Social Media Bomb Sent From Usatoday Office Injures Thousands
October 29, 2007
Working diligently through the week, contributing reporter Greg Farrell from USAToday probably never realized that his actions would send an impact around the world. In a hurried rush of editorial confusion, Greg succumbed to the pressure of sending along a message that should have been double-checked. Read more
Don’t Be An I’m-a-realtor-too Site - Stand Out! Market Your Website With Quality Content
October 24, 2007
What makes you stand out as a realtor from the dime-a-dozen me-too sites that abound in the real estate industry? Is it the cool graphics? Usability? Layout? These are all important factors, but people tend to pay more attention to them and less to simple components like good content, which can make a big difference in how successful your site is online.
For example, take a look at some of our local authors, especially prolific writers like Legacy Real Estate and Gitta. These clients have gotten tons of leads and traffic. Why? Because they consistently provide good content that is totally relevant to their readers.
In a competitive industry like real estate, everyone is searching for the best way to stand out and creating a steady flow of good content, from video and text to podcasts, is integral to gaining a strong presence online. People searching for real estate in your area WANT to know about it. They’re searching for the best location for themselves or their family; they want to know everything: where to find the best schools, markets, neighborhoods and more.
And who better to help them than you?
With years of experience as a real estate professional, you can help your readers and potential clients find what they need, when they need it, just as you do in every-day interactions offline. Approach any creation of content the same way you would approach a potential client and keep in mind the audience for which you’re writing. There is goldmine of information inside your mind, you just need to sit down and start typing. If you don’t want to write, record yourself talking and upload it as a podcast or create a video blog; there are numerous options available.
Text Specific Content:
The most common form content takes currently is text, but this is gradually changing. “But I’m not a writer” you might say. However, think about the accumulated knowledge in your head and how much you know about the areas you service and the real estate industry in general.
Before you start writing, take a moment and pick two or three target keywords. For example, a target keyword phrase if you’re a realtor in Orlando Florida might be “Finding Homes for Sale in Orlando, Florida” or “Real Estate in Orlando Florida.” Just think about what you’re going to write about and choose the keywords based off your topic. If you’re writing about home mortgages, make sure you include home mortgages once per paragraph. Simple elements like this will make your articles seo-friendly.
Here are a couple forms of common, highly effective article formats:
The Top Ten List
10 (or 5 or 7) Tips for Finding a Home in (City, State)
Intro paragraph - give a little background and stats about the city and state here.
1) Consider where you want to be in City, State
Always look at the areas in and around City, State. Decide which are is ideal for you and your family…
2) Find the right realtor
Find a realtor who really knows their stuff…
Tip 3
….
Tip 4
….
Tip 5
Tip 6
Tip 7
Tip 9
Tip 10
Conclusion- tell the reader why this area is great and why they should think about buying a home here, e.g. neighborhoods to see and things to keep in mind.
The Topic List
Buying Your First Home
Selling Your Home
Getting Your First Mortgage
Topics like those above can take any format you want, but the most effective are short paragraphs with headers:
Selling Your Home
Intro - Introduce and reiterate topic, then follow with something like ” If you’re thinking about selling your home in somewhere, here are some things to keep in mind:”
Get an experienced real estate agent.
An experienced real estate agent can make all the difference in getting a great price for your home…
Take your family’s home needs into account.
Think about the type of neighborhood or home that is best suited for your family…
Conclusion-why, when, how and where.
Quickbooks Just Start - Intuit Simple Start 2008
October 20, 2007
Various companies are experimenting with new ways of using social media. Intuit has jumped into the fray with it’s new campaign to launch the new Simple Start product, with www.iwilljuststart.com.
They are encouraging entrepreneurs to “Just Start” by sharing the motivation, karma, and professional business ideas through a video contest. “The best idea could score $40K in cash and over $10K in expert resources. Plus, two first prize winners walk away with $5K. Enter the contest, it’s easy. Tell us what you’ll Just Start. Fact, fiction or fantasy. What have you always dreamed of doing? What are you resigning from and moving towards? And, how will the Just Start grant ($50k) help you strike out on your own?” Read more
7 Places Yahoo Is Winning The War Against Google - Search Engine Wars
October 15, 2007
It’s common knowledge that Yahoo comes in a distant second place to Google in terms of search traffic, but Yahoo and Google represent a lot more than just search. Here is my list for the web services and properties where Yahoo has effectively out maneuvered Google and is ahead is both market awareness and user experience.
- Yahoo Answers launched in 2005, after Google Answers had been a poor performer for a long time, Yahoo took their new service and pushed and promoted it on their main site. Yahoo Answers worked over Google, because of the user experience - it turns out people really enjoy voting on the “best answer” as well as surfing through the train wrecks. In addition the site has wonderful SEO in the other search engines (Yahoo’s answers tend to rank very well). Overall Yahoo Answers was so successful that Google ended it’s Answers service shortly thereafter.
Jumpstart Your Seo Campaign - Old Domains Improve Search Engine Rankings
October 15, 2007
Within the Search Engine Optimization community it’s well known that it’s much harder to rank a brand new domain / site than one that’s been around for a little while. Now, much harder does not mean impossible. We’ve ranked sites in 2 weeks to a month for 2 and 3 word searches (see distressed real estate), but that usually involves acquiring an excellent domain name in combination with an extensive online marketing campagin.If you start with an old domain that already has page rank links and traffic it makes building a powerful online presence and outdoing your competitors that much easier. Everyday people are trying very hard to spam, spoof and fool Google in everyway they possibly can.
For this reason. It’s often called “the sandbox”, but more accurately it just involves Google not having enough information about a site to trust it, so it delays ranking it for the really competitive and highly sought after terms.
So if your revamping your website try to stay with the same old domain name you’ve had for years, it will lead to faster rankings or if you’re starting a new web venture considering buying an existing site or domain that already is “out of the sandbox” or more specifically has some links, is in Google’s cache and will be easier to rank.
We recently re-branded and launched adsforfree.com where we’ll be selling aged domains with prepaid hosting, existing traffic, pr and content. We’ve got over a hundred domains and websites there, and even adsforfree.com itself is for sale!
Now these domains are in addition to our regular packages and start at just $200 with 1 year of hosting included, if you buy them by themselves they come as is, with no support of any kind. We’ll send you your login info and give you full access to a separate hosting account (with FTP, Cpanel etc) and then you’re on your own. If you’d like social media marketing, advice, support and the other services we do as well, consider the cost of the old domain (which is cheap) an add-on to give you a kick start.
