First off, this is shaping up pretty well and I am extremely proud of the REW family for pitching in.
I thought that now would be a good time to offer some observations on how it is going. I hope some of my thoughts will start some conversations and some learning not only about online reputation management, but of SEO in general. Contests in general are good places to learn. It fortifies a truth that I have always held to.
"Competition by it's nature is not about one person smashing the other person. It is about both people becoming stronger and wiser from the effort "
With that in mind, please take these observations as they are intended. To make us all stronger, wiser and to help us have more fun!
Observation 1: We now have 8 of the top 10 spots for the REAL Carolyn. I would call that a raging success by any measure.
Ovservation 2: Nobody has scaled Mt Spitzer (grin) and taken over the #1 spot. Interesting, but also a sign that Google has it right. By this I mean that relevance comes in many ways. It can be notoriety, infamy or true authority, or all of the above.
Observation 3: One thing that we can see is that some folks are going with "exavt match" domains...and doing fairly well. This appears to me to be more successful of a strategy these days than in years past, but is it a strategy for your business? Would love to have some conversation on city-real-estate.xyz vs branding.com...my take is that for a REALTOR running their business, it would be better to have a branded domain than a dash domain over the long haul. (EricOnSearch did not seem to have much trouble ranking for Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World..grin) And before you say it...yeah I know that now is different. I am talking about as an overall asset vs just what will rank.
Observation 4: Rick Clarke seems to be doing ok with realestatevalley.ca despite the fact that there is no text on his page about Carolyn or Capalbo and so forth. Way to go! A great conversation starter and instructive as well. Thoughts? It also offers some insights into what is important...grin
Observation 5: Lisa Udy has done a terrific job of builing links to her Active Rain blog and getting it to rank and help Carolyn out. Commendable, but one has to ask the following question: Would you have been better off building links to a page that you actually owned as opposed to someone else's domain where they have made it clear that the juice is theirs? Again Lisa - please do not take this as criticism, just encouragement for you with the next opportunity to post the contest piece on your own site and promote it on AR...you only get a profile link from AR (last I checked) and that is a lot of work for little reward.
Observation 6: There are a lot of great folks in the top three pages...all of whom could win (and I wish them the best). How many of them will stick with it? How many will cooperate with each other to help promote each others' efforts? I have not yet seen anyone go at this as a team sport...interesting.
Observation 7: Established blogs (like the Bloodhound Blog) as doing quite well despite the post not attracting tons of links or promotion outside of the original post itsself and the publicity that it gained. That says something about the value and authority of established blogs.
Observation 8: Some of the typical social media sites are showing up and others are not...in years past we would have seen someone hitting on Squidoo pretty hard, but not this time...hmmm...grin
Final thoughts and observations: At least as of today's date, I am seeing a significant number of REALTORS get involved to help a person who has an online reputation management issue and that is great. Things left on the to do list:
a. Pictures. Get some more up to replace the bikini shots (grin)
b. Mt. Spitzer - Who is gonna be the first to scale it?
c. Has someone attempted a video entry yet? Last time around, we had some fun videos to accompany the effort...grin
d. Still need to assist Carolyn in building her own blogs authority. That would be a nice way to wrap this up in a couple of months. It is the gift that keeps on giving.
My best to all in the contest...and on a personal level thanks for your support of our community. Would love your thoughts and comments.
Eric
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There are currently 3 Responses to this blog entry.
judyo
A long post with many different observations. I'll choose to first comment on the exact match domain. When I saw how these were ranking (and of course they're new), it was a "duh!" moment. Why didn't I think of that? Would I have done it? Probably not, but what a great idea.
Which brings me to my own long, hyphenated domains. My local niche site (my Oak Lawn site) is my oldest but the one I spend the least time on. Yet it still holds up on first page (usually top 2 or 3) Google results for Oak Lawn real estate. From what I remember it didn't take that long to do it (and on a free Point2 agent site to boot). Sure, back in the day there wasn't much competition, but it has certainly increased and with little effort it stays at the top. Yet I gave up having it rank for Oak Lawn homes - I had to point links to my Cook County site's Oak Lawn page to get first couple of pages Google position for that phrase (it's on page 2 today). But it happened faster with my Cook County site than my Oak Lawn site - my Oak Lawn site only ranks well for the domain name (and yes, I know I don't have a lot of links pointing to the site to begin with). I did put it on the back burner once I got my Cook County site up and I noticed that my main site ranked quicker than the niche site.
My main site still ranks well for it's domain name (Cook County real estate), but I have to work hard and long to get it to rank well for the smaller towns I work in the most (such as Orland Park). Although I've finally appeared on page 1 for Orland Park real estate, Orland Park homes and Orland Park homes for sale and longtails, it is a battle and I keep fluctuating. I'm thinking I should have kept building the orland-park-real-estate.com blog I started a couple years back and dismantled because it didn't seem like it was going anywhere fast (enough), and I was convinced I'd be better off spending that time on my Orland Park pages on my main Cook County site. I'm not so sure about that now - probably should have kept that blog up and given it more time.
As far as the team concept for this one, I truly believe this is an easy enough endeavor for us not to have to band together. And this one might benefit Carolyn better with multiple blog posts ranking along with her own sites to help push the Spitzer stuff down. What would the benefit of joining together to get ericonsearch at the top (or whatever vehicle we decided to use) vs. trying to push away all of the bad stuff? The only other thing to do would be to push Carolyn's own website and blog up to the top so she can stay there, but it would still be followed with the bad stuff if we didn't have multiple blog posts ranking.
And as far as those pictures, I think we need to use different ones with the alt text rather than use the same ones over and over, or how does that work? I've taken one of her photos and have recreated it several different ways, but none of those are showing up on the Images section.
Speaking of Squidoo, that was a thought of mine since I learned how to create a lens from our last endeavor. But again, we had a lot of teamwork behind that one which is what helped propel that lens (and other lenses created by our team members), and I don't see that happening without building a team again, which I don't think is necessary for what we're trying to accomplish here.
LisaUdy
Hi Eric!
You're probably right, but I am very new to the online marketing game. I started out on Activerain and that blog is the best juice I have at the moment. I am working on other outside projects, but in order to get the best juice, I needed something with a little more power. At this time, I felt it was the best option for me to rank and to push the most juice to Carolyn. :)
Great analysis, you are very observant!
Eric Blackwell
@Lisa - You look to me like you are doing GREAT for the Logan Utah area...grin.<boring fact about Eric> I actually got married there </boring fact about Eric> Since we are on the subject, each Active Rain page starts out with VERY LITTLE credibility in Google.
Here is an experiment to try. Do a post about a something in one of the smaller terms in your area on active rain...don't promote it...just post it. Then do one on your REW blog. See where they rank... ;-) You will see my point that it is the singer and not the song (grin).
The power of Active Rain is that you have a large audience of REALTORS willing to link to you. My guess is that you (as an AR Ambassador) can leverage the goodwill you have built up in their community to link to your own blog. That's not stealing. You have earned it. Many of the friends you have made on AR are your friends for REAL.
For the record, I think you are doing an awesome job at generating publicity for Carolyn. I think that is the main purpose of this. It is a team effort to help another REALTOR. Good luck and I wish you well as the contest continues!
@Judy (grin) my point about Squidoo is that it has largely lost it's value in terms of helping things rank...take a look at almost all (scratch that) ALL of the links going outbound. Much like many of the other large blogging platforms, there is a lot of "red" on those pages (grin). But you are right, this is largely designed for individual efforts and it will actually help Carolyn MORE that way...
best
Eric