it shows Google too.

Related Posts:

Google Drops Real Estate Search

Conference Highlight: Search Engine Optimization

Conference Highlight: Creating a Content-Driven Business Strategy

By Amanda Stephan

Since Google’s announcement, there has been a lot of buzz about the topic of syndication and what that means for our industry. It’s interesting to us that two “Black Hat” syndication outlets have decided to merge together as one is pulling out of the race. With this announcement, we really need to ask ourselves, does this partnership and increase in exposure really benefit us?

Unfortunately, the answer is usually no. At our Annual Enterprise Network Conference last year, we had an entire session dedicated to syndication and a few of the issues we’re seeing in the Real Estate Industry today. While it sounds great to gain more exposure, we’re forgetting that often times these syndication sites are beating us on Google searches when it comes to our long tail terms. If Zillow.com ranks higher than your own site on the search engines, there is nothing stopping your customers from going to them first for their real estate needs. Eventually, we run the risk of these outlets becoming the default sites for searching property listings.

Not only are they competing with us for the top position on search engines, but “Black Hat” syndications sites are redirecting Google to their site (instead of yours) through no follow links. The results can be damaging to your SEO efforts because they’re taking credit for your content and telling Google that they are the original source and authority on your listing’s online content.

Reiterating the point we made about syndication last week (for more information, read Google Drops Real Estate Search), we need to consider our options when it comes to separating ourselves from the syndication outlets. As local real estate professionals, no one knows our communities better than us – so why are we allowing these syndication outlets to be the authority?

By providing the best technology available in our industry, we can provide our customers with a much better online experience. We need to make sure our customers are accustomed to using our sites for their real estate needs – not the competition.

For more information on this new partnership, read Zillow’s official announcement.

By Amanda Stephan