I want to thank the Future of Real Estate Marketing blog for giving us good info on these social networking sites.

Most know by now that Web 2.0 is not going away and it is here to stay. We humans are naturally social, and so even with the advent of theInternet where we can cloister ourselves away and order everything we need to live online, we still want that interaction with other humans. We want to feel the human touch.

Enter online communities.

According to Wikipedia, "a virtual community, e-community or online community is a group of people that primarily interact via communication media such as letters, telephone, email or Usenet rather than face to face, for social, professional, educational or other purposes."

Online communities have been around since the late 1980s (BBS anyone?), but they have proliferated in the last five years, and more continue to pop up on the horizon with the advent of the latest ideas and technologies.

Below are a few of the most popular communities online:

* Linkedin.com - This is a professional social networking site that is gaining ground fast. According to their website, "Linkedin is an online network of more than 20 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries."
o How can I use this in my business? Contacts, baby!
* Ning.com - This is a do-it-yourself social networking site. According to their website, "Our passion is putting new social networks in the hands of anyone with a good idea. With Ning, your social network can be anything and for anyone."
o Again with the contacts, but you can also be known as that genius on the specific topic of townhouses in Hoboken, NJ. Or wherever else.
* Facebook.com - Facebook seems to be the slightly grown-up version of myspace.com. According to the Facebook website, "Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves."
o Making contacts is key to any business, isn't it? Just slap up your information, make some friends, and you just might sell property for someone you meet through the site.
* Squidoo.com - This is a bit different from the above three site. According to their website, Squidoo is a site "...designed to make it easy for anyone, for free, to set up a single page on a topic he or she knows or cares a lot about. Advertising revenue is shared with these content creators, and some of it is given to charity."
o Become the expert writer-slash-real estate guru when people begin to discover your squidoo page.

Why bother with online communities at all? We are all busy, so what is the importance of these sites? One word: eyeballs. Millions upon millions of people all over the world reside within these sites. They spend lots of time in them. If you had the chance to reach out and touch that many people, would you take the opportunity?

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According to Wikipedia – “A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries.”

Ok, so now we’ve defined what a blog is, is it good for your website?

Short answer is ABSOLUTELY! And here is why.

A blog is a collection of posts that are generally updated on an hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly basis. By updating your blog you’re increasing the possibility of having someone return to your blog because you’re creating something new to read.

Have you ever received an email or an IM from a friend saying, “HEY, read this”?

By that person sending you the link, and by you reading it, you’ve just increased the traffic for that site. Increased site traffic means more eyes looking at what you have to say, and by having it informative or entertaining increases the chances of a link to your blog being passed on or linked back to.

Just remember…

Write about what you know or about something you’re passionate about. This will ensure you take the time to keep it updated. If it is interesting to you, you’re more likely to take the time to write about it.

Update often. By keeping the blog updated often, not only are you giving your viewers something to read, the search engines see this as something more to index.

Search engines love fresh content. By having updated content, your site has a better chance of being indexed more often. Being indexed more frequently in turn allows your site to moves up in search engine rankings. Higher rankings on search engine leads to more traffic. Higher search engine placement brings more eyes to your blog. It’s all related.

And don’t forget:

Keep it informative
Keep it updated
Keep it fun

So, get out there and BLOG AWAY!

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The thought of search engine marketing can be rather mind-boggling, especially considering the staggering number of seemingly “secret” methods employed by the professional search gurus. There are, however, quite a few basic techniques that EVERYONE can use to boost your search engine results organically. Keep the following things in mind when trying to create effective organic search engine rankings:

1. META Tags
META tags are part of HTML but exist for the sole use of search engine spiders. These tags contain various information that the site owner wants to deliver to these spiders. Meta Tags include, but are not limited to:
a. Site Title
Title refers to the META/HTML tag that contains the page title, which SHOULD be determined by the contents of that page. Many designers pay little attention to the page content versus the title.
b. Keyword Tag
This tag generally refers to any word or phrase the user might search for in order to find a website or a page. Each variation of a keyword, such as the plural form of the word, is treated like a separate keyword. Phrases (i.e., a string of multiple keywords) are generally used interchangeably.
c. Description Tag
Refers to the information contained in one of the META tags that holds the description of the page and/or website. As the information contained in this tag is the information that is displayed immediately after the main link on many search engine results, it's a good idea to make this text “sell” the page or site content.

2. HTML Navigation
Most people like to use JavaScript or Flash for the main navigation on websites for the simple reason that you can include many links without taking up a lot of space on your page. While technically this method will work, JavaScript and Flash are not readable by the search engines. Create your navigation using HTML to ensure that the search engines can read your navigation and follow the links to your content pages.

3. Place Keywords in Your Page Content
Search engines scan your website for keywords. Including your keywords in your site content will help ensure that your site is “Content Rich” and more likely to be ranked higher in organic search engine rankings.

4. Use Flash Sparingly
Flash is very popular due to the visually appealing presentation one can achieve with its use. However, Flash cannot be read by search engines and, if used too frequently, can actually hurt your optimization efforts.

5. Submit Your Website to the Search Engines
After you have optimized your website, you need to let the World Wide Web know that it is up and running! Submit your website URL (address) to directories such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and DMOZ.

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If you’re spending to get traffic to your website from the major search engines you are probably wondering how much of your money is wasted on passive searchers. You know, “browsers” the type of person that’s caught between the conundrum of buying vs. renting or maybe they're 6 months to a year from making a purchase. The type of person you immediately call after they fill out a lead form only to find out they only wanted to know what school zone the house is in but isn’t serious to buy. Eventually, these passive searchers just end up on your drip marketing campaigns in hopes they come around someday.

A way to separate the passive searcher from the active home-buyer and spend money wisely is to optimize your blog and website content to a very local level. In search, the rule of thumb is the longer keyword phrase the better the prospect.

For example:

Chances are a person searching "Manhattan Real Estate" is a more passive searcher than a person searching "Soho NY Lofts for Sale near Wooster Street". In the second example you know exactly what the consumer wants and where they want it. That’s the type of person you want to find your website.

You can enhance your search marketing strategy by setting up campaigns with specific neighborhoods in mind or use the neighborhood names in the link text or headline of your ads. Using these methods can increase your click-through rate of your ads and usually the conversion rates will improve because it will weed out the passive shopper and attract those who know what they want. If you choose to just go the neighborhood route be prepared for less search volume, but since there is less competition the clicks should still be cheaper. This is a good way to stretch your advertising dollar and still attract those hot leads.

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Anyone can get a website these days.
Blogs have proliferated and many are free, so getting a presence online is not an issue.
But getting traffic to your website, that is the key to this whole online thing.
Here are some of the basics every realtor needs to generate traffic on their website:

• Social Networking. This is as basic as it used to be back before the world was "online". Get yourself known out in the online world. Myspace, Facebook and Linkedin are just a few of the social networking sites. Get a presence on them and get known.


• Article Writing. Sites like ezinearticles.com are an excellent way of gaining credibility and interest. Choose your niche and go for it! Set up a calendar of topics on which to write, and you can gain a loyal readership that will spread the news that you are the authority in your area of expertise.

Next I will add to this list of things to do to generate traffic to your website.

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Search Engine Optimization

Join Homes.com & AgentAdvantage.com November 8th for a FREE online training session on Search Engine Optimization. This class covers basic principles of search engine optimization, quick reference tips, examples of good website optimization and a few tricks of the trade. This class is for any agent looking to develop a solid foundation or wanting to maximize their current SEO efforts.

To register, Click Here. Hurry! Space is limited!

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Search Engine Marketing & Optimization

Join Homes.com & AgentAdvantage October 23rd for a FREE online training session on Search Engine Marketing & Optimization. This class will cover a basic overview of both SEO & SEM, common pay per click practices, examples of good website optimization and a few tricks of the trade.

This class is for any agent looking to maximize their current PPC or Search Engine Optimization efforts.

To register, Click Here. Hurry! Space is limited!

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Social bookmarking websites let you save bookmarks online and tag and/or categorize them with keywords. The difference between local, or even remote, bookmarking (protopage Google, etc) is that with social bookmarking websites, it is a community of shared bookmarks within common categories or themes. These sites store and organize bookmarks and interesting articles and posts. The content is created by, and added to, by thousands of members; thus creating the community and changing the designation to social bookmarking.
A blog called Blog Marketing Tactics has provided a comprehensive list of social bookmarking websites. But beware. Not all are equal. Some stand above the crowd. A short list is Digg, Del.icio.us and Reddit.
They all do it just a bit differently, so choose which one works the best for you.
Next time I will go into more detail, using a few choice social bookmarking websites as well as how to use these to promote your business.

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Technorati is a search engine for blogs and it is chock full of good stuff, smart information and and all-around view of the blogosphere. Search on any topic under the sun and you will find something useful.
When I am doing my research each week, I head to technorati first. The beauty of a blog search engine is you know that when you type in a keyword or a key phrase, you won't have to sift much to find good blog information. When going to the major search engines, type in "search engine new" and see what you get. You'll get good sites with good information, but mixed in with those useful sites are the ones that are just link farms with not much help. They just send you somewhere else that may or may not be useful.
Technorati.com gathers most of the appropriate blogs for our perusal, based on the small couple sentence blurb we can choose to click further and we get to very informative blogs. Of course many of the blogs are moving to monetize themselves, but that doesn't bother me too much because blogs, by their nature, give away so much awesome information. One doesn't go away hungry.
Go to technorati.com and poke around. You'll find what you like and you'll enjoy your time along the way.

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The more I get into SEO and SEM (for those new to this blog and new to, well, the Internet, SEO is Search Engine Optimization and SEM is Search Engine Marketing), the more I recognize the importance of understanding how to utilize the search engines. The more we know, the better we can optimize our presence on the web.
Check out this piece on Google's landscape. This a wealth of information, people!

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What is the goal of every website on the web? We create a website to BE SEEN. We want as many people to see our website as possible. The more eyes looking at our site, the more chances they will respond to the information on the website.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? The concept is simple, but building a site that will get visited takes time.

How does anyone find your website? A searcher's first task when searching for new and interesting information is to open up google.com or yahoo.com or msn.com or ask.com or any of a host of other search engines. Type in key words or key phrases and hit the go button. Find a site worth keeping and bookmark it or link to it.

Why did that particular website get located? The most influential reason is through good SEO and SEM practices. It was high up in the search engine rankings and it had good content. No fluff. Fluff and garbage just don't fly online anymore and people will not hunt through it to find a diamond in a rough website.

So what is the goal for today? Revisit and review your website making sure that it is SEO and SEM optimized, even if you have to pay. Paying for an expert to optimize your website can be worth 5, 10, or a 100 times what you will pay. Is it worth paying a couple hundred per month in SEO and SEM spend to get back thousands per month in new leads and clients? The answer should be a resounding YES.

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The idea of creating lists is not new. Consider David Letterman's ongoing top ten lists. I used to watch the show for the nightly list and who would be "performing" the list. In my humblest of opinions, here is my SEO/SEM Fab Five list:

You can get your fill and more of SEO and SEM and everything else in the blogosphere from Darren Rowse. He has been around the blog world for quite a while and has learned and taught more than I can hope to know. And he is not shy in providing his wealth of information.

SEOroundtable.com is a good site for the more nitty-gritty stuff of SEO and search engines. More newsy. And this site is a "list of well-known and respected authors that represent each of the major SEM-related forums on the Internet.

Searchengineland.com is Danny Sullivan's company. Those of you who have gone to SEO conferences, you know him already. He founded searchenginewatch.com in 1997 and recently left. He took his knowledge with him and it resides at his new site. I suppose the old site is good too.

Webmasterworld.com is a wonderfully comprehensive site for everything in the web world. It is not just SEO and SEM, but the information available on SEO and SEM makes a valuable site to bookmark.

Webguerrilla.com is a great SEM website. His name is Greg Boser, AKA the Web Guerilla, and he is a Search Engine Marketing Consultant. He has an interesting bio and his information is from a decade in the SEO and SEM business. Good stuff!

So there you have it. These are five of the many very good, very informative sites on SEO and SEM. Not comprehensive by any means, but it will get you started along the right path.

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