REAL SEO

<p> Is submitting to the yahoo directory worth the $300/yr fee?<br /> My first reaction is it is not unless your seo budget is substantial however<br /> it must be in demand otherwise Yahoo would not be able to charge so much.<br /> <br /> Here is the url for submission <a href="https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/">ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/</a> </p>

<div> Hi Everyone;<br /> <br /> </div> <div> Compass Internet Systems is happy to introduce a new booklet, <u>REAL Leads: How to Get Them and Sell Homes Online</u>. This booklet explores online marketing for non-technical agents and brokers. We&#39;d like to offer RealTown members a copy of this booklet for free; just write to <a href="mailto:realleads@compassinternetsystems.com">realleads@compassinternetsystems.com</a> and we will send it to you (and no one will call you.)<br /> <br /> </div> <div> Please visit <a title="http://www.compassinternetsystems.com/successstories.html" href="http://www.compassinternetsystems.com/successstories.html"><span style="color: purple">http://www.compassinternetsystems.com/successstories.html</span></a>and read a few fabulous stories from real agents just like you who have revolutionized their business by succeeding in online marketing for realtors.<br /> <br /> <br /> </div> <div> Best wishes,<br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; line-height: normal"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://www.compassinternetsystems.com/"><font color="#1C4D90">Compass Internet Systems</font></a> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <span style="font-size: 10pt"><a href="http://blackwater.realtown.com/"><font color="#800080">http://Blackwater.RealTown.com</font></a></span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://realtownstore.com/"><em><span style="color: #006bb5; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none">RealTown Approved Vendor</span></em></a> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://www.realtown.com/CarolineWethington/groups/real-seo"><font color="#800080">http://www.realtown.com/CarolineWethington/groups/real-seo</font></a> </div>

<p> In light of the recent outlook on market conditions, we thought this article written by the president of a major real estate company in Eastern Long Island would resonate.<br /> <br /> </p> <p> <img height="112" alt="" width="197" src="/members/CarolineWethington/files/t%20and%20c%20logo.jpeg" /> </p> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt -0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%">FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 24, 2009</span></span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt -0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%">Contact: Judi Desiderio , 631-324-8080,</span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt -0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%"><a href="mailto:jd@1townandcountry.com">jd@1townandcountry.com</a></span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt -0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%">1Townandcountry.com<br /></span><br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt -0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt -0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt -0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%" align="center"> <b><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%">THE GLASS IS HALF FULL.</span></b> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt -0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%" align="center"> <b><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%">IT&#39;S TIME THE MEDIA STOPS THE GLOOM AND DOOM CAMPAIGN.<br /></span></b><br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt -0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%" align="center"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt -0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%" align="center"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> Drawing parallels between today&#39;s environment and that of the Great Depression borders on irresponsible journalism and is incorrect. During that time in history, 25% of all Americans were unemployed. We are nowhere near such a catastrophe. We have learned and grown so much since then, having instituted safety nets such as the Federal Reserve, which was born at that time to avoid a similar collapse.<br /> <br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> Much more was born at that time as well, as it was a time of great OPPORTUNITY. Back in the 30&#39;s some very smart, entrepreneurial contrarians launched companies the likes of Fischer-Price, Allstate, Tyson, Lego, Toyota, Warner Bros, Sheraton, Polaroid, Volkswagen, Sara Lee, and The Ritz Carlton, to name a few. The only legitimate parallel that exists between that time and today might be the fertile grounds for OPPORTUNITY. We are seeing such forward thinkers emerge ahead of the next wave.<br /> <br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> For instance, The Real Deal March issue reports on three investors and their quest for faltering assets in &quot;Delving Into Distress&quot;. These seasoned professionals are not having a problem raising billions of dollars to buy up real estate deals. Also, according to CNBC March 17, &quot;Housing Stats Post a Surprise Rebound, Up 22%&quot;. Additionally, we&#39;ve seen foreign investors emerge in search of prime real estate at discounted prices.<br /> <br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> Yet the media insists on sensationalizing, and at times steering the reader to see the glass half EMPTY. Then again, drama sells newspapers. Take for example, the WSJ article of February 20, &quot;The Hamptons Half-Price Sale&quot;, quoting an agent&#39;s claim that a $25M house now listed at $13M was not over-priced in 2006 but simply caught in a bad market. Offers were made in 2006-07 in the mid-teens, just where the house should have been priced from the beginning. The current demise of the sale of that particular house is due to the bankruptcy issue!<br /> <br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> The same article quotes another real estate broker who claims to have customers offering 50-70% off the asking price, but the article does not disclose whether any of these offers resulted in a sale.<br /> <br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> The New York Times March 11 issue printed &quot;A Cold Season in the Hamptons&quot;, again spinning a negative tone. But closer scrutiny of the first paragraph tells the REAL story about East End real estate. It reads: A Southampton home sold for $460,000 in 2001, then for $850,000 in 2003, then again (after renovations) for $1.65M in 2006, and now is now listed at $2.2M. The writer admits &quot;almost five times the property&#39;s market value at the beginning of the decade&quot;. In my words, &quot;nearly doubling in value each two year trade - WOW - wish my 401K performed half that well. Today, in this long overdue correctional market, it will likely trade close to its 2006 price. That is equivalent to a stock holding its&#39; value in a down market - I&#39;ll take that return any day. Wouldn&#39;t you? I keep saying, &quot;I wish all my money was in East End dirt.&quot;<br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> The simple truth is real estate in our specialized area is experiencing a correction. During the past 10 years, we enjoyed double-digit annual appreciation. Such a rate of appreciation could not be sustained indefinitely without some correction. More importantly, real estate is meant to be a long-term investment -it is not a stock or commodity to be traded at whim. Long term, East End real estate has proven historically to out-perform most other investment vehicles. And it&#39;s tangible - it&#39;s a haven for family and friends, it&#39;s a place to make memories. The fact that we&#39;ve enjoyed exponential growth on our investments is just a bonus. Everyone wishes they could own a piece of paradise… aren&#39;t we fortunate that we do! </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> Judi A. Desiderio - CEO, President<br /> </div> </div> <p> Caroline Wethington </p> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://www.compassinternetsystems.com/"><font color="#1C4D90">Compass Internet Systems</font></a> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <span style="font-size: 10pt"><a href="http://blackwater.realtown.com/"><font color="#800080">http://Blackwater.RealTown.com</font></a></span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://realtownstore.com/"><em><span style="color: #006bb5; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none">RealTown Approved Vendor</span></em></a> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://www.realtown.com/CarolineWethington/groups/real-seo"><font color="#800080">http://www.realtown.com/CarolineWethington/groups/real-seo</font></a> </div>

<p> Ok I have to admit I am domain name junkie! I own 164 domain names. I maintain 13 websites, the other domain names would forward into my sites. I know this did nothing for SEO, I just wanted to control the domain names. </p> <p> Well that has changed, at least I think. I am curious on your opinion. Godaddy.com now allows me to create a one page very simple website for each domain. I can add my contact information as well as one link. </p> <p> See an example here. <a href="http://brookfieldforsalebyowner.com/">http://brookfieldforsalebyowner.com/</a> The main thing I was hoping to achieve was another link back to my main site. <a href="http://www.brookfieldhomesforsale.com/">www.BrookfieldHomesForSale.com</a> which I am hoping will help with SEO. </p> <p> I would be curious to see your thoughts on how this would work. </p> <p> Brad </p>

<p> </p> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> </div>&quot;Lilo&quot; Clacher is an agent with Crye-Leike Realtors in Cookeville, TN. She has been a realtor for 13 years: 11 in Florida and the last two in Tennessee. But it is only in the last two years that she has succeeded online. In 2008, 75% of her leads and 17 of her sales came from her website (<a href="http://www.lilorealtor.com/">www.lilorealtor.com</a>). No doubt many agents would be very happy to have 17 sales closed in that terrible year, but it&#39;s how Lilo lands listings that literally blew us away when we spoke to her recently. How she does so illustrates an often-overlooked benefit of being a true Internet realtor: Success selling homes online attracts sellers because the public knows that 84% of all homes sales begin on the Internet.<br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <b>Lilo has a simple presentation to show her Internet dominance<br /></b> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> First, she tells clients of the importance of the Internet in selling property today. &quot;Surprisingly,&quot; she says, &quot;many clients already know that a strong Internet presence is necessary, but most have never seen it proven right in their living rooms. The first thing I do is ask them to enter &#39;Cookeville TN Real Estate&#39; (or another of the towns I sell in) into their favorite search engine. Because I come up on page one of all of them, they immediately get the point that anyone looking for property in Cookeville online has a chance at coming to my website. Then, using my WebReporterTool, I show them statistics about my site and what it does for my clients. I show them how 4902 people found my site on the first pages of the major search engines in the last year. I show them that 50% of the visitors to my site come from search engines, meaning that we aren&#39;t limited to just the local marketplace when selling their home, but that people from all over look on my site. I open a chart that shows that while I had 9600 page views from Tennessee in recent months, that I had 8900 from Florida, 4100 from VA, 3900 from New York and even 2700 from California. They immediately understand that there is a whole large group of homebuyers on the Internet that would never find them without the services of an Internet realtor. And then, I pull out my secret weapon, and close the listing! Since I started this, I have won seven listings!&quot;<br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <b>Lilo&#39;s &#39;secret weapon&#39;<br /></b> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> Remember, she has just spent a few moments enthralling her prospects with evidence of her Internet strengths and attractiveness. With the stage thus set, she turns on her Statcaster feature on her tool, which shows -live, as it happens-every visitor to her site, where that visitor is from, and how many page views her site has had so far that day! Thus, the client&#39;s attention is seized by this little box on the bottom of her laptop and sure as shooting, while they watch, visitors come onto Lilo&#39;s site right in front of them! &quot;It never fails to trigger a conversation about how I sold someone&#39;s home they know to a person from out of state,&quot; Lilo told me, &quot;and that&#39;s when they are convinced to list their home with me.&quot;<br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> &quot;There&#39;s no question that my success online has a lot to do with my CompassSearch subscription. After all, before I subscribed I could get no higher than page 14 of Google. Once I subscribed I was on page one of Google within six weeks and sold my first home from my subscription seven weeks after I signed up. I never knew how useful this could be in gaining listings, however, and it is the most powerful tool I have ever seen for doing that!&quot;<br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <p> Caroline Wethington </p> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://www.compassinternetsystems.com/"><font color="#1C4D90">Compass Internet Systems</font></a> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <span style="font-size: 10pt"><a href="http://blackwater.realtown.com/"><font color="#800080">http://Blackwater.RealTown.com</font></a></span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://realtownstore.com/"><em><span style="color: #006bb5; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none">RealTown Approved Vendor</span></em></a> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://www.realtown.com/CarolineWethington/groups/real-seo"><font color="#800080">http://www.realtown.com/CarolineWethington/groups/real-seo</font></a> </div> </div>

<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <span style="font-size: 10pt"><font color="#221E1F">If you were attending an educational session at a major convention it is highly doubtful that two &quot;HomeTown Girls,&quot; as they call themselves, from Amarillo-each a grandmother-would be featured on the program giving tips on how to succeed in online marketing. After all, who would think that two agents-one an agent five years, the other just three-located in a place that gets very little press-could have discovered something that would help sophisticated folks in New York or San Francisco?<br /></font></span><br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <span style="font-size: 10pt"><font color="#221E1F">The two agents, Debbie Moore and Karen Malone, are with Prudential ADA in Amarillo, Texas. Having sold 15+ houses from their personal website this year (</font></span><u><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #233f8f">www.moreamarillohomes.com</span></u> <span style="font-size: 10pt"><font color="#221E1F">), these mainstream real estate agents are receiving about 20-25 good leads each week from their site. Even now, they are continuing to average more than one home sale each month from their site. What do they know that you don&#39;t know?<br /></font></span><br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <span style="font-size: 10pt"><font color="#221E1F">&quot;I use our Internet presence as a selling point by taking some of our website reports to listing presentations to show prospective sellers that we receive plenty of traffic and lots of inquiries from our site,&quot; Debbie says. &quot;They are all very impressed that two Grandmothers who bill ourselves as &#39;The HomeTown Girls&#39; can actually be so technologically strong. They know we have the local knowledge but they are sold when we show them our Internet positions. It is flattering to be considered technologically hip when one is a grey haired Grandmother, and it also makes our clients value our services more highly!&quot;<br /></font></span><br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <span style="font-size: 10pt"><font color="#221E1F">Debbie and Karen specialize in Canyon, Bushland and Amarillo, Texas Real Estate. The total population of these three cities and towns is about 266,000 people. There are plenty of real estate agents servicing that population, too, but if you go to Google® and type in Amarillo TX Real Estate, you&#39;ll find Karen Malone and Debbie Moore right there on page one, currently in the number two listing, just below Realtor.com.<br /></font></span><br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <span style="font-size: 10pt"><font color="#221E1F">Compare how you go about selling today to how these Grandmothers are succeeding in their part of the world. Is there something you can learn from them? If people can&#39;t find you online, you need to make it so they can. If you don&#39;t have a personal website, you need to get one. When you have those two things, you can work smarter at succeeding in the part of real estate that everyone wants to succeed in, but that very few do succeed in: online marketing.<br /></font></span><br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%"><font color="#221E1F">So, what do these ladies know? It turns out that these two professional agents know this: When it comes to Online Marketing, you can&#39;t sell if they can&#39;t find you when they go online looking for a home. Unlike so many other agents who won&#39;t go after Internet buyers, these ladies recognized right away that that&#39;s where the buyers are-Online-and they developed a strategy to bring some of them to their site. It should be no surprise that they are subscribers to CompassSearch.</font></span><br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%"><font color="#221E1F">If you are still having no success selling homes online, chances are there&#39;s a pretty basic reason that can be corrected. We have evaluated tens of thousands of personal agent websites over the years, and we&#39;ll be more than happy to evaluate yours, FREE, and advise you on what needs to b e done to make it more search engine friendly.</font></span> <span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%">To request that free review of your website to determine if it can be found by Internet buyers and if it is search engine friendly, go to</span> <a href="http://admin.compassinternetsystems.com/inquire/realtown/"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%"><font color="#800080">http://admin.compassinternetsystems.com/inquire/realtown/</font></span></a> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> </div>

<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <span style="color: #0d0d0d">Many newcomers to SEO may find it difficult to distinguish REAL SEO from ordinary Search Engine Optimization, which uses tricks to try and get clients found by search engines. When major search engines such as Google and Yahoo discover websites using these &quot;Black Hat SEO&quot; techniques (attempting to redirect search results to particular target pages in a fashion that is against the search engines&#39; guidelines) can even result in your website being banned.<br /> <br /></span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <span style="color: #0d0d0d">For example, a few years ago, Google banned reciprocal linking as an approved way to build links and changed their algorithm to exclude total links, reverting instead to inbound links only, net of outbound. Building these rich linkages between related pages is a very different thing than link farming or reciprocal linking.<br /></span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <span style="color: #0d0d0d">What is a link farm?</span><span style="color: #0d0d0d"><br /> <br /> Link farms are websites that have lots of inbound links to increase their search rankings and Page Rank. Such sites can contain lots of links to unrelated websites. Sometimes there are also networks of link farm sites that link to each other (reciprocal linking). Using link farms violates Yahoo and Google&#39;s</span> <a href="http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics-18.html"><span style="color: #0d0d0d">Webmaster Guidelines</span></a> <span style="color: #0d0d0d">and will not improve your ability to come upon the first pages of the major search engines..<br /> <br /> Search engines are very strict with blocking link farms. Most of them ban such sites completely from being indexed and displayed in search results. Furthermore, you may also lose your ability for anyone to find you if you get banned by Google.<br /> <br /></span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <span style="color: #0d0d0d">Yahoo&#39;s Site Guidelines<br /> <br /></span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <a href="http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics-18.html"><span style="color: #0d0d0d">http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics-18.html</span></a><br /> <br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <span style="color: #0d0d0d">Google&#39;s Site Guidelines<br /> <br /></span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356"><span style="color: #0d0d0d">http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356</span></a> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <span style="color: #0d0d0d">Why would anyone continue to sell methods that are banned? Unfortunately, some vendors want to try to obtain for free what they know works well when fairly paid for. We would rather pay submission fees to hundreds of online directories and know that our clients will be registered and indexed than simply wave a wand and hope that they will be. Also, linking is a constant thing, and we re-link everyone every six months. That&#39;s expensive, but then again, our clients count on us to KEEP them succeeding and on page one. Our clients trust us to do nothing that will put their online marketing efforts at risk. They&#39;re right. We won&#39;t.<br /></span> </div> <p> Caroline Wethington </p> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://www.compassinternetsystems.com/"><font color="#1C4D90">Compass Internet Systems</font></a> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <span style="font-size: 10pt"><a href="http://blackwater.realtown.com/"><font color="#800080">http://Blackwater.RealTown.com</font></a></span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://realtownstore.com/"><em><span style="color: #006bb5; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none">RealTown Approved Vendor</span></em></a> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://www.realtown.com/CarolineWethington/groups/real-seo"><font color="#800080">http://www.realtown.com/CarolineWethington/groups/real-seo</font></a> </div>

<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <span style="color: #1f497d">While Google is usually cryptic in its responses, it says pretty much right here:</span><br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/12/building-link-based-popularity.html"><font color="#800080">http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/12/building-link-based-popularity.html</font></a><br /> <br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in"> <i><span style="color: #1f497d">&#39;To sum up, even though improved algorithms have promoted a transition away from paid or exchanged links towards earned organic links, there still seems to be some confusion within the market about what the most effective link strategy is. So when taking advice from your SEO consultant, keep in mind that nowadays search engines reward sweat-of-the-brow work on content that bait natural links given by choice.&#39;<br /> <br /></span></i> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <span style="color: #1f497d">This says that exchanged links are frowned upon.<br /> <br /></span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <span style="color: #1f497d">This has been the case for nearly a half-decade; just 3½ years ago, one major real estate website company had to hire on outside SEO strategists to help protect it against quickly falling rankings due to its failed link exchange campaigns on nearly 45,000 clients.<br /> <br /></span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <span style="color: #1f497d">We have thousands of sites that we monitor performance on, on an ongoing basis. Because of that, we are able to see which strategies work, and which ones do not. I can tell you that surely as anything else, exchanging links not only does not help, but <i>most often harms the websites ranking</i>. The reason behind this is simple: email campaigns which promise links in exchange for others often renege on their commitment to link back to your site. This leads us into a situation where our client sends an outbound link to another site, &quot;bleeding&quot; some weight to the targeted site, while receiving none in return. This is a 100% bad scenario and helps only the &quot;scamming&quot; site. In the best-case scenario, they link to a more popular site, then the more popular site links to them (and thousands of others), giving a very small percentage of the total possible outbound weight to our client, as it is shared amongst everyone being linked to.<br /> <br /></span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <span style="color: #1f497d">Bottom line, as has been stated for years by those in the know-link exchanges are bad. They are not good, the odds are not in your favor, and more often than not, you will not receive the promised inbound link. Even if you do-it will only help to minimize the negative effects of this type of campaign. It is time to start learning from the major mistakes of others, time to start listening to what the search engines are stating they are looking for… because believe it or not-sometimes they&#39;re pretty up-front about it-and it&#39;s time to start building the right way, organically, and with powerful one-way links.&quot;<br /> <br /></span> </div>Caroline Wethington </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://www.compassinternetsystems.com">Compass Internet Systems</a> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <span style="font-size: 10pt"><a href="http://blackwater.realtown.com/"><font color="#800080">http://Blackwater.RealTown.com</font></a></span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://realtownstore.com/"><em><span style="color: #006bb5; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none">RealTown Approved Vendor</span></em></a> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://www.realtown.com/CarolineWethington/groups/real-seo"><font color="#800080">http://www.realtown.com/CarolineWethington/groups/real-seo</font></a> </div>

<div> <b><span style="font-size: 9pt; color: black">Good SEO will not overcome poor marketing practices<br /> <br /></span></b> </div> <div> <span style="font-size: 8pt; color: black">Getting people to your site is just step one; once there, you must handle them properly and respond to their inquiry within four hours, maximum.<br /> <br /></span> </div> <div> <span style="font-size: 8pt; color: black">Enable your website&#39;s notification system to text message all Internet leads directly to your cell phone so that you can make this requirement happen.<br /> <br /></span> </div> <div> <span style="font-size: 8pt; color: black">Does someone respond individually (not just with an auto responder) to each lead immediately? The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) conducted research into the effectiveness of online marketing and found that leads contacted within one hour of submission were 10 times more likely to result in successful contact than those not contacted within one hour. An auto-responder is better than nothing, but a personal phone call is even better: not only are you likely to find the submitter still at their computer and available to talk, you will absolutely blow the submitter away with your superior service.<br /> <br /></span> </div> <div> <span style="font-size: 8pt; color: black">The best SEO will not overcome bad business practices and lackadaisical lead follow up.<br /> <br /></span> </div> <div> <span style="font-size: 8pt; color: black">Recently, a client was troubled because he &#39;wasn&#39;t getting many leads this week.&#39; We had him check his cell phone and he found that one of his clients had been feverishly text messaging him from London saying &quot;I am ready to buy today!&quot; Seven others were trying to reach him to look at specific properties. No product can overcome lack of immediate follow-up.</span><br /> <br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> Caroline Wethington </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> Compass Internet Systems </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <span style="font-size: 10pt"><a href="http://blackwater.realtown.com/"><font color="#800080">http://Blackwater.RealTown.com</font></a></span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://realtownstore.com/"><em><span style="color: #006bb5; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none">RealTown Approved Vendor</span></em></a> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://www.realtown.com/CarolineWethington/groups/real-seo"><font color="#800080">http://www.realtown.com/CarolineWethington/groups/real-seo</font></a> </div>

<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <b>If your html tags were never properly written, although your website is &quot;optimized&quot; it could be optimized for the wrong targets.<br /></b><br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> Most website providers leave the choice of tags to the developer or the client (that&#39;s you). Some use computer generated tags. (Often times those computers generate your tags by choosing the town where your billing address on your credit card is located instead of the towns you may target in your practice! A good idea is to aim your site at the very same place you receive 80% of your business from now-by town.) Some providers do a better job than others in these tags; some do nothing about them. In either instance, they may not be properly optimized for you.<br /> <br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> To see if you have that problem, pull your site up, go across your navigation bar to &quot;View&quot; then scroll down to &quot;Page Source.&quot; Click on page source and a new window will open in your browser. That&#39;s your html code. See what it says on your &lt;title&gt; tag. Does it say &quot;Home&quot; or some other equally non-descriptive thing that does not describe what you do and where? That usually means you need your tags written to reflect what you sell and where you are. Without that little piece of finishing, your site is not findable by search engines or searchers.<br /> <br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> This section of your website is never seen by viewers; it is only read by the computers that run the internet. Computers are very literal machines: they follow instructions exactly. The instructions about what the computer should do about your site are contained in these tags, and none is more important than your title tag. This little line of html code is about the single most important part of people being able to find you that you can do anything about, yourself.<br /> <br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> Accompanying this tag are your &lt;meta&gt; tags, more instructions which further specify how your site is to be catalogued for the searching buyer. With no disrespect intended, if you saw the abuses in this area that we see each day, you would understand that there aren&#39;t that many people out there who really have any idea about how to write proper html tags for your website. They don&#39;t suffer, but your site and its efficiency do!<br /> <br /> <br /> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> Caroline Wethington </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> Compass Internet Systems </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <span style="font-size: 10pt"><a href="http://blackwater.realtown.com/"><font color="#800080">http://Blackwater.RealTown.com</font></a></span> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://realtownstore.com/"><em><span style="color: #006bb5; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none">RealTown Approved Vendor</span></em></a> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> <a href="http://www.realtown.com/CarolineWethington/groups/real-seo"><font color="#800080">http://www.realtown.com/CarolineWethington/groups/real-seo</font></a> </div>

<p> Does anyone have experience using ajax on a website and then providing stardard html links for Google to crawl? I&#39;m a little hesistant to have separate web pages for Google and others for users but the advantages of using ajax are hard to pass up. Also if the ajax application does not provide a unique url for a web page a visitor will not be able to provice an inbound link to the page if he or she chooses to do so. How do you address this situation? </p>

<p> We are talking about shifting away from the &quot;traditional&quot; dues billing cycle; i.e. bill in October, collect through December. </p> <p> We&#39;ver thought about semi-annual, quarterly, or annual based on a July 1 due date. </p> <p> If you utilize &quot;non-traditional&quot; dues billing, could you comment on what it is and how it works for your members? </p>

<p> In this group, we&#39;ll be posting some common reasons that even good SEO may not bring you the business it should, right out of our clients&#39; files. You are still the most important component to your online marketing strategy and if there is one thing we have learned about this, it&#39;s that our client base that follows our direction about lead capture, community pages, deleting outbound links and the rest can average 5-15% of their unique visitors converted to leads. It doesn&#39;t take all that much traffic to make the leads flow. So then, why doesn&#39;t SEO always work for people appearing on the first pages of the major search engines? Here&#39;s what our experience shows as some of the most common reasons. </p> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <b>REAL SEO TIP: Maybe your site is optimized for the wrong targets</b> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> This happens more often than you might think. It happens when (for one example) an agent covets the high end neighborhood where she may not be doing business and instructs her SEO company to optimize her site for that coveted territory and not for where she makes her living; in this example, let&#39;s say for &quot;Beverly Hills Homes for Sale&quot; when she really sells homes in Burbank. In due course, our covetous agent is all over the search engines on the first page for that search, but the phone doesn&#39;t ring. Perhaps this will help explain why that is: a) The agent&#39;s office is in Burbank; b) Her telephone area code is 818 and Beverly Hills is 310; c) She is a member of no Beverly Hills civic or professional associations or social clubs; 4) She has no clients in Beverly Hills. </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> We tell clients to optimize for where 85% of their business comes from geographically, not where they want it to come from, unless they are prepared to physically be in that target market with all the accoutrements necessary to belong in it. Why? Because people looking for a home in Beverly Hills want a Beverly Hills Expert, not some agent from Burbank trying to crash their market! Don&#39;t be greedy; stick to where you can properly be the neighborhood expert. While good SEO will bring you buyers from all over, proper SEO is aimed at where 85% of your business is, today! </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> There&#39;s another common variation on this theme; where you choose the wrong phrase to optimize your site for and the traffic just isn&#39;t there. An actual example is &quot;Historical Homes for Sale Long Beach CA.&quot; Too narrowly targeted can be as bad as improperly targeted; stick to broader use phrases, such as &quot;Luxury Homes&quot; or &quot;Waterfront Homes&quot; and you&#39;ll have more success than with a niche too narrow. </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> Good luck! </div>

<p> Has anyone used Orangesoda.com for SEO? I submitted my website to Orangesoda, for free, and then a rep called me and asked if I would be interested in their services ranging from $1,000/month - $300/month. Just wondering if anyone has used and their experience with this company. </p>

<p> </p> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <b>&quot;Page Rank is dead&quot; is old news and Google algorithm changes happen dozens of times annually.</b> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> Recently you may have seen an article in Broker Agent Pro seeking to scare you all into thinking that Google has changed the entire way it evaluates organic search placement. Specifically, there was a paragraph that read as follows: </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> <b>&quot;Where Does this Leave the SEO Crowd?</b> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> You might as well consider that Page Ranking is dead. In the future you&#39;re going to have to look at your analytics program, measure traffic, bounce rates, action, and much more. In the first six months of 2009, we&#39;re going to see a lot more implementation of behavior and intent-based search leading to a mindset of &quot;ranking is dead, and traffic will be all that matters.&quot; </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> Those of us who do this for a living have been aware of the correct parts of this prognosis for over a year are already coaching our clients about these things. I should mention that our clients have the best analytics package available, one that measures all the things cited in the article, included in their subscription. </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> However, part of the hysteria is just plain false: traffic will never be all that matters. Bounce rate is useful, but not as important as other statistics, and can be manipulated by redirects and outward bound links to your detriment. &#39;Behavior and intent based searches&#39; sounds high-falutin, but it is simply another way of stating the obvious: Search engines want to know that when you search that you are being delivered to the correct site to fit your search. The REAL SEO crowd already makes certain that is the case. Translation: Google&#39;s possible algorithm changes don&#39;t mean bupkus to you if you are already a REAL SEO client. Furthermore, Google&#39;s existing database and search engine placement have had NOTHING to do with Page rank for over a year. As Mike Parker wrote last year in a well received article: &quot;<b>Page rank is largely determined by the person or company that creates the basis for assigning page rank. The person writing the algorithm essentially predetermines the results by crediting more weight to factors where they have an advantage to favor their goals. It is as simple as Algebra 101. As an objective measurement, page rank is of little value</b>.&quot; </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt"> Nothing has changed, but some people are just trying to deal with the ever-changing Google algorithm; real or proposed. Google changes their algorithm dozens of times annually. To the SEO industry, it&#39;s simply a fact of life that needs to be constantly monitored and adjusted for. In the real estate business, these changes are no cause for alarm. </div>