Seo Redefined

Breaking News about Google and Real Estate

Wayne Golliday (SEO Redefined) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:58:24 -0600

Well Google has officially announced what most of us have been seeing for quite sometime. . Yesterday in an Australian Blog a Google employee announced that Google will now be adding Real Estate information to it's Google Maps. The new "Real Esate" tab will include such things as property information, photos, for sale or rent information, and even AdWords. If the Street View is available of the property then that will also be included. For right now all this information is being pulled directly from two data bases. The most prominent one being Prudential.

To those of us who follow Google on a regular basis we have already seem this in Google Maps. The fact that Google has officially made the announcement is really the news.

This will have far reaching ramifications not only for the folks searching for a home to but but also for web design and SEO. I for one have seen this as a very positive move by Google and can only help both Real Estate Agents and Potential Buyers. It looks like Google will soon have a National MLS Service Database.

Once I have had a chance to better analyze this for you I will go into greater depth my thoughts on how this will benefit agents, buyers and sellers as far as Online Marketing Services for Realtors are concerned

Latest Addition to the Portfolio

Wayne Golliday (SEO Redefined) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:28:31 -0600

Another fantastic web design by Nancy Golliday. Job well done Nancy. This maybe one of my favorites.

Via Nancy Golliday (First Coast Designs):

Next Generation Realty Group
Naples, Florida Real Estate
Point2 Agent Web Design
View Portfolio of Point2 Agent Websites

____________________________________________________

Nancy Golliday
Website (re)Design for Marketing Results

Custom Website Design
FirstCoastDesigns

Social Media Customization
Custom WordPress Blogs using Thesis
Custom Fan Pages for Facebook
Twitter & YouTube Backgrounds
Active Rain Headers & Backgrounds
WebsiteDesignGal

SEO That Gets Results
SEORedefined

Point2 Agent Website Customization
NancyGolliday

Custom Website Design | Ultra Agent Website Customization | Point2 Agent Website Customization | Innuity Website Customization | Sam's Club Members Website Customization

____________________________________________________

24 Jacksonville Florida real-estate professionals indicted on mortgage fraud

Wayne Golliday (SEO Redefined) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:57:08 -0600

In todays Jacksonville Fl Time Union newspaper. No names have been posted yet:

A crackdown on mortgage fraud has resulted in indictments of 24 Jacksonville-area real estate professionals in connection with at least $244 million in loan amounts for 200 pieces of property, federal authorities said today.

The people indicted worked during the housing boom in positions such as small business banker, title company employee and owner, mortgage broker, mortgage banker, employee of a real estate development company, real estate agent, Realtor, home builder, real estate investor, title and closing agent, and real estate appraiser.

They are among about 100 people being prosecuted by federal authorities after an intensive, nine-month investigation of mortgage fraud in the Middle District of Florida, spanning the metropolitan areas of Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa and Ft. Meyers.

“You will be caught, you will be prosecuted, and you will be sentenced to significant jail time,” U.S. Attorney Brian Albritton said today at a news conference in Jacksonville.

Do you still do sales and training meetings?

Wayne Golliday (SEO Redefined) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:16:57 -0500

Recently I did a talk for a Broker friend of mine at his weekly sales meeting. Basically it was a talk about what great SEO does for a website. After the meeting was over I spent a few minutes in Bob's office talking about what we had just discussed. He made a statement that I found interesting that I wanted to pass along here.

He told me that many Real Estate Agencies he knows of no longer have sales or training meetings. Instead the training and sales meetings have been replaced with emails and online training. People are now reviewing PDF's or PowerPoint presentations of weekly sales and listings instead of attending meetings.

I found this a little shocking and wondered why in an industry that is so heavily dependent upon customer contact and personal services why an agency would do that. I would think that the contact that Real Estate Agents get from one another is not only a very necessary human bonding event but gives each agent the feeling that they are not alone. The knowledge dump alone in these meetings could be very beneficial.

My question to this community is this true of your agency or do you still do sales and training meetings and how often?

Does your website reside in a bad neighborhood? (Part 2)

Wayne Golliday (SEO Redefined) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:52:35 -0500

Wow I had no idea I was so busy the last 4 weeks that I did not blog Part 2 of this series. Wow! Sorry about that. In case you forgot here is Part 1.

Ok, how do you get backlinks removed that you no longer want linked to your site? It is not too hard to get them removed and I have had about a 90% success rate at doing this. Sometime this process takes persistence and patience, but it can be done.

First you must determine if your site is linked back to by a directory site or a website. I have had almost 100% success rate in getting backlinks removed from websites . I have had closer to a 90% success rate in removing backlinks from directory sites.

Website owners are usually reasonable people who may or may not realize that they are linked to your site. It may be that their web designer or SEO company are using the website owners site to build a huge link farm. This is done a lot by SEO companies that only have only the SEO company's interest at heart, The SEO companies will link every site they have worked on to each other using Blackhat SEO. Good backlinks are important and when you have a real estate website you do not want porn sites linked to your site. Usually an email to the website owner will resolve this issue for you.

Site Directories can be a bit more difficult but do not fret, they can be resolved with an email as well. Though it is not usually in the Site Directory's best interest to remove a link, most will be happy to do it. Keep in mind that it can take many emails and pleas of help to get some of these Directories to remove the link back to you. Do not give it and keep after them. What ever you do always be polite and professional.

In the next blog I will you some tools you can use to check what neighborhood your site resides in.

Does your website reside in a bad neighborhood? (Part 1)

Wayne Golliday (SEO Redefined) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 11:08:06 -0500

It is all about Location, Location, Location; even for your website. Do you know who has linked back to your website? Do you know if all of your back-links are links you would want linking back to you? Do you have adult sites or gambling sites linked back to you? Is your current SEO Company only producing good links back to your site? If you do not know, then you may be in for a big surprise or worse yet banned by a search engine.

Recently a former client of mine called because his website had dropped off of Google. It was no where to be found. After a checking I discovered that his current SEO Company had done a massive back link campaign for him. They did 500 back-links for him in a 3 day period. The majority of the back-links were from adult services and gambling sites. A huge mistake for anyone to do.

First, 500 back-links in 3 days can be red flag for the search engines. Google tends to see this as blackhat seo and can knock your page ranking down to zero. Anytime the search engines see massive irrelevant back-links to a site you are looking to get banned. Especially if the sites are directories whose sole purpose is to create massive back-links. This is what happened to my former client.

Google tends to like to see back-links developed over time in a more organic way. Listing your site with directories that are relevant to your site is very important. Commenting on blogs that have similar content as your site is also excellent. It is a slow process and can not be rushed. If it is rushed or down wrong the search engines will look at this as spam and your site will be removed.

So what can be done to check to see if your site is a bad neighborhood or not? How do you remove the back-link you do not want associated with your site? How do you get the search engines to re list your site? What tool can you use to check your back-links? You will have to read my next blog for that information.

Broken promises and cow manure!

Wayne Golliday (SEO Redefined) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:51:11 -0500

This is probably not the best title for a blog but my wife made me clean up what I had originally written as a title. Good thing I listened to her or I may have regretted writing the other title. You are probably wondering why I am so ticked this morning? It takes a lot to fire this old Georgia boy’s tractor up but some SEO scam artist got me going.

I spent about an hour on a telephone conference this morning with some independent Real Estate Brokers and Agents talking about how to do SEO during an economic downturn. The conference was going really well when several Brokers brought up how well they were doing, Well we all like to hear success stories and I for one can always pick up a nugget or two of new information that may help me and my clients.

Two of the Brokers use a well known SEO company. The Brokers were very pleased about their first page Google placement. On the service this sounds good and is very impressive. But a couple of questions later and the truth emerged.

The search terms they were being found under were not search terms people would ever use to search for a Broker/Agent or homes for sale. In fact when I checked the search terms being used I found there was only 5 other sites in the world using that term. So no wonder they were showing up in the number one position for that search term. So as not to embarrass the Brokers I have cleaned up the search terms so they can not be indentified.

Here is the search term they were in position one for on Google:

Hometown State USA real estate and homes for sale or rent in Another Town but Same State

No matter how you broke this search term down they could not be found in the first 10 pages of Google. The search terms you would expect to be used were not used and these Brokers sites were non-existent for the most used search terms for their area. The Brokers told me they had each paid over $5000 for this SEO Company to work on their sites. They were promised by this SEO company first page placement for their selected search terms.

Brokers and Agents are professionals who spend their time getting listings, showing homes and selling homes. Many of you do not have time to do the SEO for your websites or research the best search terms to use. That is why you trust and rely on an SEO professional to give you the best information possible. Many of you trust these people enough to give them thousands of your hard earned commissions.

SEO Companies who do business like this make it all the harder for honest hardworking folks like myself to make a living. Once an Agent or Broker have been burned, they are less likely to trust any SEO Company again. Who can blame you.

Stories like this really fire up my old John Deere tractor. So over the next several weeks I am going to share tools and tricks with you that will help you make some good educated choices. So whether you are thinking about hiring an SEO Company or checking on the one you currently use, you will be better informed.

Yet another tool from me

Wayne Golliday (SEO Redefined) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 18:35:31 -0500

I always like to share new tools with folks that I find useful. This one is no exception. In fact this tool is a great way to check on how you are doing with your SEO. You can even check on the progress of your SEO firm that you hired.

The tool is called Website Grader and can be found here at Hubspot. It is easy to use and the information it gives you can be useful. But keep in mind that I have found this tool to be between 80% and 85% accurate when grading the websites that I have done. But for those of you who no very little about SEO this tool may be a pretty good one to use.

All you have to do is enter your website address and then your email address. In about 30 seconds you will have a report sent to your email. You just click on the link and read your report.

The report will tell you things like in-bound links, Google page rank, the age of your domain and other information. You might not understand all of the information but you can Google the terms to get a better understanding.

Social Media - What is It and How Can it Help Real Estate Agents?

Wayne Golliday (SEO Redefined) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:23:44 -0500

Excellent Post. I always enjoy reading posts from you. Thanks again and keep up the good work.

Via Nancy Golliday (First Coast Designs):

Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies - it's a great tool for real estate agents wanting to build links back to their website.

Social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content; it's a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one to many) into dialogues (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers.

Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal, political and business use. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).

Some Social Media / Networking / Blogging Platforms That AreOut There...

Twitter is...

Wayne Golliday (SEO Redefined) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:10:53 -0500

Basically Twitter is part of the much larger social networking platforms you will find on the Internet. Facebook and Myspace would also be part of the social networking world on the internet. Twitter is also considered a micro-blogging platform. That simple means that you are only given about 150 characters to get your point across.

Twitter allows you to send tweets(updates) to anyone that may be following you on Twitter. You sign up for Twitter and get a text box to write your micro-blog in. When you are through typing you just click on the "update" button. Then what ever you typed in the text box will be sent out to folks who follow you.

People can choose to follow you or you can choose to follow them. Either way every time you update your Twitter account people following you will receive your update. You can send tweets from your pc or from your phone in if have SMS.

My last blog gave a great example of how a friend of mine is using Twitter to sell real esate

Follow Twitter Twendz

Wayne Golliday (SEO Redefined) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:02:13 -0500

Twitter can now be searched. There is a neat tool out there that is currently in BETA form that I have been having fun with for sometime now. It was developed by a company called Waggener Edstrom Worldwide. They are a PR company that is well known for their online and offline tools that dig deep into audience impacts and influences and demonstrate reality-based return on influence. I know that is a mouthful but they are a cool company.

The folks at WEW say that this new tool called TWENDZ is a Twitter mining Web application that utilizes the power of Twitter Search, highlighting conversation themes and sentiment of the tweets that talk about topics you are interested in. I thought it was fun to play with myself and after using it for a few hours it dawned on me all the ways in which this would become very useful. In fact we may even be looking at the beginning of a new type of search engine. It shows what is on the Tweeters mind and their emotional reactions to life events. Tweets are rated either with a positive or negative rating. This allows Twendz the ability to do things like predict the most current trends.

This tool allows business to see what is currently important to their potential customers. A company could launch a new product to the Twitter world and wait for the tweets to come in. You could change the face or marketing of a product by getting real time feedback from your customers rather than waiting weeks for a focus group's data to be analyzed.

You can go to the Twendz website and type in any search phrase and see what people are saying about it. I tried many different types of search phrases and was very surprised by the outcome. I did try searching for "Homes for Sale" and "Real Estate" and saw that there was a few folks sending tweets about new listings. However I think they were missing the boat on this and were to general in their tweets. I have blogged about how my Broker friend Jim uses Twitter to tweet to his customers about new homes his firm has signed up before they hit the MLS. He recently sold two properties using Twitter and I will go in to this in another blog after I have had time to talk more in depth with Jim

If for nothing less than a silly diversion over coffee, Twends is worth trying just for the smile factor. But for those of us who like cutting edge technologies and the potential they possess, it could be phenomenal.

Monday morning laugh (great one liners)

Wayne Golliday (SEO Redefined) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 06:45:59 -0500

I thought these were funny and wanted to share. Have a good laugh this morning.

1.. My husband and I divorced over religious differences. He thought he was God and I didn't.

2.. I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.

3.. Some people are alive only because it's illegal! To kill them.

4.. I used to have a handle on life, but it broke.

5.. Don't take life too seriously; No one gets out alive.

6.. You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me

7.. Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

8.. Earth is the insane asylum for the universe.

9.. I'm not a complete idiot -- Some parts are just missing.

10.. Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.

11.. NyQuil, the stuffy, sneezy, why-the-heck- is-the-room- spinning medicine.

12.. God must love stupid people; He made so many.

13.. The gene pool could use a little chlorine.

14.. Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.

15.. Ever stop to think, and forget to start again?

16.. Being 'over the hill' is much better than being under it!

17.. Wrinkled Was Not One of the Things I Wanted to Be When I Grew up.

18 . Procrastinate Now!

19.. I Have a Degree in Liberal Arts; Do You Want Fries With That?

20.. A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

21.. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.

22.. Stupidity is not a handicap. Park elsewhere!

23..They call it PMS because Mad Cow Disease was already taken.

24.. He who dies with the most toys is nonetheless DEAD.

25.. A picture is worth a thousand words, but it uses up three thousand times the memory.

26.. Ham and eggs...A day's work for a chicken, a lifetime commitment for a pig.

27.. The trouble with life is there's no background music.

28.. The original point and click interface was a Smith & Wesson.

29.. I smile because I don't know what the hell is going on.

You can make money with Twitter

Wayne Golliday (SEO Redefined) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 22:34:28 -0500

People are making money with Twitter everyday. It is not that hard to do. You just need to develop a following and then give them a reason to follow your tweets. Can everyone make money? That is like asking if every new business will make it. It all depends on what you have to offer and how well you market it.

In a recent post about my friend Jim,a broker in the Midwest I detailed a story about how he sold two properties using Twitter. He did that by getting his agents behind the idea that they tweet all of their customers when a property comes up that their customers might be interested in. His agents are required to sign up for a Twitter account and to sign up their clients as well. It took about three or four months but it has started to pay off.

There are lots of examples of tweets making people money. The first thing you have to do is to develop a following on Twitter. This is not as hard as you would think. Go through your current list of clients and see if you can find a common thread. Lets say you have several folks all looking for a 4/2 in a nice neighborhood. I am sure many of you get email address from your customers when they sign with you and use some type of drip-email service? You can use Twitter as a tool to enhance your marketing plan.

Market Twitter as a way to get new listings before they hit the MLS. Let your clients know that if they follow you on Twitter they will get new listings before anyone else. It needs to be marketed as an exclusive service that offers information that is HOT! Current information that no one else can get unless they follow you on Twitter.

Get other agents in your office to tweet you as soon as they sign a seller up. Twitter gives you 140 characters to use and that is usually enough. Make sure you are very specific and target exactly what your clients are looking for in a search.

Yahoo wants to fire SEO Firms!

Wayne Golliday (SEO Redefined) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:29:28 -0600

Yahoo filed a patent last month to automate the SEO process. On the surface this may sound like a real threat to SEO firms and their very way they make a living. It all most seems like Yahoo has found a way to make SEO a no brainier. Is Yahoo saying that it is no effortless to optimize a web site for their search engine? Well, maybe!

Yahoo's patent is to automate the process of website SEO. It is done by using keyword analysis through the frequency of searches on Yahoo. The keywords will be analyzed and then relationships of keywords will be strung together in order to determine what will work best for a website. Depending upon what your site is about; Yahoo will determine the type of traffic you will get. This automated process, according to Yahoo, is going to direct lots of traffic to your site.

Lots of traffic to your site sounds great. Except if it is not the type of traffic your really want. Let's say you are trying to sell Left Handed Blue Widgets and Yahoo determines that your SEO should include Whatchamacallits as well. We all know that Left Handed Blue Widgets cost 10 times more than a Whatchamacallit . You have a real niche market for Left Handed Blue Widgets and want to market to only those people but the Yahoo automated SEO process has decided that you should market to the Whatchamacallit crowd as well. Do you see the problem here? Niche market websites could be killed by this automated process and Yahoo will send lot of traffic your way except they are looking for the cheaper Whatchamacallits and can not afford your more expensive Left Handed Blue Widgets.

In theory this all sounds good but in the end I think this will only be good for people who like to do their own website design. Good luck with this one Yahoo.

It’s ten o clock; do you know where your kids are? Google might!

Wayne Golliday (SEO Redefined) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:41:14 -0600

Google released a new widget called Google Latitude, that can keep track of your kids for you. The widget can be used with a cell phone and your computer. By downloading the widget to each cell phone you want to track and turning on the GPS feature you can locate you children quickly. Now in theory your children can now no longer hide from you, but there have been some issues with this new technology.

Several groups have done some testing and found that this service is not always accurate. The system using what is called Triangulation. Simply put the nearest three cell towers make a best guess as to where the cell phone is located. Hopefully the cell phone is still with your child. One group found that their children had relocated to a mall in Las Vegas, even though they had been in Atlanta, GA just 30 minutes before that.

This new free service has many advantages for small business as well. Even though it has issues it is a great start for a free service.