Bloodhound Blog Unchained Notes

Heckuva day…

I landed last night in Phoenix and was immediately met by all of the usual Bloodhound Blog suspects Greg Swann met me at the airport and off we went to the hotel. (and we talked there until way too late..and even later EST).

The trip has been great so far.

I just finished teaching a 3 hour SEO class that was a blast. High energy stuff.

I have met a ton of new friends. I am currently listening to Kelley Kohler (aka HouseChick) on the subject of PPC and long tail optimization. I am sitting next to Terry Smith, a Fort Worth REMAX Realtor who I just met.(BTW- Special Thanks to Kerry Melcher of Phoenix Real Estate Boutique for the turkey sandwich!)

The bottom line on this is that it is fun, there is a lot of learning going on and I am having a blast. More updates later tonight.

The case for original content…

Long post ahead, beware. It’s worth reading.

Recently, someone asked on a real estate forum about a specific insurance site and how much use of duplicate content is allowed before (essentially) affecting things.

I noted that indeed the forum that even the forum that we were on at the time was strictly moderated for original content. And for good reason. But the question was raised that once a site became an “authority” site in the search engine’s eyes, then was more leeway granted as far as duplicate content.

My answer to that will be a non answer. Not because I don’t want to address the question, but rather because I think it is the wrong question to ask. I think the right question to ask is, “How important is orginal content to building the overall asset that is my site vs. the time and expense of doing it?”

I’d like to correlate that question with a previous post of mine about publishers going to Google and requesting preferrential treatment. These guys are primarily newspaper sites, and since the site I was asked about was an industry related news site, I think the comparisons are applicable.

The Newspaper sites claim that they are the ORIGINATORS of the news and thus deserve to be the canonical references to it online and that SEO’s are usurping that by posting an article (on an ad filled page) about it and systematically linking to it to get it to rank.

First off, most newspapers are not the SOURCE of news and therefore should NOT be the canonical reference. Most times they are regurgitating rip and read news off of the wires.

On that basis, how can they claim to be the most relevant? (i.e., the most worthy for the top spots?)

So my answer for any type of news or business related sites? Have a take. Have an angle. Spend (errr…INVEST) the time to post unique information. This does TWO very important things.

1) It makes it of more value to your readers. Plain and simple.

2) It encourages links to the story on YOUR site. Links to a news story ONLY come from being the first on the scene with a powerful microphone or having a FRESH take on a situation. (This is the money quote of the post here. Read it twice. ). Second place is TRULY first loser.

So based on the above, posting a news story and having a unique take on it from a site that is already AUTHORITATIVE is the ULTIMATE. You can RANK for it. Generate new readers. Generate more links. And your unique content will do ALL of those more effectively than “rip and read”.

Is this approach worth the time. YES. Is it expensive in terms of time / money? YES. Is it defensible? YES!

If you are going to succeed long term in the search engines, you MUST be willing to invest in a quality product that provides relevance. Search engines crave that and they reward it.

Duplication of someone else’s work can NEVER (in the long run) be considered RELEVENT. It simply can’t. Can you scam the search engines short term with it? Yes. But we here at EricOnSearch are into building assets…and building lasting authority. Spamming for short term gain? Not so much.

HomeGain widgets vs Trulia Widgets – explained

Several months ago, Trulia’s agressive widgetbaiting program caught the attention of many of the blogging crowd in the real estate sector. Here is a Google search of the relevant posts.

I too posted about their efforts and what I thought was wrong with them. I specifically pointed out a couple of flaws in their program. #1) The aggressiveness of their techniques to get the widgets on unsuspecting REALTORS blogs / sites in the very city where they were competing with them and #2) (and most importantly) where they even slipped them into internal pages of sites where the owners did not know that they put them there, but the (in my opinion) unscrupulous action of their website builder Number1Expert played a game of “hide the link” with their own customers.

Folks suspected privately that there HAD to be some sort of a payoff between the two companies, which was denied.

After all of the furor died down, the main thing to come out of it was that Number1Expert folks were given three choices: No widget, a different widget, or the Trulia widget.  The fact remained that Number 1 Expert customer had had a widget added to their site that strengthened their competitors search results without their knowledge.

Well, today HomeGain has announced that they are releasing widgets as well. So you would think that I would jump all over them, right? I mean widgets are evil, right?

Ummm, no.

I write widgets for part of my living. Writing great widgetbait is NOT a bad thing…when done and distributed CORRECTLY. (For transparency’s sake – I had NOTHING to do with the writing of the HomeGain widgets…no am I their “homer”.

I simply thought that this would be a good time to explain what I mean by that because in HomeGain’s effort, I see some things done right.

Step One: They are “Opt-in” vs “Opt-Out”.  This is crucial because Opt Out widgets rely on the inertia of the website not to take them out. BESIDES, to do an Opt-out widget, you MUST have complicity with someone who can “hide the link” or “hide the widget” in the site. Usually this is a webmaster who is counting on less than savvy site owners NOT to notice. (Can one REALLY do this to paying customers? Yes. If the terms of service allow it or if the customer does not rise up and say “Knock it off.” It can and does happen.

The HomeGain widgets are opt-in, meaning that a person wanting to deploy them has to initiate it. Not HomeGain.

Step Two: HomeGain went to another step. Check this out. That is their newsletter where they spell out CLEARLY who the widget is intended for and where it is best used. It is clear, concise and not intended to confuse or take advantage of the less than savvy.

So, before you ask, I will answer: When is it OK to put widgets on my site?

Fair question. All pieces of software included in a blog or site that come from an author can and do deserve to have some form of credit back to the author if requested by them. Widgets included, themes included.

Some widgets are good enough to warrant it. Some are not. Some WP Themes warrant it. Some do not even ask for it. What it really boils down to is will the amount of traffic that the widget brings in offset the value of the link(s) to the site…

The step that HomeGain took was to give the potential customer of their widget the information AND ability to make their own decision. I applaud that. They work in a sector where far to many agents are less than tech savvy and can be taken advantage of.

Trulia (IMO) took advantage of that lack of understanding and tried to get over on REALTORS. HomeGain has not.

LILO – the new internet startup model

A few weeks back, my friend Glenn Kelman over at RedFin posted about how much it cost to startup a real estate site that would have lasting impact. I countered in the comments that I thought the number was much lower and that much of the MBA-izing of the site was not needed.

I like Glenn. He’s had the courage to do what a few other have doen before him as well. Namely the dot.com 1.0 guys. They have cut down tons of trees to forge a wide path. It is essentially unprofitable to cut down trees but that’s OK by me. It IS profitable to drive a truck down the road they’ve created. That’s my business model. Driving the truck of profitability up the roads created by others.

I commented about it here on EricOnSearch a while ago.

Now the guys at Time have created an acromyn for this type of business. LILO startups. Little in / Lots Out. I like that. Great article.

It fits SO well with phrases like Sweat Equity. And Earned Media. And Stephen Covey’s “Begin with the End in Mind”.

I’d like to add something to Mr. Covey’s profundity. Or maybe take something away.Here’s my corollary on creating online businesses:

“Begin with the end.”  – Eric Blackwell

Seriously.

My friend Jon Karlen refers to “beginning with the end” as not being an “Underpants Gnome“. There’s a ton of insight from South Park on that.

There are a whole bunch of low cost / revenue producing sites out there. Bootstrap it. Don’t have enough search engine experience. PARTNER.  You don’t need an MBA to do this stuff. You do need a work ethic, an idea, some savvy, and some would claim copious quantities of Diet Mt. Dew….

Do you have examples of great bootstrappers who have made it online? Send their examples / stories to me! I will be happy to have you guest post on EoS about them.

I want people to see how possible this really is.

Seriously.