Posts Tagged ‘SEO’
Facebook vs. Google
Sunday, July 4th, 2010
Last week I posted an article on how powerful Facebook Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising could be for your business. Since then I’ve received responses from people who say it is not all that great shakes. This is clearly a case of discovering a new “hammer” and thinking everything is the same kind of nail. It’s all about using the right tool, for the right purpose at the right time. Here are some tips that will help you choose the right business promotion tool for the job.
Facebook is about Interests
I recently challenged one of my ULTRA eTEAM members, Roman Pavlik to use Facebook to drive traffic to his new highly targeted DownTownLivingMiami.com Website. Since most of his buyers for luxury downtown Miami condos come from New York, Canada and South America he targeted his Facebook ads to people who live in those areas. Let’s just say there are a lot of Facebook members living in those areas. In a very short period of time (literally just a couple of days) he had over 60,000 ad impressions. Unfortunately, not one person clicked on his ads. And to add insult to injury, Facebook stopped showing his ads (after all, they want to make money too!)
So Brad Carroll (our Online Dominance Social Networking Mastermind coach) and I suggested that he further refine his targeting by including interests that would be consistent with anything having to do with Miami. For example, people living in Canada, New York and South America who are interested in Miami sports teams and so on. While this refinement substantially reduced his pool of Facebook members that would see his ad, the click throughs to his site shot up (he had 24 just in a couple of days vs. zero before).
When advertising on Facebook, less is more and you really have to think about which member interests are most likely follow through on your ad’s call to action.
Google is About Wants and Needs
When someone searches on Google, by definition they are looking for something specific (i.e. a want or need). In this case, it makes perfect sense for Roman to complement his Facebook advertising with a Google PPC campaign targeting people who are specifically interested in buying downtown Miami condos. A little closer to home, I am personally involved in syndicating GoArmyHomes.com Websites for every army base on U.S. soil. Part of this process includes driving substantial traffic to each respective base site. At first we considered running Facebook ads because there are well over 300,000 Facebook members who are also in the army. The only problem is that a tiny fraction of those will be interested in going to any particular base at any particular time. Without a doubt if we had pursued that course of action we would not have seen any click throughs and Facebook would have shut our ad campaign down. In this case, our PPC options are clearly better with Google. However, Facebook is the tool to use as we begin to promote our GoArmyHomes Facebook page.
Facebook and Google are two awesome online advertising tools. It’s just a matter of knowing which one is the best option for the task at hand and using it in the manner that produces the best results for the lowest cost. With a little bit of practice and patience, you will get the hang of it :0)
Climbing the SEO Ladder with Real Estate Keywords
Sunday, June 6th, 2010
I’m sure by now you have all heard of Google rankings. We are all striving to climb that ladder up to the top of the search engine. It is called building your SEO – Search Engine Optimization. This coveted top spot is not something that Google is trying to hide from you – in fact, they have a special tool just to help you get there. It’s called the Google Keyword Tool, designed to help improve your Google rankings.
Carrie Gable of RealSupport, Inc. is our “VA Quick Tip” columnist offering expertise in real estate marketing, technology and more. RealSupport’s office and team of 9 full-time staff members is located near Chicago, IL. Their successful team works virtually for many top real estate agents nationwide. Pioneers in the Real Estate Virtual Assistant industry, RealSupport offers marketing, website and logo design, branding, lead generation, technical support, transaction management and more.
Contact Carrie
Visit us Online at RealSupportInc.com
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Copy and Paste For New Web Traffic
Monday, April 26th, 2010
I get asked all the time about how to prevent people from copying content off their Websites and blogs. Now there is a service that will have you hoping they will!
Copy Me —Please!
Tynt is a new free service that will track what is being copied off your Web and blog sites and help you drive traffic back to those sites as a result. After you set up your free account you are given a short bit of code to add to your Website pages you want to track. For blogs it’s actually much easier. It shows you (or your Webmaster) how to add the code just once and which will then cover every page and post of your blog (highly suggested).
Once your site or blog is loaded in this way any time someone copies and pasts an image or text from your site / blog and pastes it into theirs, a social networking site like Facebook or even an email, it will automatically include an attribution link back to where it was copied from. This provides a powerful and automatic way to build link backs that will drive more traffic to your site and raise its SEO positioning. Oh, there’s one more thing. You can even set Tynt up so that anytime someone copies and pastes your content online, it will generate a Tweet about it in your Twitter account.
Here’s a short video explaining the entire process:
So now instead of dreading that someone is “ripping you off” you can actually benefit every time they send a part of your work to their friends and associates. BTW, feel free to copy any part of this post and forward on to others, you have my whole-hearted permission :0)
DISCLAIMER: Always investigate any third-party products or services to your satisfaction prior to using them. RUSSER Communications, its officers, staff and consultants do not receive any compensation whatsoever from third party vendors and are not responsible for any damage or liability you may incur as a result of using products or services mentioned herein. If you do not agree to these terms do not use the product or service mentioned.
Explode Your Facebook Fan Page Base For No Cost
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
Douglas Newby is one of my long-time students who had zero (0) fans for his FaceBook fan page last September (2009). As of the date of this post he has well over 48,000 fans, each of which contributes to his search engine rankings. Here’s how he did it and how you can explode your fan base without spending a dime. NOTE: if you already have a fan page and want to learn the secret of explosively growing your fan base for no cost without having to read this whole article, just go to www.FaceBook.com/OnlineDominance and click the “Cool Tools!” tab.
Personal Profile vs. Fan Page
There are two primary ways you can represent yourself on FaceBook:
- Personal Profile – everyone who has a FaceBook account has a profile page. This is your “home base” for all your friends and family to connect with you in a personal way on personal (i.e. not business) matters. While how you grow and manage your “friend base” is a topic for another post, suffice it to say it doesn’t even come close to helping your business as the next way.
- Fan Page – sometimes also referred to as your business page. This is where you try to attract and interact with people who are part of your target market or at least connected to it in some way. Now this next part is very important: The more targeted fans you have, the more Google will see you as being relevant and important in your field of real estate expertise. And this translates to significant gains for your search engine rankings. For example, Douglas Newby is essentially a one-man shop in Dallas, yet his site consistently out-ranks those of companies in his area with 1,000 or more agents.
To create a Fan page in FaceBook simply go to www.facebook.com/pages/create.php and follow the simple steps. Now there are some things you might want to do jazz it up so it looks attractive and engaging. There are plenty of articles written about this that go into more depth (just Google “How do you create a fan page on FaceBook”).
Once created, Facebook will give your fan page an innocuous looking URL that no one would ever remember. However, once you have at least 25 fans, you can get your own URL that is tied to your brand. This is crucial that you do this ASAP!! Get your friends and family to become fans so you hit your 25 fan threshold as quickly as possible. Then go to NameChk.com to see if your intended name (i.e. brand name) is still available on nearly every social media portal on the Net. If so, grab it immediately on FaceBook, Twitter and YouTube at the very least.
Growing Your Fan Base
Douglas Newby did something rather clever to build his fan base from 25 to about 2,000 in a short period of time. He simply created a FaceBook ad targeted to people on FaceBook who are interested in modern architecture. His ads were set up as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) which means if they clicked on his ad, they automatically became a fan. Keep in mind however, this method is not free and each fan you bring in this way costs you money. Once he hit the 2,000 mark, his fan page went wildly viral and started growing exponentially by word of mouth from his initial base. The reason his fan base grew so quickly after that is a) his content is extremely interesting to his target market, and b) there are millions of people all over the world that are interested in fine modern architecture.
Here are several ways you can grow your fan base without spending money:
- Send emails to your clients and prospects suggesting that they become a fan;
- Place a “Become a Fan!” widget on your Websites and blogs.
While these methods may add marginally to your fan base, don’t expect rapid growth this way. The key to explosively growing your fan base consists of two parts: 1) make sure you have something of extreme value in the eyes of your target market, and 2) well, it will have more impact if I demonstrate it for you —just go to www.FaceBook.com/OnlineDominance and click the “Cool Tools!” tab and you will instantly see how this second part works :0)
You will find that taking the time to aggressively grow your targeted fan base will have a dramatically positive impact on your online bottom line. There is simply nothing more powerful in marketing than having a bunch of raving fans…
Photo Blogging Your Way to the Top of the Search Engines
Monday, February 1st, 2010
There is no question that blogging can be a powerful tool to help you and your Website stand out from the crowd and generate new business. And, as many have already discovered, it can be time consuming and a lot of work —until now.
Here’s an innovative way to post compelling content to your blog in just seconds that will also help propel your site to the top of the search engine results.
Photo Blogging: Cell Phone to Blog Post in 90 Seconds Flat
Photo blogging is a way to leverage what you do best every day, look at properties and use your cell phone, to create fresh search engine relevant content for your blog even several times a day. Here’s how it works:
STEP 1 – Snap a cell phone picture of a listing in your market area
STEP 2 – Compose an email with the address of the listing as the subject line and just a sentence or two describing the property.
STEP 3 – Send the email to a special address that once received will instantly post your subject line as the blog post title, insert the photo and follow it up with the descriptive text as the main body of your post.
There you have it, about 90 seconds total (unless you are all thumbs like me, then figure 2 minutes). And what is really cool is that you haven’t broken your daily routine to do it. And no more staring at a blank computer screen trying to figure out what to post while you could be out, well… looking at property.
Now at this point you are probably thinking “Awesome, I can do that! Ahhh, what’s that special address I need to send these emails to?” As you might have guessed, there’s just a little bit of set up you have to do before you start photo blogging yourself silly…
Getting Started
The first thing you want to do is set up a free account at Posterous.com. Once set up, you will be able to send your cell phone posts to post@posterous.com and it will “know” who sent it (it also works with email sent from any device, including your computer). Now if this is far as you go, Posterous will automatically create your blog and handle updating it via your emails. However, if you want to maximize your “Google Juice” that a frequently updated blog can give you and have a look & feel that is consistent with your brand, then there are a few other things that you want to do:
- Create a sub-domain from your main Website domain that points to your photo blog. For example, if your main site domain is “LuxuryMountainHomes.com” then you may want to set your photo blog URL as “photoblog.LuxuryMountainHomes.com” with links to it on every page of your site. By doing this, search engines like Google will attribute the new photo blog content to your entire site. And since you used the property address as the post title, your site’s relevancy for your market area increases with every submission.
- Have your Web designer modify the look and feel of your Posterous blog to be consistent with that of your main Website.
By doing the above, you now have a way to constantly be adding high-relevancy blog content to your site throughout the day, day-in day-out without breaking a sweat.
IMPORTANT: if you already have a blog with more traditional content, be sure to make your photo blog separate from it. Not everyone subscribed to your current blog will want to receive your photo blog posts throughout the day.
Remember, the main benefit of a photo blog is quickly and easily adding search engine relevant content to your site on a regular basis, not necessarily to inform a reader base.
From $250K to $600K Average Sales Price in Just a Few Months
Walter Burns is a condo specialist with Weichert Realtors in Hoboken, NJ. Thanks to his social media efforts (a large part of which is his photo blogging) his average transaction prices have soared from $250,000 to over $600,000 in short period of time. You can see his photo blog by going to http://photos.livingonthehudson.com/. You will notice that in addition to his photo blog he has a traditional one as well, both of which are seamlessly integrated into his main site www.LivingOnTheHudson.com. If you examine both, you will see that the frequency of his posts to his photo blog is far greater than his regular one. And for good reason, it’s so darn easy!
Whether you are brand new to blogging or a seasoned social networking pro, photo blogging is one tool you should be using on a daily basis. If you can take photos and text with your cell phone, you can photo blog.
NOTE: Mr. Internet®, RUSSER Communications, its staff and officers receive no compensation whatsoever from any third party vendors (unless he/they are directly involved with the creation and/or improvement of a vendor service or product), and make no recommendations as to the suitability of the products or services mentioned in this article. Always thoroughly investigate any product or service before trying or purchasing.
Mr. Internet is the alter-ego of Michael J. Russer, an internationally recognized Internet speaker, trainer, author, and strategic consultant to the real estate industry. He’s dedicated to helping real estate professionals leverage their people skills into profit on the Internet. Send your Internet questions to help@askmrinternet.com or you can visit his Website at http://www.russer.com
This article is reprinted in its entirety from the February 2010 issue of REALTOR® Magazine by permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®. Copyright © 2010. All Rights Reserved other than mentioned above. Mr. Internet® is a registered trademark of RUSSER Communications.
Photo Blogging: Cell Phone to Blog Post in 90 Seconds Flat
Photo blogging is a way to leverage what you do best every day, look at properties and use your cell phone, to create fresh search engine relevant content for your blog even several times a day. Here’s how it works:
STEP 1 – Snap a cell phone picture of a listing in your market area
STEP 2 – Compose an email with the address of the listing as the subject line and just a sentence or two describing the property.
STEP 3 – Send the email to a special address that once received will instantly post your subject line as the blog post title, insert the photo and follow it up with the descriptive text as the main body of your post.
There you have it, about 90 seconds total (unless you are all thumbs like me, then figure 2 minutes). And what is really cool is that you haven’t broken your daily routine to do it. And no more staring at a blank computer screen trying to figure out what to post while you could be out, well… looking at property.
Now at this point you are probably thinking “Awesome, I can do that! Ahhh, what’s that special address I need to send these emails to?” As you might have guessed, there’s just a little bit of set up you have to do before you start photo blogging yourself silly…
Getting Started
The first thing you want to do is set up a free account at Posterous.com. Once set up, you will be able to send your cell phone posts to post@posterous.com and it will “know” who sent it (it also works with email sent from any device, including your computer). Now if this is far as you go, Posterous will automatically create your blog and handle updating it via your emails. However, if you want to maximize your “Google Juice” that a frequently updated blog can give you and have a look & feel that is consistent with your brand, then there are a few other things that you want to do:
a) Create a sub-domain from your main Website domain that points to your photo blog. For example, if your main site domain is “LuxuryMountainHomes.com” then you may want to set your photo blog URL as “photoblog.LuxuryMountainHomes.com” with links to it on every page of your site. By doing this, search engines like Google will attribute the new photo blog content to your entire site. And since you used the property address as the post title, your site’s relevancy for your market area increases with every submission.
b) Have your Web designer modify the look and feel of your Posterous blog to be consistent with that of your main Website.
By doing the above, you now have a way to constantly be adding high-relevancy blog content to your site throughout the day, day-in day-out without breaking a sweat. IMPORTANT: if you already have a blog with more traditional content, be sure to make your photo blog separate from it. Not everyone subscribed to your current blog will want to receive your photo blog posts throughout the day. Remember, the main benefit of a photo blog is quickly and easily adding search engine relevant content to your site on a regular basis, not necessarily to inform a reader base.
From $250K to $600K Average Sales Price in Just a Few Months
Walter Burns is a condo specialist with Weichert Realtors in Hoboken, NJ. Thanks to his social media efforts (a large part of which is his photo blogging) his average transaction prices have soared from $250,000 to over $600,000 in short period of time. You can see his photo blog by going to http://photos.livingonthehudson.com/. You will notice that in addition to his photo blog he has a traditional one as well, both of which are seamlessly integrated into his main site www.LivingOnTheHudson.com. If you examine both, you will see that the frequency of his posts to his photo blog is far greater than his regular one. And for good reason, it’s so darn easy!
Whether you are brand new to blogging or a seasoned social networking pro, photo blogging is one tool you should be using on a daily basis. If you can take photos and text with your cell phone, you can photo blog.
NOTE: Mr. Internet®, RUSSER Communications, its staff and officers receive no compensation whatsoever from any third party vendors (unless he/they are directly involved with the creation and/or improvement of a vendor service or product), and make no recommendations as to the suitability of the products or services mentioned in this article. Always thoroughly investigate any product or service before trying or purchasing.
Mr. Internet is the alter-ego of Michael J. Russer, an internationally recognized Internet speaker, trainer, author, and strategic consultant to the real estate industry. He’s dedicated to helping real estate professionals leverage their people skills into profit on the Internet. Send your Internet questions to help@askmrinternet.com or you can visit his Website at http://www.russer.com
This article is reprinted in its entirety from the January 2010 issue of REALTOR® Magazine by permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®. Copyright © 2010. All Rights Reserved other than mentioned above. Mr. Internet® is a registered trademark of RUSSER Communications.
Google Now Has a Need For Speed
Friday, January 8th, 2010
Just when you thought all that Google cared about was fresh, relevant content, they go and throw another wrench into the works. A few days ago Google announced that their page-ranking algorithms are now going to take page loading speed into account. This means all those sites that have really cool revolving banner images have just been knocked down a notch in the page-ranking wars. It also means that if you site is slow for *any* reason, it suddenly becomes a disadvantage to your search term rankings.
Google is all about delivering relevant results and a good user experience during the search process. Apparently the Meisters in charge of tweaking their sacred ranking algorithms feel that a slow site inherently detracts from the user experience. Even in our current world of ubiquitous broadband Internet connections, this is still an issue. Now it used to be that all you had to do was optimize your images to improve page loading speed, not any more…
Google Page Speed
Google provides a free tool call Page Speed that Web developers can use to test your site’s loading speed and then optimize it for the best possible performance. The issues it addresses are quite technical and go way beyond the scope of this kind of post. So what do you do if you don’t happen to have a second career as a geek? Contact your current Web developer and tell them you have, in the immortal words of Tom Cruise in Top Gun, “a need for speed!” and let them figure it out.
Find Out How Your Website Ranks for FREE!
Friday, December 4th, 2009I came across this FREE site, www.KPMRS.com recently, and thought it was a pretty cool way to track your website’s Search Engine Rankings.
First, what is a search engine ranking? How high your site comes up when a keyword is searched for on a search engine.
For example, my keyword/phrase is “Chicago Illinois Real Estate”. When I type in “Chicago Illinois Real Estate” on Google, what number does my site come up? First, third, twenty-second?
This free site allows you to track this number for one website for free (the paid version allows tracking mulitple sites). It gives you google, yahoo, and bing! This is great for those of you (like myself) who are simply curious, but even more powerful, you can use it as a tracking tool when implementing any kind of search engine optimization.
If you are planning on or have recently implemented some new keywords onto your site, or started blogging using your keywords (see our Google Juice blog post for more on this) – then now is the time to start tracking your progress!
It is so easy, you can sign up for a free account with KPMRS.com or don’t sign up and just check your site on the homepage!
The main difference between the paid service is that it saves your keywords and site information, so you don’t have to enter it each time you check it. It also offers email updates when your rankings change, an Iphone application and some fancy charts!
Below is an example of what the resulits look like when using the free, unsubscribed version:
WARNING: This is addictive! Once you start checking, I guarantee it will become a favorite pastime!
Want to know how you can improve your SEO through keywords, blogging and more? Contact your Real Estate Virtual Assistant to learn more!
Carrie Gable of RealSupport, Inc. is our “VA Quick Tip” columnist offering expertise in real estate marketing, technology and more. RealSupport’s office and team of 9 full-time staff members is located near Chicago, IL. Their successful team works virtually for many top real estate agents nationwide. Pioneers in the Real Estate Virtual Assistant industry, RealSupport offers marketing, website and logo design, branding, lead generation, technical support, transaction management and more.
Contact Carrie
Visit us Online at RealSupportInc.com
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