Not ranking for real estate webmasters?

This evening a user posted in the forums that they were looking for Real Estate Webmasters by Googling our name, and it did not show up in the first few pages (for our own name) – huh? I received several PM's about it as well.

Now of course I go and check for myself, and sure enough – the forums and blogs seem to be coming up fine for queries, but for searches that would normally return the main page of our site, nothing seems to be showing up. Of course my first reaction is one of shock – this can't be right, must be a mistake (every webmaster thinks they are squeaky clean right? :))

But seriously – as someone who has been around SEO for as long as I have, I know that this warrants investigation – I mean sure it would be nice if there was some mistake – but who takes that chance – not me. So this evening starts my investigation (and hopefully this posts serves as a resource for others in the future whether this turns out to just be a glitch or if we discover there is an actual issue).

So here is my process (and if you care to chime in on anything I miss in my first round of considerations by all means do so)

Experience tells me that search engine penalties are typically tied to linking patterns – so I am sitting down thinking about all the potential ways links are built to Real Estate Webmasters – I am going to start with the least likely culprits and get into some of the more likely culprits further down the list.

Evaluating inbound links: These are all the generic categories / ways Real Estate Webmasters gets links (that I am aware of).

Reputation / earned links: Love us or hate us, Real Estate Webmasters is widely known on the web and discussed (and linked to) quite often in forums, blogs, news items, etc – These links are obviously out of our control and truly a function of how links are supposed to be naturally acquired – I do not think this is a potential issue.

Press Releases: There is an onclick that (as far as I am aware) renders the links in press releases useless from a link popularity perspective – and it would make no sense to penalize a website for releasing press releases (we release very few, but when we do, they are always legitimate) – I do not think this is a potential issue.

Credit for work / copyright links: As the owner and provider of template based products (which we own the copyright to) we include a standard copyright notice that includes a link back to the Real Estate Webmasters main page. This link (often referred to as a credit for work link) is standard web design practice and you will see the same thing on all major template providers to Realtors – AdvancedAccess.com and Point2.com being two of the largest examples. Because there is no known issue with these types of links (no other major providers all of a sudden stopped ranking for their own name) I have to assume that this is also not the issue – (But I could be wrong here... Matt?)

Social Bookmarking / Media: I am a member and have a profile at the usual suspects DIGG, Technorati, Linked In etc and of course I fill out the "your website" in the profile section. I do not think this is a potential issue.

Scraper sites: I think we all know what a scraper site is, and I am going to give the Google gods credit here, and simply state that they would never penalize someone for getting linked to from a scraper site.

Required link on homepage to be listed in the directory (Could this be it?): As many directories do, the REW directory requires a link on the user's home page in order to be listed. I would be lying if I stated that I wasn't aware that this does wonders for my link popularity – but quite honestly, REW is bigger than that – our goal is to make every Realtor out there aware of us, our community, our services etc – If this is the issue, I think I can solve it (Or would be happy to propose a solution) – If Google has a problem with this type of directory strategy, I am happy to place a rel="nofollow" on the required homepage link that users place as a pre-requisite to getting a free listing.

Paid placement in the directory (How about this?): It is also true that we sell one exclusive listing per city to Realtors if they choose to purchase said listing. It is worth stating, that there is absolutely zero extra link popularity benefit to going featured (Paid). The only true benefit is added exposure – being at the top of the page, in an emphasized box guarantees you will get noticed before the free listings. An example of a paid listing vs free listing can be seen on our Panama City Beach page.

Now with regards to the directory (unlike 99.9% of the directories out there) our directory is 100% moderated. Every single submission must be reviewed by a staff member and approved. We have rules for submission that are strictly enforced, and we support our directory virtually 24/7 with our full time paid staff. You can view many examples of this at our REW Directory forum. – Here I am making some defenses for the quality and usefulness of our directory, but if this is an issue (due to paid links or reciprocal requirements) once again, we are willing to address it in any manner necessary – I do not believe we are doing anything wrong with our directory – BUT if I was in charge, I would not be having to write this post now would I? :)

Ummm – I think that is about it – Honestly Real Estate Webmasters does not participate in any other activity in terms of building links – We do not purchase any paid links or submit to paid directories, when we comment on others blogs it is truly because we have something to contribute and couldn't care less if they are do-follow or not, we don't 301 redirect any domains to our site to inflate link popularity, (just going through the list here) we don't cloak or have any deceptive redirects of any kind, so am I missing something here? (Members, please feel free to chime in if you are aware of any way in which Real Estate Webmasters builds links back to www.RealEstateWebmasters.com other than what I have stated.)

So I think that is it for "Inbound links, or link building" items that I can think of.

My two next things to consider are outbound links (could there be an issue here?) and of course what exists on our domain as a whole (onpage SEO) – I'm grabbing a coffee and will be back :)

Ok i'm back – I opted for water instead of coffee ;-)

Next on my list is to evaluate the ways in which we provide outbound links from the Real Estate Webmasters domain to other websites. There are basically only three areas where there is any outbound linking of any significance, all of which deal with our community of forum members, bloggers or the directory – so in essence the "user contributed content" section of Real Estate Webmasters.

#1: The REW Forums: We run probably the most popular forum on the internet that caters specifically to Realtors who are looking to improve their websites (how it looks, how it works, how it converts and yes how it ranks). All live links posted in threads and posts are already nofollow, so this would not be an issue, but we do allow a maximum of 3 outbound links in the signature. Now once again, we have rules that stipulate you cannot link out to anything illegal or any website in violation of any search engines terms of service – we have a team of over 40 moderators (37 of which are on the payroll) that keep a watchful eye on this. As a secondary measure, we have a hack in place that does not remove the no follow on signatures until after 300 posts. We are often asked why the count is so high – the answer is that we want members to participate in the community to learn, teach and build relationships with like-minded peers – we do not want people signing up simply to get  a backlink – by 300 posts, we have had more than enough time to evaluate their membership and intentions – and honestly after 300 posts, there isn't a single member who even cares about the signature at that point – they have had enough time on their side to realize that the true value of the REW Forum is the education and relationship building achieved. My assumption is that because dofollow signatures on forums are the standard / default for all major forum softwares, including the popular vBulletin software we use, that this is not the issue, but once again I am open to learning and if this is an issue, please let me know so that I can address it.

#2 REW Blogs: Just like the one you are reading this post on, our members have the ability to create their own blog and post user-contributed content. Once again, all blog memberships must be approved, and these blogs are constantly moderated. If you have not done so, please feel free to read our terms of use – there you will read in several places that we are completely against any form of search engine spam including attempts to artificially inflate link popularity. In fact this warrants an excerpt.

"Search engines: REW blogs perform very well in search engines – this is due in no small part to the fact that our authors write high quality (Unique) content that does not violate any search engine's guidelines and is often referenced from other sources on the web.

Our rules against link spam and other forms of search engine spam or low quality advertising posts ensure that REW Blogs are able to maintain their authoritative status by providing our readership with the highest quality (Unique) content possible. It is also very important that these rules and regulations are strictly enforced so that search engines can trust that they are indexing and ranking high quality human contributed, edited and moderated content.

 Link schemes: Any attempt to artificially inflate page rank or link popularity is not welcome here. Search engines frown upon this kind of behaviour, and it does nothing for the user experience – when a link is placed in any section of REW Blogs (In a post, in the relevant reading section, in the related links of a post) it should be done so for the sole benefit of the user, and NOT to send yourself link juice / page rank."

REW Blogs are a new technology, but I am very proud of the level of quality of the postings overall and (perhaps arrogantly) state that we do more to combat search engine manipulation at REW blogs than ANY public blogging platform out there (including blogger, no offense), in fact I even try to help our competitors clean up their act such as my post on "Active Rain Banned by Google".

Being new – I may have made some coding mistakes, or might be missing something that is causing the issue – if this is the case, once again Google Guys let me know because I can't see it and if this post says nothing else, it shows that I am truly putting an effort into identifying and addressing any potential issues.

#3 The REW Directory: Out of the three areas mentioned here, once again this is the most likely culprit – but once again I would love for this to be a Google glitch and not some form of penalty, due to the fact that comparatively we run our directory the right way. We focus on traffic, we have human editors and moderators, we provide a support forum etc – But the fact of the matter is, we do allow one live link in a user's submission and we do allow them to put anchor text in that link – is this the issue here guys? Say the word and we will change it – I just need to know.

Other than that, there are so very few places on the Real Estate Webmasters domain that we link out, it is not funny – there are a couple on our accolades page, and perhaps some in the IDX sections where we actually link out to the MLS boards' websites – but these are always done for the benefit of the user.

Just to be clear, directory aside – RealEstateWebmasters.com does not participate in any kind of link exchange (solicitation or otherwise). We do not sell links from our domain, we don't buy links, we don't spam comments with our links – in fact – we are so damn busy building technology for our clients that we wouldn't have the time to go out and try to get links even if we wanted to – it's the old "The carpenter's house is in the worst shape in the neighborhood".

 Ok – before I get into addressing any possible issues with the actual onpage content of REW (there won't be any issues with the content – it's 100% unique) I am going to get some sleep. See y'all in the morning :)