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I’m
Concerned this won't help much if the rates keep dropping
Number of Indexed Pages Dropping Rapidly
Has anyone else noticed a significant drop in the number of pages that google is indexing on your website over the past week. I have been very methodically about tracking the number of pages which google has indexed for the idxpress on my website. (Google site:http://www.desertmountainhomesonline....) The number of indexed pages rose quickly from 0 to 3550 in 14 days from installation but has been decreasing ever since. 28 days after installation I am down to only 460 idx pages indexed on google. Do you think google is on to us? Are too many people in the Phoenix area doing the exact same thing and google doesn't like it?
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You could be right Carmen. If there are many people using the same plugin in your area then Google could look at your pages as duplicate content and therefore not index them. It could be something else, but if many agents in your area are using the plugin, then it is a real possibility.Comment -
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I’m
neutrally optimistic
Carmen, same happened to me. Mine went up to 3000+ then dropped to 1500 about.
It has since gone back up to 3500 but hasn't gone further. The number of idx pages indexed have stuck at 1200. You would think more would get indexed. Consequently the drop in indexed pages affects my hits on idx -
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I’m
feeling unloved
www.naples-fl-real-estate.com dropped overnight from 1200 Google indexed IDX DS Solutions pages to a meer .....
Results 1 - 10 of about 750 from www.naples-fl-real-estate.com/idx. (0.08 seconds) -
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EMPLOYEE
I’m
confident
hey guys - not quite sure what is going on but there are a lot of factors that go into Google indexing your pages. It could be site structure, incoming links, site authority, content, bounce rates or anything really. While dsIDXpress is not the silver bullet it sure does help and can be very powerful. As always I recommend not trying to index as much as possible. Start small. Try indexing your farming areas first and then start adding additional cities or communities slowly. Try using the Live Listings shortcodes to put lists of listings in your content pages. If any one come up with something concrete please let the rest of us know. -
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Justin has a good point. The number of pages that Google indexes will fluctuate. There are things you can do to keep the number of pages on the higher end. Work on your page rank, back links, and internal links. The more important Google thinks your site is, the more pages it will index from your site.
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I’m
feeling like a revelation has befallen me
I know of only one RE agent with a page rank over 4 and that site has 20,000 IDX pages from DS indexed.
I checked the site DS often refers to http://www.daniellecordova.com which also uses the DS pluggin and is a PR4 site yet it only has 1000 IDX indexed
pages
You can check idx indexed pages by going to google and doing this
site:daniellecordova.com/idx to show all idx pages. Just leave out the /idx for a total of ALL pages indexed by google
The fact still remains that this pluggin is supposed to be fully indexable yet fantastically huge differences in indexing is occuring from 20,000 all down t0 1000 (which is quite standard for most sites I've checked)
If you have an MLS with 26,000 listings and only 1000 pages are index, it won't help your clients finding you.
All my regular pages, over 2000, have been indexed with google and customers find them just fine. So its not as if google doesn't like my site.
What google doesn't like is indexing my idx listing pages -
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Point taken Graham. I don't have the experience with this plug in that you have. It looks like the plug in is working extremely well some websites and not as well for others. I was only guessing as to why that might be. Your website is beautiful by the way. That picture makes me want to move to Florida!
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Yeah, I went from 11,000 4 days ago down to 4,100. I'm not sure what DS can do about that....-
Gilbert - I remember telling you it would probably drop after the google excitement abated. Now it will likely simmer around 4000 pages
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I’m
giving away too many seo secrets
Pheonix is tough because of Jay Thompson using the plugin...or that's my guess anyway.
There are many things you can try to have more pages indexed.
1. Put all of them in content pages and surround the listing with keywords including the Address and MLS#.
All things equal *though that may be unlikely where you have a site like Jay's with a ton of "authority"* - the spiders will like sites that use the keywords more frequently.
2. Put links to specific listings on your home page.
These tend to be get picked up faster. If Google sees a page on your site before it comes across it on Jay's then you might be indexed and rank higher for that listing.
3. Clean up your pages of Duplicate content.
I did some testing with the ListingPress plugin before the company quit development on it...and looked very closely at duplicate content. What I found was that big sites like Zillow, Trulia, etc....had a huge amount of duplicate content on their single listing pages, where my pages - stripped of sidebars and even some of the property details fields - had very little duplicate content. My pages always ranked higher on a very new domain.
I'd extrapolate from that and some other work that the best SEO listing page consists of:
1. the address in the title, URL, h1 tags, h2 tags, in the photo description.
2. no duplicate content in header, sidebar, or footer...or as little as possible.
3. 1 photo and very few graphics for the fastest possible loading time....put it on a fast server too.
4. with it's link in the google xml sitemap
5. FEWER property details fields.
Let me explain #5.
The property details fields all have labels i.e. Property Type: Roof: Beds: Baths: ALL of this is duplicate content on your listing pages which lowers their SEO value. It also lowers your pages SEO value by outweighing the keywords. Keyword density doesn't seem to be as much of a factor in SEO as it used to be, but these make your pages long with lots of duplicate content.
I'd rather have a clean page with only the basic details fields and the marketing remarks.
The final thing is that you can boost your pages SEO value through INTERNAL linking. One strategy is to have each page link to the next to the next to the next...creating a Silo'ing effect and giving that page some authority. Google has been pretty clear that your link value on a page is divided between the number of links on the page (even links in the comment section...which is why to not allow comments.) So links going from a Listing page to a bunch of other listing pages and sidebar links to other pages won't have much value.
Whew. Sorry it's late and I get to rambling.
Pay Per Click ads is the way to go IF your site captures leads well. But auto-SEO can be very valuable.- view 4 more comments
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I was inspired and spent 2 days spec'ing out a plugin that will create a content page for every Listing details page and Summary Results page AND surround it with unique content according to your specifications.
The content pages would enable you to insert keywords, graphics, RSS feeds or other text into areas called SEO Blocks before and after the Listing Content.
The SEO blocks and keywords would rotate upon page creation and reload so the page would always appear to have unique content....or you could freeze individual elements in order to ensure to keep their SEO value constant.
The plugin will also allow replacement of specific text in the actual listing for each town - for example the word "Property Features" with keywords or other code, for example, "Philadelphia Real Estate Property Features" with these words linking to the anchor Philadelphia Real Estate SEO page.
I already coded a portion of it and am looking for Beta testers and development partners i.e. kick in some money to get it in your area before anyone else. NDA though will be required.
This plugin and another that I am envisioning that would enable Lead Capture on any site that uses dsIDXpress would not be open source and would not be effected by any changes to the dsIDXpress plugin.
Robert,
I hope you all don't mind that I do this kind of work. I've got clients that would sure like this sort of functionality...and many others who would use the dsIDXpress plugin if it had them.
I'm happy to discuss this further with you, Justin, and/or any of the other folks on this forum who would like to be part of a small working group on the subject of optimizing the plugin. -
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We take all feedback into consideration. However we are not going to make changes to the output of dsIDXpress on the whim or request of every user that participates in the discussion. One reason you pay us is to sift through the signal vs. noise of the SEO world. Trust us that we're not ignoring what is said here, but you're never going to see us just change things in a short amount of time. We want to take every step very lightly now that each step we take means changing content on thousands and thousands of pages for many clients using the service.
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I’m
amused
You're welcome. Just don't get mad at me if I put up a page that sells plugins that do all these functions or make myself available for hire.
I'm building similar plugins that work on the RealShout plugin and some extra optimization stuff for the RealBird system.
heh heh...
I also know how to change the internal text of the pages the plugin serves up from your server and am about to figure out how to reorganize the design as well...but I didn't think you'd like me to share that!!!
I had to take on the challenge when the tech dept said we couldn't move the Bing map under the Marketing Remarks or customize the CSS.
PS. That Bing view is so dramatic the bounce rate would be much lower if it were more prominently placed. I'm mystified why so many IDX companies bury this at the bottom of the page.-
It's been very interesting tracking and watching Google's response to the duplicate links and content. Giving the client access to the information sells the site to gather the info; however, we need proper seo to get us there and keep us found...
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I’m
spunky
You were too expensive for my pocket Sam and the product was not yet complete at the time I spoke to you. But keep posting here and I'm sure it will stimulate DS to improve. Competition is key to success
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lol. that was about hooking up a different map based, lead capture search site to your MLS and my developer partner not wanting to do the work for free. : ) Hope all is going well for you.
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I’m
content
Too bad Sam, DS did it for free and they seem to be on the ball. Keep giving them suggestions about indexing, it can only help. Thsi was your idea of cost ...."Setting up our system in Naples with property lines, etc...will cost us 3 days at around $3,000. "
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Ah well, I've been happily positive thus far, but I haven't commented on the other important thing which DS doesn't seem to do well, and that's have a high lead capture rate.
Big difference between having a site that SEOs and one that captures leads well.
The key is to use the two in tandem.
The plugin does not have a lead capture function other than a form so it's probably capturing at less than 1% like traditional search sites. BOOOOOOOO!!!!
Gotta fix that one.
People who have good lead capture sites and can follow-up well can run $100 of PPC ads, get 15 leads, and close 2 deals per month...easily. Great ROI and no stress about SEO.
Are you doing 6 transactions per month? because of the SEO value of the site? lol -
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I’m
Wacka wacka
Sam - Your idea of overlapping the county property lines on the google map is unique and quite important when selling land, but not everyone sells land.
The last update DS provided had improvements for leads. The bottom line is Sam, that customer service is key to a growing business and I think, for the most part DS is aware of their issues and work on them constantly
I have no idea why you would gate crash a forum like this to pawn your wares. POst your website and fees and features and we'll all disect them-
You are Wacka Wacka.
Good grief. The plot lines had nothing to do with lead capture.
Go read my other posts. I just spilled the beans on how to modify the use of the plugin to rank and index higher than other users of the plugin.
Anyone with half a brain can follow the logic and hire their own freelancer to develop a way implement those systems automatically.
As you know, I'm not selling much of anything right now. I'm working with specific partners to dominate specific markets. The only time I sell something, like I discussed with you, is if we can get a high enough price to be worth the hassle and/or open up a new market and/or offset the opportunity cost of actually partnering with someone for a % of the business.
I was trying to be nice and helpful to you, because I'm a softie, but John wasn't about to redo his search site and spend a bunch of time on development without getting paid.
So, how much business have you done as a result of using the plugin...or any other technology for that matter.
That's the true test of whether something works or not. -
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yeah, not to beat a dead horse, but DS must act quickly on increasing the capture rate of the plugin. Otherwise they are going to be losing customers, I know of several who are leaving because they simply aren't getting the captures they need. What good is traffic if no one is registering... Come DS you're making it hard to love you! :-)
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I’m
happy
Nice Work Graham! I see you've redone your site and now look very professional. You've integrated the plugin nicely.
It should really be paying off. -
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I’m
sad
: ( I know Gibert. Great folks. Gorgeous map search. Beautiful front end on their regular website. Terrific functional back-end....but even the main search product was registering at less than 1% when I used it 3 or so years ago.
Meethinks it's too visually complex, and in my experience lead capture rate is directly related to size of photos, minimal agent branding, and search site expansion to the full size of the browser window. -
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I hope they are reading this and taking speedy action....
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We're trying! As I posted on the other topics in a bit more detail, the plugin was designed almost solely for SEO; with all the other WordPress plugins and ways to customize your blog/site available already, the lead capture was intended to be left to the user.
Based on all the feedback, we've added the forms as a first step, but I'm not sure how much further we will be developing the existing plugin to focus on lead-capture VS. releasing an updated version or "hybrid" product that marries SEO with lead capture. Our clients definitely seem to be looking for a plugin that has SEO benefits plus all these lead capture capabilities. This IS coming, but it was not something dsIDXpress was intended to do, and will most likely be seen in a new product or upgrade.
We are pretty flexible so we encourage the feedback, but as a friendly reminder, pretty please try to keep the conversation on the dsIDXpress plugin product only; we plan to start a separate forum in June/July for feedback/topics on the map-based search dsSearchAgent. This will make it easier for DS and also for your fellow users (now and in the future) who use this forum as a go-to for help! :) -
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With all due respect Robert we are talking about the dsIDXpress.....about its short falls, which in my opinion has been very constructive criticism. By the way, who in their right mind wants a site with lots of traffic and no conversion. It's kind of silly isn't it...
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EMPLOYEE
