Hey folks, as promised, I have published the first of many tutorials to come over the REW Blogs contest timeframe. Please check it out here http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/...rey/2416/show/

I have changed the links section to a more appropriate name, and encourage questions and comments both here and at the blog post.

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Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles [Of Google] will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit. Google.com

Great post and thanks for the detailed information.

I understand everything you are saying, except the "Deep linking". Are you saying that if I want to link to a particular article contained in a website, I should only link to the root url? I've read your paragraph on Deep linking a couple of times and done some searching on the web, but still don't understand what you mean. Can you please explain.

Sorry for the confusion.

Thanks,
Mark

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Mississauga Real Estate

Find Homes for Sale in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

Not a problem - Deep linking means linking to internal sections of a website, that is correct.

Now where the confusion comes in, is regarding the "Relevant Reading" section itself. That section shows up on EVERY page you have on your REW Blog, so unless you discuss a certain article over and over again, then it would not make sense to have it in that section, that section is more about extended complimentary materials that correspond with the overall themes and content choices of your blog as a whole entity.

Now - in terms of linking to an internal article (If it is relevant and will help your visitor) from a specific post, this is why we have the "related links" section of the blog post (Modeled after Wiki's external links)

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Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles [Of Google] will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit. Google.com

Not sure if you read the post about outbound link abuse, but it is quite relevant to the related links section as well. http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/...rey/2143/show/

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Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles [Of Google] will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit. Google.com

Thanks for making that change, though not sure that the name you have picked is the most consumer friendly.

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James Boyer
RE/MAX Properties Unlimited
Morristown, NJ 07960
973-647-0253
Serving the Real Estate markets of Morristown, Morris Township, Madison NJ Real Estate, Chatham NJ , Summit, Short Hills, Millburn, Maplewood, South Orange, & West Orange Referals happily given and accepted. For information on home sales in New Jersey please contact. Morristown NJ Real Estate Madison NJ Real Estate Chatham NJ Real Estate

I am open to suggestions (And actually thought about that one a lot before I changed it) - I figured ok here are links to external sites that this blogger is sending me to, what are these links. Well presumably, they are relevant, and I am being recommended to read them.

Your thoughts?

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Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles [Of Google] will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit. Google.com

Incidentally, I intentionally stayed away from links or resources as those are often associated with spammy linking, and I didn't want bloggers falling back into bad habits.

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Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles [Of Google] will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit. Google.com

I REALLY like the name change (you guys are talking about the links section, right?). In fact, I am now using the "Relevant Reading" section for material I might draw a visitor to. Some personal, some professional. I've stepped away from text links and will update this Relevant Reading section a few times a week to links reflecting updated content or featured articles.

My thought is, is a visitor will probably not click on a text link, however, the visitor might click on a featured item description out of need and/or curiosity.

Maybe I'm out in left field on this one, as I haven't seen it done before.

Another thought is to enable the REW blogger to name the links section. Just a thought. If I had the freedom to edit that section I would let the visitor know the section will be updated frequently. In the meantime, I will add something to that effect in the bio section.

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Mr Lane, are you trying to seduce me? (Or was that colleen posting again)

This is an EXCELLENT IDEA! - Updating your "Relevant Reading" on a regular basis (Or your blogroll or whatever) this is certainly something I would love to see more people adopt, keeping yours links fresh and current - what better way to further entice your readers to come back and read often.

I checked out your blog, and noticed the formatting, the way it is laid out certainly makes me want to click

One criticism however - (Constructive I hope) - Most of not all of the links posted are either to websites you personally own or control, or are to social networking sites with you your section as the feature. I am not sure that this is the best way to go about things, as readers are looking for unique perspective as well - don't be afraid to link out to websites that you don't own, or in a way that your own personal websites miss out on link pop - it's for the user, not your link pop - there is room for your sites as well though

One think I really liked was that you linked to "your favorite REW discussion" as it seemed to be more of a share with readers as opposed to being self serving, however when I went to the thread, I saw that it was started by you and lost interest. Do you see how having everything in there about you might turn off readers looking for diversity?

Anyways - enough with the criticism, the fact of the matter is this is a great idea, and I think yours will evolve over time as well - THANK YOU for sharing

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Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles [Of Google] will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit. Google.com

Good! And good criticism as well. It was my first shot at the idea, so it'll need some refining.

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