A Word About SEO That Realtors Should Know

For those that are here to learn about preconstruction, this posting is probably not of interest.
But I do feel there are some realtors that look at this blog every now and then, and probably most have websites and are interested in that website's search engine ranking, and of course, Google is the big dog in search engines.

Those of us who do SEO for a hobby or for a living are all familiar with "Google Guy", this mysterious employee at Google who has acted as a go-between for us and our "godhead". His name is Matt Cutts, and he's now got his own EXCELLENT blog, in which he tries to answer questions that he's asked hundreds of times , and in such a way that it can be referenced later.

I recommend his blog for EVERYONE that has any interest in search engines or Google. He's a funny guy, an excellent writer, and thank goodness, someone that we can finally take as the gospel when he speaks.

That being said, I found this post on his blog today, and for realtors everywhere, you really SHOULD take note of this. I suffer from BO (Backlink Obsession...as he so cleverly quips) as much as anybody. I dream of PageRank at night. And this is something I've always thought, but never knew for sure. Now we know! Matt, if you see this, I love you! Haha.

From www.mattcutts.com/blog

What’s an update?
September 8, 2005 @ 12:01 pm · Filed under Google/SEO
(Normally I, you know, think before I post. I’m experimenting with the quick-post-with-very-little-thought technique here.)

What is an update? Google updates its index data, including backlinks and PageRank, continually and continuously. We only export new backlinks, PageRank, or directory data every three months or so though. (We started doing that last year when too many SEOs were suffering from “B.O.”, short for backlink obsession.)

When new backlinks/PageRank appear, we’ve already factored that into our rankings quite a while ago. So new backlinks/PageRank are fun to see, but it’s not an update; it’s just already-factored-in data being exported visibly for the first time in a while.

Google also crawls and updates its index every day, so different or more index data usually isn’t an update either. The term “everflux” is often used to describe the constant state of low-level changes as we crawl the web and rankings consequently change to a minor degree. That’s normal, and that’s not an update.

Usually, what registers with an update to the webmaster community is when we update an algorithm (or its data), change our scoring algorithms, or switch over to a new piece of infrastructure. Technically Update Gilligan is just backlink/PageRank data becoming visible once more, not a real update. There haven’t been any substantial algorithmic changes in our scoring in the last few days. I’m happy to try to give weather reports when we do our update scoring/algo data though.

Um, that’s all I can think of regarding taxonomies of updates, so I guess I’ll publish it.