Real Estate Marketing SEO Blog

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all the HouseBlogger readers and friends.

God Bless! and enjoy your time and please do consider for all that you have to be grateful. Thanks....

Persevere

Last Saturday the team I Coach of 8 to 10 years olds played one of the most inspirational games I have ever watched. There was tears of grief in the stands and tears of joy for our side.

In what was one of the most grueling games I have ever watched, my El Segundo Eagles won the PCC Championship for the Mitey Mite Division.

I am the dude closest to the pole.

So why would I write about my team on a marketing blog? First off I am breaking my own rules and taking that rare moment of indulgence. While I am at it may I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving?

This team won a game that was won on pure desire. Heart. In other words it took three overtimes to win this game. I kid you not only were the teams and staffs drained, the parents and fans were wiped out.

I have not experienced this kind of noise on the sideline since my days of playing in College.

Three overtimes is not easy and I for one have never been put into that kind of pressure cooker as a player or Coach. Imagine 8 and 9 years olds. These kids on both teams got experience that will serve them for ever.

In a way the students taught the teachers(Coaches and Parents).

Yah we adults face a world currently that seems a bit bleek. It is the Over Time on some of your business futures. Taxes are due and some of you haven't had a deal in awhile.

Kevin Hogan discusses the current Survivor show on NBC as a game of will. Much like my football players victory, this show is a battle of "who wants it more?"

Hogan  compares success to a rocket:

The fact is that she broke the earth's gravity and that took a LOT of fuel. A TON of energy. But once you have momentum, once you have established the ability to control the self, amazing things happen.

Like the team I Coach who paid dearly in sweat and practice all season, constant improvement is necessary for success that most will say is easy and instant. 

As Woody Allen says,"The secret to success is showing up. How many ever do actually show up and are present when faced with adversities? Honest assessments of self are necessary for growth. 

Todays market is crazy. But I promise someone in your marketplace is succeeding right now as I write. Someone is tearing your market up. Transaction City! Why can't it be you?

Much like 8 and 9 year olds who frankly may not know any better than to give their best effort...Why can't it be you who gets the deals? Or are you too adult to keep persevering?

How to Get Link Juice For Nothin'

In the Pre internet days of the last real estate recession, an old pal of mine Phil Gilboy went head to head against his Multiple Listings Service. It seems ole Phil was looking for new and exciting ways to prosper during a down market and he started a new phone service called something like 1-800-cal-lmls (I made that up as I cannot remember the exact number).

Well the Westside MLS came down hard with their legal beagles claiming infringement. Except one thing was wrong. The ones owning MLS as a trademark are Major League Soccer. They eventually let Phil do his thing.

Now besides this legal issue of who owns what. The real issue of course is why would an entity that Phil helped support attempt to take away his right to make a living?

The Realty Associations of course have a long history of this type of dumping on the ones who brought them to the dance.

At the dawning of the World Wide Web, NAR made a desperate plea for higher fees to help fund Realtor.com. If the site was not built it was argued then that Microsoft and others would take over the MLS.  The site made by NAR for its reason for being was built to much fanfare. It quickly sunk from the notion of protecting the MLS and into a new revenue stream. Thus charging its members to participate in the site built on their behalf.

Ironically, a few years later and now we have Trulia who many in the public might argue is the defacto online MLS.

This whole issue was brought to the forefront of late as a Florida MLS has not only used the traditional means of regulating their members, but many bloggers believe that they have gone so far as to compete with the very people who pay them for help in their business.

This story begins with a Realtor who owned a domain with the word MLS in it, some strong SEO and link juice. And then a Multiple Listings Service who in this authors opinion went to extreme measures to use their power.

Who is the Realtor? Marc Rasmussen of Sarasota, Florida. The URL was TheSarasotaMLS.com, and the Board?  None other than the Sarasota MLS.

Archive.org show the url going as far back as Sept 2003. So why now in 2008 would this Association feel that they could impose an ethics violation?   

According to RealEstateWebmasters:

Article 12 of the National Association of Realtors Code of Ethics".

".. the NAR adopted a new stance on the use of the acronym "MLS" in a Realtor's domain name – basically stipulating that "at their discretion" MLS boards could adopt new policies prohibiting the use of MLS in a Realtor's domain. In my opinion, the NAR did not practice any measure of responsible due diligence before adopting this addition to the COE and it was extremely poorly received by its membership as evidenced by the extreme negative reaction by the Realtor / webmaster community as a whole.."

John Allen a Sarasota Realtor and competitor, defends Marc Rasmussen. He turns the issue on its head when he asks if the Sarasota MLS is going to claim ethical violation for the use of their name in the website The Sarasota MLS.com. Then Allen asks about the SAR owned domain Time2BuySarasota.com:

Selling Homes in the Market

Alex Perriello, CEO of Realogy, gives advice to Realtors on dealing with the times:Be positive, persistent, And tell people houses are selling, there is not reason to sit on the fence.

Considering SEO as a Boost for Your Real Estate Brand

The following was inspired by an email thread that went back and forth between myself and the President of a Web Design House. the project mentioned is  in the very beginning stages of an SEO project that we are fulfilling for one of their clients.I thought you might find this of interest.....

At the start of a project brand increases because of linking. Often times a client thinks that this was built in, when in fact some of it may have been but Google does not necessarily care about your brand. They care about mentions and citations of your brand. Google cares only what links to the references of your brand across the web on your site or not. As your links increase to your pages of your site, your brand references (keywords) within your analytics should go up.

So what you get last month in your original, pre-seo campaign "brand traffic" spreads out to larger derivatives of that word and more searches as it gets links to the pages with brand words. And links that carry those branded words in the anchor text increase. In the case of brand it usually is not very competitive if at all, so a few links can really get the brand out there.

Reputation Management
This by the way is what reputation management is about. One can easily steal your brand by creating pages about your company on many web pages. It can even be done anonymously on free sites. Its easy to do because there is 0 competition for it until someone actually does it.

The idea being that you can get crowded out totally or partially from the SERPS (search positions) for your own name!Thats why it is important for companies to do more socially and thru syndicates to populate the web with references to their brand.

By the way we often will get an agent site to come up higher in the SERPS than a broker site online (if the broker is not our client). Its very easy if the broker isn't working for in bound links.

This reputation thing is not as bad as it is hyped up to be yet. I have seen few attempts by malcontents but not done very well. But I do think it will be a major problem down the road not just in the real estate business. But I see this playing out in how news and politics can be perceived.

For a glimpse of the future and managing reputation and perceptions, study how the Obama and McCain campaigns have run their online marketing for the past election.
Election Special: Whatever You Do, Do Not Vote For This Candidate
Even McCain used online Video masterfully. Obama used the web better than any one politician or business yet.

Confessing Your Sins Will Get You Traffic!
A site can be SEOd all day long, but if it does not have links it does not fully or even in some cases partially exist to Google. On many templated real estate sites there is not much one can do as far as onpage optimization.

So how does one get high rankings?

Links. Links make up for the sins of the site. They are the absolution from the priest called Google.

So right now a month into the project what we see is a start of a wider span of brand words. And even a small start at seeing real estate search words giving traffic.

We can do that by comparing the search strings from last month before the SEO launch to now. This month is almost double brand based visits. (names changed to keep the client private)
The list is longer (width) and many words are getting more visits compared to last month.
ie. TOTAL BRAND visits  are double last month
27         century 21 franchise name
26         url.com
19         century 21 franchise name realty
14         franchise name
6           century franchise name
6           www.franchise name.com
4           city century 21
4           century 21 in state
etc.....

Election Special: Whatever You Do, Do Not Vote For This Candidate

Today's vote is historic. And I assure you that no matter who you voted for,your guy in some way manipulated you. Once you found yourself making your choice, most people will defend their choice logically. Although as we know in sales 101, we buy for emotional reasons and justify with logic. .

Some interesting lessons for us online marketers have been revealed of late by political experts.

Mark Nagaitis, CEO of 7 Billion People, said “This analysis demonstrates how the design of a website and the use of language can influence the effectiveness of that site in communicating the desired message. Too many web designers underestimate the power of language in reaching the complete audience, not just their base.” Key findings from the analysis include:

• The McCain website uses language that emphasizes risk and problem avoidance - such as the section on the Homeownership Resurgence Plan featured prominently on the home page during mid-October 2008 in the final weeks before the presidential election.
• By comparison, the Obama website offers voters key language on hope and opportunity as the primary focus, with risk items still present but secondary in nature.
• Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s website is designed to appeal to people that use peer opinions and other references in their decision-making process. Obama’s website speaks to those that see themselves as part of a group. (For example, the Obama Everywhere section on the home page includes links to popular social networking sites).
• Conversely, rival John McCain’s website appeals to those people who make decisions based on gut-feeling, information and personal choice. McCain’s website primarily speaks to the individual, not the group.
• Senator McCain’s website presents information in a procedural, step-by-step fashion that appeals to analytical voters that feel comfortable with process and order – there is a clear path from the initial landing page that features Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin to the center panel of the website home page presenting topical videos denouncing his competitor. McCain’s website may feel constrictive to some voters.
• By contrast, Senator Obama’s website appeals to voters that prefer choice and exploration of all of the options available to them. The website contains a wide array of menu items and clickable section headings representing numerous choices for visitors that need to feel that they have explored all the options - including a Learn menu section providing backgrounds on the wives of Senators Obama and Biden, texting for campaign updates, Obama Mobile for ringtones and an official iPhone application for the Obama campaign. Obama may be missing the opportunity to talk to voters that prefer order and process on the site.

The Gopac knows this and as such shows us some interesting language patterns that  politicos should use:

Use the list below to help define your campaign and your vision of public service. These words can help give extra power to your message. In addition, these words help develop the positive side of the contrast you should create with your opponent, giving your community something to vote for!: