Hello Active Rain friends! Please check our official blog for updates regarding our recent data center move and the current system issues we are working to resolve ASAP.

http://www.advancedaccess.com/blog/

We appreciate your patience during this transition.

I just wanted to put up a quick post to remind you that our official blog is located at:

http://www.advancedaccess.com/blog/

Of course, we're always making sure to stay on top of whats going on here on AR, but if you're looking for information from us, you can either visit the blog or contact our Customer Support Team at:

TOLL FREE (866) 518-1571

or

Support@AdvancedAccess.com

Thanks and Happy Selling!

At this time most systems are up and running.  Specifically, certain websites will be running slowly throughout the rest of the day and the Classic 3.0 Virtual Office is currently inaccessible.  Email is operating and will be slowly moving through the backlog of messages from the past day and a half.  Our entire staff is working diligently to correct these remaining issues and we will continue to keep you updated.

On a positive note the resources available at this new location should help to prevent the very issues we experienced.  The new data center is a state-of-the-art facility with multiple fiber paths for internet connectivity, redundant environmental control systems, on-staff AC and electrical technicians and on-site backup diesel generators.

Please feel free to contact our Advanced Access Customer Service Team
Support@AdvancedAccess.com
866-518-1571

We are getting updates to everyone as quickly as possible... the above mentioned items are up and we will be getting more info out ASAP via our corporate website once that is restored to its current version.

We have our support center staffed to capacity as well to answer your calls.  1-866-518-1571.

- Anna

At this time, Advanced Access is having significant power issues at our offices and all services are currently down.  100% of our resources are dedicated to solving this problem with many various solutions being implemented at this time.   There has been no data loss or corruption of your services.

We are expecting that all services will be shut off for the rest of the day.  We do anticipate all services to be running tomorrow, Tuesday May 22.  We sincerely apologize for the downtime and are doing our best to get you up and running as quickly as possible.

Thank you for your business and support. We will continue to post updates at our Advanced Access Blog as we receive them and are able to post them from sources outside the office.

- Kristina

If you like to study the Google results for certain keywords in your community you may have noticed that there have been some changes to the landscape.  Many results pages that include the keyword of a local community or city now have a large map at the top of the results and three local businesses listed.  This has dramatically pushed down the organic listings for many local keywords that real estate agents target which makes it imperative that your business be listed in Google Maps.

With the new layout, as you can see below, it pushes down the organic search engine results a few more inches and placing quite a bit of importance on Google Maps and Local results. 

In the above image, three different sections are marked.  Number one indicates where sponsored ads are being run via Google AdWords.  Many times Google will show two advertisements at the top of the page and the rest of the advertisements are shown to the far right.  The number two position is Google OneBox results.  Scroll up to compare how it used to look for community or city searches and you will be surprised to note that it has almost tripled in size. The third section is where regular organic Google results start to show up.

How to Rank in Google Maps & Local OneBox Searches

Ranking your website in Google's organic listings can be confusing and difficult for most of us but at least there are many guides and helpful hints to show you the way.   Ranking in Google Maps however is more treacherous to navigate through because the service is so new and changing. 

First, you need to be signed up with Google Maps and get your site verified. It's very easy to sign up. Simply sign in using your Google account and if you don't have a Google account, it's easy to sign up for one of those as well. Justin from Christian Real Estate Network provides a possible solution if your office has already signed up using their office location by applying for a mail box from the UPS Store.

Second, make sure your physical address is also posted in other places around the Internet to let Google know you are on the up and up. Here are a few local search directories that you should be included in:

Other Important Local Directories:

CitySearch
InsiderPages
Live Search Local
Local.com
SuperPages 
TrueLocal
Yahoo Local
Yelp 

Third, make sure your business listing has a few reviews and/or testimonials through the local directory services. 

To read the full article that goes over these important tips, please visit our corporate blAAwg. :)

- Kristina

Dave Sifry from Technorati posted the quarterly State of the Blogosphere report. If you haven't seen it, it's worth a look. It's amazing to see the growth in blogs. One of the stats Dave posts about is that the blogosphere is doubling in size approx every 230 days.

To throw a little humor on that, Google Blogoscoped added in a few more lines to Dave's chart.

It's amusing how many spammers throw up sblogs and scrape content, websites, press releases, and more.  I have Google Alerts setup to track our company name and for a few weeks after we have new releases, they will pop up in the oddest places. Nice to see Technorati attempting to put a stop to them.

- Kristina

Who is writing these captivating blogs on ActiveRain that I am reading in my Google Reader each day?

I don't know.

To find out I have to click through. Clicking through on my Google RSS Reader is 'another click' and annoying. (To me, anyway) I just like to read them through my Reader. It's quick, it's easy, I can keep hitting 'J, J, J' and the posts fly by while I skim through. Many times I usually know who is writing the posts. The Lovely Wife has her unique style, I can usually pick out Krystal Kraft from her pictures, and Toby & Lenn drop descriptive links to their websites which points out the author pretty well. It's a good strategy too.

Why don't I know who the writer is? There is no 'author' setting in ActiveRain telling my RSS Reader the info.

I was going to post this weeks ago but I didn't. Why am I posting now? I noticed that my Google Reader has updated the author (I'm assuming AR updated something in their settings) which gives each blog the author of 'from Active Rain Blogs' and links to a Google search of ActiveRain blogs. Which is strange. I didn't know that field could be linked.  I was going to take a screen capture of it and then it disappeared.  Maybe AR is working on things, I'm not sure. Instead of 'from ActiveRain Blogs' it would be fabulous if the author could be the actual author of the blog. :)

Here is an example of the author setting under the blog title.

See how it says 'by William Slawski'? William is the only writer of the blog SEO by the Sea so hopefully many people would know he is writing the blogs anyway. (If you love to read about search engine patents, this is the blog to subscribe to, btw!) Another example would be The Bloodhound Blog who just recently introduced Russell Shaw as a guest poster and the 'author' field is extremely convenient for that reason.  I know right away if Greg is writing, or if it is Russell. 

Here is a blog by Matt but it has no author under the title. Since hundreds of blogs are written a day that are categorized as 'ActiveRain Blogs' it is a big folder to skim through. Having the author listed would be nice.

I remember reading Toby's post a few weeks ago about 'Spamming Your Own Site' and thinking while his point was valid, I actually liked the signatures because they told me who was writing the posts. When you are actually reading the posts on the AR site (and reading the comments!) the signatures and extra links are not needed as the link to your profile does the job just fine.

ActiveRain - For the RSS Readers around here, think about adding the author setting to your 'wish' list which must be miles long. :-)

For RSS subscriptions, each blog has it's own personal RSS feed. The categories and all the blogs have their own RSS feed as well. A few months ago when blogs were just getting started I subscribed to the 'Most Interesting' RSS blog feed from the AR Blog post about it. For awhile I would read the blogs in my RSS reader and then go to ActiveRain at some point and realize I was missing out on blogs. I didn't have the full RSS feed of *all* blogs.  I changed my RSS feed to setup all blogs written... and still realized I missed these 'Member Posts' that people would talk about.  That was when I realized I was missing out on some more valuable information and finally decided to sign up. :) 

I enjoy reading my blogs in my Google Reader.  It would be handy if the author tag was added. I still love to visit AR and do a quick skim through the Blog archive to view the comments and see the featured posts of the day though.

Thanks AR for being a great stop in my daily activities :)

- Kristina

Adding and editing articles on Wikipedia can be a little confusing for the average Internet user.  It took me two tours through their tutorial to feel comfortable enough to start editing a page, and even then I had keep flipping back and forth to the FAQ to be sure I was doing things correctly.

Luckily, the tutorials are very complete and if you read through them you can become an expert Wikipedia contributor in no time.

The best way to start is to Sign in or Create an Account.  After signing in, take some time to get to know Wikipedia before jumping in and creating an article. In many cases, new articles should not be created so you may wish to browse through the Articles of Creation Wizard for recently registered Wikipedians.  Otherwise, the best way to start is to find a topic that you are passionate about and slowly begin editing and contributing relevant facts.

After you are signed in the best place to start is their Help section, specifically the Introductions page.  It encourages you to jump right in and test out editing the page.  The Help section guides you along the rest of the ins and outs of Wikipedia and I encourage you to read through the whole thing. The section talks about experimenting in the Sandbox and don’t worry, the Sandbox is wiped clean everyday so nothing you write will be set in stone.  Feel free to test away.

The main Help section will guide you to the Tutorial which is what I fully recommend.   Wikipedia has their own editing system so if you are familiar with HTML, it will take a little getting used to.

For instance, to italicize text you would add two apostrophes before and after the text, like this:

‘‘text’’
text

To bold text, you would use three apostrophes before and after the text, like this:

‘‘‘text’’’
text

Links are done in brackets. 

There is definitely a small learning curve but bookmark their handy Cheatsheet so you won’t get stuck.

Go slow, remember the special Wikipedia conventions (you did read that tutorial, right?), and have fun exploring and contributing!

Quality links are essential in helping you with your quest for a number one search engine ranking for high trafficked keywords.  Many people continue to assume that any backlink is a good link to have. This is not the case, especially with ‘Big Daddy’, the latest Google infrastructure update that occurred over the summer.

My last post went over the value of having a trusted backlink from Wikipedia.org.  Adding your site to Wikipedia is not an easy thing to do.  The third favorite strategy in the Ultimate Guide to Building Backlinks by Mary McKnight from RSSPieces talked about not adding your link to the main ‘Real Estate’ category in Wikipedia but instead adding it through a sub-section and linking to articles about mortgage loans or other subjects that you have written yourself. 

Location, Location, Location

I’d like to refine that advice. Real estate is local.  Associating yourself with your local community will help you gain traffic and trust.  Type in your city & state (Yorba Linda, CA for example) into Google and you will most likely find the local Wikipedia page in the Top 10 rankings.  Having a link from trusted sites as these will bring you traffic from consumers surfing for information about their area.  Your site will also gain trust by being associated with your local community and then gain rankings for your key search terms.  Since your key search terms are most likely community related (City Real Estate), it’s a win-win situation.

Be a Community Expert

We have talked about creating quality content to our own family members for years.  Having community pages on your site with unique content written by YOU will position yourself to be the community expert. In the process of working with buyers, I’m sure you have come across your clients asking you questions about the various communities within your city.  Make sure you are writing that knowledge down and posting it on your website.

Examples of information you might want to include:

• Neighborhood Descriptions
• Area Maps
• Floor Plans
• Recreation Activities
• Parks
• School Info
• Local Phone Numbers
• Market Updates
• Photo Galleries
• Events
• Area History

When you have some quality community content in your website, it’s time to start letting people know about it.

Help Build Wikipedia

Using the search box on the left of the main page, type in your city and state and click on search.  Depending on how large your city is the page may be filled with content already and quite large.  Start reading the page to determine if there is any useful information that you may be able to add.  You may have to drill down to a lower level community page but the best idea would be to be able to spot areas where you can contribute new community info by creating a new page to add to Wikipedia and link it from the higher level city page in a way that would make sense and be helpful to the consumer.

Confused? Let me show you.

Let me give you a real world example.  Eric Bouler, my favorite New Orleans expert, is constantly adding new community information to his website. I think everyone will agree that the pictures he posts are amazing and the content he is constantly adding is helpful for someone wanting to learn more about New Orleans.

Let’s check out New Orleans in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans,_LA

The page has a Google PageRank of 7 and is full of helpful info already.  The page also comes up in the top 10 rankings when typing in New Orleans, LA into Google.

Let’s go take a look at Eric’s website:
http://www.ericbouler.com/

Eric has quite a few community pages.  I selected Mandeville which is a smaller community in St. Tammany Parish. 

Here is the St. Tammany parish page on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Tammany_Parish,_Louisiana

Halfway down the page there are 11 cities and towns listed that link to their respective pages.  Click on Mandeville, or use the link below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandeville,_Louisiana

The page is mainly filled with history and demographics.  Keep in mind that Wikipedia has an editorial policy for a neutral point of view on all of its content. Viewing the Mandeville page and then Eric’s page on Mandeville real estate, it looks like there would be some opportunities to help build Wikipedia.

How Can You Contribute?

The first example that comes to mind is adding information about the Mandeville homes and subdivisions.  Eric has over 12 subdivisions listed on his community page. A good way of adding content to Wikipedia would be to either add 12 new pages about each subdivision or add a new page listing information about the subdivisions.  Where they are located in Mandeville, what schools they are associated with, average cost of a home in 2006, and any other facts.  He could also add some of his beautiful pictures.  Keep in mind that under the GNU Free Documentation License anyone would be able to use the information so it would be best that the info is not copied from your website (confusing your website and Wikipedia with duplicate content) but is unique.  Since you are the expert on the area, it should be simple to come up with the facts and post them on the site.

Once the page was created, with a link to Eric’s community page for more detail info and photos as he is the community expert, it could be linked from the Mandeville page. Voila! A valuable inbound link from Wikipedia and you are contributing with helpful information to the site.

What are your Experiences? 

Have you added content to Wikipedia? Was it helpful for you? I’d love to know! 

Can’t figure out how to add content or pages to Wikipedia? It can be a little confusing.  A short overview will be posted tomorrow.

Enjoy! - Kristina