Real Estate Blog Lab

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When I first set up the lab one of the first experiments was to see the effect of having more than one URL pointing to the same place.

I know for someone just beginning to figure out their web site/blog they might not know the difference.

In the beginning all we care about is if people can find out site.  In this case we set up our blog to run out of a directory in our main host directory.  This is a folder and not a sub-domain.  In this instance here are the players.

I created a directory (folder) called realestatebloglab this folder contains all the wordpress files for the Real Estate Blog Lab.  The url is: http://www.barbaralasky.com/realestatebloglab/

I bought the url: http://www.realestatebloglab.com

When I bought the domain I told it to point to the directory realestatebloglab. 

1. I told Wordpress the url was http://www.barbaralasky.com/realestatebloglab/
2. I used that address when I left comments on blogs
3. I set it up as the url in Technorati and claimed the blog 

The next step was to start using the http://www.realestatebloglab.com   

1. I used this address when I left comments on blogs
2. Along came the 2000 bloggers project and I used this URL
3. I claimed my blog on Technorati
4. I waited a few weeks for the pot to boil

The 2000 bloggers project put this experiment into hyper drive.  I wish I could say it was the interesting posts that started the links pouring in but it was the 2000 bloggers project that did it.

Yesterday I called a halt, (well as much of a halt as I could), to the project.

Let’s take a look at the results and the implications.

Results

• http://www.barbaralasky.com/realestatebloglab/ 
  • 64 links
  • 11 sites
  • ranking 359,753
  • Google PR 2
• http://www.realestatebloglab.com
  • 126 links
  • 80 sites (yes, it updated after the screen shot)
  • ranking 43,515
  • Google PR 4

Implications

• Instead of putting forth one consolidated effort on the web it split the effort.
• The Google PR update recently helped with this project showing how the lack of links can impact the PR of a site dramatically. 
  • Higher PR translates into higher organic placement for keywords
  • Otherwise known in blogspeak “More Juice”
• The continued diminished return as links accumulate down both paths
• Confusion as people and search engines see the same place as two

The same issue applies to using http://www.realestatebloglab.com and http://realestatebloglab.com both are seen as separate URL’s and create split paths.

Fixing it:

Fixing this is basically the same as if you moved your blog to a new url.  Here is what I did and believe me I am no expert on this stuff.  I’m just trying to shine a light so those behind can see a little better.

• Beg everyone you know to use just the URL you have picked to use.
  • check the links you have and get into contact with them and request they change the links to the new url.
  • write a blog post letting people know the URL you prefer asking your readers to change the URL they have book marked or are using for their RSS Reader. (They may want to delete the feed and re subscribe.)
• Do a 301 redirect in your htaccess file to direct any of the incoming traffic on the old URL to the new URL.

If you have read this far and you find any of my links to the old URL would you please update them with the new one. Here it is again http://www.realestatebloglab.com

If you can shed some light on other things that can and should be done please comment.  I know this can be an issue for blogs and web sites alike.

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Post Tags: Google-PageRank , Real Estate Blogging , Technorati-Rank

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