Ask Kalena

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Dear Kalena…

I have just discovered your site and have read your article on Blogging. I am a realtor in Whistler, BC Canada and my question is: Do you think blogging is a good thing for a realtor, and if so what do you think the topics should be? Please note, I have just discovered your site, and a friend built my site, but he can’t do it any more so I have turned to SEO101 to find out what on earth I need to do. Thanks for your time and I look forward to hearing from you.

Marion

Dear Marion,

Maintaining a blog for almost any site is usually a good thing. However, it takes consistency, time, and of course, commitment. There are several benefits to having a blog on your site.

Blogs provide rich content that the search engines just love. They are usually updated on a regular basis which also helps to keep the search engine spiders coming back for more. For your purpose, you need to focus your blog to attract whomever you are looking to get to your site.

Assuming your goal is to bring in folks looking to buy real estate in Whistler, BC, I would write about Whistler! You could blog about great restaurants, interesting places to visit, or happenings in the town. Whatever news and information you think your visitors would find helpful.

Try not to talk about your own business, but rather offer information that is useful and unbiased, so your visitors will keep coming back, and also see you as a trusted source of information.

Lastly, research and build a list of important keywords that you need to optimize your site for. Use those keywords to link to your main site where appropriate. That will all help to pass the relevance of your blog onto your business site.

Oh, one last tip. If you’re going to start a blog it is worth the time and effort to install and host the blog on your domain instead of using a hosted version from a third party. WordPress is easy to install and administer.

Good luck! Nick
www.TheSmallMerchant.com

Popularity: 39%

Dear Kalena…

I have been in the top three positions for the keyword ‘motivation’ for five years and just last month dropped to 16. A block of my once-ranked pages has simply disappeared. My business is sinking as a result. I haven’t changed a word on my site for months - perhaps even a year - because I’ve been writing a new book. Could this be the issue? My site is: Motivation123.com

Jason

Dear Jason

The advertiser competition for this keyword is very high resulting in a near saturated market.
The position change for your site could be as a direct result in a downturn in the number of searches for the single keyword “motivation”.

If your site content and meta-data has remained static for a period of a year or so then Google may have decided that your site is not as relevant in this search as it once was, resulting in placing your competitors higher in the Search Engine Results Page for the search term “motivation”.
Detailed analysis of your competitors may reveal more readily updated content and SEO work being carried out on a scheduled basis.

A positive move may be to restructure your keywords for a less saturated keyword phrase still related to motivation, it is important not to lose the keyword “motivation” altogether so add keywords rather than delete them.

Take a look at your site content and be sure to include any new keyword phrases in the body text two or three times and also consider looking at your description tag to reflect this new content.

Plan strategic SEO by using different related keyword phrases as opposed to single keywords and you could see your site rise in the SERPs again.

best regards
Andy Watson
Wildcat SEO

Popularity: 30%

Dear Kalena (and Jacqueline in this case),

Are there any issues with an SEO company taking on clients that are competitors? Who will get ranked highest and is strategic marketing info passed on to competitors?

David Ash

Dear David,

In my opinion, an ethical SEO company has no place taking on clients that are in direct competition, like two businesses that are targeting the exact same market with the same keywords. Furthermore, a trustworthy SEO company definitely wouldn’t pass any strategic information on to competitors - look up a company before you work with them, and be sure to go past the first page or two of results. After all, an SEO firm probably knows how to push anything negative down in the SERPs, but they can’t make that stuff disappear completely.

For SEOs and search marketers themselves, taking on two clients that are direct competitors can lead to many ethical quandaries, so therefore, each client’s chosen keywords and even a non-compete clause should be written into your contracts. You should always protect yourself legally - an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure in that regard.

If you are planning on working with an SEO firm and you are concerned about that same company working with competitors, ask them about their confidentiality practices and such before you sign anything; if you are an SEO consultant wondering about dealing with two clients that compete, consider the differences between those clients. Are they really that similar, to the point where they would go after the exact same keywords? Do they have different specialties or do they operate in different neighborhoods? If your potential clients are two distinctive companies in the same industry, it is possible to still work with them ethically if you target separate keywords and focus on their differences (and of course, if you keep everything confidential).

Best of luck!

-Jacqueline

SEOGroup.com and Ocean19.com

Popularity: 27%

Dear Kalena…

I have just started up an SEO company in Bangkok called Search Sense Thailand and have my first real break. Yesterday I got a new job to work on a real estate agent’s website, with a brief to get them onto the first page of Google for Bangkok Property.

But there’s one site, position #2, that has duplicated six websites, all linking to one another and using keyword spam on all their domain names. And I cannot compete with it! Why does Google weigh the domain name so heavily? Why does it allow duplicate content, from the same owner to dominate their search? This is just plain wrong. I would like some help on this, please. How can I get Google to take any notice?

Pun

Dear Pun,

Out of curiosity I checked Google and did a search for “Bangkok Property” and did not notice the issue you are stating above. This is not surprising, as Google often shows different results for different users.

However, to answer your question. If you would like to report spammy activity to Google you can use the link below. If I were you I would concentrate on all of the good whitehat tactics that you no-doubt employee, and try to beat him that way. By collecting good quality, relevant links, and filling the site with useful relevant content you can eventually beat him.

http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

Best of luck, Nick Loeser

Popularity: 31%

Hello Kalena

You were very helpful in answering a previous questions.

I have a client who has about 5 or 6 online dating websites. He wants to set up one website with a new domain and link them to all the other websites, but he wants to optimize only this one website instead of optimizing each individual websites.

My recommendation to him is to optimize each website separately since they all have separate keywords. Do you think this is the correct way to go? Thank you!

Mirna

Dear Mirna

I think what you’re asking is: should your client optimize each site individually or redirect all to a single optimized site? Without knowing the URLs of your client’s sites, it’s difficult to answer this one.

If your client has multiple stand-alone sites that each target a specific market and they can each be logically optimized for unique keywords, then I would agree with you that optimizing the individual sites one-by-one would be the way to go.

On the other hand, if your client has a single target market and each of the existing sites contain similar or duplicate content and are only for lead generation for the main site or company, then I would suggest redirecting them all to a single branded site optimized for your client’s main keywords.

Popularity: 52%