Well it’s not quite that nasty, but it certainly feels a little uneasy on my end of the deal. I usually get 3–4 requests a week for trading links and I routinely decline them all.
Today I get a quite nice, and generally friendly request from my brokerage to use certain keywords and links to the brokerage website from my home page and certain other pages on my blog and static pages. I truly don’t think they are trying to be bastards about this. I suspect it was just realized “hey we have some bloggers and individual websites in the brokerage, maybe they could all link to us and we wouldn’t have to do anything in way of providing content to plump up our page rank”.
Here’s the rub though. The Brokerage main site is Page Rank 5. My blogsite is Page Rank 5. As far as Google cares… we’re equals.
If I’m being asked to add a direct link to the brokerage on my home page, wouldn’t the quid pro quo be that the brokerage adds a direct link to me on it’s home page?
The other thought is making me giggle. I could completely comply with every demand to use the brokerage name as keywords. Heck I could add it to every page a couple times. Just tossing it in the footer and header would do the trick. By this time next year I’ll likely have a solid Page Rank of 6. Which would possibly mean that I would rank higher in search results than the brokerage website for vanilla searches on the name of the brokerage itself.
Another random thought. My own brokerage is ranked as the 14th largest brokerage in sales figures nationally. Shouldn’t they just be a little freaked out that little ol’ me is viewed as an equal in the eyes of Google?
And finally…
Sheesh, caring about page rank? Isn’t 2006 over?
Todd Carpenter
January 3, 2008 at 1:58 am
What you say now? https://youtube.com/watch?v=dIQ53t0gv_4
Anyway, Page Rank is not the most important thing to worry about, but I guess I would have a hard time linking back like they wish. It will help them, and cost you. You should send them the stories about how all of the bloggers lost page rank for artificially linking back in November. Tell them you’re worried the same will happen to you.
You know, lie.
Joe Peffer
January 3, 2008 at 7:51 am
The self-promotion/brokerage connection is always a fine line to walk. I can’t stand the idea of constantly promoting my brokerage (with 600 other agents) every time I promote myself and the happy mediums aren’t good enough.
I constantly consider opening my own brokerage because it seems easier to brand myself as a new brand than as an individual agent. I’m already competing against my own brokerage online and off.
John Harper
January 3, 2008 at 10:39 am
Like you, we ignore many link requests every week. I used to take time to explain blogging etiquette, but there are just too many people who need educating.
Our team leader has approached us several times wanting to know if we will donate our time and effort to build a better Internet presence for the office.
I can’t quite get my mind around me donating my time and effort to improve my competitors businesses when they consistently ignore the need to evolve their use of technology and spend some money to do it.
Jay Thompson
January 3, 2008 at 12:06 pm
It drives my broker crazy that our website ranks higher than the brokerage site, and his site personal site for the search term “Century 21 Aware”.
What really drives him nuts is when people contact us from our site looking for him.
The fact that the brokerage site *sucks* seems to be lost on him. Also lost on him is the fact that not many people use the search term “Century 21 Aware”. “Century 21 Phoenix”, yes. But I don’t think he knows he’s not on the first 10 pages for that term…
loren nason
January 3, 2008 at 12:23 pm
There is an easy resolution to this problem.
Give them the link at say 20 bucks per week.
Then make sure you give the link a “no follow” attribute that way google doesn’t get mad
Loren
Marty Martin
April 19, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Word.
Athol Kay
January 3, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I agree with the comments here. I just pinged an email back saying “er… you want me to compete on keywords for the brokerage name when I’ll likely #1 by the end of the year?”
Waiting for reply…. 🙂
Chris Lengquist
January 3, 2008 at 4:11 pm
New Year’s Resolution #23. Not to worry about all this crap.
Teresa Boardman
January 4, 2008 at 4:59 am
My blog gets more traffic than the web site for our four local offices put together, and more leads. Not hard to do. If I were you I don’t think I would give a link for nothing. I don’t think having the keywords on your pages are going to help you at all. Don’t people search for houses, or information? Do they really search by real estate company brand? My web presence used to come from my real estate compnay, or at least they gave it a big boost. When I left that company I had to start all over. It is very empowering to be my own internet rain maker.
Athol Kay
January 4, 2008 at 6:04 am
The plot thickens somewhat. I get a nice reply, which also included the bait of the possibility of providing blog content for the main brokerage website. Seeing the extremely dull website got 5M+ visitors in 2006, that’s a tempting platform.
I said yes, but with the caveat that there is not really any halfway with blogging.
So we’ll see.