It is likely no secret to any real estate seo's, marketers or professionals in the space that 'are just geeky enough to get into trouble' - Google has been updating its algorithm like the mad, mad machine that it is. It is always up for debate whether their mantra of 'Do no evil' is in reference to no evil on the web and to all of us, or to do no evil to that huge bank account... but I digress.Google normally has literally hundreds of algorithm changes per year - most minor. Over the past 12 months, however, we feel that we have seen around 13 or 14 major updates that have had an impact on Real Estate Search Optimization (our good friends over at MOZ have been kind enough to turn that into a log of sorts, if you get interested).What does this mean for you as a real estate broker or team, who is leading or growing in your market? If you have rankings now, you are probably a *little* intimidated that you might drop, because you don't know WTF you are doing with the last 10 updates. If you don't, you might be a *tad* nervous that you will never see the light of day on on search rankings anywhere.The truth is, most of the updates are, or can be, friendly to you if you can manage to setup a very strong Real Estate SEO strategy that includes content, leveraging IDX, uniqueness, and a few other guiding principles.Some of the updates lend themselves very clearly to supporting a local brokerage with a strong name, while pthers are more obscure. Here we have outlined 3 of the recent updates, and what it could mean for real estate brokerages focused on their online marketing:

1. Google Authorship Removal on Real Estate SEO

Many people heard about this, as it was a complete 'nail in the coffin' of the authorship program that has been being dismantled for some time now. Basically, those author images and information that was accompanying some search results are now gone.What many real estate brokers have asked is if this is coming back, if their Google Authorship markup will negatively impact their rankings, or what they should do with that markup. The short answer is that there is no indication that the markup will ever count against you. And there are still some Author Rank indicators out there that lend to the fact that being a recognized and popular content creator is still great for you. In fact, there is nothing in the value of that core content that has changed. What has changed, is the way Google tries to figure out what should rank where for Real Estate SEO as well as across the web.Recommended Action: Keep building content. Don't worry that your photo doesn't show up, and have a content strategy that is built around value and the SEO is the secondary thought, and this shouldn't hurt.

2. SSL (HTTPS) Update on Real Estate SEO

This one was interesting, as Google almost unilaterally decided that they were going to be a bit of a pain for a lot of people as they basically started the process of forcing websites to be 'https://' rather than 'http://'. For many, this is apainful process, and a lot of real estate website and real estate marketing providers are caught with their pants down on it.Luckily for our customers, we saw some of this coming, and have a single-click way to start to implement. We like to give people a heads up so it does not mess with any external forwarding or other issues. This is an item that is there, and will likely only become a stronger ranking factor as time goes on.

3. Pigeon Update on Real Estate SEO

Pigeon is an interesting one as well, and not many real estate marketing folks or brokers have heard much about it. This can have a very positive impact on brokers websites who are setup well for local, and who have embraced good local best practices.Basically, pigeon brought closer the ranking factors that were released by Google in the well-known Panda or Penguin updates together with the Google Local algorithms. The core concept behind this is that less and less information out there is un-touched by it's location information. So those algorithms are brought together.For Real Estate SEO, this update in particular is interesting, because as professionals, we have access to LOTS of location information, and one of the best angles on the web is to be the absolute best local information resource - right?So, this is where having the right kind of website solutions, IDX optimization, and SEO strategy makes all the sense in the world.Now, for those of you who are so bored that you want to gouge your eyes out, but who don't feel right about NOT reading this in 'this day and age' - just give our team a call, and we can handle this stuff for you. Even for those who are up at 2am (same time I am writing this), and get real geeky about real estate SEO - give us a call, because you should be running a brokerage tomorrow, not spending time with this.