Real Estate Blogging

SEO Strategies for your Real Estate website?

noreply@blogger.com (Skylar Lewis) — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 18:27:00 +0000

Are you looking to dominate your online marketplace?

Well getting links to your website is one of the best ways to do this. I have many real estate websites that are ranked high in google and the easiest way to get them ranked is by having other websites pointing to your website.

Here are a couple "Authority" sites that will improve your ranking with the major search engines if you get a link from them...

www.activerain.com ( set up an outside blog. This will allow "do-follow" links that google can pick up )
www.ezinearticles.com ( write a real estate article with 1 link to your site )
www.zillow.com ( sign up for an account and put your website on it )
www.trulia.com ( same as above )
www.abcrealestatedirectory.com ( sign up to get put into their directory )

This is a few simple steps towards getting ranked high in Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Skylar Lewis
Keller Williams
Carpet Cleaners Murrieta - Friends

Squatters moving into Upscale Neighborhoods

noreply@blogger.com (Skylar Lewis) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 20:18:00 +0000

Don't let the Squatters get you!

Squatters have recently been moving into upscale neighborhoods and overstaying their welcome.

Most recently has the been the example of Randy Quaid. He was caught living in a home that was vacant, probably waiting for someone to find out about it. He claims that the home was his but he was not on title and had no documentation.

If you own rental properties, it's important to always watch out for people that might randomly move into your home. This is known as "Squatting". It is very difficult to evict someone that has been living in your home for months and they can prove it. Our legal system is about 90% geared towards tenants as opposed to the landlords. This has also been happening in Hemet Homes also. They tend to be a little cheaper and they stay vacant longer.

Just FYI. Be careful!

Skylar Lewis

Lewis Realty
Here are some of my other real estate Blogs:
Temecula Real Estate
Temecula Restoration - Our Friends
Water Damage Temecula

How is the foreclosure crises affecting our neighborhoods?

noreply@blogger.com (Skylar Lewis) — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 04:49:00 +0000

It is a well known that fact that as the amount of foreclosures rise, so does crime and vandalism. Why is this, and is it happening to us?

Well Temecula and Murrieta have always been very clean cities. Low crime, high grades. This could possibly change in the future if foreclosures in our community keep hitting all time highs. We are a part of Riverside County and Riverside has the 5th highest rate for foreclosures in the country. Temecula Foreclosures are on the rise. Are these foreclosures going to affect our cities in a very negative way?

Foreclosure rates rising in a city means that there will be more vacant houses, which could lead to more vandalism. As soon as these cheap foreclosures are sold at auctions, investors typically buy them. When investors buy these foreclosures they usually rent them out. What we are noticing in the Temecula Valley is that investors from all over the country are buying up our houses and renting them out. We are going from a community of owner-occupied homes to tenant-occupied homes. This will only negatively effect our communities are renters typically do not treat the homes as owner's would.

What can we do about this trend?
Try and get it over with as quickly as possible. We need to get housing inventory moving and out of the way. Price have to start recovering and we need to push investors out of the Temecula-Murrieta market place. Houses in Temecula that are for sale need to decrease and we as consumers, need to focus on keeping up our community and working together.

Temecula Valley is and will stay one of the nicest places to live in Southern California.

Skylar Lewis

Keller Williams - Lewis Realty Group

Vista Homes
Carpet Cleaning Temecula

Zillow.com Advertising. Is it worth it?

noreply@blogger.com (Skylar Lewis) — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 18:00:00 +0000

As you all know, Zillow.com has become a very popular tool for real estate agents, buyers, sellers, and everyone else!

Zillow did a great job by putting together all the information everyone would need about the community, property, agents, etc. It is all in one place and that is what attracts buyers.

The question is, can you convert buyers from Zillow into actual revenue? How long will it take?
Zillow states that the conversion ratio for leads is about 30% in any specific market. So that means if you get an email saying you received a lead, you have a 30% chance that they are an interested buyer. It DOES NOT mean that you have a 30% chance of closing a real estate transaction. You need to watch out for any company who quotes ratios, and check to see where the ratios are coming from.

Zillow.com is actually a good tool. Their main advertising method is showing your picture to the right of the screen when someone is looking at a home, so they think your the listing agent. You have to pay about $500+ a month just for this. We use zillow for Houses in Temecula.They have other advertising that cost $1,000+ a month, but you can start off with the smaller package, if you have that kind of money.

We feel Zillow is a good advertising method if you have the money to pay into it. It will take about 3 months to get your campaign going, but after that you should be getting leads every week.

We have worked with Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, Realtor, and many other Real Estate advertising websites. Zillow is probably one of the most dominant sites, but it costs an arm and a leg.

Skylar Lewis, Realtor
Murrieta Homes
Temecula Houses
Corona Homes

Publishing Several Websites

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 08:41:00 +0000

The advantage of publishing more than one website is that you can have these websites link to each other, to help build up "inbound links".

An inbound link is a link from another website pointing to yours.

So, if you have four websites, you can have three of them linking to your bread-n-butter website.

Ideally, what you want is a hierarchy where the lesser websites link to your main website, but the main website does not link back to the lesser websites.

It's ok if the lesser websites link to each other, just don't have your main website linking back to the lesser websites.

Link Farming

A lot has been written about link farming. This is where you have a bunch of websites that interlink with each other, for the purpose of raising each website's SEO value. The idea is that Google penalizes the websites taking part in a link farming scheme.

But I believe this is largely myth these days.

This is because if you examine some of the top listed websites in a particular genre, you'll find that many of them interlink with other sites, and yet they still get listed at the top of Google.

Most blogs, for example, have blogrolls, where they link to other blogs in the same genre. And these blogs are linking back and forth to each other. That's effectively a link farm. Yet, these blogs still enjoy high rankings on Google for their priority keywords.

To me, that proves link farming is mostly a myth.

I say "mostly" because the link farming penalty will still come into play if these sites are junk sites. That is, if these sites are rarely updated, or have very little content, then Google will downgrade the PR value of these websites.

So, if you want to set up several websites that link towards your main website, just make sure each of those have plenty of content, and are updated on a reasonable basis. You'll avoid any kind of link farming penalty.

Read my other articles on linking.

Ideas for Websites

So what other websites can you create that link to your main website?

A separate blog where you post tips on homeselling and homebuying.

A personal blog where you post personal stuff (recipes, vacation photos)

A real estate market report blog, where you post your thoughts on the local market once a month.

Homes sold blog, where you post a photo and a recap each time you sell a house

Notice I suggest blogs. That's because they're easy to set up on Blogger or Wordpress, and easy to maintain, and because Google still seems to love blogs.

Origin 3 Website Site Design Closed

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:02:00 +0000

There's news that a website design company called, "Origin 3" had to shut itself down for reasons that are not very clear...

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_7972938

But in any case, what amazes me is that this company (as well as many others) could charge business owners $6,000 for what appears to be simple websites. I say simple because they appear to be within my range of capability, and I'm not a very sophisticated web design guy.

Are business people that gullible, or are some web design companies that greedy?

Some of the website designers that I've met personally charge only $50 to $100 for a simple, but still decent looking, website. They charge separately for web hosting, and then set up a retainer for updates.

I suppose I could get into the business of selling $6,000 websites that are effectively simple HTML and CSS. But I haven't because I have this thing called a "CONSCIENCE".

If you're looking to get a real estate website built, just know that a simple, clean looking design shouldn't cost you more than $100.00 to build professionally. Web hosting fees should't cost you more than $10.00 a month. If built effectively, you'd hardly need to update it.

Making Links Look Like Links

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:47:00 +0000

Surprisingly, there are still people who have difficultly recognizing a hyperlink when they see one. The problem occurs particularly with links embedded within articles. While it's a great way reference external sources, hyperlinks within an article are often confused for emphasized text.

For example...

While many of us are experienced enough to know that the underlined text in the example above is a link, many more still don't realize they can click on that text.

I know this for a fact, because I get phone calls about this everyday.

I publish many other blogs besides this one, and many of those blogs are "product blogs", where I write reviews of products, or announce new products. Every article I write has a link to the manufacturer's website, or a link to a retailer. Someone will conduct a Google search for that product, and often times they find my blog.

Then, they'll call me on the phone asking me how they can purchase this product, or if I'm still selling it. The conversation goes something like this...

Caller: "Hi, I'm wondering if you're still selling the one gallon size of Soft Paws?"

Me: "Well, we don't sell products, we just write articles about products"

Caller: "Well, where can I buy it?".

Me: "In the article you read, there is a link to the manufacturer's website."

Caller: "I didn't see any link in the article".

Me: "It's there. Look for some words that are underlined, and then move your mouse pointer over it."

Caller: "Oh, I see it now! Thank you."

This conversation happens with greater severity during the Christmas season. In fact, I just received such a call this morning, around 6:30am Pacific time, while I was still sleeping.

Albeit as a real estate agent, you're not selling products. But if such a person needed your services, and they visited your website, they might also not realize that the underlined text are links.

Jakob Neilsen, who is perhaps the most respected authority on website usability, wrote a book entitled, Coordinating User Interfaces for Consistency, where he said, "One of the most important aspects of usability is consistency in user interfaces." What he means is that today everyone's website works differently from one another, and this causes people to become confused in how to use a website. There are just as many websites that removed the underline on their hyperlinks, as there are websites that use them.

Here are some tips you can employ that might help your web-challenged visitors navigate better...

All links should be underlined. If you set the text-decoration parameter to "none" in your CSS, then turn it back on (remove the parameter altogether). I realize that links without underlines might look cool, but your visitors don't really care about the aesthetic appearance of your links.

Or, instead of underlines, use dashes or dots. More websites these days are doing this instead because it still gives the appearance of an underlined link, but the dashes or dots set it apart from emphasized text. For example, check out CSSPortal's examples on this: http://www.cssportal.com/hyperlinks/
Try also placing parentheses around the (hyperlinked text).
Use italics for emphasized text. This will create some additional differentiation from hyperlinked text.

Use call-to-action-words, like, "Click here". My favorite way to do this is to present a call-to-action statement, and then display the URL as a hyperlink. For example...

Linked text should consist of no more than three words as a general rule. The more words you string together in a single link, the more it starts to look like emphasized text.

Tradewinds Realty - Website Review

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 06:03:00 +0000

This is a paid review.

Tradewinds Realty provides specializes in Nova Scotia real estate.

They currently sit at #1 on the Google SERPs for "nova scotia real estate", and #4 for "halifax nova scotia real estate", and #1 for "nova scotia canada real estate", which are 1, 2, and 3 on the list of popular search terms for these keywords.

But Nova Scotia is a big place, and I'm guessing potential home buyers conduct their searches more locally. So I left out the words "nova scotia" and just Googled stuff like, "halifax real estate" or "lunenburg real estate" or "yarmouth real estate".

I found that Tradewinds' website did not appear for the "halifax" or "yarmouth" searches, but it did show up at #1 for the "lunenburg" search. Then I noticed that Tradewinds' homepage has the word "lunenburg" on it. That may explain why it appears on Google for that search.

Tradewinds does indeed have dedicated pages for these community-oriented searches, but those pages are two clicks away from the homepage (clicking on the "Our Properties" link). I'd recommend adding links for 10 of its most popular community pages to its homepage, to help boost their appearance on Google. These links can be indented below the Our Properties link.

Their individual community pages can be enhanced as well. For example, take a look at their Halifax real estate page.

The TITLE tag should say, "Halifax Real Estate Listings", instead it just says, "Properties by Area: Halifax". Adding the words, "real estate" to the TITLE tag should help it rank better on Google for local searches.

Tradewinds can help its community pages even more by adding the words "real estate" to the query string in the URL. In the case the URL of their Halifax page is as follows...

http://www.tradewindsrealty.com/cgi-bin/listings.cgi?area=Halifax%20&%20Area

I'd recommend renaming "Halifax & Area" in the query string to "Halifax Area Real Estate". Add "Real Estate" to the query string to all community pages. This will help it rank higher on Google for these specific searches.

While the META keywords and description tag is present on the homepage, it's missing from the community pages. Adding unique META tags for each community page, will help those pages rank higher on Google.

Each property featured on Tradewinds' website has its own dedicated URL. This is good. But each page is not well optimized. For example, here is a home for sale named, "Simply Enchanting".

If someone were searching Google for the phrase, "simply enchanting halifax" this property shows up at #2. But who in heck searches for that?

I recommend using more relevant keywords to name each property page. Instead of "Simply Enchanting", call it "South Halifax Home for Sale". If you have two or more homes in South Halifax, variate the names: "South Halifax House for Sale", or "South Halifax Charming Property", etc.

On a usability standpoint, Tradewinds' website removed the underline on their links. I recommend keeping the underlines on links. People tend to click on links more often when they see the underlines.

Another usability tip is that right now the homepage has the following welcome message, "Welcome to SeaNovaScotia.com". This is confusing on a real estate website. It should instead say, "Welcome to Tradewinds Realty, Inc.", with a sub-phrase of "Nova Scotia Real Estate Services". That will encourage potential clients to stay on the website.

Another thing on the homepage, use photos of homes. Right now, the homepage randomly displays images of Nova Scotia's landscape, making it feel more like a vacation and travel website.

Tradewind's "Nova Scotia Real Estate Blog" is hosted on the same domain name, which is a great way to host a blog. It helps disperse PageRank to the whole website. But the blog is poorly updated. The last article is from a year ago. To make a blog work for you, it has to be kept current. Post a minimum of three new articles per week.

On the blog itself, Tradewinds' should have links on the sidebar to its key real estate pages, such as its community pages (Halifax Properties, Lunenburg Properties, etc.). Doing this will disperse more PageRank value into those pages.

Will Inbound Links From a Non-Related Site Hurt Me?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:44:00 +0000

There's a common perception among a minority of people that inbound links from an off-topic website will devalue the authority of your website.

That is, if your website is about Real Estate in Medford, Oregon, and another website about baseball cards is linking to yours, will that help or hurt the authority of your website?

The answer is that it won't hurt.

The better question is, how much can it really help?

Preface this by accepting the fact that you cannot control which websites link to yours. If someone with a website about baseball cards, decides to put a link to your real estate agent site (maybe because he thinks you're a great Realtor), it's nothing you can help.

Therefore, it's nothing that Google can penalize you for.

That link can only provide with some Google PageRank value, IF, Google decides to credit that link to your website. Remember that Google doesn't credit all inbound links to you; it only does so for those links that it feels meets its criteria, and falls into its authority algorithm.

So, if Google DOES credit you with that inbound link then it does provide you with some PageRank value. How much, will only be known to Google.

You can do a inbound links search for this blog, "link:http://www.realestatehow.com/", and you'll see that Google is crediting me for inbound links from dog blogs, motorcycle blogs, food blogs, business card blogs, and more. As long as you can see those links in that search results, Google has credited me with PageRank value from those sites, and of this writing, my homepage is a PR5 on the toolbar.

But does that help my authority?

Authority is the combination of the prominent keywords of a website, and the website's popularity. Thus, any inbound link that Google credits you with, adds to the popularity of your website, and thereby addresses at least half the equation for authority.

You can also raise your authority by publishing a continuous flow of content. Your blog is an excellent avenue for this. You can also strengthen your authority by one-to-one link exchanges between two blogs. This form of reciprocal linking still works very well when done between blogs, as far as SEO is concerned.

Summary

Authority is something that is well within your control. You can still enhance that authority even with inbound links from totally off-topic websites.

While inbound links from off-topic websites cannot hurt you, it's really more of a question of how much can it help you. It may not help you that much, but then again, that depends on other factors.

PayPerPost and ReviewMe - Is It Worth It?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 16:48:00 +0000

PayPerPost and ReviewMe are the top two contenders offering sponsored content marketing.

Through their service, you can purchase a link from another blog. The blogger actually writes a blog article about your product, service, or website, on their blog, and it includes a link to your website. So basically, you're buying an inbound link from a blogger.

The way it works is like this...

1. The service has a large base of bloggers signed up with them, and categorized into subjects.

2. An advertiser can buy a review from the service, either targeting a specific blog, or opening up the offer to any blogger who wants to accept it.

3. Buying a review from a specific blog is usually much more expensive, ranging between $40.00 to $200.00, depending on how popular that blog is.

4. While opening up an offer to any blogger often costs as little as $5.00 to as high whatever you want. The higher you offer, the more bloggers will accept.

Does it Work?

Actually, yes. I purchased a review over a year ago for my dog blog. I targeted one particular blog, that seemed to have a pretty good ranking on Technorati, and had several inbound links according to Google. I paid $100.00 for it. The blogger earned $50.00. She gave me a good review, with a few inbound links to me.

Eventually, Google did credit that inbound link to me, and it still shows up when I do a "Backward Links" search on Google.

Recently, there's a lot of talk that Google is penalizing bloggers that participate in PayPerPost, though I've disputed this here.

The question becomes, how much is an inbound link worth to you?

Remember that the end goal of all this is to get Google to credit that inbound link to you, and there's no guarantee of that. Google will not credit all inbound links to your website. Many are ignored, actually. But inbound link from blogs seem to have a high success rate in getting credited by Google. Services like PayPerPost and ReviewMe have popped up because of this high success rate.

And by the way, I sell paid reviews directly from this blog, click here. (shameless plug).

Click On Your Blogroll Links

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:25:00 +0000

A blogroll is the list of links to other blogs (or websites) on the side column of a blog.

You should maintain a blogroll with links to your favorite blogs. Don't worry if those blogs are not linking back.

Once you have this blogroll displaying on your blog, regularly click on the links. That is, instead of visiting these blogs from the "Favorites" or "Bookmarks" of your browser, visit your blog and click on their links in the blogroll.

When you do this, a visit is recorded on the statistics (server logs) of those blogs. Those bloggers will see that someone clicked through from your blog to theirs. They won't know that it was you that clicked through, they'll only know that people in general are being referred from your blog to theirs.

(Well, technically a blogger CAN see the IP address of each referral, but few people ever take server log analysis to that extreme).

The net effect of all this is that these other bloggers will get a sense that they're receiving a valuable benefit from you, and thereby will put you on their good side. Maybe they will put you on their blogroll. Maybe they'll mention you in their articles. Maybe they will add you as a friend to their Linked In profile, or who knows what.

With so many bloggers out there, there are enough of them to get a good percentage willing to reciprocate a favor. And it all started with you clicking on your own blogroll links.

Vanessa Fox Gives Tips for Real Estate Agents

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:04:00 +0000

Vanessa Fox, who has gained fame in SEO circles with her previous employment at Google and Zillow, speaks on camera about about real estate agents can do when marketing themselves online...

Of course she can't explain it all in just 4 minutes of video.

The main thing that Vanessa said, however was to identify the specific keywords that your target audiences searches for. The operative word there is "specific", not general. She went on to explain that "homes for sales" is not the same as "houses for sale". She recommends identifying what specifically is searched the most.

I want to bring that up because she reinforced what I've been telling you all along, that keyword variation is more important than keyword volume. Read my previous article, "Keyword Variation and Keyword Volume".

In short, Vanessa clearly identifies that what might seem as related phrases to Google, are not always in fact identified as related phrases. So, it's better to incorporate all of these keyword variations into your website. You can still use the most volumnous keyword, "reno real estate" in your domain name, but go on to create lots of pages with other keywords, "homes", "houses", "properties", etc., in their filenames.

Real Estate Blogging Ideas

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:01:00 +0000

When asking yourself the question, "What should a real estate agent blog about?", here are some ideas...

1. Newspaper reactions - Go through the local newspaper (use their online edition), and react to its articles. Write a new blog article telling your readers about a news item you read in the paper, and you can even post a quote from the item, and then provide your response or interpretation.

Look for articles that are real estate related, or, find a way a put a real estate spin on an otherwise unrelated article. Do a search for "real estate" on Google News, and look for blogging ideas.

2. MLS Updates - Each month gather data from whatever MLS you're linked up with, and publish statistics from the previous month. Show the number of new listings, properties sold, average price, average square foot, price per square foot.

3. Strange stuff - Everyone loves to read stories about the strange, odd, and funny. Assuming you're someone who spends some time reading real estate news, and visiting real estate forums, I'm sure you come across funny or weird real estate news. Stuff like this gets people to e-mail your URL to their friends.

4. Tips - Tips for sellers and buyers are always good, but the problem with most tips is that they're too short, or not specific enough. Identify one tip, for example the smell of a house when you first walk in, and go in-depth on it, devoting 3-5 paragraphs.

5. Your Properties - It's certainly good to blog each new property you've listed. When blogging a property, use a different title for each one. For example, use the neighborhood as the title, "Wilshire Square Home For Sale". This will create more keyword variation for search engine indexing.

6. What's new with you - Write about what you've been doing lately, but try to put a real estate spin on it. You want to keep mentioning "real estate" or "homes" in each blog post to help reinforce your authority as a real estate blog with Google.

7. React to other real estate blogs - Maintain a list of real estate blogs and visit them regularly. When you read something that interests you, react to it by writing an article on your blog. Then, include a link to that other blog article. When finished, write to that other blogger, let him/her know that you mentioned them. 50% of the time, they will voluntarily link back, even if you didn't ask for a link.

You want more real estate blogging ideas? The REBlogGirl is running a thread called, "A Year's Worth of Real Estate Blog Ideas"...
http://www.rsspieces.com/2007/06/23/a-yearrs-worth-of-real-estate-blog-ideas

Blog Comments and Backlinks

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 06:50:00 +0000

Question: If I post a comment on someone's blog, and that comment included a hyperlink to my website, will that link provide any SEO benefit for me?

Answer: Generally, no.

Many blog platforms, including Blogger, WordPress, and TypePad, insert the "rel=follow" attribute into the anchor tags of comments. If you were to post a comment on someone's blog, and included a hyperlink, that hyperlink will automatically have the "rel=nofollow" attribute added in by the blog platform.

So, all those hundreds of comment spam you posted on people's blogs, was all for naught. Google won't count them as backlinks, nor will it count them as anchor text, nor even follow them.

The only thing it's good for is to get direct traffic, that is, a click through from the comment.

If you want an inbound link from a blog, try contacting the blog owner and asking them. Reciprocal links, on a one-to-one basis still works very much between blogs. Google doesn't downplay nor ignore one-to-one reciprocal linking between blogs, because as I've said before, Google loves blogs.

It's true, however, that Google hates "spam blogs", but then you're not publishing a spam blog, right?

How Does Keith Byrd Get 681 Visitors Per Day?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:51:00 +0000

RealBird Inc., a technology company that integrates Google Maps with MLS data on agent websites, issued a press release today naming Keith Bird's website, as generating the most MLS searches of all the company's subscribers...

RealBird, Inc., a leading supplier of MLS search solutions and single property websites for real estate, announced today that Keith Byrd, a Century 21 REALTOR® in San Luis Obispo County, California, generated more MLS searches through his website than any of their other agent subscribers nationwide. Keith's interactive MLS Search Map was accessed by over 225,000 unique visitors in the first 11 months of 2007 resulting in over 625,000 MLS searches.

That translates to about 681 unique visitors per day.

So, I decided to do some investigating on Keith's website, "slocountyhomes.com" to see where all the traffic is coming from.

1. Keith's website does fairly well at optimizing on Google for the "san luis obispo homes" phrase, showing up at #5. It also shows up #10 for "san luis obispo real estate". Not stellar, but good.

2. Better yet, he's getting #1 for the "slo" variations. He's #1 for "slo homes" and "slo real estate". San Luis Obispo happens to one of those communities (like Los Angeles), that people often refer to by their initials.

3. His blog is awesome. First of all, he's been writing it since 2004. Second, he's writes it everyday. This translates into hundreds, perhaps a thousand, unique URLs (permalink pages) that he's seeding into Google. Each one of those pages will rank #1 for something. Therefore, the more pages he creates, the more visitors he captures from Google.

4. His blog links to his MLS searches. On the side bar, he has several community links, and each one points to a page on his own website.

5. Backlinks. Actually, Keith doesn't have that many. Which shows that backlinks aren't everything. Though he just picked up a new backlink from me!

I credit his website success first to his domain name, "slocountyhomes.com". It contains two of his most important keywords, "slo" and "homes".

The domain name is the reason why his blog works so well (http://www.slocountyhomes.com/real_estate_weblog.htm). With "slo" and "homes" in the domain, each article adds several unique keywords to it's URL, creating hundreds or thousands of keyword variations on SLO homes. The effect is that anyone searching for ANY variation of SLO homes, will find one of Keith's pages.

Keith is hosting his blog on his agent website (on the same domain name). This is a great way to host a blog. In my previous article "Hosting a Real Estate Blog", I said to host it on its own unique domain name, so that you can also get the backlink benefits. While Keith won't get that, he seems to be doing great with it by virtue of the "slo" and "homes" keywords in his agent website domain.

It goes on to show the power of the blog. It worked for Keith because he's been writing it for years, and still blogs everyday. As I have stated before, Google loves blogs. So blog often, everyday, and keep on doing it, just like Keith.

Writing Good Blog Titles

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:51:00 +0000

How do you know what title to use when writing a new blog article?

As a rule, you combine two elements:

What keyword/phrase variation do people search for, and

What phrase will lure people into clicking

It's not enough to just pack your keywords into the blog title, and hope that it shows up at #1 on Google's listings. You have to write the title in such a way as to make people want to click on it. To do that, figure out what will make the title SO compelling, that it convinces people to think that your page is the best page.

Writing Compelling Titles

A compelling title is a combination of two things;

Providing the right phrase that Google searchers will connect with, and

Not saying too much, so as to create a hint of mystery.

In other words, you want your blog article title to sound like it will answer the questions that searchers have in mind, yet be vague enough to make them want to click. Maintaining some ambiguity in the title makes searchers ask themselves, "Hmmm, I think this has what I want, let me check to see if it does".

A title that "connects" with Google searchers is one that acknowledges their question. For example, if you searched Google for, "how to write a good blog title", and among the results you saw one that read, "Writing Good Blog Titles", those words immediately acknowledges your question.

The "compelling" component is simply keeping the title short enough, so as not to give away too much. That mystery makes people want to investigate.

Finding the right keywords and phrases

This is mostly a matter of using Google's keyword tool, punching in a word or two, and seeing what shows up.

When I wrote this article, I entered "blog titles". The results showed me phrases containing those two words, as well related phrases. I simply sorted them by most popular, and then examined the top 10-15 to find patterns.

Ideally, you could do everything I outlined above, on every new blog article you write, and maximize your Google referrals.

Online Real Estate Marketing Increases

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:40:00 +0000

Borrell Associates, a research and consulting firm that tracks local advertising and helps online businesses develop marketing strategies, published a new report on the state of online real estate marketing...

http://www.borrellassociates.com/ reportDetails.aspx?prodID=91

The report has to be purchased, but I was able to get a free synopsis.

It says that real estate agents, who initially tried to appease home sellers by advertising more on traditional channels, this year cut their print budgets and pushed more money into the Web.

In short, total ad spending on real estate declined 3% this year, while spending on the Internet grew 25.8%, hitting $2.6 billion. The company projects online real estate advertising to grow at 12.4% next year while total real estate advertising continues to decline.

By 2012, Borrel believes that agents and brokers will be spending more ad dollars online than in newspapers.

Real Estate Ad Revenues ($ thousands)
	*2007 Forecast*	*2012 Projection*
Newspapers	$4,842	$3,295
Online	$2,582	$3,453
All Other	$4,038	$4,458
Total	$11,462	$11,206
Source: Borrell Associates, Inc., November 2007

What Borrel didn't say (in the synopsis) is that the current slump has forced agents and brokers to find new ways to market their services and properties, and this is what is driving the online marketing spend. Should the market bounce back to a seller's market, I'm sure newspaper marketing will bounce back.

And as for newspaper advertising, Borrel goes on to paint a grim picture. They project that coming off last year's high of almost $5.2 billion in print advertising, there will be a 6.8% decline this year, almost the same again in 2008, followed by a 16% fall in 2009, and 13% in 2010.

This analysis is pretty consistent with other reports I've read.

So, let's assume that Borrel is correct, and that the real estate industry will largely market itself online. We can look at existing tools, like Zillow, Trulia, blogs, and RSS feeds.

But every ten years, there's a total paradigm change in the way we perceive reality. Ten years ago (1997) you probably didn't think you'd be sitting here learning Internet marketing. Obviously, ten years from now, it's too difficult to predict where we'll be.

I tend to believe that Wi-Fi networks will greatly evolve into marketing tools. Imagine driving by a house for sale, and a broadcast appearing on your car's LCD monitor, showing you the video of the interior. Or, pulling into a Starbuck's drive-thru, seeing the menu on your car's GPS display, and punching in the order right there. This sort of thing already exists in limited applications, using Bluetooth.

I'm sure Google or Yahoo is going to get in on the real estate business, and buy up Zillow. Imagine being a Google real estate agent!

The 18-35 year old market is the most computer savvy of all. Eventually, they'll be wanting to buy a home, and no doubt they'll turn to the Internet before even thinking about calling an agent. So, where will you be in all of this?

Blogger or WordPress - Which?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:48:00 +0000

A big debate on blogging is often on which platform to use, Blogger or WordPress.

I've built up a successful business using Blogger blogs, one of which is the blog you're reading now. They're really easy to set up, free to use, and they seem to get indexed faster into Google.

Let me clarify that again, they get indexed faster, I didn't say they get a PageRank boost.

Google owns Blogger. There has been much discussion in SEO circles on whether or not Google gives Blogger blogs any extra weight in PageRank. I don't believe so. But does Google give Blogger blogs any other kind of advantage?

I think they do, in the form of speedier indexing.

Blogger is tied into Google Blog Search

Google has its own dedicated blog search engine, "Google Blog Search", and Blogger has a pipeline into it.

Blogger provides its publishers with a control setting called, "Let search engines find your blog"...

This setting allows you to get your blog indexed by Google Blog Search. By default, it's set to "Yes".

This tells me that a Blogger blog and its articles will automatically get into Google Blog Search, instanteously, within seconds. And once in Google Blog Search, it's sure to get into Google Web Search.

But the truth is that WordPress blogs can get into Google Blog Search too. It's just that it's not joined at the hip to it. Instead, WordPress blogs have to ping Google Blog Search to get in there.

So the question is, how fast is Google's ping service? I don't have the answers to that. But I have done my own tests to get some circustantial evidence.

One such peculiarity I often find is that certain extremely popular blogs, such as Gizmodo for example, will have their articles syndicated on other blogs, in full. Many times, Google Blog Search will index the articles on those other blogs, before it indexes the same articles on Gizmodo. Assuming that Gizmodo is pinging Google Blog Search, how is it that its content doesn't show up there before the syndicated content?

Bottom Line

What all this means is that when people run searches on Google Blog Search, they're more likely to find Blogger content before they find WordPress content.

And while this does provide Blogger blogs with a small advantage, it's not a significant advantage by any means. The fact is that many WordPress blogs have become very popular blogs. But so have Blogger blogs.

I'd wish that more SEO consultants would start a discussion on the connection between Google Web Search and Google Blog Search, to see how the two influence each other.

Using AdSense Heat Maps

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:55:00 +0000

AdSense Heat Map is a chart showing website designers the areas of a webpage where visitors are mostly likely to click on an ad. It can help real estate agents make decisions on where to place key elements on their websites.

On my AdSense blog, I've written in more detail about the AdSense Heat Map in an article entitled, "Best AdSense Placements".

Here's what the Heat Map looks like...

The orange areas are the "hot zones". These are areas where visitors are most likely to click on an ad. The darker the orange, the hotter. Google created this map based on actual AdSense performance data.

Of course, you won't probably won't have ads on your agent website. But there certainly are elements that you want your visitors to see, and click on.

For example, you want people to notice your property listings. Place them in the orange areas, I'd suggest at the top, just below the navigation bar.

If you have something special to say, put it in that darker orange area.

Your contact info would best go on the left-side, towards the top, in the orange area. You certainly want people to find your phone number, street address, and e-mail address.

Just below your contact info, and still within that orange area, place a link to a webpage outlining your credentials and expertise.

If you find that the website template you're using is not really set up to take advantage of all these hot zones, remember that you don't have to utilize every hot zone. In fact if you did, more than likely the visitor will be confused on what to focus his or her eyes on. It's better to pick just a couple of hot zones, and emphasize those.

Real Estate Blogs

Google created a heat map just for blogs...

I'd make the following recommendations...

First, the navigation column should be switched to the left, just like the design of this blog you're reading. Remember the general heat map showing the orange zones, and you'll understand why left-hand columns are better.

Second, in between blog posts, I'd recommend not stuffing anything. Just let the articles flow one after another. You can post a few links to your other websites from within the body of the article. That'll actually work better for both SEO, and referrals.

Third, treat the blue "Link Units" and the gray, "Links" column as navigational links to other areas of your blog, and to your other websites.

Real Estate Web Forums

And in the off-chance that you might be hosting your own web forum, Google has a heat map for those too...

"cityof" Domain Names

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 16:31:00 +0000

A "cityof" domain name is simply a domain name with the words "cityof" up front. Here are some examples...

cityoforange.com
cityofscottsdale.com
cityofboulder.com

I believe that Google holds some "magical" value for any domain name that has "cityof" at the beginning, AND, in which the city mentioned in the domain name actually exists. I think Google uses some kind of master list of place names.

Here's my observation on why I think this is so...

I publish a hyperlocal news blog, "Menifee 24/7". In my town, there are a few others who compete with me, publishing other Menifee-related portal sites, and news sites. Thus far, I have the one with the highest traffic volume. However, I don't have the site that ranks #1 for "menifee".

That dubious distinction belongs to a website called, "City of Menifee", using the domain name, "cityofmenifee.com". This website is NOT the official website of Menifee. Menifee is not an actual city, it's an unincorporated area of Riverside County. It doesn't have its own government. But it is found on various lists of place names, including the US Geological Survey, DMOZ, and others.

I think Google gives a great rankings boost for sites that represent the official website for government. Official state websites, county websites, and city websites, are given a big boost, because they're supposed to be highly relevant if someone searches for a particular state, county, or city.

So, since Menifee doesn't have an official government website, Google gave that title to cityofmenifee.com, recognizing that it is an actual place name. I think the Google guys have something in the algorithm that allows each state, county, and city to have one official website, and gives it a big boost to make sure it doesn't get overtaken by unofficial websites.

Here are some facts to prove my point...

City of Menifee is a PR3, Menifee 24/7 is a PR4

City of Menifee has 10 backlinks, Menifee 24/7 has 294 backlinks

City of Menifee gets minor updates about 2-3 times per month, Menifee 24/7 is updated about 20-30 times per month

City of Menifee mentions the word "menifee" less than Menifee 24/7.

This only happens on Google. Yahoo and MSN doesn't put cityofmenifee.com at the the top, instead both giving that honor to the Menifee Unified School District

As it stands now, if the guy that runs "cityofmenifee.com" can exploit this Google weakness to his benefit, then so can you. Look for unincorporated communities, with nary a presence on the web. Register a "cityof" domain name, and just publish some content, in my theory it should shoot right up to the top.

Use Local Forums to Build Reputation

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 07:40:00 +0000

One of the advantages of participating on local community web forums, is that you can leverage them to build up your name recognition.

One of the problems about marketing yourself as a real estate agent, is that you're largely "transparent" in the community. No one needs you, until they actually need you. Unlike a restaurant, or dry cleaner, no one notices your store front while driving down the street, if you even have a store front!

Most towns have some kind of web forum somewhere, where local residents hangout to talk about what's going on in their town. By simply participating in the discussions, and signing your name, business name, and website address, on each message you post, will "brand" your name.

The idea is that in time, other community members will remember your name, and will think about you when they actually need your services.

On top of that, signing your website address on each message gives people the opportunity to find your website. Google will actually "crawl" these messages. In rare cases, Google will actually credit these links as backlinks to your site.

Topix is a very large news aggregator, that happens to have set up a discussion forum for just about every city in the USA...
http://www.topix.com/city

Aside from Topix, there are other independent forums that offer the capability of creating "signature pics" or "sig pics". A sig pic is a photograph, or graphic, that serves as a signature. The forum will also let you create a hyperlink on the sig pic. Thus by creating your own sig pic (with your face, business name, and contact), and hyperlinking it to your website, you can drive traffic to your website.

To find some independent forums focusing on your town, do a Google search for something like, "oakland forums". Something will usually show up.

Does Reciprocal Linking Work for SEO?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:31:00 +0000

In short, yes, it works, for SEO.

But it depends on which site you're linking with.

First, Google doesn't count every inbound link to your website. It only counts the links from websites that it feels has a certain level of authority. Spam sites are not counted for obvious reasons.

There are also many websites that Google cannot index for a variety of reasons, including slow responding servers, or an inability to resolve a domain name on a dynamic IP address. If these websites have links pointing to your site, obviously they won't be counted.

Google doesn't index links contained within Javascript.

Content duplication is another reason why so many inbound links are not counted. If the same list of links is duplicated across several websites, it doesn't count them all. The same with Blogrolls duplicated across all pages of a blog. Google will only count a few of the pages.

But I do know that one-to-one reciprocal linking works because I've done this with many of my websites, and I can see it in using Google's "link:" operator. This is how you can tell if reciprocal linking helped your overall SEO, by seeing if the inbound link shows up on this search. Type "link:http://www.yoursite.com" to see which inbound links Google has credited to your site.

How to Choose a Reciprocal Link Partner

Trade links with websites that publish unique content. Two real estate agents trading links with each other is perfect. Both will get an SEO benefit.

However, if your website has a higher PageRank than your link partner, it's true that you'll pass more PageRank into their site, than what you'll get back. But not always.

The amount of PageRank that gets passed through to another site is determined by the number of links on that page. If you're linking to another agent's site from your homepage, and your homepage has a total of 20 links, including links to other sites and links to within your site, the PageRank that you transfer is divided by 20. So, if your homepage has a PageRank of 1,000, you'll transfer a value of 50 to the other site.

But if your partner's homepage has a PageRank of 600, but only had 5 links on their homepage, then he'll transfer a value of 120 to you.

Hence, a reciprocal link where you give out 50, and get back 120, is a pretty good deal. Who says one-to-one reciprocal linking doesn't work??

Remember that "PageRank" is a different animal than the PageRank you see on Google's Toolbar. The real PageRank I'm referring to is the much larger number that Google uses in its algorithm. The single-digit number you see in the toolbar is just an abbreviation of the real PageRank.

Get Links from Blogs

When discussing a reciprocal link exchange, often times I request a link from someone's blog. Google seems to love blogs.

I'll just ask for a mention within a blog article, which most bloggers feel is pretty easy to do.

Blogrolls are ok to reciprocate links from, but watch out. But some blogs have very long lists of blogroll links. In order to maintain them, bloggers often utilize a blogroll management system hosted by a third-party, such as Blogrolling. This third-party then gives the blogger a piece of Javascript to deliver the blogroll links. Google doesn't index Javascript, thus you're not getting any SEO value from it.

Also, bloggers tend to edit their blogrolls, and over time, they may forget about your link exchange, and remove you. This is why getting linked through a blog post is better.

Link Partners to Watch Out For

Be skeptical of trading links with link directories, or agent directories. Most of these won't earn you any SEO benefit. It's not always a black-n-white decision on which directories will work for you, but generally, Google counts links that were created by the publisher's choice. Most directories don't reflect personal choice, rather they're sites where anyone can get a link for some kind of consideration, such as payment, or reciprocal link.

The reason why reciprocal linking works between two agent websites, is because it mutually agreed upon by each agent, and because agent websites are not directories!

I used to have a partnership with Advanced Access, a company that creates real estate agent websites. They maintained a directory of links to various real estate information sites, and included a link to this site (RealEstateHow). They placed that directory on every agent site they created. My site was linked up from hundreds of agent sites across the USA. In return, I linked to back to each agent site from an agent directory that I maintained. In the end, I didn't pick up much benefit from this. Google didn't credit any of those inbound links to me, with the exception of a few. Meanwhile, I was passing through thousands of PageRank points to Advanced Access' clients. I was giving out PageRank, and getting virutally none back. Now, I don't do that anymore, and Advanced Access doesn't link to me either.

REL="no follow"

Google provides an attribute for the anchor tag called, REL="no follow". It tells the Google spider not to follow this link. Here's how you use it...

<a href="http://www.realestatehow.com" REL="no follow">Real Estate How</a>

Another website can insert this attribute to a link pointing to your website. It will negate any SEO value to you. If you conduct a link exchange, you'll want to check the inbound link (look at the source code), to make sure they didn't put this attribute in there.

For More Linking Tips

Read my archive page of linking tips, and Backlinks.

Aloha Whistler - Website Review

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 03:19:00 +0000

This is a paid review.

Aloha Whistler Accomodations is the name of an accomodations broker that provides condos and chalets for skiers travelling to Whistler, BC. Their website is called, "Whistler Accomodations", and is where tourists can go to book accomodations.

Ahola's website has been online as far back as January 1999, according to the Wayback Machine, so they've had quite a bit of time to make improvements. The company itself has actually been in the business of providing accomodations to Whistler tourists for the past 27 years.

A look at their on-site SEO efforts and website design shows that they've done quite a bit...

They've made heavy use of the "whistler" and "accomodations" keywords.

They utilized tabbed navigation at the top of the page, which most usability experts agree is the most easiest form navigation for website users.

They've made their telephone contact easily visible in a red side panel.

They've even embedded a Whistler news blog into their website, which I've said before is best way to use a blog as a marketing tool.

But there are still a few improvements they can make. Here are my suggestions...

They haven't used the "canada" or "british columbia" keywords on page. Google's keyword tool shows that such phrases as "whistler bc", "whistler british columbia" and "whistler canada" all have average search volumes. While the company has used these words in the META tag, they need to place them "on page", that is, within the readable text. Whereever they print the word "Whistler" replace it with "Whistler BC" or "Whistler British Columbia". It carries a lot of weight when keywords are actually being used on page.

The Home page is too static. Add a "What's New" section below that displays the first paragraph from their last three blog posts. Note that Aloha is already doing something like this, but are instead only showing headlines, and they've done this through Javascript (via Feedburner). Unfortunately, Javascript is not indexed by Google, and as a result, Google sees the homepage as totally unchanged. Instead, deliver these headlines and paragraphs through some kind of server-side scripting, like PHP or ASP, so that Google can detect it, and consider the homepage as being constantly updated. This will result in higher search engine rankings.

Add the word "whistler" to all the filenames. For example, their Accomodations page has this filename, "accomodations.php". Instead use this, "whistler-accomodations.php". This will give you a little better search engine ranking. Use it on all pages.

Create pages for all popular "whistler" keyphrases, and link these pages through a "Resources" or "Site Map" page. Other phrases that Google's keyword tool shows as having average search volume, "ski whistler canada", "whistler blackcomb", "whistler condos", "whistler packages", "whistler hotels", "whistler lodging", "whistler ski resort", "whistler vacation", "whistler weather". Aloha should create a page optimized for each of these phrases. This will have the effect of casting a wider fishing net to capture more clients.

Gay Friendly Real Estate

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 19:30:00 +0000

There apparently is a faction of people searching Google for "gay friendly real estate". More specifically, they're searching for this on specific locales.

Here's a list of search phrases that I found on Google's keyword tool...

tucson gay real estate
gay tampa real estate
palm springs gay real estate
gay real estate los angeles
fort lauderdale gay real estate
gay atlanta real estate
gay real estate chicago
gay real estate columbus
houston gay real estate
gay real estate new york
gay florida real estate
san diego real estate gay

Google shows "low" to "very low" search volume on these phrases. But still, there's a minority of home buyers and sellers who want to sift through listings and agents to find one that's "gay friendly". It's an opportunity you can cash in on.

What does "gay friendly" mean?

In my opinion, the term "gay friendly" is a oxymoron. Technically, most people are gay friendly, in that they'd treat gays just like they'd treat anyone else. And if I'm correct, I think that's what gays want. If anything, there is only "gay unfriendly".

Also, there's no such thing as gay friendly property. If a gay or lesbian is specifically interested in buying a home in Omaha, NE, then technically he or she is interested in ALL Omaha properties (not just the gay ones). If you happen to be an Omaha-based agent, you can show them any property.

How to Take Advantage of This

All you have to do is create a new website focused on the "gay" word. Make sure to use other words like, "lesbian" and "LGBT". Make heavy use of the term "gay friendly".

If you're working the Omaha, NE market, you might use a website title like, "Gay Friendly Omaha Real Estate". You might use a domain name like "gay-friendly-omaha-real-estate.com". Put the "gay-friendly" up front because it's more likely to be noticed there.

The website will list all the same properties that you're marketing right now. If you wanted to, you can make it look exactly like your main agent website, but with some necessary changes, like incorporating the term "gay friendly", and showing some tasteful photos of gay couples in the suburbs (you can find these on Google Image search). Find a graphic of a rainbow, and display up top in or near the header. These elements are "signs" that you're a gay-friendly agent.

Link to this "gay friendly" website from your main website. But don't do the opposite. Just keep it as a one-way link. You don't want your gay clients going to your main website, noticing that you've listed all the same properties.

Use Google AdWords to market your "gay friendly" website. There are thousands of websites where gays congregate, that also display ads from Google AdSense. You can get your ad displayed on these sites by setting one up in AdWords.

Real Estate Websites Cash in on Desperation

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Johnson) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 17:31:00 +0000

When home sellers are desperate to get out of a home, particularly in these times when the market is down, real estate agents can harness their knowledge and use their websites to cater to that desperation.

Desperate home sellers, who have become "Internet savvy", often seek solutions on their own by running searches on Google, trying to soak up all the information that they can. They, they try to make informed choices, on which real estate agent to hire, how to spruce up their homes, or even attempt an FSBO.

So Here's What You Do

Basically, you're going to create webpages or websites (preferred) to capture desperate people who are searching Google for answers. By crafting pages that acknowledges their need, you can pull them in from Google, and market yourself to them.

Use Google's keyword tool to find out which phrases are the most often searched for.

Do some simple on-page search engine optimization to help boost its rankings.

The webpage/website titles should clearly acknowledge a specific need. If you want to capture people who are desperate to sell their home in 30 days, then use a title such as, "Tips to Selling a Home in 30 Days". Try titles like, "Five Big Mistakes of Home Selling", or "The Reason why FSBO's Don't Work". Make it no-nonsense.

Then, get this webpage and/or website linked up from as many of your websites as possible.

Finally, consider advertising this webpage/website through Google AdWords. Use highly compelling text that acknowledges the needs of home sellers. Use the same or similar text as the examples above, "Tips to Selling a Home in 30 Days".

The Reason Why This Works

Successful Internet marketers know that the single biggest factor towards marketing success is catering to an urgent need. When someone is desperate for something, they'll gladly pay money to get it. So, what you're doing is catering to someone's need to sell their home right now.

This is why certain niches like weight loss, love, job searching, are so lucrative for marketers. How many decades, or centuries, have people been cashing in on these needs?

You're simply going to capture those people who have turned to Google for answers.

The key to making it work, is to use titles and headings that acknowledges their need. When people run a Google search, they search for titles and descriptions that match the search terms they typed in.

Use a Webpage or Website?

I'd recommend creating a new website just to serve this purpose. You might want to get a domain name called, "denver-home-selling-tips.com". You could even launch another website as well, perhaps called, "easy-home-selling-tips.com". The words in the domain name itself acknowledges a need. Each site need only contain a few pages.

Then from your main agent website, point links to each of these mini-websites. Each mini-website can link back to your agent website. But don't have any of your mini-websites linking to other mini-websites.

Here's an illustration of this linking arrangement...

The reason why you don't want to link from one mini-site to another, is because these mini-sites will likely not be updated with new content on a continuous basis. Google can detect over time if a website is being updated regularly. If not, any interlinking between several non-updated sites, runs the risk of being dubbed a "link farm". This is not a problem as long as you maintain the linking method illustrated above.

On the other hand, if you plan to update the mini-sites regularly, perhaps once-a-week with new pages, then you could interlink them, and avoid the link farm penalty.

If you have any other websites, such as a blogspot blog, or a personal website, link to the same mini-websites using the same method. Just replace "agent website" with "blogspot blog", and link away.