Real Estate Marketing SEO Blog

Traffic Battle Plan 2012

Check out my Traffic Domination Plan for 2012 I announced the war with Google and Facebook over a year ago. Did SEO Just Die Since then many have said that yes SEO is dead. As Google has changed time and time again. Over the next few weeks I will be chronicling some of these deep changes that are effecting your website and your social graph right now. » Its a Social World In a nutshell Google blinked. And much of that has do with the velocity of content being created in the social media. Facebook, Twitter and more. And now the new kid on the block Pinterest is digging into the Facebook Traffic. » Its about the data. Google's and Facebook's business is not search and Social. It is datamining. While Google has been changing many have complained that Google is no longer relevant. That is the point of search relevancy isn't it?   Google's job is guessing at your and my behavior such that they can serve us relevant advertising.   Google grabs that data through all the data it gets from your cookied searches, visits to websites with adsense, analytics etc, your signed-in behavior, and your Google Plus behavior and your Android phone locations and behavior.   Facebook gets to know you through their graph of likes, follows, friends, clicks, etc and of course your profile you create when you sign up. In effect Facebook wants to be Google, Google wants to be Facebook. » The world just got smaller. Do a search in New York and chances are real good that Google will serve you local results having to do with services in New York. Google Places dominates the local searches with at least 4 results. Often times number 1 of yesterday, is now possibly 8.   Littered within that search will often be images and videos. We ran a post years ago that some day Google will be the new Yellow Pages. That day has come. » Disinformation. Google has succeeded largely from incredible public relations to compliment their just good enough search engine. With their online personalities, they have been able to spread vast and complicated concepts to misinform what is/was actually going on.   The more things change the more they stay the same. Google has always been about links, then the title tag and matching h tags. This concept has not changed. Its just that there is less of the same coveted prize called organic search results for you to grab.   Less competitive terms are easy as they have always been and the super competitive keywords will continue to be difficult to get.   Links have expanded in their definition. Links are 80% of the game. But now you have likes, Google pluses, and other social markers that Google desperately is trying to track. I call these social noise makers.   One reason Google has moved forward with Google Plus as an answer to Facebook, and recently adding SearchPlus Your World is that they were being blocked out of tracking social graphsof the biggies Twitter and Facebook.   Additionally local citations, or your business name, address, city, zip and phone weigh heavily for your Google Places (local) ranking. They serve the equivalence of links in local search. » To make things more crazy. Your website will need to adjust for mobile phonessome day soon as more and more searchers are using mobile phones to search the web. Soon to out number desktop searchers.   The long term answer is to get strategic and hire a firm like Spider Juice Technologies who can help you get your arms around the changes, while not getting swallowed up by all the marketing hype.   Step 1 is to embrace the fact that you must become a publisher of your own unique content, ghost written content, curated content, and collaborated content if you are to survive in this ever changing online environment.   Because the fact is. Google simply doesn't need you anymore. The only medicine is to get big on publishing. More on all of these changes and tactics soon.   We are here to help you.   Tim O'Keefe http://www.spiderjuicetechnologies.com/ 310 533 9145

Mortgage

Do you know the latin word for mortgage?

It means Death Grip! That's probably a secret you want to keep to yourself lol.

.. from medieval times when, if one fell on hard times, one solution was to seek to mortgage a property you already owned in order to get cash.

From Websters:

mort·gage Pronunciation: \ˈmȯr-gij\ Function: noun Etymology: Middle English morgage, from Anglo-French mortgage, from mort dead (from Latin mortuus) + gage gage — more at murder Date: 15th century

From  American Heritage Dictionary:

 ETYMOLOGY: Middle English morgage, from Old French : mort, dead (from Vulgar Latin *mortus, from Latin mortuus, past participle of mor, to die + gage, pledge (of Germanic origin).

FICO Scores

Fico Scores can mess up a deal. Getting way in front of a possible frustration is just smart business. Scott Mitic from Trusted ID tells us what we can do to protect ourselves and how you can help your client not only protect her FICO score, but raise it to a better level.

Trusted ID : Chief Executive Officer Scott Mitic is an accomplished entrepreneur and national expert on identity theft and consumer credit issues. As CEO of TrustedID, Scott leads the creation of innovative new solutions that effectively eliminate the most dangerous and costly forms of identity theft. Previously, Scott was Vice President of Sales & Business Development at Fair Isaac's consumer division, myFICO, where, during his tenure, he helped millions of consumers access and manage their FICO score, the gold-standard indicator of consumer credit worthiness.  .

"Get the Odds on a Rate Cut"

Analysts predict the Fed will trim its key rate, now at 4.5 %, by one-quarter of a percentage point at that time. A few even speculate about the possibility of a half-point cut.

What are Vegas oddsmakers saying about an interest rate cut?....

Creative Financing

People want to buy but often find the financing is a roadblock. Can You Remember Creative Financing? Get out those books!

According to the 2007 National Housing Pulse Survey from October, 59% of Americans think "now is a good time to buy".

Interestingly as I wrote in the December newsletter, I see this in the hundreds of log files of real estate websites. People are consistently coming to realty websites. But, it seems that their willingness to register as a lead is down. ( I believe that can be more than just a market driven thing, but it might be the freely available listings at verticals like Edgio, Trulia and such. Even smaller players like Picky Homes offers real estate listings without registration.)

Mortgage Broker Leads

Mortgage Brokers are having a rough go of it currently in many parts of the U.S. Just like the Realtors. Mostly because of tightening of lending requirements.

I recently witnessed a couple methods that Mortgage Pros are using to ramp up their chances of landing an application.

Mortgage Marketing Sucks

Has this ever happend to you?

You are watching your favorite sports team or TV show, or banging out new brillaint posts on your blog, and the phone rings. Hoping that its your loved one, you eagerly answer. "Hello?"

This is how it usually happens to me...."Hello, Mr. Okefay (My name is O'Keefe") we are calling from..." and they go into some lie that they are giving people in my area special rates, or some gal named Mary is calling from their San Diego office, when clearly she is from India, and she is not named Mary.This despite the fact that I am on the do not call list. And is there anything more annoying than those computer calls that hang up on us? No doubt this is some way to confirm our number as live.

Well the Harris Interactive Financial Services Group released a new poll this week and I guess I am not alone the target of these aggressive tactics.

66-percent of consumers surveyed online believe marketing strategies on mortgage loans are "not credible.” And, of the 2,383 poll respondents, only 34-percent found the marketing strategies “credible," while 22-percent called them "not credible at all."

Predictions for Online Real Estate 2006

Get the insider track on 2006
....online real estate marketing predictions

Happy New Year! everyone. I just posted my predictions for the new year. Check it out.

Video :: Virtual Tours & Real Estate

Virtual Tours for me have always been a bit cartoonish. They have always seemed kind of cool, but never seemed to have much viability as a marketing tool. They always made me dizzy.;-)

I will be making my real estate marketing predictions for 2005 in the next few days and one tool that I think finally has some possibility is audio and video.

(If you have an interest we will be launching this service very shortly. Unlike other service, ours will act as a marketing tool for you in the engines.---read on--call at 310-533-9145 or write Tim @ SpiderJuiceTechnoliges.com )

Google and Yahoo have recently launched a search tool for video. What if you could get these positioned indepently. Call or write now to reserve your spot.

            

Real Estate Depression Blues

To the dismay of the doomsdayers, the housing bubble just won't burst.

As I have said before, supply and demand is a tough nut to crack as long as interest rates stay favorable.

In California, home builders will still fall nearly 40,000 units short of the amount of new housing that is needed to meet continued strong demand, even though builders will start construction on as many homes and apartments in 2005 as they did in 2004. This according to a recent forcast put out just recently by the CBIA.

The forecast, authored by CBIA Chief Economist Alan Nevin, projects that California will see a total of 210,000 housing starts in 2005, equaling 2004's production numbers. Last year was the first year since 1989 in which construction began on more than 200,000 new homes and apartments.

• Housing Units Needed: 250,000 homes and apartments
• Housing Units projected to be  built in 2005: 155,000
• Housing Units being built in 2004: 155,000
• Housing Units built in the lat 1980's: 255,000 housing units

Nevin expects prices of single-family product should increase 4 percent to 5 percent on average statewide.

On the multifamily side, he forecast that 55,000 apartments and condominiums will be built, adding that the split between the two can't be determined because many projects originally permitted as rentals convert to condominiums prior to completion.