Real Estate Related

Many of you may have seen this seo “competition” for who can rank for the phrase: “greatest real estate agent in the world”.  I’m officially dropping out. It was short lived.

I’m just really sick of people giving me a hard time and claiming that I’m using spamming to get the results I’m getting.

One of my so called “spam” techniques was to include the keyword: “greatest real estate agent in the world” in some anchor text on comments I left at a few blogs. I immediately got an ear full from other commenters that I was spamming. But the ironic thing is that 24 hours later, I started seeing about 10 other competitors doing the exact same thing. It just cracks me up… I even saw 2 people in particular that did it after telling me it was spam!

Sometimes these competitions just bring out the worst in people… so, instead of creating a bad name for myself because of people’s misconceptions, I’m simply going to bow out of this one.

I went ahead and removed many of the incoming links to this post, and made significant changes to the page itself… so I assume that my ranking will drop in the next 24 hours. It’s just not worth it to me to tarnish my reputation simply because some people have an extremely loose definition of spam. I have been open and honest about the techniques I use, and the people that know me know that I only use and teach white hat seo. The people that are crying spam and black hat have simply never been exposed to what REAL black hat seo is.

The whole contest is really kind of silly anyway. Once I thought it over, I should have realized the kind of techniques that would be brought out. With such a short time frame, you almost have to use some short term “run and gun” seo in order to get ahead. I highly doubt that we’re going to see any revolutionary new seo methods being used by the participants anyway. One of the purposes of the contest was to share ideas, but I have a really hard time believing that is going to happen. My prediction is that it’s going to turn into a “spam fest” and only lend further to the growing opinion in the real estate blogosphere that all seo is spam. This could have been a really great contest… but I just can’t see it benefiting the real estate community. It is however a great link bait idea (wish I would have thought of it), even if that wasn’t the original intention.

This is what I propose for a future contest:

1. Lengthen the time frame (at least 4-6 months). This will weed out the competitors that aren’t serious, and give people time to use some regular long term seo techniques. This will also make it more fair to the website that doesn’t already carry a high trust rank.
2. Don’t just choose 1 keyword to compete on, but 5-10. This makes it more realistic if you’re trying to use the contest as a teaching tool for other agents trying to get better rankings.
3. Create a more comprehensive rule list. What is, and isn’t allowed?
4. Document the success of the leaders on a regular basis (once a month), and reverse engineer their techniques and publish at the end of the contest in order to help other real estate agents learn about real life successful seo techniques.

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In regards to “spam”, I can at least respect the position that Ardell has taken. She has come out openly to say that SEO in general is spam. And I can understand how she feels to an extent. There are so many snake oil salesmen out there, and so much false and misleading information. I see real estate agents fall victim to it everyday. Even though I don’t agree with her on her definition of spam, I can respect it. And believe it or not, Ardell: if you’re reading this, your comments have had an impact on me and I’m going to be very careful from now on with some techniques I use. Namely, respecting the blog authors out there and not over using keywords in my comment anchor text.

So, even though Ardell isn’t even in the race, I’d like to see her come out on top of the results. She is a very opinionated lady, and we don’t see eye to eye on alot of things, but I respect her honesty. Here is my vote for you Ardell: Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World

Good luck to the rest of the participants…

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Just got Meme’d by Margaret Woda.

If you don’t know what a MeMe is, try this link.

Here are a few things you may have not known about me… and I’m including some pics at the bottom of this post too.

• I am 27, and have a beautiful wife named Lori. I have two girls: Caley: 22 mos. & Abby: 6 mos.
• I am a full time worship leader at my church. I play guitar and attempt to sing…
• My favorite hobby is surfing, but since I live in Colorado now… that has become… difficult
• My dirty little secret: I coach real estate agents on how to blog and market themselves, and I run a national real estate referral network with over 1,400 members, but am not personally licensed.

In order to keep this going, I’m going to tag another 3 people…

Here we go, I’m tagging:

• Scott Saghirian – TheTopTechAgent.com

• Sarah Bandy – TylerTalkAlot.com

• Chad Lariscy – ChadLariscy.com

My wife and I…

My Daughters…

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I’ve found that this is a hot button topic among many real estate agents and brokers. Maybe someone can enlighten me, but I just can’t seem to understand why more agents don’t blog about their listings. You have a free opportunity to let the world know about one of your properties… what are you waiting for?

My only conclusion is that most real estate agents just don’t know how to do it. Maybe you are an agent but just don’t want to include a property listing post right in the middle of your other blog posts… whatever the reason, I want to show you 4 reasons you would be crazy not to start blogging your listings

Crazy Myth #1: Blogging about my real estate listing takes too long

Nonsense. You don’t have to be a photoshop pro in this day and age. There are plenty of tools out there that will allow you to create an online flyer that you can easily post on your blog. My favorite, and probably the easiest is VFlyer.com - It is super fast, and it even submits your flyer to GoogleBase, Trulia, Craiglist, and more… sort of a double whammy. And there are plenty of other sites out there there let you create an online flyer… just make sure that you can export it in an html format so you can copy and paste it as a blog post.

If you don’t want to use a property flyer on your blog, or you can’t get it to work, you can still just write a quick description of the property and include a picture slide show using flickr, slide, or Real Estate Shows. You can even post a video tour right on the blog using youtube or Wellcomemat.

Crazy Myth #2: My blog gets no traffic, what’s the point?

There are plenty of other places you can post that listing. Just because you may be new to blogging doesn’t mean that there isn’t value in blogging about your listings. Think outside the box… try using Localism.com. Just go to ActiveRain, paste in your flyer, or listing as a new post. Then choose “for consumers”, and “advertising a listing”. This will also increase your AR points with little to no work!

But don’t just stop there, almost every single social networking site out there has a mini-blog feature that will let you paste in an html flyer, or even add a slideshow. Try: Facebook, wannanetwork, xanga, plaxo, cre8buzz, Myspace. Go crazy… there are hundreds of sites like these to choose from.

Crazy Myth #3: The chances are slim that an individual listing will be seen online.

Even if posting your listing online doesn’t bring a direct buyer, there are still plenty of other benefits to be had.

• Blow your potential clients away during listings presentations by showing them a huge list of places where their property will appear online. Most people are floored when you tell that you will be blogging specifically about their property. It’s impressive!
• If you spend the the time posting your listings in places besides your primary blog, you have the opportunity to create a call to action within the post itself. Direct people to click a link to view all the available MLS listings in their area. Ask them to sign up for your IDX email delivery system notifying them of new properties on the market in their area. The possibilities are endless here.
• Each time you post a listing, you’re creating a link back to your website or blog. This will improve your search engine ranking… but make sure you use good anchor text.
• Branding. Your face, logo, name, comapny… etc. are all branding tools. The more places you leave them online, the more branding will come into play.

Crazy Myth #4: Posting listings on my blog will water down the rest of my content

This myth actually isn’t so crazy. It’s a real concern that many real estate bloggers have, and I don’t recommend that anyone write a post about an individual listing and include it with their regular blog content.

So, here is how you get around that… The solution I’m sharing can be done on any platform, but I’m going to show you how with wordpress.

The best solution for this problem is to create a specialized category just for your listings. Then, you want to tell wordpress (or your platform of choice) not to include that category on the home page. You are essentially just excluding that particular category.

You will want to place this code in your index.php file to tell your home page not to include the category you choose.

Here is the code: <?php query_posts(’cat=-13?); ?>

If that doesn’t work, you can also try this:

<?php  if (is_home()) {query_posts(”cat=-13″); }?>

You will need to change the category number to make it work (where it says: “13″). To find the category number, go to >Manage>Categories, then view the category number you want to exclude. For more detailed instructions on this try this wordpress tutorial.

I hope that was helpful. It doesn’t take much work to blog about your listings. Just go out and do it!

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If you are looking for a customized blog, or in depth coaching to kick start your blogging or internet marketing campaign, please email or call me.

You heard it here folks.  Damion Foxworthy is now the proud new owner of my ActiveRain profile.  The story behind the sale follows…I’m sure many of you have heard the controversy about the sale of MMORPG characters and goods.  It is quite an industry actually, complete with overseas sweatshops where workers will spend hours mining for gold in World of Warcraft, or building up an Everquest Character for resale.  You can even buy 50,000 “Linden” dollars on ebay for only $199.99, in the popular online universe known as second life.  I even wrote a post about it a while back that discussed the implications of a lady that became the first millionaire from selling virtual goods.

It’s an interesting topic… and it got me thinking.  If people can sell virtual goods and money, why not ActiveRain points? ActiveRain isn’t a game or an online virtual world, but it does deal with a potential commodity called: points.

In the early days of ActiveRain, it was pretty common to see people gaming the system for points.  Writing 10 junk posts a day, or commenting 50 times a day just to build their points.  But as AR has evolved there have been measures put in to make sure that in order for people to get ahead, they have to actually work at it.  Which makes the points that much more valuable.

Let’s discuss the value of points for a moment…  As most of you know, points can help you get ahead of your competition in any given market.  You can see here that I am currently listed in Colorado.  Ranked 7th in Colorado, 2nd in Douglas County, and 1st in the town of Castle Rock.  Not Bad!

But, lets say I decided to sell my profile to a real estate agent in Virginia… it’s a hugely populated state, and represents a huge real estate market segment.  But, there is very little competition for points.  Meaning if I were to switch my profile to Virginia…

I suddenly catapult to the number 2 position in Virginia, 1st in Arlington County, and 1st in Arlington.  Pretty amazing!

Not only does the profile now catapult me to the top of the Virginia members, but it also gets me to the home page of activerain for all the people from Virginia viewing the site!

It struck me like a ton of bricks the other day that my AR profile is valuable!!!  And somebody might pay some serious dough to get an instant high placement in the state they work in.  So, I went ahead and sold it to the highest bidder.  I considered the fact that many of the AR member would be angry, frustrated, or even hostile. And if you happen to have read this far into the paragraph you’ll be happy to know that none of this is actually true.  I haven’t sold my profile, I just wanted to see what kind of reaction it would get from the AR community.  What if tomorrow you woke up and saw a profile selling for $6,000 on ebay?  Would you be mad, upset, surprised, frustrated?  What?  Points are important to alot of people… whether you are trying to beat your competitor to the home page or AR, or trying to get to that coveted first spot on localsim.  Points on AR are the underlying thing that drive the community.

The other issue to selling an AR profile is the content.  What do you do with it?  Let the person have it for free?  Place a CC license on it so they can’t duplicate it?  You have to ask yourself, are you willing to let all that content slip away… how valuable is it to you?

Points rule activerain… and I plan to make a fortune from selling AR profiles.  Who’s with me???

Yeah baby…

http://www.inman.com/Member/specialreports/bloggers07/default.aspx

vFlyer has done it again. This company continues to impress me. I have written about vFlyer before, twice actually. At the time, I was a die hard postlets fan because of the speed in which you could post listings. But since then, vFlyer has grown up quite a bit and won me over completely!!! The level and speed of innovation is very impressive.

Since my first article, I have received half a dozen or so email announcements from vFlyer about improvements they have made, and all of them from what I can see are valuable to the real estate professional.

In their latest announcement earlier today, they have opened up the possibility of brokers using the tool for a full office of agents. It can also be set up for assistants or people that want multiple accounts.

This is yet another helpful tool from vFlyer, and the reason why I am referring them to all of my clients that need online classified flyer support.

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When I saw this video on Inman TV, I jumped to watch it.  It’s not everyday that you get a Google executive speak specifically about Google’s goals for the real estate market.

Google Wants:

• To aggregate listings from across the country from the top 100 brokerages.
• To court MLS boards around the country to get them to feed them their listings.
• To provide free data on listings to consumers that are searching with real estate related terms.

What does it mean for you?:

• Make sure ALL your listings are on Google Base Try using a service like Postlets or VFlyer so you don’t have to submit listings manually.
• Keep an eye on your local search terms.  You will probably notice the Google Base search bar come up for some local real estate terms.
• If you work for a local broker, try to talk them into feeding your office’s listings into Google Base.
• On some smaller searches you may start to notice Google Base results in the organic area.