No one is better suited for a discussion of the value of blogrolls in viral weblogging than South Park’s Mr. Mackey. (“Drugs are bad, m’kay?”)
Some supposed experts have done extensive research by reading other weblogs and they have come up with (and reiterated) this startling conclusion: “Blogrolls are bad, m’kay?”
I would link to the source, but that might turn out to hurt their SEO prospects. I have, out of thoughtful consideration, removed them from BloodhoundBlog’s blogroll. Not, mind you, because, “Blogrolls are bad, m’kay?” but because I don’t want to promote pernicious nonsense.
Why are blogrolls thought to be bad? Because they might look like a link exchange, and they might get brand new weblogs temporarily sandboxed by Google.
What are we talking about? SEO results, yes?
What should be your objective in producing a real estate weblog? Viral marketing, yes?
If we stipulate Mr. Mackey’s case without contest, would blogrolling being bad for SEO imply that blogrolling is bad for viral marketing?
Take it apart. The masque of Mackey is bullshit: Brand new blogrolls don’t have extensive blogrolls, and, even if they did, there is no reason to suppose that Google is penalizing them. More likely the contrary. Google likes links.
But even arguing to the contrary, would a hypothetical Google-that-doesn’t-like-links make any difference in your viral marketing strategy?
First, lightning can strike with an over-the-transom lead from Google, but it’s not very likely.
Second, the objective of your viral marketing strategy should be to nurture a substantial community of people who are predisposed to use you when they have a real estate need. This has almost nothing to do with SEO results.
Ergo, everything you do with your real estate weblog — and with other viral marketing tools — should be focused on nurturing relationships with people who can and will do business with you, not with attracting random hits from all over the world. In other words, if your primary concern is SEO, you’re spinning your wheels.
So what does this imply about blogrolls? In a community-focused real estate weblog, a blogroll of other weblogs and web sites focused on that community is an immensely powerful viral marketing tool. Putting the local PTA or HOA weblog on your blogroll is an important first step to getting your own weblog on their blogrolls. This is how you will meet the neighbors who will become your friends and clients.
There is more than you can and should do. I discuss some of those in a short clip linked below from my presentation at the Southwest Regional Blogging Conference. There is a lot more at Real Estate Weblogging 101.
SEO is a lot easier than building a community of clients, with easily codified — even if misconstrued — rules. But SEO is not going to produce the results you’re looking for. If you don’t develop a viral marketing strategy, your competitors will.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
Jay Thompson says:
Excellent post. I commented on the experts blog mentioning that the official Google blog contains a blogroll of massive proportions. I was then told I was “mocking” them (which was not the case).
Their claim that Google may ban you for a blogroll is ludicrous.
I love SEO, SEO has been good to me. But it is NOT just about SEO, not by a long shot.
July 10, 2007 — 8:48 pm
Greg Swann says:
Matt Cutts has a blogroll. ‘Nuff said?
July 10, 2007 — 8:52 pm
John Michailidis says:
The problem with whomever you were quoting (I must confess that I don’t know who the hell m’kay is) is that they were approaching the issue from the standpoint of a traditional internet marketer attempting to sell a product — from that perspective they are correct.
However, what they obviously didn’t understand is that the purpose of a real estate blog is to build a community of relationships.
I’m with you Greg!
July 10, 2007 — 11:28 pm
Mike Thoman says:
Matt Cutts also organizes his permalinks in this fashion: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/company-blogging-101/
So does the seo authority site you cited here. Not only that, they specifically advocate organizing your permalinks so. I don’t know if Matt does.
…but you didn’t think permalinks organized like that was a good idea.
Are Matt and SEOMoz the idiots that every other idiot is copying?
This monkey see, this monkey do.
July 11, 2007 — 8:23 am
Greg Swann says:
Sorry, Mike, but I think you’re wrong here. Neither Matt Cutts nor SEOMoz use the style of permalinks recommended by my correspondent and copied by so many others:
domain.com/2007/07/11/post-title/
Instead, both of those blogs link in this format:
domain.com/blog/post-title/
Cutts specifically advises against using dates in a permalink.
All that nothwithstanding, is it your claim that coding permalinks by the WordPress default
domain.com/?p=1234
is not more efficient for human beings? Are you willing to argue that an unknown and possibly non-existent benefit to keyword-packing in URLs (Cutts seems to imply that a nod is as good as a wink) conclusively outweighs the benefit of more-efficient, less-error-prone permalink coding?
July 11, 2007 — 8:55 am
Mike Thoman says:
Greg,
I don’t disagree with you about the yr/mo/day format in url’s. I always wondered (before I ever used blog software) why that was done, but realized that people probably do it because it’s alot easier for them to implement. As far as whether that helps them or not (by getting keywords into the url) is dubious, since you’re probably triggering factors that both help you and hurt you.
You may have been arguing ONLY against the yr/mo/day format, but I got the impression you were arguing against the domain/category/title-of-the-post format, too. Why? Well, by example, and by the vendor source you referenced (untrustworthly lot, those vendors), who ‘scored’ all other options lower than the domain.com/?p=1234 format.
As far as whether your format is more efficient for human beings (not monkeys) is probably case dependant. Someone who would have great difficulty implementing an alternate permalink structure, especially a person with occasional, non-competitive content, should probably not worry about it (not efficient). You? I think it would have been efficient for you to implement such a permalink structure.
Efficiency is the ratio of output to input…with the vast amount of content that’s produced here and your familiarity with WP and coding, it should have been highly efficient for you to implement. After all, the interview with Cutts you just mentioned also has him specifically advocating using “the first few words from the title of the post in the url.” What’s a few? Hell, I don’t know, but if I’m not mistaken, wordpress will truncate the url automatically beyond a certain point.
Also consider your readers’ efficiency: I know I’ve hovered the mouse over one of your links back to a previous post and wondered what the hell post you were referring to when I see:
https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=1644
If you use anchor text like “I talked about Zillow back in 1987” and you point back to one of your many posts on Zillow, how do I know which one it is? The post title in the url would really help me in certain instances.
July 11, 2007 — 9:41 am
DSB says:
I ran a link exchange program for a year. never had much of a problem with it. I took it off my site about a month ago and now want to use it as a business directory rather than a link exchange. I think my site did better with it than it did without it. I now have all my blogrolls on a bookmark page. I do not know if it is a good thing or bad thing as it’s all links but I don’t care, I actually read all those blogs on that page and even through it is only a few days old, I have updated it daily including removing some links which I do not think I will read again for a while.
Google can come after me if they want, I don’t care. It’s for my benefit – having somewhere I can have all my links to the blogs I read without having to go to my browser’s bookmarks or subscribing or unsubscribing to peoples feeds, etc.
July 11, 2007 — 7:25 pm
Todd Carpenter says:
DSB,
Have you tried out del.icio.us? It’s a great place to store your bookmarks online. Quite a few RE bloggers are using it, and you can add them to your network to see what they are saving. It’s pretty cool. Mine are at
del.icio.us/lenderama
July 12, 2007 — 12:08 am
DSB says:
Yeah, I have an account there but I do not really like social networking and bookmarking sites.
July 12, 2007 — 8:41 pm
Gena Riede says:
Very interesting article and love the conversation. I too was reading all of the SEO BS concerning blogrolls and wasn’t sure if M’kay was right or not. It would appear that since there are plenty who have gotten past the last Google roll over unscathed that she may be wrong.
I would like to hear more about the date in the URL as I too, think that this makes the URL quite long and will be truncated in many instances. I’d be interested in knowing how this would effect the article…I’d say not too good.
November 13, 2007 — 9:13 pm