Real Estate Marketing SEO Blog

Blogs, Emails and 2 point oh.

This is a snippet from a recent email thread I had with a UK journalist.  I cut her part out as she never did give me permission to print her part:

Is Google Really Helping You With Free Tools?

Google offers a plethora of great tools for Webmasters. But why?

Data

Many of us webmasters love Google's "help", while others see their tools as an unwelcome intrusion. More specifically, an unwelcome look into your website's inner workings and your users behavior. Some skeptics even go so far as to call these tools "spyware".

The Recession is Upon Us

"It's now clear that we have entered what we anticipate will be a mild recession, running through the first half of this year, and there are substantial downside risks to this economic scenario," said David Seiders, of the National Association of Home Builders, in a statement today.

What a load. Seriously, I found this story over at Inman. Recession or no recession. Who cares? Sellers sell. If you buy into this Internet Kumbaya load that you do not have to sell you will be looking for a job soon. And now you get this thing they call a recession. I love labels. They imply so much. Just another excuse.

Get out and start selling. I am meeting with a buddy of mine in the morning. He is a broker owner. He told me recently that he is going to start actually getting out there and selling. His office isn't cutting the nut. So he knows he can go out and sell.

Deals are being done. The only thing that has changed are the rules.

The Hottest Niche In Real Estate

What real estate niche is still selling like hotcakes? Luxury in pretty much any industry the high end is impervious to any market. They have the credit and the equity to stay fluid.

So what to do in the rest of the markets? Well, ramp up your marketing and your persona as marketing expert Dave Lakhani said in his podcast.

Allow me to repeat what I learned from Mike Ferry almost 20 years ago.

The best priced home will sell. If you list, the house better be the best priced home in the area. Or you and the house is gonna' sit. Tell the truth and your prospects will appreciate you. The ones that can wait it out will appreciate that they don't have to have people trampling thru their home anymore.

The ones that must sell will know the bitter pill they have to swalllow. And like a Doctor telling a patient they have cancer, you may not like it, but you sure will feel better when you get them out from underneath a whole lotta stress. And it will be because you had the courage to tell them the truth.

The Absolute Standard for a Real Estate Blog

Does it make you money?

Will They Forgive the Sins of your Website?

As an SEO professional specializing in the real estate and mortgage industry, I have refused to write much about Search Engine Optimization. Even though that is the bulk of our business. Because most of is being taught is about the WHAT of SEO & is a complete waste of time.

The HOW is much more interesting to me, and much more useful to you and your business. And when I say the how, I mean the strategy of SEO.

SEO defined: SEO is simply defining your marketplace, translating that marketplace into keywords, then representing those keywords onto pages throughout your website. Now, link to those pages.

There... now you do not have to spend the next 180 hours reading every SEO book out there. You see there is SEO, and there is traffic building. And then there is lead building!

Most of what is being taught out on the web is on page optimization tactics that at best are activities that you can obsess forever over. That at best will maybe help you move from a 6 to a 5 position.

Most people, even Realtors simply are not living (yet) in that competitive of a marketplace. The piece of the SEO that matters are links, link equity, off page optimization, Page Rank, etc. Whatever you want to call it.

Links are so important that you can say that links forgive the sins of the page. When you have links you will get traffic.

When Ideology and The Bottom Line Clash

Redfin was going to prove to the world that you don't need a Realtor, you can just buy off the web for a mere pittance of what a traditional Realtor would charge.

Now it seems that the young maverick may tick off a few of its purists. It seems that Redfin is offering some "hand holding" just in case you do in fact need a Realtor.After, ummm, you did not need one.

Blog Me, Blog Me Not

Mary McKnight of RSS Pieces has advocated ghost writing your blogs. I have always believed it is better to do something crappy than not at all. So I guess you can gather that I do not recommend ghost writing, but it certainly is better than nothing. However, I believe this issue strikes at the heart of a blogs real value.

How the Rich Buy Real Estate

I recently read an article on how the rich buy real estate that reminded me of my only experience with how the super rich, buy a house. Or in this case, build a mansion.

As the article points out celebrities and the wealthy like to buy incognito under the guise of a trust. Well, years ago, back in the days of Heavy Metal and the Sunset Strip here in Los Angeles, the band Guns N Roses seemed like they would always rule the genre.

How to Equalize Seemingly Junky Traffic

A recent study says that 80 %  of all searches are "informational" in nature while 10 % are "navigating" to a specific website, and 10%  are what the researchers call "transactional" whereby the searcher is looking for an item to purchase.