It always seems that there is never enough time to write blogs for your website. There comes the question, could I pay some one to write them for me, hmmmm?

The key to make blog writing lucrative is to spend as little time to write the blog and sell it to as many people as possible. Of course, your job is to pay as little as possible for as many blogs as you can get. Now the game is set, it is time to play "Buy it or write it", the game where the only thing to lose is leads.

Write them yourself

advantages:

Usually you will get better quality when you write your own blogs, especially when talking about neighborhoods in your area. You can put your own personal touch in the blogs, good or bad. You can put passion in your writings and it will show in the blog. It will cost you a little time rather than money.

disadvantages:

It will take more time than buying them.

Buy Blogs Written by Someone else

advantages:

Save you time than having to write them yourself.

disadvantages:

Depending on who you get them from, the blog may sold to every client they have. The writer may copy and paste the material from other blogs and/or sites, rather then taking the time to write them himself/herself. Google will catch duplicate content on your site even if you do not, while they are spending the milliseconds spidering your site. The writer may not have any passion about the subject, it can reflect it in the tone of the blog. The less you pay, expect less quality of a blog.

Conclusion

I have had clients wondering if we will write blogs and/or content for them, especially for their neighborhoods, to beef up their content on their site. We always tell them it needs to come from someone that lives in the area. Agents that live there will know details that someone in other areas will not. Some things just need that personal touch that the owner can only give to it. If you do buy blogs, there are duplicate content sites to check your site and/or blogs out. It is only a Google search away. The game for outside content writers is to resell the content over and over. Also, spend least amount of time writing the content. They are in the business of making a profit just as we are.

Labels: blogs, pay for blogs, write blogs

There has been many discussions on whether links will hurt your site or help it. If you do it right it will help the site, but done wrong it will hurt the site. Of course I have heard horror stories that people claim the links is what caused their site to fall from Google grace or people that link must be flying under the Google radar and one day they will get caught. The thought that pops up in my head is what did they do wrong. Maybe I am used to doing it right that I do not fear linking.

Google

For Google to find a site, either someone has to submit the site to Google or Google finds a link on another site to that site and indexes the site. Hmmmm, but isn't linking suppose to be bad??? In the beginning of Google, it relied on links from one site to another to fill its database with sites to present to the user of the search engine. Even blogs like this one rely on links to give some Google juice to a site. Blog is useless for positioning a site without a link. A link is a link is a link.

Relevant sites

What is a relevant site? In my definition, it is either a site that is local to your area or industry related.

• Local sites are excellent to trade links with. Make sure both sites have the local address on the sites for Google to pick up.
• Industry related sites, like real estate, are great as well. I will stick with US and Canada. Going out to UK or Bulgaria will lose its relevance because of the distance.
  

How many and how fast

This is an important part. If a thousand links are pointed to your site overnight, Google will know it is not natural and you can be penalized or all the links will be useless. If you have a one page site and a thousand links pointed to the site, even if over a period of time, that will be obvious as well. Nice thing about using links in blogs is that you have to write content to go along with the link. The ratio of content to links is always in check. If you write them yourself then there is no way you will write a thousand blogs, for a thousand links, overnight. The idea is to build links over a period of time and if you have link pages then make sure to add a description to the site to add content to the page as the links build up. The ratio of links to content is important. Building up content on the site while building up links is important as well. I do not have an exact ratio to quote, use best judgment.

Why does not every SEO company offer it?

• It is time consuming
• It is expensive to collect potential link partners
• They do not have a clue on the proper way to conduct linking
• It is easier and lucrative to conduct blog coaching. They can regurgitate the same thing over and over and over.

There are some SEO firms out there that will try to convince as many people that it does not work simply because they cannot sell it themselves. Think about it, if you knew it worked you would ask for it and they would not be able to sell it to you, lost business. Don't drink the cool-aid (Jamestown).

Conclusion

When in doubt, take your time in link building. Build up some nice content first. Neighborhood page are a great way to build up content. Blog as well, both are a great combo for a one two punch. Finally, do not drink the cool-aid.

Labels: link building, links, real estate links

There has been a lot of hype over Bing and Wolfram Alpha taking over Google. I even had a client ask me if this was possible for Wolfram Alpha to take over Google and how do we position his Real Estate website for it.

Wolfram Alpha

The developer also created mathematica software, which I did use while taking upper level math classes in college. Both the Search Engine and the software is more for academics than it is for most users. It will never be competition to Google for what most people use the search engines for; unless you want to know how many protons are in the human body or some other science oriented question. I tried to look up search terms like "seattle real estate" and nothing came up at the time.

Bing

Another clone and attempt by Microsoft to gain search engine market share with a few upgrades. Problem with Microsoft gaining market share with anything is that they might charge a hefty price for something that would crash and not be compatible with your older printer and force you to upgrade, or down grade depending on how you look at it, while you are kicking and screaming for he older version to come back. IT personnal would be screaming at the top of their lungs, why me. I am having flashbacks about Vista right now. I think some out of curiosity will try it out to see if it is really all that different and then go back to their normal routine.

Overall

It will be hard to oust Google from being the number one search engine. From my experience with switching over agents to new software, even though once they use it they would never go back, is that people do not like change for the most part. Their routine is comfortable. I still wonder why people are still using Internet Explorer when Firefox and Chrome are far supperior browsers. It is part of their routine. If you're freaking out wondering if everyone will start to switch over to another search engine and what will it do to your sites position; do not start to worry yet, it will not happen over night.

Labels: search engines

I never thought that a site with agents pictures and info only on an internal page (Not the home page) would be considered a stealth site. I thought is was keeping up with the times. What users are expecting have changed over a period of time and so we must fulfill expectations.

Understanding that out of state clients, which is most of the internet leads, find homes in this order:

1. Want to find out about the area and/or neighborhoods
2. Look for homes
3. Find an agent

Finding the agent is last on the list, so it makes sense to put the agents pictures on an internal page. Believe me, no one wants the see the agent and their dog on the front page. That is web 1.0 stuff that should be left in the museum. It really makes me wonder if agents that want to paste their picture on the front page are creating an e-commerce site or just feeding their egos. I know that web designers will feed their egos to get the contract. We design our sites with the end user in mind and the search engines, not the agents egos.

Find a web designer that knows how to create an e-commerce site, not just a website. The difference is that a website can suck all it wants, nobody will ever care to see it anyways. E-commerce site is intended to make money. That high school kid that can design a website for $20 will not work. Drop the emotions and think of cold hard cash you can make off a great SEO and user friendly site.

Labels: Website Design

This is not such a problem as in the past, but every so often I run across a website that makes no sense. Why is this important? Users cannot find what they want then they will click some where else to find it. People usually search in a z pattern and scan the sites, not read it, until they find what they want. An error is only a click away and a different site is only a click away as well. People go to websites to find things faster from their home. Lets make the navigation fast for them to find what they want. It is tough once you get more than 10 pages on your site and you want to link to them all from the home page.

4 Tips to start with:
1) Keep all link text as simple as possible, do not get fancy.
2) Watch the clutter, confusion may follow. Trying to fit too much on the home page will confuse and aggravate users.
3) Most important pages, to the user, always above the fold (top part of the site).
4) Keep the header no bigger than 100 pixels.

A great reference site is webpagesthatsuck.com The top 10 2008 worst sites are always amusing. The site has a list of many things to avoid.

Labels: Content, Website Design

I have looked over thousands of web sites. The main problem with most of them for the potential clients that do come through is that there is no info on the area the agents serve. The thought may be to send it to them in a relo packet to get their contact info. It may work, if they stick around long enough on the site to request it.

Internet leads start with:
1) Finding out if they want to move to the area or which part of the area.
2) Look for homes
3) Find an agent

In that order.

Google loves content. It tells the search engine what you are about. Does not hurt to have the proper keyword density as well for the city/neighborhood and using the proper title and meta tags for the city/neighborhood. Blog style works just fine. Most amazing of all, they do not list the area they serve on the front page for the potential clients. You would think putting the city you serve on the front page is a "no dunno?", but there are hundreds of sites out there that do not. When in doubt, clients will go to another site they know it is the right area. Another site is just a click away, always.

Labels: Content, Website Design

I am having a hard time with the concept of paying to submit your site to the search engines. Really, there is only a few search engines that have any amount of traffic to them. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are the only ones that really matters. Bing is too new to be much of a concern at this point. Since people do not like change, I doubt that many people will switch to it anytime soon. Nothing like entrenching habits with everyday software that people use, like Google.

I run into agents here and there that pay hundreds per month to submit their sites to the search engines, what a waste of money. Once you submit your site or the search engines find your site, they will come back to index it again. I have serious doubts that if you submit the site every month the search engines will come back sooner than they already will or it will make your site any more desirable than it already is.

It makes me wonder if the SEO companies that charges monthly fees to submit your sites every month, actually submit the sites or do they just collect the money since they know the search engine spider software will come back through like clock work.

Here are some FREE ways to submit your sites to the search engines.

FREE submission to google
Use this as many times as you want. Unless your site has changed drastically, once is usually enough.
Submit to Google

Yahoo submission.
Submit to Yahoo

Here is MSN/Live/Bing submission.
Submit to MSN/Live/Bing

Labels: Google, SEO Strategies, SEO Tools

It's important to understand that the ways consumers now digest their news and information is much different than years ago and I consider real estate professionals to be the best poised to benefit from the type of citizen journalism we see a lot of today.

Here are some slides I used recently for a Vlogging and Video Publishing presentation covering some of the basics from recording to sharing.

Labels: Branding, Social Media, Vlogging

You have heard about them: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn tomorrow's next big thing and diving into the world of Social Media is a daunting task when you don't know where to start, what to focus your valuable time and energy on and ultimately what provides a real return on investment.

The Real Estate industry is unique. Social networks thrive on user interaction, sharing quality content, business transparency, building connections and networking. Constantly PUSHING products, listings, marketing ploys to these networks are generally met with negative feedback and few results.

The SOLUTION is two part:

1. Spend time on the right social networks and evaluate the You Brand you are representing on these networks. Know what to share and how to engage the communities using all of the available tools to your advantage.


2. Integrate social networks into your website and blog. Some visitors to your site may just be browsing content and not in the stage to become a solid lead yet. Give these visitors a way to view your social profiles: Facebook, Twitter, ActiveRain, etc and potentially befriend you, follow you or interact on those platforms. Social networks provide a great opportunity to stay connected to and interact with visitors over time.

We have created a Hybrid Social Media Package that tackles the technical aspects of setting up a successful community presence combined with our popular coaching services to ensure long term benefit. We want you to stop worrying if you are doing the right thing and to focus on what you do best, closing deals.

If you're interested in our Social Media Services please contact us today!

Labels: Social Media, Website Design

If anyone has seen those infomercials that will give you ten template sites to sell their products as part of their package. Sounds great? Well, my thoughts is, who cares. Ten sites that will not be seen is just as useless as one site that will not be seen. Now, if you have ten sites that are positioned on Google well; that is a different story. Just having ten brand new sites will not sell your products or services even if they are linked together.

I always give the advice to Real Estate professionals and other people, focus on one site first. One site positioned well will bring in more leads than ten sites that will not be seen by anyone who cares or may have a few long tail search terms. Keep driving traffic to that one site with linking, blogs, linkedin, twitter, and any other social media you use. Trying to get ten sites off the ground will consume your time and will give you mediocre results than spending your time one site.

One thing to avoid with multiple sites is having duplicate content, basically one site ten times. Advanced access got hit hard with this some years back with their template sites when Google started checking for duplicate content. It was one site 30,000+ times. It should be a commandment "thou shalt be unique onto itself". Only one site will gain any page rank and the rest will fall in the shadows.

Moral of the story: focus on one site at a time to maximize your blood, sweat, and tears that you put into your site.

Labels: real estate seo

Welcome to our newest team member Eddi Hughes who recently joined the Working The Magic group!

 

Eddi brings to our team a strong background in web, graphic design and multimedia communication.  Eddi stood out from a number of qualified applicants for his use of social networks to connect with consumers through local niches in the real estate and automotive industries and his technical understanding of content management systems including WordPress.

 

As our client base continues to grow Eddi is an intergrate part of our team understanding that search engine visibility is an increasingly important investment for real estate professionals hungry to create ongoing relationships with their clients and we are excited to have him on-board!

 

We continue to provide great results for real estate professionals interested in succeeding in the online marketplace. Contact us to find out how we can bring more traffic to your website!