I’m going to count backward from 3 and when I get to 1 I want you to wake up. Here we got 3. . . . 2. . . . 1. . . . WAKE UP!
There is a growing cult in the Real Estate blogging community. It is the Cult of SEO. More and More RE bloggers are being recruited to this cult almost every day. The seduction begins with “Look into my eyes, I can get you search results quickly. I can get you rankings and PR almost without effort. Follow me, it is easy, it is quick, it is painless.”
They are being sucked in and brainwashed to believe that if they just focus on SEO they will rank high and blessings will flow from their contact form.
Headline: SEO is the Fast Buck approach to RE Blogging
How many times does it have to be said,
- “Write for the Readers not for the bots”
- “Content is King”
- “Find your voice, not your marketing strategy”
- “Personal is Professional”
Poor SEO advise can hurt your site, but not as much as good content can help it.
There is a lot of hype about the release tomorrow of WordPress 2.3. There are parties being planned, it is a big roll out.
They have done a much better job of explaining what is going to happen and what plugins work and which ones do not. Check this list of working and non-working plugins. WE WILL NOT BE UPGRADING IN THE NEAR FUTURE!!
The lab is where I try out new things and usually upgrade to the latest version of WP when it comes out and provide some feedback on the changes, caveats and land mines.
However, this latest version is including “tagging” in the base functions of Wordpress. The changes are going to break a lot of plugins dealing with tags. UTW (Ultimate Tag Warrior) is one of them along with just about every other tagging plugin now associated with WP.
It is being stated that as is not many bloggers are taking the time to set up a tagging plugin so it is being included to make it easier for those that have never used them.
One of the things that set RE blogs apart from many WP bloggers WE DON’T BLOG FOR FUN. We blog as a part of our business.
In the past when things have been broken for a while with a new upgrade it was more an inconvenience than anything. But messing with the tagging system isn’t just an inconvenience it goes to the core of how we get found in the search engines.
If you upgrade your WP blog to 2.3 you will have to use the built in tagging system, UTW and others won’t work because of the changes being made to the database structure itself.
From what I’m reading it also appear this upgrade will “EITHER DELETE OR REMOVE ALL EXISTING TAGS ON EXISTING POSTS”
Are you prepared to have all the tags on all your posts suddenly removed. Do you know what havoc this will create for how your site is viewed by the search engines?
I tag for local tags as well as technorati tags. I haven’t seen this addressed anywhere in the new tagging system. I don’t care about tag clouds, which are being added in this release. I think they are ugly and take up too much real estate on the screen.
The lab isn’t into new things that can wreck self destruction. No, we won’t be upgrading anytime soon.
My suggestion to RE bloggers. WAIT. If you go to an Upgrade party tomorrow, be the designated blogger and let the hobby and geek bloggers go first.
Remember those kids that liked to build beautiful models of cars so they could blow them up? That is what this sounds like to me. I’ll be following this with interest over the next week.
I have some small single property site blogs which are not longer needed (the house actually sold) I’ll upgrade a couple of those with existing posts and tags. I’ll also be watching to see if some of the plugin authors UTW primarily make changes to the plugins so they will still function under this upgrade.
For me this is one time where “If it isn’t broke don’t fix it” comes into play. The logic “Well most people aren’t using tags anyway so lets blow everything up for those that are in hopes that those that don’t will. DUH!
Let us know your experience if you do upgrade or have further information to share.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.Yeah Right !
