Get Google Love Through Zillow and SEO?
I am sure many of you received an email from Zillow that was titled, “Get Google Love Through Zillow and SEO.” The first thing that came to my mind was, I can’t believe they are blatantly stating that by using Zillow you can get “Google Juice”? According to the email, if you use their site, you could receive a boost in the search engines.
For those of you that might not be aware of how search engine placement is achieved, I can assure you that using Zillow and placing links to your website from Zillow is not going to increase your search engine placement. It takes numerous sites linking to your website to move your way to the top position. Anyone can make this statement!!! I could say “Get Google Love Through Wanna Network and SEO” because the key word is SEO. Your website needs to be optimized for your key words, you have to build links to your website and consistently update your website with fresh and unique content. As easy as it sounds, it’s not that easy, otherwise everyone would be # 1 for their key words.
For tips on increasing your placement in the search engines, read the blog titled “Real Estate Link Building”!
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10 Responses to “Get Google Love Through Zillow and SEO?”
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Hi WannaNetwork, it’s David from Zillow,
First, it’s certainly not true that any real estate site can make this claim. For Zillow, offering SEO benefits to the professionals that use our site is a conscious decision. Most real estate sites take the opposite approach and ensure that RE pros do not get any SEO benefit from syndicating their listings to tem. The most common way in which this benefit is withheld from RE pros is by adding the nofollow tag to links to their websites from their listings. Zillow is one of few sites who don’t add the nofollow tag and we do think it’s quite a big deal and so, that’s where this e-mail comes from. Likewise, professionals have more opportunity to improve their sites’ SEO via profile pages on Zillow than they do on most professional directories where again, links often have nofollow tags or similar mechanisms.
If you do understand link-building, you’ll know that know that links are often built and optimized one at a time. No link is worthless but some are certainly more valuable than others. We have seen that activity on Zillow increases the authority of users’ profile pages and thereby the strength of the links they have on those pages. Many active Zillow users have PR3 and PR4 profiles on the site and links from those pages not only could but would have SEO impact if directed to a real estate pro’s blog or website.
My profile page on Zillow for example, has the same page rank as the wannanetwork home page! It’s also a PR4!
Thanks for that detailed description, David. Nice to see that you stopped by.
mm
David,
I assure you I understand link building!
Your email that you sent out is misleading! Let’s look at what you stated in your email.
Want to show up higher in results on search engines like Google? We can help. Zillow has a lot of “Google Juice” and we want to share it with you. By using Zillow and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you, too, can boost your Google search results.
You are stating that by using Zillow and SEO, you can “boost your Google search results” and that’s just misleading! Using Zillow in your search engine marketing is beneficial in any link building campaign but in it itself, it will do nothing in increasing any real estate agents position in the search engines. It requires more than just pointing a few links from Zillow to “Boost your Google Search Results!”
Case in point, I added my website to the Zillow Professional Directory and created a profile a short time ago and I didn’t notice any gains in the search engines? The links from zillow don’t even show up as a top back link either.
On the flip side, it is important to gain links and like you said some links are more valuable than others and I will say a link from Zillow is a litle better than most.
why is zillow aggerating listings now? The structure on their listing pages looks like Trulia.
I didn’t post my listing on zillow.com and suprize, suprize…there it is? Was it scrapped?
Then, I scrolled down to the bottom of their page and click on one of the links…presto chango…a trulia like page of listings….http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Fountain-Valley-CA/
I wonder what zillow and trulia’s real plan is?
I am not a zillow fan, but on the SEO comment David G is right. Adding a link from a high ranked “real estate” site would contribute decent pagerank to your site. This would help your rankings by increasing your relative pagerank (especially due to the high correlation of real estate terms on both sites). Note, it will take about a month for the site to be reflected in google, but you should be able to see the backlink in yahoo siteexplorer within a few weeks.
Sorry Tony. Love the blog and commentary, but in this case I had to respond with a correction.
Cheers,
nzf
1. SERP has NOTHING to do with PR
2. Google loves links with anchor text. Zillow blocks off the link
So if your link is
abcdefghij.com
Zillow will only show
abcdef…….
So the anchor text is
abcdef…
when it should be at least
abcdefghij.com or an anchor text keyword of your choice
[...] http://blogs.wannanetwork.com/blog/2008/10/25/get-google-love-through-zillow-and-seo/ [...]
“1. SERP has NOTHING to do with PR”
eh?
its pretty basic internet marketing:
Build quality (pr) back links using a variety of anchors
Get higher serps within google for said anchors
Get higher PR next update
anchor text is key on what serp your targeting but a dofollow link from a mega site like zillo / trulia etc is a huge boost to any Internet marketing campaign.
Nice marketing tactic by Zillow don’t you think?
I think lets stick to the Zillow topic and stop throwing weight around about who knows more about linking.
Personally think your heading is great link bait!
My listings go to Zillow and i get traffic from there. That is what it is all about.