R & D Art is proud to annouce the launching of our newest venture, SellBuyRentOnline.com. Read our article announcing this launch here. If you are interested in joining, simply click here.

When it comes to landing pages for your site, there are quite a few options. The three main ones that I have encountered are Static, Blog, and Flash. Personally, I hate Flash pages as a landing page, but for the purpose of this article, I am going to keep my personal feelings to myself. With that said, over the last year that our online real estate network has been in existence, we have moved from the Blog Page being front and center to a static page. When we create a new account for our members, a static landing page is standard in our membership fee of $150 per year. So, to get back on track, lets take a look at the three types of landing pages mentioned in this article. A huge advantage to having this type of page is you can actually build a sitemap of your site in a format that is user friendly. When I say "sitemap" I am not referring to a standard sitemap, but instead, an article that links people to the things that they want to find on your site. Also, you can focus on keywords for your site easier.

Static Pages

Typically, a static page is one that remains the same (see image to the right). While you can change the content fairly easily, it usually remains the same. One advantage of this is that the page is cached in the world wide web and typically opens quickly. Static pages can be created easily and saved in databases as html files. The common use for static pages for blog sites is to give the appearance of a CMS (content management system) feel or type of site. This is what is commonly referred to as a website.

Blog Pages

A blog page is common in sites that are built using WordPress, Blogger, Vox, and others (see image to the right). Blog pages are pages which generates a list of your most recent posts or articles and places them on one page. While all of these platforms have a different layouts and functions, the blog pages are typically set to function in the same manner. Posts are kept in a chronological order that you can click on and go to the individual article. The big disadvantage of having this page front and center is that if you are away for some time and do not post, it is apparent to everyone immediately.

Flash Intro Pages

Flash into pages load animated content first while loading the main content in the background. The main problem with this type of page is that NOT everyone has a Flash Player on their computers. Even though that might sound prehistoric, it is a fact. In the end, if they can't load it, they can't see it. While Flash pages can be pretty and can also take the site to another level, if no one can see it, then it is as dumb as having a Picasso and leaving it in the closet. For this very reason I think it is bad to have this as your landing page. Another disadvantage to having flash is when people are using dial up (yes, it still exists) then it takes forever for that page to load. Regardless how people are connecting to the internet, they all want a FAST experience. Flash does not offer that.

In closing, the type of landing page that you chose is basically up to you. Your web site developer should be able to expand on this subject more, but I hope that I have provided enough for you to make an informed decision.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

One of the daunting feats that we all want to do is to keep people on our page. One of the newest ways to do that is to embed Google SERPs (search engine results pages) in your site. This way, when someone comes to your site looking for your informative post and want to do research, they can with the click of the button and never have to leave your site. Now, before you all say that this is old news, let me go into it deeper. The picture to the right is actually OLD news. However, that is not quite what I am talking about here.

For those of you that do not know, Google now has a feature through Adsense that allows for you to have the Google search engine results pages show up inside your website. This way, a reader or consumer can stick around on your site for some extra time. The one thing that I am not keen on with this product is the fact that it has to be at least 800 pixels wide. For most people, this is a majority of your content display. For people that employ the 1200 pixel themes, this really would not be a problem if you have a single sidebar or two that are less than 400 pixels total.

In closing, it is still a great tool to add to your site if you want to keep people hanging around. If you click on the picture to the left, you will be able to view a site that has this in action. If you notice, the header is still active. If you want to see it in action for yourself, visit SEO Info Now. For any PREP member that would like to add this feature to your PREP site, contact our office at 865-951-0522 and we will help you walk through it.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

Two weeks ago I was speaking with Your East Cobb REALTOR® who not only happens to be a member of Positive Real Estate Professionals but someone I regard as a friend. We were talking about how her blogging style and choice of topics has evolved since she first began blogging last April. I bring up Jodi Smith because her efforts are a perfect example of how blogging can help you to achieve concrete results in terms of business growth. Below are some of the common questions (and my responses) when people ask ‘What will a blog do for my business?’

What Is Blogging?

This is fairly straightforward. Blogging is writing; more specifically, blogging is writing posts/articles online. There is often a common confusion of terms that I would like to clear up. A blog is a collection of posts/articles. When you are blogging you are actually writing an individual post/article. So you don’t actually write a blog, you write a post/article on a blog. A good analogy is that a blog is similar to a magazine/newspaper and the posts/articles on a blog are similar to the articles in a magazine/newspaper. Hopefully this will clear up some of the term confusion.

Why Is A Blog Important?

There is an often used and written about phrase ‘Content Is King.’ I too have written several articles on this very topic and would encourage you to read Content is King for more information on this topic. The main reason that a blog is important for any website is that it is an easy way to add new content. New content to index is what the search engine spiders are looking for. New content and frequent indexing is a contributing factor to a site’s rank, Page Rank (PR) for Google. Rank is one of several key factors in how high a site returns in search engine results. Semi-regular posting to your site’s blog gives you the new content you need to help your site return higher in search engine results. The higher your site’s placement in search engine results, the more visible your site is, and the more likely it will be visited by potential clients.

What Role Do My Content Topics Play?

Your topics are important because they fill out the content vacuums that static webpages inevitably leave. A static webpage is basically an informative page that doesn’t change or changes infrequently. This is fine as long as the accuracy and relevance of the information on that page doesn’t change frequently either. A blog can definitely be a great way to give a deeper insight into various topics that your site’s visitors are looking for. Say for example you are a REALTOR® who deals with a lot of relocation clients, your potential clients will probably looking for all types of information on the area they are relocating to. To get a real feel for the area many people write posts that highlight historic buildings and/or places, local parks and other outdoor venues, restaurants, nightclubs, and shopping. Other people take a broader approach and write less about specific offerings and write instead about local youth and/or adult sports, the various houses of worship, or the availability of public transit. This is a way to make your website a destination for relevant information for your potential client base. This is also a continuing resource for past clients and an easy place for those past clients to refer potential new clients. It is important to also show your knowledge of your industry by writing things like market reports  and legislation that may impact your clients. A good rule of thumb is to put yourself in your clients, or potential clients’ shoes when you are considering a topic for an article and ask yourself honestly if this would be something of interest.

Not The Journals Of Yesterday

I feel that it is important to draw the distinction between the journaling that blogging used to represent and blogging for business. There is absolutely nothing wrong with maintaining a journaling blog or a poetry blog but these should not be confused with a business blog. In many cases people hear the term blog and think of these personal types of blogs. It is true that in the early days of blogging these types of blogs were very popular, and they do remain popular today. I enjoy many personal blogs but blogging for business is far different from personal blogging. If you are blogging to attract clients to your real estate business then the funny thing your cat did, or photos of you modeling that robe you got for the holidays are not relevant nor appropriate at all. These types of articles will probably have the opposite effect of what you intended. Keep your posts on a business blog relevant and you will produce the concrete results in terms of business growth that you are looking for and have heard so much about.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

Marketing properties with a listings blog just became easy. Imagine walking into a listings presentation appointment armed with the ability to have your client’s property reach the top of the search engines quickly. The great thing is, there are no black hat tricks used to accomplish this. Another great thing is, you do not have to log out of one site and into another to post to this additional blog. Everything is done on the same platform and is almost seamless.

One of the things with Postlets and VFlyers is that they require more room that what is typically on a page. To make sure that we have enough room for this to set up properly, we just remove the sidebars all together. Therefore, the property is front and center and is getting all of the attention that it requires. Also, once a property is listed in PREP, it does not take long for it to climb to the top of the search engines.

Now, before many of you ask why “categories” or “tags” cannot accomplish this, let me explain this; neither of these are indexed by the search engines. If they were, the bots would crash any network once they started to crawl them. So, having the additional blog gains the ability to have ALL the listings found in a search in one spot. It also allows for ALL the listings to be ‘index, follow’ and this is huge as it will increase your SEO.

As with any additional blog add on, there is a one time charge of $100. Once that fee is paid, it will take a couple of hours to be setup. If you have questions, please call us at 865-951-0522 or email me.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

Blogging is NOT the future of real estate; it is the NOW. Before someone thinks that I mean that blogging is the only thing that you should focus on, that is far from the truth. With that said, if you are not blogging, then you are missing out on the success that millions are enjoying. Is it hard work? Well, yes. Anything that brings proven results requires us to work at it. If it did not require work, we could charge $150 a month for our online real estate network as opposed to the $150 a year and people would still flock to us.

Since I started blogging in 2007, I noticed that I was able to reach more potential consumers than I could through normal means. Print adds were not working, not to mention how expensive they were. Leads just seemed to never pan out when we bought them. However, all that seemed to change when I started growing as a blogger. The reason was not that I became a great blogger; rather I was able to put my message in front of a larger audience at one time.

Blogging can change the way that you communicate with your potential consumers. Having the ability to reach more than 350,000,000 people with the click of one button has to be appealing to even the skeptic. There is no print add out there that could deliver a tenth of that number that I am aware of. Think of it this way. Major companies are setting up social media departments just for this very purpose. If it works for them, then it can work for you.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

Keeping up with the momentum of bringing new and powerful tools to our online real estate network, I am pleased to announce that we have brought in two new tools pertaining to copyright.

In today’s age of syndication, duplicate content, and scraping, the staff here at Positive Real Estate Professionals thought that we needed to bring in some tools that will benefit and protect our members. With that said, we put our focus on COPYRIGHT.

The first tool is a copyright for the entire site. It is designed to automatically update as the years change. While it can have a custom “Rights Reserved Message”, once set this feature will never need to be followed again. As for the second tool, it pertains to each and every post that our members write as well as page content. This tool is designed to place a link into your RSS or Atom feed that will direct back to the original article. With this particular tool, you get the year, blog name, and All Rights Reserved right in the RSS or Atom feed. The blog name provides a link back to your site.

In closing, while these two tools might not seem like much, they are huge. The intent is to protect the original author from people stealing content in order to increase their blog or website’s rankings in search engines. Like always, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

PREP now offers broken link checker to it's members. We decided to add this tool after running a number of reports on our online real estate network. For those of you that are unaware of what damage broken links can have to your SEO and your site, let me explain it this way. When a link is broken and someone clicks on it, they are directed away from your page. Sometimes you will get a "500" error, but most of them come back as a "404" error and state nothing was found. Not only are these errors encountered by human searchers, they are also encountered by search engine bots. In the end, neither are happy when they encounter this.

As part of full disclosure, when we ran ours on PREP, we found 144 broken links out of 1751 for just over 8%. For me, that is just too high of a ratio and damages our SEO. Once we figured that portion out for our site, we thought that the members would have similar issues. So, with that coming to light, we decide that this was a "must have" tool to offer to our members. It is free to use and can be located on your dashboard under tools. The first time that you run it, it might seem to be stuck, but let it do it's thing. It will clear out.

Now, what causes broken links, you ask. Well, that is a simple answer. Links can be deleted over time. A website can expire over time or go corrupt. Even worse, a site can be moved from one domain to another. While there are other fixes out to preserve these links, you have to ask yourself if it is worth the effort to track down the new URL. Once the program runs, you will have the choice to edit the URL, exclude it, or unlink it. In most cases, the only real choice is to unlink it.

So, what all does this tool do? For that information, I thought that I would just turn to Wordpress Plugins Directory for that answer:

Features

• Monitors links in your posts, pages, the blogroll, and custom fields (optional).

• Detects links that don't work and missing images.

• Notifies you on the Dashboard if any are found.

• Also detects redirected links.

• Makes broken links display differently in posts (optional).

• Link checking intervals can be configured.

• New/modified posts are checked ASAP.

• You view broken links, redirects, and a complete list of links used on your site, in the Tools -> Broken Links tab.

• Searching and filtering links by URL, anchor text and so on is also possible.

• Each link can be edited or unlinked directly via the plugin's page, without manually editing each post.

Basic Usage

Once installed, the plugin will begin parsing your posts, bookmarks (AKA blogroll), etc and looking for links. Depending on the size of your site this can take a few minutes or even several hours. When parsing is complete the plugin will start checking each link to see if it works. Again, how long this takes depends on how big your site is and how many links there are. You can monitor the progress and set various link checking options in Settings -> Link Checker.

Note : Currently the plugin only runs when you have at least one tab of the Dashboard open. Cron support will likely be added in a later version.

The broken links, if any are found, will show up in a new tab of WP admin panel - Tools -> Broken Links. A notification will also appear in the "Broken Link Checker" widget on the Dashboard. To save display space, you can keep the widget closed and configure it to expand automatically when problematic links are detected.

The "Broken Links" tab will by default display broken links that have been detected so far. However, you can use the subnavigation links on that page to view redirects or see a listing of all links - working or not - instead.

There are several actions associated with each link listed -

• "Details" shows more info about the link. You can also toggle link details by clicking on the "link text" cell.

• "Edit URL" lets you change the URL of that link. If the link is present in more than one place (e.g. both in a post and in the blogroll) then all instances of that URL will be changed.

• "Unlink" removes the link but leaves the link text intact.

• "Exclude" adds the link's URL to the exclusion list. Excluded URLs won't be checked again.

• "Discard" lets you manually mark the link as valid. This is useful if you know it was detected as broken only due to a temporary glitch or similar. The link will still be checked normally later.

In closing, this tool is set out to benefit our members. Unfortunately, we do not have the time to run these for you. We also do not have the time to review your broken links to give you direction. Ultimately, this is something that you are going to have to make the call on. There is really no right or wrong answers.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

Many of you that have followed me over the last two years might remember that when I first broke into blogging, I was a manager for a mortgage company. I originally started blogging on ActiveRain as The Mortgage & More Guy and soon converted my blog name to The Mortgage & More Blog. It did not take me long to know that I needed to grow my presence and that is when I gave birth to The Mortgage & More Blog. Just so you know a time line, the site was born in April of 2008.

I originally turned to Blogger, which was a free platform through Google. I went there thinking that because it was tied to Google, I would be able to garner more Google Juice. Boy, was I dead wrong. It did not take me long to realize that this was the wrong platform. I soon started looking for a platform that I could expand on.

This is when I found Wordpress. Many people do not realize that Wordpress comes in two flavors; Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org . If you want to get techinical, there is also MU.Wordpress.org , in which Positive Real Estate Professionals is actually built on. I won't get into that as it is a bird of a different color. The big difference between the .com and the .org is that .com host your site for you and there are many restrictions. The .org does not host the site for you and there are few limitations. In my estimation, .org and the MU platform might be the best content management system on the market today in terms of what it can do for you.

Now, let's get back on track. I originally went with the .com version. However, it did not take me long to know that it was not the right version and I soon mover to the .org version. Since that point and time, I have been able to increase my web presence with little effort. The tools that this platform offers is extremely powerful. With that said, the people that still follow me know that I left the mortgage industry last year to follow a dream. Since that time, I have tried to keep this site going, but it has been difficult. I have since automated the site to pull my articles from PREP.

With the time running near for the site to renew, I have decided to sale it off. With that said, if you are interested in purchasing the site and all the content on the site, then we need to talk. The site is established and still has a following. It is generating about 200 hits a day at this point. If you want to discuss this, you can call our office @ 865-951-0522 or email me.

It never fails that I get 2 or 3 emails requesting link exchanges on a daily basis. Most of the requests are from people with low ranking sites that have some relevance to us. However, I typically turn all of them down unless it is a member of our online real estate network. The biggest reason that we do this is because we are not here to promote sites of non-members. We created this network to promote our members and that is what we try to do.

With that said, yesterday I received an email that was requesting a link on our site and even went as far as to state that they would pay for the link. I replied to the email and it did not take long for the person to respond to my email. I basically told them the ONLY way that we would accept a paid link is if the link could have a "nofollow" attribute added to it. The person said "NO" and ran away. Now, why would I have told him that? Why not just take his money? Well, let's turn to Google Webmaster Central for the answer to that:

Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

• Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the tag
• Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know. We'll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links.

In closing, I am hoping this will help to shed some light on how Google actually looks at paid links. Many of the other search engines are starting to follow this same path. Matt Cutts of Google once stated “The best links are not paid, or exchanged after out-of-the-blue emails–the best links are earned and given by choice.” I have to 100% agree with him. Earning links or getting them because someone likes your site is so much better than obtaining them by having them built by paying for them, selling them, or even link farming.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.