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Written by Kevin Harper   

You may find it strange that I'm writing about the offline marketing technique of using real estate postcards on a blog that deals primarily with online marketing and real estate SEO. The truth is that you can't afford to ignore either online or offline marketing techniques if you want to compete for your share of real estate transaction in this market or any market.

Make sure your online marketing techniques are up to date, such as your IDX website, drip email marketing campaigns, organic search engine rankings, etc. Then make sure you are still marketing to your community using offline methods such as real estate postcards, radio ads, and print ads. Offline marketing is not dead--it just needs to be done intelligently.

Read more... Written by Kevin Harper   

If you are renting a home, how likely are you to upgrade the kitchen, or invest in new landscaping to increase the resale value and curb appeal? Not likely, I imagine. After all, when you rent, you know that any investment you make in your home will be lost when you decide to move.

But here's a question for you: Do you rent your website, or do you own it? Are you one of the million or so agents who choose to pay a regional or national real estate technology provider for the privilege of borrowing their server and their content management system on a monthly basis? Yeah, I thought so.

While many real estate agents encourage an ownership mindset when it comes to real estate decisions, they have a hard time shaking the renter mindset when it comes to their own real estate website. Are you really going to invest serious time or money in a website you don't actually own, knowing that if you decide to switch providers, you'll have to give it back and start over? Of course not.

Read more... Written by Kevin Harper    Deluxe property in Mallorca can be a great choice for a vacation property, or as an investment. The easiest way to find an appropriate property is to contact a UK property services office (Google UK PS and several will come up). Whether it's a villa, a condo, or an apartment that tickles your fancy, they'll be able to offer you several choices in a variety of price ranges. As always when dealing with strangers, it's advisable to ask them for references, and a check with the Better Business Bureau is a good idea. Once the agency's credentials have been established, the fun of property hunting can begin. Draw up a list of requirements you want. You may wish to consider such things as access to transportation (if you plan to vacation there, is it easy to get to the airport?), distance from the beach, and whether the building offers amenities such as a swimming pool or a gym. These are important whether you wish to use the property yourself, or rent it out to others. If you do wish to rent it, find a real estate agency that is willing to find and deal with tenants, and other property management tasks, unless you prefer to deal with these yourself. Don't grab at the first property you see. Take your time and make sure you find one that has most of the features you are looking for. Deluxe property in Mallorca doesn't have to be just a dream. Written by Kevin Harper   

Mobile real estate search is here, so you better get ready to deliver your listings over yet another medium. Are you reaching these home buyers on the go?

A growing trend among increasingly tech-savvy home buyers is to browse real estate listings from a mobile phone. For some, it's counterintuitive. "Why would they want to browse the Internet from such a small screen," you say. Well, you've probably never browsed on an iPhone or some of the other touch screen devices, have you? My first experience was on my son's iPod Touch, and I have to tell you - it's pretty slick. Since you can zoom in and out of a page quickly, it is fairly easy to navigate, and the browser screen is rendered almost identically to a Safari browser window on the iMac desktop machine.

What does that mean to the real estate industry, and you in particular? Well, it means that real estate searchers are increasingly browsing the Internet from their mobile devices, because the technology is now there to make it convenient and actually productive. No more clicking through text-only screens. It's a near-desktop browsing experience on the go.

Here's a little statistic for you. Did you know that 48% of all mobile web browsing in September 2009 was done on an iPhone? That's astonishing, but what are you going to do about it? With mobile real estate search on the rise, I'd suggest making sure your IDX website provider has an iPhone app available for your potential customers to download. If yours doesn't, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or call me at (208) 249-8893 and I can help you out with a mobile real estate site of your own.

The benefit of offering an iPhone app is both obvious and exciting. You can do postcard campaigns and other advertising promotions to draw people to your site to download it. Once they do, they'll have a slick interface for searching properties in your area. They probably won't delete the app once they install it, either, so it's a great way to build a long term relationship with them. The best part is that all the leads come to you...on your mobile device, no doubt. How's that for mobile real estate search?

Written by Kevin Harper   

There is a new way to get additional online exposure for your real estate listings through real estate feed syndication. I've designed this system get your listings crawled and indexed by search engines fast.

Why real estate syndication works

The goal of real estate marketing is to get maximum exposure for properties so that potential buyers can find it. Syndication helps accomplish that by taking your existing property listing data and re-publishing it in other places on the Internet.

Read more... Written by Kevin Harper   

If you're interested in buying property in a beautiful part of Washington, you should check out the Bellingham area. Located near the Canadian border on the coast, Bellingham real estate provides some good deals and gorgeous scenery!

Written by Kevin Harper   

I've had several clients ask me how I check their sites for keyword rankings on Google.

Here is an SEO software download I've been using for years to monitor my clients' rankings for hundreds of keywords at a time.

It is a free trial, so you have nothing to lose by giving it a try. This tool is invaluable in helping me achieve high rankings for my websites. I have actually been able to achieve page one Google rankings before a site is even launched!

You'll be amazed at how much information this SEO software download gives you about your website. (In fact, it is great for checking your website rankings of your competitors as well!)

Read more... Written by Kevin Harper   

So what is your website worth, anyway? This is a much more philosophical question than it may sound at first glance. Add the words "to you," and maybe you'll get my drift. Think about this for a moment; what is your website worth TO YOU?

If you're like most website owners, the question is easily answered by checking your credit card statement for last month: $29.95 per month, no more, no less (or $49.95, or $99, etc.).

Now let's ask the question a different way. What long term value have you invested in your site to make it perform better than the other agents who are forking over $29.95 or $49.95 for the same cookie cutter site? And you wonder why you are suffering such dismal results from your website?

Read more... Written by Kevin Harper   

Email newsletter marketing is a tool used by highly paid pros in Big Business to add customers to their sales pipeline and big profits to their bottom lines. If you as a real estate agent are not using it to its full potential, you are leaving sales (and commissions) on the table.

If you want to grow your real estate business, learning more about automating your email marketing efforts is an essential item on your to-do list. It doesn't have to be intimidating, and you don't have to be a disciplined or accomplished writer to make this tool work for you.

Read more... Written by Kevin Harper   

Don't you hate seeing a thousand other real estate agents right next to you on the real estate agent directories out there? There's certainly a need to be listed in as many places on the Internet as possible.

But what if you could be the only agent listed in your primary service areas...permanently? And what if your city name could link directly to your website (or any page on it)?

I've designed a way for every agent in the U.S. to do just that. It's extremely affordable; it is a one-time cost, not a subscription. Once you're in the directory, you're in for good. And when space runs out, that's it. There won't be more listings added.

Here's how it works...

Read more... Written by Kevin Harper   

Every real estate agent who has flirted with blogging needs to pick up a copy of Hugh Hewitt's book Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World. Better yet, read it, and see how it impacts your strategies for real estate marketing. I'm adding the book to my homeschooled kids' required reading list. It's that important.

Why would I recommend a book by a nationally known political commentator to a readership of real estate agents across the political spectrum? That could be dangerous, as I certainly don't want to lose readers over politics.

Read more...   Written by Kevin Harper   

How much time did you spend writing your bio for your real estate website? Five minutes? Maybe even less? Uh oh. Dig it out right now!

Writing a persuasive bio for your real estate agent website is very important, because you're selling yourself long before you're selling a house. You won't convert a single lead to a client unless you sell them on who you are and what you do, first and foremost. Only then do you have the opportunity to list their home, or help them buy a new home.

Read more...   Written by Kevin Harper   

Ever heard of drip marketing or drip newsletters? It's method of sending newsletters to leads and clients in a more personalized way. In fact, this this article you're reading right now will be delivered on day 28 of my own drip e-mail system (also called an autoresponder).

There are several reasons a drip marketing system is superior over a standard broadcast newsletter system. First and foremost is the ability to dramatically boost your conversion rate of leads to listings or leads to sales.

Read more...   Written by Kevin Harper   

As a search engine optimization consultant, my job is to build sites that Google loves to crawl, index, and rank well in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

But what do I do if my SEO efforts are so successful that Googlebot loves my site too much? What happens when Google's crawler robot spikes my server load so high that I get load warnings from my webhosting provider?

That's the problem that led me to develop Googlebot Scheduler.

The Googlebot server load problem

What about Google's Webmaster Tools?

How Googlebot Scheduler solves the server load problem

Can you use Googlebot Scheduler to regulate other robots?

How Googlebot Scheduler can save you over $1000 in hosting fees per year.

 

The Googlebot server load problem

Googlebot can be a mixed blessing. You want Google to crawl your site, but sometimes Google gets carried away and becomes a resource hog. From an SEO perspective, this seems like a good problem to have. After all, this means Google loves your site.

But if Google is over-crawling your site on a shared hosting account, you can quickly go above your load limit and get your account suspended. That's not good! That's why I wrote Googlebot Scheduler.

(NOTE: If you have a site that Google is NOT crawling heavily, maybe you need some SEO consulting help. ;-)

  

What about Google's Webmaster Tools?

Yes, I know that Google Webmaster's Tools allows you to reduce your crawl rate from Normal to Slower for a fixed period of time, but there are two problem's I've experienced with this:

It didn't cut back enough to reduce my server load warnings. Not by a long shot.

The setting expires, so if you forget to renew the setting, Google will start crawling at the faster rate again.

How Googlebot Scheduler solves the server load problem

My Googlebot Scheduler script was born of necessity for one of my own sites with over 33,000 URLs that Google loves to death. I needed a way to limit Googlebot's daily access so it could only crawl within a specific window of time each day, thus reducing the load Googlebot was putting on my server.

There are two easy time settings to make in the script: The allowed time and the disallowed time. When activated on your server through a cron job (or cron simulator, like JCron Scheduler for Joomla), Googlebot Scheduler will change the contents of your robots.txt file at the times specified to either turn on Google's access or turn it off. 

Can You Use Googlebot Scheduler to regulate other Robots?

Absolutely!

You can easily use Googlebot Scheduler to limit the access of other robots through your robots.txt file.

The only reason I've named this script Googlebot Scheduler is that Googlebot seems to be the worst (best?) offender when it comes to drinking bandwidth. But if you have other robots overloading your server, all you have to do is enter them as another user agent in your "allowed" and "disallowed" robots.txt files, and they can easily be controlled.

How Googlebot Scheduler can save you over $1000 in hosting fees per year

Now, you don't have to decide between being Google friendly and running a large website on a shared hosting account. Because you can scale back Googlebot's access to as little as one hour per day, you have complete control over how much bandwidth you give to Google (or any other robot).

This means Googlebot Scheduler is a big money-saver, because Semi-Dedicated Servers can run from $60 to $90 per month on up. And a Dedicated Server can be more than that.

With Googlebot Scheduler, you won't be forced onto a Virtual Private Server, Semi-Dedicated Server, or Dedicated Server unless your human-generated traffic demands it.

 

God bless,



Kevin Harper

P.s. - For more information on robtots.txt usage, see:

http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html

P.p.s. - You can check your Google Webmaster's Tools area to verify if your robots.txt syntax is correct.

P.p.p.s. - If your webhosting plan doesn't allow cron jobs, try ResultsInternet.net. For Joomla sites, you can download the free JCron Scheduler component to simulate cron scheduling.

  Written by Kevin Harper    Did you know that search engines can use the Internet "footprints" of website visitors to help determine a site's relevance for search results?

When a visitor goes from one real estate website to another, participants in the Alexa program allow that information to be collected and analyzed for "related links" and traffic estimates.

Here's why this can be beneficial for website owners. You spend a lot of time on your own site, right? (If not, you probably need to talk to me about your website!) With Alexa, you can add your own traffic to your own website into the Alexa database, as well as the other real estate sites you visit on a regular basis.

Read more...   Written by Kevin Harper   

Have you ever wondered how some of your Realtor colleagues got to become the experts in a particular area of real estate?

Whether it's commercial real estate, development land, vacation properties, or even a neighborhood, city, or county, it's possible for you to become a real estate expert by combining your experience with focused search engine optimization strategies.

Everyone wants to be all things to all people, but sometimes it is better to narrow in on your strengths and really get that message out clearly.

Read more...   Written by Kevin Harper   

Did you know that there are seven common but fatal flaws that can destroy your chances of ever showing up in the search engines?

In fact, these SEO Killers can make your site completely invisible to Google and Yahoo!

In my work, I am frequently asked to analyze websites to explain to their owners why they're not showing up on the search engines. What I've found is a stunning lack of knowledge in the web design industry about the fundamentals of how search engines work.

They should be embarrassed. Instead, they're raking in monthly subscriptions from tens of thousands of Realtors each month who don't know any better!

Many of these big companies (I call them website factories) couldn't care less about your ability to show up in the search engines, because their template sites are full of these SEO Killers.

Want to check your own site to find out of it is invisible to Google and Yahoo?

I've prepared a report for you that will walk you through it step by step. Just print it out, set it next to your computer, and check each item. You can do this in ten minutes.

SEO Killers: Is Your Website Invisible To Google and Yahoo? is simple enough that even a newbie can understand it. Considering what you currently pay every month for a website that may be totally useless, this little report is very valuable.

Want free reports to help out your web marketing? Just sign up for my Marketing Tips Newsletter!

  Written by Kevin Harper   

When I talk to Realtors and real estate agents about their websites, one of the things I talk about is the importance of unique content—in other words—written content that is not boilerplate, that is not simply one copy of 10,000 copies out there on the web.

Boilerplate content is content that comes standard with most agent websites. But if you want your site to show up on the search engines, you need to either replace it or add significantly to it. Otherwise, your site will be exactly like the sites of the 10,000 other customers of that particular Realtor website factory.

Read more...   Written by Kevin Harper   

Are you a boilerplate Realtor®? Are you a clone of all the other real estate agents out there you are competing with?

"Of course not," you say. But is your most important marketing tool, your website, a boilerplate site? I thought so.

Why do so many real estate agents get sucked into boilerplate sites that just don't perform—that just don't bring in leads, listings, or sales? It's easy to keep paying for them, month after month, year after year, with the same dismal results when it comes to search engine ranking and search engine traffic.

Read more...   Written by Kevin Harper   

Sometimes Realtors® forget that in order to market their properties, they need to market themselves and their own websites. One can't simply focus on advertising her or her properties, and not spend time and resources dragging a wide net to collect leads. That should include plenty of offline promotion of you and your website.

If your job is to match buyers and sellers, it stands to reason that you need to get in touch with a lot of potential home buyers and a lot of potential home sellers before you'll be able to effectively sell real estate.

I can do some amazing things with search engine marketing techniques to drive organic search engine traffic to your site, but online efforts can be supplemented with great results through the following offline promotion techniques.

Read more...  

More...

• Joomla SEF Component Reviews
• High Value Linking: Why Internal Links Work for SEO
• Installing Google Analytics in a Joomla Site
• Parking domains or redirecting domains
• Targeting search engine traffic
• Why exchanging links is important for search engine ranking
• How to give your leads to your competitor
• Using Google Local business listings to capture search traffic
• Ten Tips For Working With the Press
• What should real estate agents do in a market downturn?

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