MLS Feeds and Site Interfaces:

Dealing with templated websites and sites that utilize web-based interfaces poses a potential problem for search engine optimization. Oftentimes these products impede the ability to access pertinent areas of content and code. In general, sites with dynamic content (including but not limited to MLS Feeds) are built with such a structure that it requires a considerable amount of labor to optimize. This paper is a discussion of such sites and their various impedances.

What is a templated site?
Templated sites are skeletal pages with the main content left out. That way, you can quickly create a series of pages with an identical look or navigational structure but different content. These pages can be created in a variety of languages such as HTML, C#, ASP, PHP, Java, and PERL (in any combination). Oftentimes these sites are database-driven.

What is an interface?
An interface or a web-based user interface is an application which circumvents the need for the FTP access by allowing the user to directly edit and/or upload their content via web-based forms.

Why is an interface a potential problem?
Interfaces can be problematic for search engine optimization in that they may not allow us access to certain parts of the website’s code. For example some interfaces may not allow us to access <meta> tags and some interfaces will not be able to open pages for editing once changes have been made to the code outside the interface. The key issue with interfaces is how much access do we have? Can we access the code via FTP?

What is an MLS Feed?
The Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is a company that offers real estate agents and brokers a membership. As an MLS member, the agents and brokers get access to view the property listings that the MLS maintains as well as to post listings of their own. The primary product of an MLS is this cooperative property listing database that they have compiled by soliciting listings from their membership. An MLS Feed is the delivery of this data for direct and instant posting on websites based on user-defined criteria.

Optimizing E-Commerce sites and sites with MLS feeds
Optimizing E-Commerce sites and sites with MLS feeds requires that we translate all the dynamic pages into static HTML pages. For example a site with a store that has 100 items where each product page is created dynamically from a database will need a static HTML page created for each page that is to be optimized. Ordering will still be handled by the dynamic pages. Furthermore, if the interface disallows FTP access the process takes longer as each change needs to go through a series of forms. Ideally we could make all changes at once locally and then upload the finished product.

Questions to ask when given an interface/store/MLS Feed site
-How much can we access?

• Is there FTP access? (i.e. direct access to the code)
• Do we have to code through the interface?
• Will you need to edit via the interface once optimization is complete?

-Is there a database? (90% or more stores will have these)
-How many items?
-Can we tag the images?

Note: Ideally we will have access to transfer the source files and edit them locally using a program such as Macromedia Dreamweaver.

Popular Interfaces/Stores

Michael King
Technical Analyst

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