Should I have home listings not followed?
-
Hi,
I currently am doing digital marketing for a home builder. Here is one of our challenges: we build homes, create the page to sell them, details on the house are put up, Google crawls them, and then the house sells and I need to take it off the site. This is just creating a constant redirect process that I'm OK with but I'm just thinking I'd rather have Google not know they exist and delete them.
I have community pages and floor plan pages with evergreen content and a blog that's doing well. I'm OK with Google not seeing these pages, but I'd really like to know what others in the industry do and what Moz thinks is best. I have a working theory of creating 10-15 pages where I rotate the houses: house 1 is posted and once it sells replace site content with house 16 (assuming 15 pages already exist with 15 houses).
Reason - none of my listing pages have any page authority and it overall just makes the site un-authoritative. I know the domain authority is a different ranking factor, but I need the pages to be stronger or just not there. I'd love confirmation that that shouldn't be a concern for me as it seems to be one that I've inherited through years of SEO marketing paranoia.
-
You know what I don't know if this is something you would like to do or not considering your a custom home builder and I just finished up a custom home I purchased in New Hampshire I have a lot of respect for your craft.
I think you can get that information at a very low price and also give your site a little bit more appeal to end-users if you use walkscore.com you can get data if you think it would benefit your site. If not I would simply leave the pricing off of the site entirely I'm assuming that because everything is a custom home everyone is a different price and they are purchasing the land on their own already. I am certain that you advise them. So you really want to show off what you have accomplished with these past homes that you've built. I would definitely keep the photographs and add video if you do not have them. I know when I look at homes I like to be able to see as much as possible and if I'm looking for a builder I want to see a lot of trust signals and past work.
https://www.walkscore.com/professional/research.php
https://www.walkscore.com/professional/
I would also definitely crawl with Moz & deepcrawl you want to make certain that if somebody linked to one of your homes for sale that you keep that link equity as well.
I would definitely make sure that they are visible and show off what you are proud of.
Hope that was of help,
Tom
-
Thanks - super helpful. We are home builders so once a home sells there isn't pricing updated or anything since they are almost custom houses after they are sold. The traditional information that would be enticing for potential buyers/sellers in a neighborhood isn't on our site, unfortunately.
-
Yes - I think that would definitely be a way to go especially creating more link juice out of the sold listings. The related posts plugin idea is golden and I've been trying to think of spicing up the sidebar because as of now it's none existant. I will incorporate that part for sure.
-
I think that you should link to them from the new homes as long as the relevant. So if I live at 1313 Mockingbird Ln. and 1210 Mockingbird Ln. comes up as a sold home I want to know what it sold for I want to be able to get an idea of what people are paying in the neighborhood. So I would not make them into orphans I would have them linked from the new homes and when the new home sell keep the link so they're not orphans they're just helpful data.
I created a video for you it's narrated hopefully this is helpful.
Here is an example of a home that is no longer for sale but is still linked to.
I hope that helps,
Thomas
-
It wouldn't be hard to add custom postmeta to the "home" post type - a simple flag called "inactive." When you create a new home or update one, it would by default be unchecked - meaning the listing is active. Once it sells, you check the box to make inactive = true. From there, you just edit your theme (child theme or custom theme). The easiest way to ensure a link to the inactive listings won't appear anywhere, no matter what type of page you're on - archive/search/etc. - would be to add a filter to the main query. If the post type is "home", add a meta query that searches for "inactive == false". You'd then customize the "single-home.php" theme file - check whether inactive is false; if it's false go ahead and display all the details, but if inactive is true remove the price, add a "not for sale" banner, that type of thing.
This way your home URLs never change, so nobody has to set up redirects, but it's also dead simple to mark a listing inactive and have it disappear from navigation. Yet it still is indexable by Google, it will still appear in your XML sitemap if you're generating one automatically, and people who have bookmarked the listing and return to the page will immediately see that this house is sold. You might even want to use a related posts plugin so that if the house is sold, visitors (and spiders) will see links to related houses that are still for sale. That will give you even a bit more link juice out of your old pages, because they'll be funneling spiders to the newer pages, and they'll also help spider AIs determine which content is the most related.
-
I really like that idea - thanks! To build on that - do you think that it is ok to have them as orphan pages?
I am certainly ok with the URLs stating active and updating the listing to have information that the house has been sold, but I'd really like them to not be a part of any page unless someone has the link bookmarked or something. If it shows up in a Google search, that's fine too, but not just as a part of the site that anyone can navigate to.
Thoughts?
-
I would keep the homes on the site and allow them to be indexed however once they have been sold I would put them into a new category where the buyer does not have the opportunity to see them unless they try to.
If you make sure the site you ask is designed not to show them Two people looking to purchase a house that is still for sale look at companies like Zillow you can see that they keep every listing online and indexed the reason that they do that is the place no longer for sale in a very prominent part of the page including using colors to show what is on the market and what is no longer on the market.
You will have to get with your developer and figure out a way to essentially move them below the listings based on pricing or location however you should keep the URLs indexed to get as much juice as possible.
Sincerely,
Tom
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Old brand name being suffixed on Google SERP listings
At the end of some of our listings in Google search results pages, our old brand name is being suffixed even though it is not in our title tags. For context, we re-branded several months ago, and at that time also migrated to a new domain name. Our title tags have our current brand name suffixed, like "Shop Example Category | Example©". In the Google search results, but not in Bing nor Yahoo, about half of our pages have titles whcih instead look like this: "Shop Example Category | Example© - oldBrandName". The "dash" and the old brand name are not in our title tags, but they are being appended, even when our title tags are fairly long. For example, even with titles at 54 characters (421 pixels), the suffix is being appended. BUT, not with our longer title tags. We are actually OK with the brand name being appended if our title tags are on the shorter side, but would prefer that our current brand name be appended instead of the older one. I realize we could increase the length of all our title tags, and perhaps we may go that route. But, does anyone know where Google would be getting the old brand name to append onto the URLs? We've checked and it is not in our page source (the old brand name is used in our page source in some areas of text and some url paths, but not in any kind of meta tag). Per Google's guidance (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-do-not-put-organization-schema-markup-on-every-page/289981/) we only have schema for the "Organization" on our home page, and not on every page. So, assuming this advice is correct to not add schema to every page, how can we inform Google of our current brand name so that it stops appending our old brand name on pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoelevated0 -
Is there any significant benefit to creating online directory listings that only provide nofollow links to our domain?
Is there any significant benefit to creating online directory listings that only provide nofollow links to our domain? For context, whilst doing link gap analysis I've found our competitors are listed on local government directories such as getsurrey.co.uk and miltonkeynes.co.uk. Whilst these aren't seen as spam directories, it's still highly unlikely we'll receive much traffic through them. The links they provide to our domain have the nofollow tag. So I wonder whether there's any other benefit to investing the time in creating these listings? Would be interested to hear your thoughts Many thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Opera-Care1 -
Best to Combine Listing URLs? Are 300 Listing Pages a "Thin Content" Risk?
We operate www.metro-manhattan.com, a commercial real estate website. There about 550 pages. About 300 pages are for individual listings. About 150 are for buildings. Most of the listings pages have 180-240 words. Would it be better from an SEO perspective to have multiple listings on a single page, say all Chelsea listings on the Chelsea neighborhood page? Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by having separate URLs for each listing? Are we at risI for a thin cogent Google penalty? Would the same apply to building pages (about 150)? Sample Listing: http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/364-madison-ave-office-lease-1802sf Sample Building: http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/for-a-new-york-office-space-rental-consider-one-worldwide-plaza-825-eighth-avenue My concern is that the existing site architecture may result in some form of Google penalty. If we have to consolidate these pages what would be the best way of doing so? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
I have a lot of spammy links coming to my 404 page (the URLs have been removed now). Should i re-direct to Home?
I have a lot of spammy links pointing at my website according to MOZ. Thankfully all of them were for some URLs that we've long since removed so they're hitting my 404. Should i change the 404 with a 301 and Re-Direct that Juice to my home page or some other page or will that hurt my ranking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jagdecat0 -
Google displaying a content box above the listing link for top ranking listing in SERPs
Hi, In the attached Google SERP example the first listing below the paid search ads has a large box with a snippet of content from the relevant page then followed by the standard link. Does anyone know how you get Google to display a box like this in their SERPs? I checked the code on the page and there doesn't appear to be anything special about it such as any schema markup. It uses standard list code. Does this only appear for particular types of content or sites, such as medical content in this case? Is the content more likely to appear for lists? Does it only appear for high authority sites that Google has selected? We have a similar medical information based site and it would be great to try to get Google to display a similar box of content for some of our pages. Thanks. Damien ZmPJVSl.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | james.harris0 -
Question about duplicate listings on site for product listings.
We list products on our site and suspect that we have been hit by Panda as we are duplicating listings across our own site. Not intentionally, we just have multiple pages listings the same content as they fall into multiple categories. Has anyone else had the same issue and if so how did you deal with it?.. Have you seen a change in results/rankings due to the changes you made?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nick-name1230 -
A few questions regarding listings in Google Places
For an SAB (Service Area Business) with a hidden address - Can you have more then one listing? Can you use a free Google Voice number? Can you forward the number to a main number? Can the listing be in an office building? Such as a rented space... For a non SAB listing with the address visible - Can you use free Google voice numbers for each listing and forward them to one main number?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
404 Redirecting to the home page
One of my clients that is managing their own server and website recently moved servers. Which then broke their custom 404 page. Instead of fixing this or putting the site back to the old server they redirected the 404 to the home page. I've been working on getting their 404's appropriately redirected, or old urls redirection using a 301 for a month or two. I read the HTTP Status Codes best practices. It just discusses usability. What technical seo back lash can happen?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | triveraseo0