Avoiding Google Penalties On Real Estate Websites
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by Brandon Cornett
I'm equally upset and elated to be writing this article. It's upsetting that so many real estate websites have fallen victim to search engine penalties lately. But at the same time, I'm happy to be in a position to help thousands of other agents avoid such heartache in the future.
What is a Google Penalty?
A Google penalty occurs when the number-one search engine's algorithm detects some kind of manipulative tactic being used on a website. Certain webmaster's (and quite a few search engine optimization companies) rely on manipulation to trick search engines into thinking their websites are larger and more popular than they truly are, all in the hope of achieving better search engine ranking.
When a search engine like Google detects something that violates their published guidelines for legitimate websites, they will do one of two things — they will either (A) penalize the website by lowering its search engine ranking, or (B) totally purge the website from their database.
All of the major search engines have technology to spot these kinds of tactics, but none are as advanced as Google's technology. Spend some time reviewing Google patents (if you're really bored), and you'll see how often they update their filtering technology.
These search engine companies make most of their money from advertising, pay-per-click and the like. The larger their user base, the more ad revenues they can make. In order to grow and sustain their user base, they have to protect the quality of their search engine results. One of the ways they protect their search results is by penalizing websites that try to outsmart their ranking algorithms with deceptive tactics.
Tactics That Lead to Google Penalties
In my professional experience, the tactics that most often result in search engine penalties (or the complete removal of the offending website) include the following:
1. Duplicate Content on a Website
This seems to be one of the most misunderstood topics among real estate folks. So let me clear the air. If you repeat / duplicate entire pages of content on your website, you run the risk of incurring a duplicate content penalty from Google and suffering lower search engine ranking as a result — or possibly having your website removed from their database entirely.
For example, I was once approached by a webmaster who claimed his website was banned by Google. I did a quick review of his website and found that he had duplicated his web pages hundreds of times over, giving them slightly different page titles. This was an obvious attempt to manipulate search engine algorithms by making his website seem enormous, when it was just the same content over and over. That's what I mean by duplicate content.
Many people mistakenly believe that duplicate content is when you publish an article that also appears on another website. This is reprint content, and it's not something search engines penalize. After all, news websites syndicate and reprint content all the time. Reprint documents may not rank as well as the original source document, but they won't incur any sort of penalty. Only when you engage in mass duplication across your own website are you at risk of penalties. Honest republication does not get penalized, but manipulative duplication does.
2. Going Overboard with Reciprocal Links
Let's revisit the goal of search engine companies for a minute. We discussed the massive revenue that comes from search engine advertising, and how that revenue depends on a broad user base. Well, in order to retain and expand their user base, search engine companies are always looking for ways to reward truly popular websites and demote unpopular or manipulative websites. Link popularity is one of the ways they reward popular websites with higher ranking.
Link popularity refers to the quantity and quality of other websites that link to yours. If I link to your website from the home page of my website, I am contributing to your link popularity and helping your search engine ranking — especially if my own website is relevant to yours and well-recognized by search engines.
Now enter the concept of reciprocal links. Most people reading this article will be familiar with this concept, but for those who aren't ... a reciprocal link is when two or more websites agree to link to one another to mutually boost search engine ranking. On a small scale, this technique has its merits — provided you carefully screen reciprocating websites for quality and relevance. But I can't tell you how many real estate agents I've seen who over-rely on this tactic, to the point that most or all of links come from reciprocation programs.
Again, we revisit the business model of a search engine like Google. Search engine companies want to reward truly useful and popular websites ... websites that attract and acquire links in a natural way. If a website gets all of its links from a massive reciprocation scheme, it signals that the website is not popular or useful enough to attract links in a natural way. Thus, they will often demote the ranking of such websites. It's all about integrity of search results, retaining the user base, and maximizing ad revenues.
The best way to acquire links to a website is by having a website worth linking to in the first place. If your website is a truly useful resource, people will link to it naturally (after finding it). Your direct competitors obviously won't link to you, but others in the real estate and lateral industries likely will.
You can also diversify and strengthen your link popularity by publishing articles online, publishing press releases online, and submitting your website to high-quality web directories. But you should always do these things with people in mind first. If you write an article with the intention of publishing it online, it should be a helpful article that truly deserves a place on the web. This will make people more inclined to visit your website, link to it, recommend it to others, etc.
3. Cloaking Techniques
I won't go too far into the technical weeds here, but suffice it to say that cloaking occurs when you show one version of a web page to people and a different version to search engines. If you don't know what cloaking is, then it's probably not taking place on your website (unless your website is managed by a manipulative SEO firm).
A few years ago, in a high-visibility fiasco, the European division of BMW was banned from Google's database for this technique. Basically, people who visited the website saw an attractive web page with a good mix of images and copy. But search engines were "fed" a different version of the page, with endless paragraphs of keyword-stuffed copy. The goal was to have an extremely long, text-based page for search engine ranking; but a shorter and aesthetically pleasing page for human visitors. This is cloaking.
Long story short, BMW claimed ignorance and removed the offending web pages, and their website was eventually reincluded into Google's database. But what a bunch of headache and hassle!
How Many Real Estate Websites Are Affected?
If you really want to know how prevalent these kinds of penalties are within the real estate industry, just enter the following search query into a big search engine like Google or Yahoo: "search engine penalty +real estate website" ... (dropping the quotes by keeping the plus sign). When I enter this phrase into Google, for example, I come up with well over a million web pages where the topic is being discussed.
I find it baffling that so many real estate agents encounter search engine penalties these days. It's baffling because you practically have to try to get such a penalty. It's no mystery what tactics lead to search engine penalties. In fact, the search engines will tell you exactly what to avoid, as Google does in their webmaster guidelines.
Nevertheless, many real estate agents rely on manipulative techniques to increase their search engine ranking, and they inevitably suffer some kind of penalty for it (or a total ban from a major search engine).
Use Common Sense and Don't Sweat It
The truth is, you really have to try hard and go out of your way to get a search engine penalty in the first place, whether it’s a Google penalty or from some other search engine. All of the major search engines tell you in plain English what to avoid. But I can sum it all up for you in one sentence. If you ever catch yourself doing something for search engines but not for people, you are probably a candidate for a search engine penalty.
Here are two parting thoughts I would like to leave you with:
1. Serve Readers, Not Search Engines
Don't ever do anything just for the search engines. If you take part in a reciprocal linking scheme with agents all over the country, you are doing it for the search engines, not for your web visitors. Why would a homebuyer in Austin, Texas want links to agent websites in 49 other states across the country?
2. Don't Become Search Engine Dependent
Don't rely too heavily on search engine optimization (SEO). Many people get what I like to call "SEO tunnel vision" by focusing on their rankings to the point of being obsessed. Search engine optimization makes a great addition to your marketing program, but it should be one of many interrelated parts. So instead of checking your search engine rankings twice a day, try broadening your marketing mix with other forms of online and offline marketing.
