Are you using vFlyer to it’s full potential?

February 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

vflyer listing syndication1 Are you using vFlyer to its full potential?

Everyone (or at least I think everyone) knows the power of listing syndication using Postlets and vFlyer.  By using listing syndication, you are “shot gunning” your properties to real estate websites all over the internet gaining maximum exposure to market your listings at no or minimal cost.

But did you know that with your upgraded account with vFlyer you have the ability to create widgets that can be added to your ActiveRain profile, website and blog to feature your listings?

Are you using these widgets on your online profiles? If you need assistance integrating the vFlyer widgets, let us know. Below are a few samples of the widgets that are available.

lisitng syndication vflyer postlets Are you using vFlyer to its full potential?

Filed Under: Lead Generation, Listing Syndication, vFlyer

What is Wibiya?

February 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Everyone asks me “What is that toolbar at the bottom of your blog?”

Well, it’s something I added when it was being beta tested and forgot it was there. I added it because I saw it on other blogs and thought it was “cool.”

If you need help installing yours – let me know.

I pulled the following from their website that explains what the tool bar is and how it benefits your blog:

Wibiya enables blogs to integrate the most exciting services, applications and widgets of their choice into their blog through customized web-based toolbars.

Their platform offers a one-stop solution for integrating, managing and tracking third-party applications.

Currently we offer a fixed set of tools such as creating a blog community via Facebook connect,
enabling Twitter alerts on your blog and enabling post navigation but there is a lot to wait for as we will be adding more and more application through time.

Integrate Facebook and Twitter Into Your Website

  • Enable your readers to tweet from your website and share your content.
  • Full twitter experience including Search, Latest tweets, Tweets about each page and more…
  • Bring your Facebook Fan Page stream to your website and grow the number fans.

Increase Page Views

  • Engage readers and raise page views with apps such as Latest Posts, Real Time Users, and More…
  • Gain traffic from the social web
  • Track your traffic growth through simple analytics tools

Communicate With Your Readers

  • Broadcast messages, alerts and more to all your visitors in real time
  • Share your latest tweets with your readers in real time
  • Participate in live chat rooms with your audience

Power Tools

  • Discover a growing range of applications to enrich your readers experience
  • Full tracking and management system for each application and effectiveness to your website
  • Add and remove applications in just one click
Filed Under: Social Networking

Google Business Locator and Bing Local Listing Center Registration

February 14, 2010 By 2 Comments

bing local listing center for seo Google Business Locator and Bing Local Listing Center Registration

Want to appear in Google Business Locator or Bing Local Listing Center but you don’t have the time or know-how to create a profile that will get you on top?

The Google business listings in the maps section (also know as the Top 7 for Google and Top 5 for Bing) is one of the most effective marketing efforts for exposure of a business you can use to target local consumers.

There are a number of rules and guidelines that need to be followed for your listing to appear. Also, there is strategy to be used to ensure you are in the top each time.

Take care of your clients and let Practical Real Estate Marketing do the work for you!

Contact us to register your business for a flat fee to Google, Bing and/or Yahoo!

google business locator for seo Google Business Locator and Bing Local Listing Center Registration

Filed Under: Bing, Google, SEO, Yahoo

Long Tail Searches for SEO

February 10, 2010 By 2 Comments

long tail seo search for google bing yahoo Long Tail Searches for SEOIt was announced by HitWise this morning indicated that Google accounted for 71.49% of all U.S. searches for the 4 weeks ending Jan. 31, 2010 which is a 1% decrease month-over-month.

Normally this type of an announcement after a major holiday would not be noteworthy but something else happened during this period…Bing increased its search market share 5% in the same period.

What was also announced was longer search queries (searches of 5 to more than 8 words) continue to increase. Between December 2009 and January 2010, search of 8 or more words increased 6%. Shorter search queries (those of 1 – 4 words) in the same period fell 1 % month over month, but accounted for nearly 80% of all searches in January.

Is it a Keyword or a Long Tail Keyword?

  • Short tail keywords are normally 1-3 words in length. (example: Real Estate Nevada)
  • Long tail keywords are typically 3-6 words in length, but are growing to be even longer! (example: Real Estate Short Sale Agent Las Vegas Nevada)

Read here for the full article.

Filed Under: Bing, Google, SEO

Why I Think Postlets R-O-C-K-S!

February 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

postlets listing syndication for real estate Why I Think Postlets R O C K S!I  have used Postlets.com for clients for years – I wonder sometimes if I was one of their first users of their amazing real estate listing syndication product.

The ability for agents to syndicate to their listings to other sites, create a single website and use the other functions available, FOR FREE!, can’t be dismissed.

Postlets is a tool that YOU need in YOUR business today. If you don’t have listings – BORROW THEM! (Seriously, there is someone in your office who would love to sell a property or two….just ask!)

Your social media sites are a click away (but be careful with this feature depending how you have your social media / networking accounts set up).

When you set up your Postlets account, be sure to include Google Analytics code. If you are a stats geek like me you will spend 1/2 the day analyzing your traffic sources.

If you are looking for an effective marketing tool for your real estate business, look no further. It’s easy to use (and did I mention FREE unless you feel the need to upgrade your account).

Filed Under: Analytics, Listing Syndication, Postlets Tagged With: , ,

IDX Plugin for Indexable Listings Released by Diverse Solutions

January 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

From Diverse Solutions:diverse solutions idx wordpress plugin ds idxpress IDX Plugin for Indexable Listings Released by Diverse Solutions

ThisIDXpress plugin will almost certainly give you a massive increase in your website visitors and a colossal boost in your search engine rankings by allowing Google, Yahoo!, and Bing to index the MLS’s properties for that will be found on your website and domain.

While other solutions either frame in the MLS content from another domain or charge you tens-of-thousands of dollars for a website you’ll never own or fully control, dsIDXpress is different. In a nutshell, dsIDXpress allows you to display search-engine-indexable content for the properties in the your MLS on your own WordPress blog / website and on your own domain name. The content for the lists of properties and property details can be accessed via URLs on your blog (ex. www.yourblog.com/idx/city/los-angeles/) or via our Live Listings℠ shortcode functionality.

With dsIDXpress, the listing data never gets stale since it’s all maintained by and resides our own servers. You’ll never have to worry about showing inactive or outdated listings on your since our system automatically takes care of all of the feed updates from each MLS. In fact, ALL of the data displayed is never more than 24 hours old and is often never more than 2 hours old (depending on MLS policies)!

HIGHLIGHTS:

  • 30 second plugin installation process that’s fully-integrated into WordPress
  • Live MLS data directly on your own blog or site and on your own domain
  • Multiple WordPress widgets make features listings in your sidebar a breeze
  • Tremendous increase in website traffic from search engines
  • Live Listings℠ shortcode insert real-time listing data directly into pages / posts
  • Shows visitors you’re an expert in your area
  • Property slideshows, Google Maps integration, and so much more..


DETAILS

  • EASY TO INSTALL: Simply download it from WordPress, click install, click activate, put in your Activation Key and you’re done. That’s all! There is no technical knowledge or special skills needed.
  • WIDGETS & SHORT CODES: Widgets and shortcodes give you more ways to create dynamic content. With shortcodes you can drop property details or groups of listings onto any post or page.
  • SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZED: All of the HTML that the dsIDXpress puts out is semantically appropriate. The benefit of semantic markup is that there’s less HTML bloat and more content for search engines to see and index.
Filed Under: IDX, Plugin, WordPress

Postlets vs vFlyer…Which to Use for Your Real Estate Listings?

January 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Real estate agents are always asking me which to use…vFlyer or Postlets. I say BOTH!

Postlets is free and vFlyer has a subscription fee. So for a small fee each month (plus your time to enter your listings into each system) you can get your real estate listings “shot gunned” (syndication) to lots of other real estate sites.

When your broker syndicates to real estate sites, as soon they are in “contingent” or “pending” status, the feed updates the status and your listing will no longer be marketed. If you do  your own syndication, your listing will stay on the internet a little longer and you will be able to generate more leads. (Plus, if you are a Trulia Pro member, you can brand the listing syndication properties long after the broker syndication feed has been removed.)

Both create .html code which can be used to post your listing to Craigslist and Backpage. Unfortunately, a lot of my clients are telling me that their ads using this code are being flagged when their “ugly ads” are not. So, if you are posting and this happens to you – this might be why and you may need to find alternatives for your ads.

POSTLETS

postlets real estate listing syndication 185x300 Postlets vs vFlyer...Which to Use for Your Real Estate Listings?

vFlyer

vflyer real estate listing syndication 200x300 Postlets vs vFlyer...Which to Use for Your Real Estate Listings?
Filed Under: backpage, Craigslist, kijiji, Listing Syndication, Postlets, vFlyer

Realshout Plugin

January 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment
gI 0 idxwebsitesearch Realshout Plugin

A few weeks ago I reprinted an article about the new plugin for real estate WordPress blogs, Realshout.

There are so many plugins available to make your real estate blog robust b ut this one seems to be ideal for agents.

I haven’t had a chance to use it yet and hope to integrate it into the WordPress blog we create.

Have you used it? What do you like about it? What would you change if you could? Would love to hear your feedback.

moz screenshot 3 Realshout Plugin

Filed Under: Plugin, WordPress

Lock up your local market! Introducing Trulia Local Ads

January 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

ARTICLE FROM TRULIA BLOG:


Today we’re excited to announce our new hyper-local advertising platform, Trulia Local Ads. Local Ads completely open up the ad market on Trulia, making it affordable for real estate professionals and businesses of all sizes to own a slice of their local market. What does a slice of your local market look like? It’s an easy way of directly targeting audiences at the city or even ZIP code level, reaching the local customers who matter to you most.

We understand that your local market may be a crowded space. Local Ads make it simple to outshine the competition by grabbing the attention of local buyers and sellers. In each city and ZIP code, there is a limited amount of advertising inventory, so when you lock up a large share of ad space, you lock out your competition. It’s a snap to activate your Local Ads campaigns. Just select a few locations and use sliders to purchase the slice of your local market that meets your budget. Ads targeted by ZIP code will show up on listings pages, while ads targeted by city show up in search results.

localads blog 2a Lock up your local market! Introducing Trulia Local Ads

We’ve spent a lot of time making Trulia Local Ads campaigns fast and easy to create. When you build your Local Ads campaign, you can select from default ad templates that dynamically update using your Trulia listing data or profile information. These ads are generously larger than competing services and perform 5 times better than the industry average for banner ads. If you’ve previously built your own advertising creative for campaigns elsewhere online, Local Ads allows you to simply upload your own custom image.

localads blog 3 Lock up your local market! Introducing Trulia Local Ads

For now, Trulia Local Ads is in limited release and only available to our Trulia Pro subscribers. Please sign up to be notified when we release to the general public. If you’d like immediate access to Local Ads so that you can get the jump on your competition, subscribe to Trulia Pro.
Please use referral code PREM492 if you upgrade your account

Filed Under: Trulia

Search Engine Optimization – Backlinks: Anchored Text

January 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

seo anchored text backlinks Search Engine Optimization Backlinks: Anchored TextIf you don’t know what anchored text is, it is the text that is within the link. Google (and other search engines / directories) love anchored text because it gives them a better description of what the link is linked to on your site.

By adding the link to the relevant text, you are telling the search engines / directories what text is important to your site so “practical real estate marketing” is a much better “click here” for squeeze a little more “Google Juice.”

Some resources will not allow you to post anchored text for your links but each time you have the ability to…DO IT!

Filed Under: Google, SEO Tagged With: , , ,
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