Justinnerd's Blog on ActiveRain

My Personal Experience with Getting Listings Crawled by Google

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:33:59 -0500

Just wanted to share a recent experience I had creating a RE website. Granted, I don't have a huge amount of experience building or designing websites, but I was up for the challenge and wanted to get my hands dirty with some of the new technologies available with RSS, IDX, social media, etc...

Luckily the client is a close friend so he was very patient with me... He's my dad! He hired me on a limited basis to redesign his old Advanced Access website that he had for over 10 years.

WordPress was the obvious choice as a platform since it's so search engine friendly, but is also very flexible in terms of design and features. I also jumped right on with Diverse Solutions as they have a really slick IDX system that allows the creation of RSS feeds based on a custom property search criteria.

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The design and set up went smoothly enough... I used my favorite hosting company: BlueHost to switch the domain over and got to work installing WordPress. I chose a real estate specific theme called irealestate, that at the time was one of the first real estate WordPress themes ever created to my knowledge. It has a really cool blue tabber on the right that can feed recent posts from any category you choose.

Without boring you with the details, we got the site up and running without too much trouble... but there was one thing that was really bothering me. How do we showcase listings on the website without using a lame, cumbersome, framed in version of the IDX search? It's slow, confusing, and just looks crappy framed into the site. You can see an example of what I mean here.

Not only that... from experience, I know that those iframes are very UN-friendly to search engine crawling and might as well be a blank page in the eyes of the search engines.

So immediately, one of my #1 goals became: how do I fix this??? How can I get listings to show up as static pages of the website that can be crawled and found by the search engines?

As I was digging around and researching this problem, I stumbled upon a feature of the irealestate theme I had purchased that had a page template that allowed you to feed listings into into it through RSS. Bingo!! I thought I had found the perfect solution!. You can see an example on this OC Foreclosures page.

The only thing that bothered me was that it just lined up all the listings on the page. I had seen something like this before on Jay Thompson's website under the Phoenix Listing Feed section. It is really cool, but I recognized immediately that this wouldn't solve my search engine problem. Yeah, the search engine might crawl this page and find some of the listing data, but it was on a single page, and it would constantly change because of the data feed it was pulling from. Not exactly the great solution I originally thought it was.

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So I kept looking... I knew exactly what I wanted, but didn't know how to make it happen. My dream was to have a feature that allowed individual listings to automatically create a single blog post as they came into the feed under whatever criteria I chose. So, if I wanted to have a category of listings in a certain zip code with a certain price range, I could set it up so every time a listing came up, a new blog post was created with WordPress. This would ensure that each listing got it's own unique URL on my site and would be able to be crawled and found by the search engines.

Alas, I began to start thinking that this was probably just impossible...

Around the same time I was looking for a solution to this problem, a friend of mine over at the Real Estate Tomato (Jason Benesch) announced the soft launch of a tool he called Listing Press. It was almost exactly what I was looking for (and I highly recommend it if you want a plugin solution).

But being the DIY'r that I am, I had to find another way to make this happen and make it have the flexibility I wanted it to. The the search continued...

Low and behold, after searching for many many hours, I found just the thing. A combination of plugins and tweeks that would do exactly what I wanted. I turned it on at about 2am one night after working for about 6 hours on it, crossed my fingers, and went to bed.... The goal was to set it up so the listings would populate as blog posts automatically without me having to do anything and I knew that by the time I woke up I would know whether I had accomplished this goal.

I rolled out of bed at about 8am to check the computer, and to my utter amazement, 95 new blog posts had been created over night!!!!! Each one of them was a new listing pulled down from my Foreclosure feed that I had created with Diverse Solutions. Amazing!!!

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Sorry, I know this post is getting long, but I almost feel like I need to journal it because what happened in the weeks to follow was incredible...

Because of some other work obligations and a vacation, I wasn't able to really work on the site for about 2 weeks. I did set up some new feeds... I was really interested in the foreclosures because I knew that the REO market was really hot in Orange County and wanted to capitalize on that. I created 5 categories on the blog, each one targeting a different price range of foreclosures. I also found a really cool tool on Diverse Solutions that allowed me to find properties with price reductions... that was pretty cool too so I created a new page for that as well.

After a couple weeks, we had over 1,000 blog posts on the site as listings and noticed that many of them were even ranking when you did a search for the address, or even the street name. I found that they even outranked sites like Zillow and Trulia for the same listings... and most of the listings were so fresh that most of the sites that publish listings hadn't even found them yet.

But where was the traffic??!! I was starting to get frustrated that my dad wasn't getting any calls or emails. Why wasn't it working?

Then I got the call that changed everything...

My dad called me early on a Monday morning saying that he just got a call from a very angry Orange County resident saying that he was so tired of his phone ringing off the hook for people wanting more information on real estate listings. Bingo!

Stupid me!!!! I had placed the wrong phone number on the IDX feed! LOL!!!! There were hundreds of listings being indexed by Google with this poor guys phone number on them. I immediately deleted all of the posts and started from scratch. But the good thing was, I knew it was only a matter of weeks before we started seeing some real leads and traffic.

It didn't even take 3 days... My dad called me on Thursday telling me he had 4 calls that day for people wanting more information on "listings they had seen on Google" and it looked like at least 2 of them were going to use him to represent them as a buyer's agent. Pretty amazing. We had done it, and the scary thing was that we hadn't even scratched the surface yet.

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That was a couple weeks ago. Since then, the phone is still ringing off the hook, the listings are still getting posted automatically, and the traffic for the site is around 200 visitors per day when it was previously about 25 per day. Over 90% of the traffic is coming from search engines and I'm just amazed at the potential.

Some possible opportunities and deals have opened up, and I'm weighing my options on what I should do with this technology.

I wanted to get some feedback from you, the Activerain community on what you thought about this whole thing. Even though I'm a nerd, I'm not as smart as I look. I feel like I've got a tiger by the tail and am not totally sure what to do with it.

You'll notice that I didn't get into alot of detail on how I did it, and that is for a few reasons:

First, I'm not completely sure what I should do with this information. Should I share it with the world, or keep it under my hat?

Second, I don't want everyone and their mother flooding the Google index with listings. A wise man once told me that if I have something good going, why try to publish it to the world and risk running into unforeseen problems (that man was actually Jonathan Washburn who gave me personal advice on another business I had in late 2006)

Third, I'll be honest... I'm selfish. I'm not sure I want to release it on a broad scale because there might be some business models I can create out of it.

So, I defer to you the ActiveRain community. What do you think I should do with it? I'm trying to be as transparent as possible here.

Here are a few of my ideas... you let me know if I'm crazy or not...

Keep it secret and just make my dad a ton of money.
Release it to a few key brokerages around the country that could benifit from it as a source for leads.
Create a business that designs basic WordPress sites, or takes existing WP sites and add this functionality.
Hire a developer to create a WordPress theme that has this functionality built in.
Create a bunch of sites around the country and use them to farm leads and create a referral network.
Lastly (and this is my favorite and the one I'm leaning towards)... create a large video series on how to do it and release it for a small fee. There are a ton of features and possibilities that I didn't even go over in this post. Like how to exclude listings from showing up in your main blog, how to syndicate this feed to Twitter and Facebook, how to create a custom email subscription box for a certain search criteria, how to create a feed based on any search criteria you choose... the possibilities are endless and I think I could create about 5-6 hours of video that would explain how to do everything...

What do you guys think? Am I crazy? Shoud I try one of the above ideas or just keep it under my hat???

Thanks for listening to my ramblings this morning....

Bringing Out the Nerd in You

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:01:57 -0500

Ok, Ok, so I haven't spent much time on Activerain lately... things have been a little nuts. But I did want to give you a quick update with what is going on (assuming you are one of the 3 who actually care).

As you can see, I've re-designed my AR blog. I won't be officially representing the Tomato here anymore. The RET will always have a special place in my heart... I taught over 500 blogging classes for them in 2008 alone! I still plan to do some consulting and coaching on the side for them as the opportunity permits, but I won't be officially representing them on social networks like AR anymore.

Early last year I re-launched a company I had started back in 2002 called Searching Solutions. It is basically an SEO consulting firm with emphasis on local search, social media & coaching. So, for the foreseeable future, I'll be blogging under the company name: "Searching Solutions". I am insanely busy, but in case you were wondering, yes I'm open for business and would love to talk to you about your blog or website (I know you were dying to ask...)

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So what is with the "nerd" thing you ask? There is actually some history there that I won't bore you with, but basically back in '97 when I got my first email address, it was: justinnerd@hotmail.com. It has kind of stuck ever since as an online screen name. Now you can visit me at: Twitter.com/justinnerd and at Facebook.com/justinnerd or event justinnerd.com

So again, I apologize for my absense lately... I have loved the Activerain community from the first few weeks it started, and plan to be here for a long time to come. Expect "nerdy" topics like SEO, analytics, linking, etc...

Hope to see you in "The Rain" sometime soon...

Listen to Tomato Radio Today At 3pm PST: We're Getting a Behind The Scene Look At ActiveRain with Jeff Corbett (VP of Operations).

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:01:40 -0500

Via Real Estate Tomato (Real Estate Tomato):

Listen in from 3 to 4pm PST to get a Behind the Scenes Look at the Real Estate Industry’s Largest Social Network, ActiveRain (About to eclipse 150K members).

Our guest, Jeff Corbett, is an old friend of the Real Estate Tomato, but more importantly, he is the VP of Operations and Business Development for ActiveRain.

He’s Bald, Bold and Brazen. and we’re hoping he’ll open up and give us the mud (dirt in the rain).

We will be talking with Jeff about:

His Role At AR
New AR Developments
AR’s Big Challenges and Possible Solutions
His thoughts on a Yogi Berraism: “Nobody goes there no more; it's too crowded!"
And more…

At 3:30 We will be taking your questions. Don’t hold back, we know you have a lot on your mind.

Listen Live: http://cli.gs/tb7u8t

Call In To Listen: (347) 884-9764

Call in with your questions. (347) 884-9764 (Then hit the #1 on the keypad to get our attn, and we'll bring you on live!)

There's a Chat Room too! http://cli.gs/tb7u8t

Yes, there will be a podcast in case you missed the live show... but being there is where it's at!

15 Quick SEO Tips for Real Estate Bloggers

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:17:40 -0500

Block Duplicate Content - With the nifty All In One SEO pack for Wordpress, you can easily set your category and archive pages to be noindex/follow… meaning that Google will follow the links to the individual articles, but not index those pages which will help guard against the duplicate content problem. For those of you not running Wordpress, try turning off your archives, and not placing posts in more than one category. Read more about: Multiple categories & Onsite Duplicate Content.
Keyword Research Before You Post - This little tactic has helped me tremendously. Before you get ready to hit publish, run the keyword phrase that you used in your title through a keyword research tool like Google’s Keyword Tool. You may often find that with just a slight variation, you’ll be targeting phrases that get a higher volume of searches. For more help on keyword research, read this post I wrote about the money tail.
Internal Link Juice - In order to properly pass Page Rank, and link value to deep pages of your site (like older blog posts), you’ll want to link to these posts often. This can be achieved through a related posts section, or by simply linking back to previous articles as resources. Sometimes a few basic internal links with proper anchor text can have a great effect on that page’s ranking. Andrew Shotland gave a great tip related to this when I interviewed him about local search marketing.
Keep Your Link Count Down - This can be a problem with some blogs… too many links on one page. It can water down your internal Page Rank, and cause problems with full indexing. Generally, try to keep the number of links on a single page below 100. Google has said that it may not crawl any links past the 100 mark. So be careful with your categories, archives and blogrolls. These are the things that can eat up your links fast especially on the home page and category page.
Use Unique Titles For Blog Posts - Diversify your ranking potential by using unique titles on blog posts. I’ve written about this topic extensively here: Keyword Cannibalization.
Each Post is a Ranking Opportunity - View each post you write as a new opportunity to rank for a unique keyword phrase. Each post has it’s own content, title, title tag, and URL slug making it a prime candidate for unique ranking for certain phrases. Don’t try to target the same phrases over and over in each post.
Use Heading Tags - Not only is this important for usability, it’s vital for search engine ranking. If you are targeting a phrase in the title of the post, try to incorporate that phrase somewhere in the post within a heading tag. This will also break up the article nicely and make it easier to read.
Label Pictures Properly - Each picture should include the tag that can be used to describe a picture with text. Be descriptive, but try to also include keyword phrases that you are targeting.
The Perfectly Targeted Post - When you are attempting to rank a post well, you must do the following: 1. Identify a keyword phrase 2. Place the phrase in the post title towards the front 3. Place the phrase in the first sentence of the post 4. Use at least one subheading in the post that includes the phrase 5. Place the phrase in any images on the page using the alt tage. 6. Let the phrase flow naturally throughout the post.
Write a Linkbait Post - This is a post that is written for the sole intention of building more links to the website through viral popularity and interest. It could be something funny, something controversial, a hoax, insider news, a free resource, and more. Just about anything can be linkbait if it ends up getting other people to link to you.
Create Link Clusters - Each post has it’s own keyword phrase ranking potential in the search engines (usually based on the keywords used in the title and body). Create extra links to pages like this in clusters. Example: you have a post that is targeting: “blue widgets”. Create 10 links to that post from other related articles with that exact anchor text as the link: “blue widgets”. This can dramatically increase the ranking of that page for the chosen keyword phrase.
Leverage Strong Pages - Every website has a few strong pages. Usually these are the most popular posts that have the most incoming links and comments. These pages can be leveraged to help build the authority of other pages on the site that may not be performing to their full potential. Link generously. Try using this tool for finding your strongest pages.
Monitor 404 Error Statistics - Using Google Analytics and Google webmaster tools can help identify error statistics. Keep your eye 404 errors for pages that get consistently accessed. It probably means that there is an old link to that page that is bringing traffic to it. You’ll want to set up a 301 redirect for the 404 error page, or talk to the webmaster of the other site to have them change the link to a working page.
Check Status of Outgoing Links - Many times the pages we link to get moved, taked offline, etc. It’s important that all of your outgoing links work properly so your readers can be taken to outside resources that actually work. Try this dead link checking tool.
Find Missed Link Opportunities - Many times, your company or website can be referenced online without the actual hyperlink. It can be an effective strategy to find these references and ask the webmaster to turn them into a link. Use this query to find pages with these references.

9 Super Easy Blogging Participation Tips

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:40:15 -0500

A couple months ago, I decided to create a post on my Searching Solutions Blog that contained a giant list of blogging tips on everything from setting up an effective blog, to advanced SEO tactics. It has become a regular feature of my site, and something I update every week with new tips. There are currently over 100.

I'll be posting portions of the list on AR for reference. If you want to see more, make sure to check out the origianl list here: Ultimate Guide to Blogging

** If you plan to link to or bookmark this guide at some point, please do me a favor and link to the original at: www.searchingsolutions.com/blog Thanks for your help! **

Here are some of the categories I cover in the guide:

Return Comments - It’s common courtesy. Not necessarily expected… but it will go a long way in building relationships with other bloggers, and show them that you care.
Answer Your Comments - This is expected. Especially when someone asks you a question. There is nothing that can kill the conversation on a blog faster than the author ignoring commenters.
Turn on Trackbacks - This will give the other bloggers that choose to link to your posts a benefit and show them that you’re not afraid to link out to them and share the love.
Have Feedburner Deliver Your RSS Feed - Feedburner is in desperate need of updating, but it’s still the best tool out there to track your feed statistics, customize your feed, and have it delivered by email.
Allow Email Subscriptions - Make sure these are turned on with Feedburner. Alternatively you can sign up for a service like Feedblitz. Either way, this is a vital part of any blog and will help the technically challenged readers subscribe with ease.
Comment Reciprocation - Teaming up with another blogger to comment on each other’s blogs can be a great way to build some credibility and show your readers that your blog is active. There’s nothing worse than have a page full of posts with no comments. It can kill morale, and drive readers away.
Extra Blog Features - This can be anything from a message board to a Q&A to a job board. There are alot of different features you may want to consider adding that will enhance the participation on the blog.
Ask a Question - One of the simplest ways to get people to comment is to ask a question. It’s like giving an open invitation to participate.
Make a Guerrilla Comment - This is the art of being the first person to comment on a popular blog. The first commenter will typically get very good visibility and traffic from a well visited blog, and will continue to generate long term traffic on some posts.

And it just keeps on growing... please comment if you have a tip you'd like to share (I'll give you credit and a link from the original post).

15 Tips For Improving Your Blog's Content

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:02:06 -0600

I'll be posting portions of the list on AR for reference. If you want to see more, make sure to check out the origianl list here: Ultimate Guide to Blogging

** If you plan to link to or bookmark this guide at some point, please do me a favor and link to the original at: www.searchingsolutions.com/blog Thanks for your help! **

Here are some of the categories I cover in the guide:

Pick a Niche - What is no one else writing about? What are you an expert in? Grab your corner of the web and hang on to it. Set out to create the most useful and unique content in your area of expertise. Adversely, you could find a topic alot of people are blogging about, and simply out-blog them. Bottom line: pick something you can write alot about, and try to pick something you’ll enjoy.
Create a Slideshow - Too many pictures for one post? Make a slide show. They add a very nice feel to any post. I like using slide.com, but nearly every photo sharing website has a slideshow creating feature.
Interview Other Bloggers In Your Industry - This can be a great way to meet people, give your website some clout, and build great content. Try a simple email questionnaire or invest in a recorder for podcasts. Read more tips on giving an interview.
Hunt For RSS Feeds to Find Topics - One of the best ways to find topics to write about is through following what other bloggers have to say. Pay special attention to the sites that are in your niche. Writing about local topics? Find a local newspaper feed, or local press release feed.
Find Insider Topics With RSS - Blogs aren’t the only sites that use RSS. But most people subscribe to the top level RSS feeds and ignore the good stuff. Hunt around for specialized RSS feeds. Try subscribing to a tag feed in Delicious, subscribing to a special topic on a press release site, or subscribing to a single category of interest on a popular blog.
Write 5-10 Pillar Articles - The post you are reading right now could be considered a pillar article. They are blog posts that are at least 500 words and help define the blog you write for. It is a long term strategy for building links, visitors, and value to a blog.
Keep Track of Ideas - Most bloggers tend to one extreme or the other. Too much to write about, or not enough. You want to be the kind that has too much to write about… that way you can be extremely selective and only write the good stuff. The best way to do this is to write your ideas down as they come. I personally use a notebook gadget with Google desktop, and also write ideas down on my phone when they come. The point is to keep the ideas coming and have lots of options to choose from when it comes time to actually write. Good bloggers will only use about 1 in 10 ideas.
Hold Posts in Reserve - Sometimes the creative juices are really flowing and you can’t help but write 3 or 4 posts in one sitting. But fight the urge to publish everything at once. You may want to reserve posts for a later date when the writing isn’t coming so easy. This can really work well if you don’t write alot of time sensitive posts that need to go out immediately.
Consistency & Frequency is Key - When famous blogger Darren Rowse asked his audience the biggest reasons why readers unsubscribe from blogs the #1 and #2 answers had to do with frequency. Posting too much, or not posting enough. This is huge. You need to set a standard with your readers and stick with it so they know what to expect. Do you post 3 times a day? twice a week? twice a month? There is no magic number… just make a decision, then make a commitment to stick with it. Going on vacation? Post date a post to be published while you’re gone… yes, it’s that important.
ReWrite An Old Post - I just did this recently with some success on this post: Competitive Website Resarch. Chances are you have some great content that may just need a little sprucing up or updating to be a great post.
Write a Series on a Topic - Looking for a way to get readers to come back for more? Try breaking a long post into 2 or 3 sections and linking them all together. You could also try posting within a time frame like week long series on a particular topic, or 1 tip a day for 30 days. Keep your readers hungry for more.
Make a List of Your Posts - This seemingly simplistic tip can really come in handy when you’re working on linking to related articles, building internal link juice, staying on topic, and keeping track of your goals. A simple spreadsheet of all the articles you’ve written so far can help tremendously.
Take Pictures & Share - Many bloggers are in industries that lend nicely to photography. If this works for your industry, make sure to capitalize on it. Take alot of pictures of your subject/topic/product. Set up an account on Flickr.com and join groups that relate to your subject. You may also want to consider showing off these pictures in your sidebar with a widget, or by creating a slide show.
Leverage Your Friendships on Social Media - This can be a great way to get ideas for a post. Try running a poll, asking advice, etc. Before you post, try sending out a quick message on Twitter or Facebook to get feedback on a topic you are thinking about writing. If they give you some good tips, make sure to credit them in the post.
Create a Video Post - This isn’t actually as daunting as it sounds. There are plenty of cheap digital video cameras out there that take great video, and will upload to your computer and to video sharing websites without any editing or converting. Try getting the help of an assistant, practice staring into the lens when you talk, don’t feel embarrassed, and invest in a small tripod. Before putting it on the blog, you’ll want to upload it to a video sharing website. I prefer Vimeo because of the quality, but Youtube and Google Video can work great too. Oh, and if you have time, transcribe the video into a text version.

And it just keeps on growing... please comment if you have a tip you'd like to share (I'll give you credit and a link from the original post).

14 Easy Tips to a More Successful Blog

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 19:09:35 -0600

I'll be posting portions of the list on AR for reference. If you want to see more, make sure to check out the origianl list here: Ultimate Guide to Blogging

** If you plan to link to or bookmark this guide at some point, please do me a favor and link to the original at: www.searchingsolutions.com/blog Thanks for your help! **

Here are some of the categories I cover in the guide:

Blog Design & Features:

Create a Best Post List - This is an awesome way to help promote some of your best work. There are some posts that will become a legacy so to speak. Your “Pillar” posts that people will come back to again and again.
Use a Favicon - These are those cute little icons that appear next to the URL in your browser and on bookmarks. They are simply a neat way to brand your site, and I find that they can become quite memorable over time.
Social Bookmarking Options - Social bookmarking is becoming pretty commonplace in the blogging world. Giving people options in this area can really help. I prefer using the plugin called Share This, but there are a host of other plugins that do something similar.
Include Useful Widgets - I’m not a huge fan of widgets because they slow down blogs, and are rarely useful, but in some industries there are some very user friendly widgets that can add alot of value. Make sure you think of the reader first, and not just how “cool” a widget is.
Publish Full Feeds - It is a well known fact that most people prefer to see the full version of your article in their RSS reader and email. Don’t truncate to try to snag extra traffic… you’ll just end up annoying your readers. Give them full access on their own terms.
Setup A Proper XML Sitemap - This is a basic plugin for Wordpress. If you don’t have Wordpress, you can create a basic page that simply links to all of your posts and important pages. Make sure to use relevant anchor text.
Update Your Design - Blog feeling a bit stale? I feel that way about every 2 weeks. If you haven’t changed your design in over a year, it may be time for a snazzy new design. If you have the dough, get a custom design or at least a premium theme. Even the simplest design changes can make a huge difference.
Call to Action | Related Articles Section - This is vital for any blog. Make sure you have a section somewhere on each post (typically near the bottom) that lists articles related to the current one. This can really improve page views, length of visit, stickiness, and overall usability.
Call to Action | Email Subscription - Every blog should have an easy way to subscribe. For your technically challenged readers, the easiest way is through an email subscription form. You can use a link, but a form looks so much nicer. Go to the email management area on your Feedburner account to find the html for this form.
Call to Action | Connect on Social Media - Are you a Facebook, Myspace or Twitter user? Make sure you give an invitation to connect via these sites.
Call to Action | Social Bookmarking - If you ask nicely, your readers and friends just may help you social bookmark your posts on sites like Digg and Stumble Upon. This is good. Giving them easy options can make it a painless process for them.
Call to Action | Extra feature - Have any extra features on your site? Many real estate based blogs will have a MLS search feature built in. If you have a valuable tool or service on your site, make sure to call attention to it often.
Call to Action | “The Classic” - Sometimes only a direct in your face call to action will work. Not always appropriate for every post or every situation, but your phone number, email, and contact forms are all examples of the “classic” call to action.
Calls to Action | Where Do They Go? - Most calls to action will fit nicely into the bottom section of a blog post, but you can be creative. If you can sprinkle them throughout a post without sounding too commercial, you’re in good shape. The goal? Try to include at least 2 calls to action in each post.

And it just keeps on growing... please comment if you have a tip you'd like to share (I'll give you credit and a link from the original post).

16 Helpful Tips For Better Blog Formatting & Structure

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 06:58:20 -0600

I'll be posting portions of the list on AR for reference. If you want to see more, make sure to check out the origianl list here: Ultimate Guide to Blogging

** If you plan to link to or bookmark this guide at some point, please do me a favor and link to the original at: www.searchingsolutions.com/blog Thanks for your help! **

Here are some of the categories I cover in the guide:

Basic Blog Formatting & Structure:

Learn How to Make a Blog Post Pretty - There is nothing worse than a poorly formatted blog post with alignment problems, multiple fonts, poor use of bolded text etc. Practice aligning pictures, and previewing posts before you publish.
Proofread - I’m as guilty as anyone in this area… Spelling AND grammar. Frankly, it makes you look like a dork when you mipsel wrds in a poast.
Use Complimentary Pictures - As opposed to uncomplimentary… think about how a picture can actually add value to an article. What does that picture communicate to the reader? Is it valuable, or is it just wasting space.
Learn a bit of html - There are great wysiwyg editors on most blog platforms these days, but a basic knowledge of html will save you in some instances when your editor is being uncooperative. I still struggle with line breaks in Wordpress… argh! Focus on basic things such as: bold, headings, hyperlinks, spacing, breaks, etc. Need help? Try this html tutorial site
Choose Your Categories Wisely - For most blogs, categories act as a sort of table of contents. Try to stay under 15 if you can and use them as an outline to stay on topic.
Subtitles are Crucial - Big blocks of text are the last thing people want to read online. Even if it’s the best article ever written, people will still only scan it to find what they are looking for. Try to break things up by using subheadings (H2-H4). Don’t go more than 10 lines without breaking it up.
Create Lists & Use Bullet Points - The list post is a classic way to catch readers attention. One of the reasons they are so popular online is because they are easy to digest. The same can be true of bullet points. If you can condense your ideas into small chunks, your readers will thank you.
Fewer Words - Don’t use 10 when 7 will do.
Titles Are Your Most Important Asset - Yes, you heard me right. Titles can make or break a blog. Not only is it the first thing people see on the page, but it is typically the first thing people see in search engines as well when they find that post. Titles have implications with: search engine ranking, click through rates, clickability, readership, subscriptions, popularity, sharing, bookmarking, and more. The perfect title will capture the attention of an audience by using emotionally charged words, and also include relevant keywords to help you rank higher in the search engines. Check out Brian Clark’s blog for ideas. His titles are so good it’s almost sickening…
Hold Off On Advertisements - Some new bloggers are gung-ho to throw adsense and banners all over their blogs thinking that somehow it will help supplement their efforts. But this is rarely the case. I suggest at least a few hundred subscribers before launching an ad campaign. The last thing you want to do is turn off potential readers with intrusive ads.
Ditch Your Blogroll - The traditional blogroll appears in the sidebar of your blog… which in turn appears on every page of your blog… bad. If you can’t help but create a large list of your blogging peeps, create a single page. Your internal Page Rank will thank you.
Set Up Keyword Rich URL Slugs - Some people will argue that using a URL with an ID number is better for usability, such as: http://yoururl.com/post/1234 But I suggest using a keyword rich slug that matches the title of the post. Not only will this improve click throughs in search engines, but it will also help identify your hyperlinks.
Can’t Help But To Monetize Through Advertisements? - A couple tips ago, I suggested holding off on advertising, but if you simply can’t help yourself, there is alternative. Try some affiliate marketing. This is a super easy way to make money from the sites that you are probably already linking to. Simply sign up for the affiliate program, and when you create links in your posts to different services/products, make sure to include the affiliate code so you make some money if that person converts. This can also work well sprinkled throughout an email newsletter.
Include Relevant Pictures in Posts - Pictures and visual elements can speak volumes by themselves in a blog post
Editing Pictures - Of Course Photoshop or Photo Elements are good choices, but if you’re technically challenged in this area (like me), try an online tool like: picnik.com, or a simple editing and screen capture tool like Snag it.
Finding The Best Pictures for Posts - I prefer to use a site like istockphoto.com where you pay a small amount as a license fee per photo. But there are plenty of ways to get free pictures too. Read this post about licensing before you go “borrowing” pictures from Google Image search.

** If you plan to link to or bookmark this guide at some point, please do me a favor and link to the original at: www.searchingsolutions.com/blog Thanks for your help! **

Ultimate List of Blogging Tips - Part 1

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 11:48:00 -0600

I'll be posting portions of the list on AR for reference. If you want to see more, make sure to check out the origianl list here: Ultimate Guide to Blogging

** If you plan to link to or bookmark this guide at some point, please do me a favor and link to the original at: www.searchingsolutions.com/blog Thanks for your help! **

Here are some of the categories I cover in the guide:

Tips For Getting Started With Blogging:

Track Your Analytics - I'm a huge fan of Google Analytics, but sitemeter can work for the more basic user. Tracking all this data can be huge for SEO efforts, and help to give you benchmarks on traffic, pageviews, and search traffic.
Sign Up For Webmaster Tools - Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer, and MSN Webmaster Center. All of these can give you great insight into crawl data, errors, strong pages, keyword data, and alot more. It's like looking through a window into the secret search engine world... albeit a bit cloudy.
Register On Blog Directories - This is the classic first step when setting up a new blog or website. Get on some relevant directories. Since you have a blog, blogging directories would be appropriate here.
Get on Dmoz, Yahoo, and BOTW - Yes, there is a small financial investment here, but it's worth it. These will all help you build trust with the search engines. When you submit to Dmoz, only do it once, and don't write about your site like you're writing an advertisement.
Claim Your Blog on Technorati - Go to Technorati.com and register. Simple.
Use An RSS Reader - As a blogger, you're an RSS publisher. Because of that you'll want to familiarize yourself with an RSS reader and get used to the technology. Beyond that, it's a great way to process alot of information quickly and will help you progress as a blogger.
Naked? Put On Your Avatar - Register for the following: Gravatar.com, Mybloglog.com, Blogcatalog.com, Yahoo Avatar, Blogger.com, Wordpress.com.
Don't Blog For Someone Else - Let me explain... there is nothing wrong with participating on industry blog sites like Activerain.com. But don't use them as your primary outlet. It may be a great way to promote your articles, and network with other people, but you need a voice of your own on... a web property that you own. When you write for a blog network site, you are giving away the rights to that content... read the fine print!
Have a Launch Party - Email everyone you know, send out cards, tell everyone you meet... the launch should be BIG. Make sure you build up a decent amount of articles before you open the doors. Your first big push (if done properly) should be able to secure many subscribers and create a buzz in your industry for at least the first couple of months.
Create an About Page or Mission Statement - Every blog needs a purpose. There is nothing worse than going to a blog and not being able to figure out why it exists. Make your purpose clear, and introduce yourself properly so readers understand the direction you want to take them in.
Build Core Relationships - Find 10 experts in your industry, and do what you can do to get to know them. Comment on their blogs, participate on social media, interview them, write about them, call them, and work on building meaningful relationships. These are the people that will help to grow your blog.
Write Your Brains Out - When you start, it is extremely important to build a base of content. Try for 5 new posts per week for the first 3 months. That will give you roughly 60 articles to work with and a good base to build from. After the first 3 months, write at a pace that is comfortable for you.
Build Basic Directory Links - This can be a daunting task, but it's completely necessary in order to build some basic links and trust with the search engines. Here are some links to some lists of directories and tips: From: Blogger Buster, From: Search Engine Journal, From Searching Solutions: Article #1, Article #2
Setup Google Alerts - This is a very simple way of finding out who is saying what about you or the blog. Setup alerts for your blog name, company name, blog url, and anything else you want to be notified of. Also, read this post on how to find new customers through Google Alerts.
Read The Best "How to Blog" blogs - In my opinion, these blogs have the best information about learning how to blog effectively... in no particular order: Problogger.net, Real Estate Tomato, CopyBlogger.com, ihelpyoublog.com,

** If you plan to link to or bookmark this guide at some point, please do me a favor and link to the original at: www.searchingsolutions.com/blog Thanks for your help! **

How to Break Up With a Search Engine Robot

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:55:43 -0600

People in the search marketing industry are so obsessed with search engines. All they can seem to talk about is how to please the search engines, get on their good sides, and kiss up to Matt Cutts in some way shape or form. But so many people never talk about the different reasons you might want to break off a relationship.

I thought it would be fun to take a look at a few ways you can break up with a search engine and manage your relationships.

Breaking the Heart of Your Favorite Search Robot

Time to call it quits. Maybe you have a private member website, want privacy, or simply don’t want your site to be in the search engine results.

To cut off all communication and break the heart of that poor search engine robot, insert the following into the header section of your pages:

<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW”>

“Let’s Just be Friends”

“It’s nothing personal, I still really like you, but we make better friends than lovers.” Maybe you don’t want the search engines to index your pages (maybe you’re trying to combat duplicate content?), but you still want them to follow your links and find other pages of your site.

Use this in the header section of your pages:

<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX, FOLLOW”>

The Messy Break Up

The search robot found out you were cheating and decided to pull your rankings. There’s nothing worse than a messy break up. Better make up as soon as possible. Leave behind your unfaithful ways and beg for forgiveness.

“Let’s Agree To See Other People”

Sometimes it’s ok to see other people for a while. Maybe you have a reason to want to include Googlebot, but exclude Yahoo Slurp from your website. Or maybe you want to exclude a specialized bot like Linkscape, image search, etc.

The best way to allow and disallow certain robots is through robots.txt. Here is a link to a very thourough tutorial on the subject of creating and using a robots.txt file.

Don’t Be a Stalker

Let’s face it, you know you are in love. You’ve become obsessed with this relationship. All your friends tell you that you need to break it off. This confined intimacy is killing you, and you don’t even know it. You’ve become so dependent upon approval that your entire livelihood is wrapped up in it. You sit around at home wondering why she doesn’t call (err, crawl) as often as she used to.

Don’t get too obsessed with the search engines. You want a steady long lasting relationship, not a one night stand.

Don’t spam the engines
Don’t become over obsessed and forget that SEO is about marketing
Focus on metrics that matter like traffic, conversions, and business (not just rankings)

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Yes, this was more of a fun post, and I didn’t include alot of “details” about how to disallow certain robots, proper use of robots.txt, excluding certain directories, using webmaster tools, etc… so if you have any questions, please comment and I’ll answer any specific questions you have…

Like this post? Please Stumble it! Click Here

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Originally posted on my Searching Solutions blog here:

How to Break Up With a Search Engine Robot

For Halloween: The Top 25 Funniest Google Ads Ever!!

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:36:48 -0500

What can you learn from these ads??

Don’t ever set your ads to auto-generate
Don’t use novelty titles/descriptions. They may help your click through rate, but won’t improve conversions. Translation: you lose money.
There is such a thing as brand destruction.

Enjoy!

Originally posted on my blog here:

Top 25 Funniest Google Ads Ever

You Know When You're a Social Media Rockstar When...

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:59:08 -0500

…over 50 people change their avatars on Twitter just to celebrate.

Click to Enlarge:

Happy Birthday Jeff Turner!

10 Free Tools For Investigating a Competing Website

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:15:52 -0500

This post is a Re-Mix of a post I wrote in 2006, Formerly called: “How to Scope Out a Competitor’s Website and Learn From It.”

It’s always fun and interesting to check out what your competitors are up to. When you type in a search for your keywords, who comes up? Are your competitors ahead of you or below you? Why? Do you know what kind of traffic they get? Do you know how many links are coming into their site?

Competitive Research

In search engine marketing, competitive research and analysis is everything. Since search engines are all about ranking, the websites you see in the search engine rankings above and below you are your competitors. So it’s very helpful to know how to research those competitors to discover how and why they rank the way they do.

10 Free Tools For Researching Your Competitor’s Website

#1. SpyFu.com

SpyFu is one of my favorites as it can show you how much money a competing website may be spending on pay per click advertisements. And is also useful to show you which organic keywords may be bringing in the most traffic. Tool Use Rating: Easy

#2. SEODigger.com

SEO Digger is a free tool that will show you what keyword phrases different websites rank for. The ranking database is updated every 2 weeks and is usually very accurate. This can be a great resource if you’re trying to find out what phrases a competing website ranks for. They can also be sorted by order of Wordtracker popularity which shows how many times those phrases are searched. Tool Use Rating: Easy

#3. SEOmoz Tools

If you are already familiar with SEOmoz, you know that they provide a host of tools that can help with SEO. Many of which can be helpful for competitive website analysis including: SEO Toolbox, Trifecta, Term Target, and their new tool called Linkscape. Note on Linkscape: this tools is definitely for more advanced users, but can be very valuable to search for link data on almost any website. Tool Use Rating: Ranging from Easy - Difficult

#4. WebsiteGrader.com

The Website Grader is an extremely user friendly site that will give a quick review of any website and show helpful data like: domain age, domain renewal information, meta data, backlinks, onpage factors, traffic, and alot more. The really helpful thing is that it gives easy to understand explanations if it happens to find any erros on the website. This is a great tool for discovering basic strengths and weaknesses with any competing website. Tool Use Rating: Easy

#5. NicheWatch.com

Niche Watch takes a little different approach in that it doesn’t start with a competing website, but with keyword phrases. You type in a phrase, and it will show you data on the top 20 competitors including backlinks, links to the page, Page Rank, and alot more. This is a great resource to see info on offsite factors for each website and it can often times give you great insight as to why a site is ranking the way it is. Tool Use Rating: Moderate

#6. SEO For Firefox

SEO for Firefox is one of the more famous tools of the bunch. Aaron the creator claims that over 50,000 people are using it. If you don’t already have Firefox, you may want to consider downloading it just for the purpose of using this great add-on. When turned on, this tool will show extra data under each Google result after you complete a search. The data includes useful things like: backlinks, page links, .edu links, pages, domain age, Dmoz, Yahoo Dir, and alot more. Basically it lets you see why competitors are ranking in the results, and based on the data, it’s usually very easy to see why sites are being ranked the way they are. Tool Use Rating: Moderate

#7. Compete.com

Looking for exact traffic numbers for a competitors website? Too bad, that is priviledged information. But the next best thing can be found at a site like Compete.com. They compile data on millions of websites to provide you with fairly accurate traffic analytics, and basic search analytics; like which terms are used the most often to bring search traffic. It’s about as good as you can get unfortunately. If you want to compare data try Quantcast and Alexa. Tool Use Rating: Easy - Moderate

#8. LinkDiagnosis.com

Link Diagnosis is a newer tool that I’ve only been using for a few months. But I have been extremely impressed so far. It basically will look at the backlinks of any website and examine the anchor text, Page Rank, quality of link, and number of outbound links on the page and displays it in an easy to read and export format. It is really sweet for being able to tell how strong incoming links are to any giving website complete with data on NoFollow links. Tool Use Rating: Moderate - Difficult

#9. SearchRascal.com

Search Rascal is purely a ranking analysis tool that allows you to see who is ranking for any given keyword. The unique thing about it is that it tracks past ranking and will show whether or not websites have moved up or down in ranking in the last day, week, or month. It is very handy. Note: only works for more competitive phrases. Tool Use Rating: Easy

#10. Google & Yahoo

Believe it or not, Google and Yahoo are a couple of the best tools you have available for competitive analysis. You just have to know how to use them… Google consistently has the best search results, so make sure you use it the most when trying to search for actual competitors. If someone is ranking above you in Google, chances are they deserve to be there. Yahoo is great for searching incoming links to your website. In fact, almost all the tools above use Yahoo’s data to search for links. To get an overall picture of how many links are coming in, visit Yahoo Site Explorer, type in your domain name with or without the www, and click on “inlinks”. This will give you a full picture of your incoming links. Tool Use Rating: Easy

I hope these 10 free tools will come in handy as you try to learn more about your competition. Make sure to keep track of your findings, and if you have any questions about how to use any of them, don’t hesitate to comment below.

Original Article Here:

Competitive Website Research Analysis | 10 Free Tools

The Value of Social Networking Relationships

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:46:30 -0500

The Value of Social Networking Relationships from Justin Smith on Vimeo.

Guide To Using Avatars For Online Marketing

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:46:20 -0500

You’ve seen them before. The small little pictures that are used to identify profiles online. You may even use one without even knowing it. Those little pictures are called avatars.

An Avatar is simply: “a computer user’s representation of himself or herself”. This could be a three dimensional representation in a game like Second Life, or a 2 dimensional graphic in a website profile.

With all the social based websites out there these days, chances are you already use an avatar on a website like Myspace, Facebook, Linkedin, Digg, Twitter, etc… This is not rocket science… but it is important to follow a couple of guidelines (suggestions) when creating these avatars.

Branding, Facial Awareness, and Improved Visibility

One cool thing that happens when you graphically represent yourself is that you start branding (for lack of a better term), you could also call it “building awareness”, or creating “mind share”. In simple terms, you’re creating a visual reminder of who you are for people that see your avatar multiple times.

An avatar doesn’t always have to be a picture of yourself. Many people make this mistake, in thinking they don’t have any options in this regard. You can really use anything you want.

You need to ask yourself, what are you really trying to create awareness of?? Your face, your company, your website, your logo? The answer may determine what you decide to use. Many people opt for an avatar that really has no meaning, but simply stands out from the crowd. Others use an artistic representation. There really isn’t any right or wrong way to do it except to say that if you are trying to create awareness for you, your business, or your website, you may want to consider using something that relates to that purpose.

Some Twitter Examples:

The “I like to photoshop my face”

The “I brand the first letter of my name”

The “I’ll just use my logo”

The “I just like my face”

The “I prefer a graphic representation of myself”

The “I like randomness”

The “I like using props on my face”

The “I like my dog”

The “I brand my face and company for maximum avatar domination”

Services You Need to Sign up For if you Haven’t Already:

MyBlogLog.com - Sign up for a free account. You don’t even have to have a blog or website. But your avatar will appear on websites that have the Mybloglog widget installed (like this one)… which is a good thing! Why not brand everywhere you go?

BlogCatalog.com - Same as Mybloglog, just a little less popular.

Gravatar.com - Becoming very important. It’s used to identify you all over the internet including when you make comments on certain sites (like this one).

Blogger.com - If you ever comment on a Blogger blog, you’ll want to set up a basic account and upload your picture so it shows up when you comment.

Wordpress.com - Same as Blogger.

Avatars.Yahoo.com - Yahoo is such a huge web portal, once you upload your picture to Yahoo Avatars, it will show up in many places all over the web as you participate

Other Places Online That Allow Avatars:

Forums & Message Boards - Involved in any forums, message boards or blogs that make you sign up to participate? 99% of these probably have a way to upload your avatar. I find that this is the place where people forget to upload profile pics the most often.

Industry Specific Sites - There are tons of sites specific to each industry that allow profile pictures. In real estate, you have Activerai n, Trulia, REW, Zolve, etc.

Specialty Sites - These sites aren’t really that special, I just didn’t know what else to call them: Twitter, Plaxo, Friendfeed, Facebook, Friendster, Flickr, etc…

Tools for Creating Avatars:

http://mypictr.com - Online tool that helps crop larger pictures

http://www.reducephoto.com/step1avatar.asp - Online tool for creating specific sized avatars

http://www.gizmoz.com - Create animated avatars and place your head on strange bodies, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP7l8rbn9rA - Video on creating an Avatar in photoshop

Final Tips:

Choose Wisely My Son: It’s a true pain in the rear to change multiple avatars if you decide you want to use a different avatar somewhere down the road. You may want to consider using something that will work for you 1 year from now.

Ask Your Friends: This simple tip may save you from using a stupid avatar.

One Avatar in Multiple Places: It would be wise not to use different avatars on different sites. You’ll miss out on a branding opportunity for people that may see you on multiple sites.

Don’t use Random Graphics: If you can’t find something good, wait. This is important. You don’t want to be using an old picture of yourself, or a silly picture of an inanimate object simply because you had nothing better at the time.

Use Photoshop: There is nothing worse than seeing a blurry or stretched picture of yourself, or an unreadable logo because you were too lazy to resize the picture properly.

Be Professional: If you are using your online identity to improve business for yourself and promote professional networking, make sure you don’t use an inappropriate picture of yourself or morally questionable object.

The Art of Puking Your Business Identity Onto the Internet
The Value of Social Networking Relationships

Original Article Here: Internet Based Avatars: The Complete Guide

Online Marketing Help Center Reaches 5,000 Members!

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:33:04 -0500

Woot! let's hear it for Christina Brine, our 5,000th Member!!!

I love this group. Please keep posting, keep participating, and keep writing great online marketing related content. With everyone's help, we can be one of the best resources online for the real estate industry to find marketing help.

While I'm at it... I might as well feature some more posts!!

** 6 Technology Tools for Internet Marketing written by Rick Schiffer - http://activerain.com/blogsview/400478/6-Technology-Tools-to

** Congratulating the "Art of Marketing You Group for their 7,000th member - http://activerain.com/blogsview/691555/TLC-4-TLW-welcome

** Interesting post and insights into mobile real estate search - http://activerain.com/blogsview/697513/The-Coming-Boom-in

If you think your post is worthy of a feature but was simply overlooked, make sure to email me: justin@realestatetomato.com

Until Next Time!

-Justin Smith

Online Marketing Help Center | Group Admin

Online Marketing Group Update on ActiveRain

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:17:08 -0500

Hello Online Marketing Group Members!

Yes, I know you don't hear from this group very often... in fact many of you might actually think this is spam (it's not).

Whether you remember signing up or not, you are a member of the Online Marketing Group on ActiveRain.com.

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I have a couple of announcements for you all. We are re-branding this group to be called the: "Online Marketing Help Center". I've realized over the past year and a half that our group hasn't been focused enough. We've consistently been in the top 15 groups since we started in 11/06, and have almost 5,000 subscribers, but the content is all over the place, and there are too many posts that are irrelevant to the topic. So as you post, try to keep on topic with the posts you add to this group.

I'm also proud to announce a new feature here on the group. Weekly featured posts!

Each week we will be sending out a group email with featured posts written on the topic of Online Marketing. So keep submitting your best stuff to this group. You may just get featured!

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This Week's Featured Articles:

http://activerain.com/blogsview/690499/Go-Ahead-and-Shoot

http://activerain.com/blogsview/689103/Adding-Forms-To-Your

http://activerain.com/blogsview/598475/Clip-Art-For-Your

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If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or our group moderators:

Cindy Lin - http://activerain.com/staged4more

Debe Maxwell - http://activerain.com/debe

Until Next Time,

Justin Smith

ActiveRain Evangelist & Blogging Coach

The Art of Exploding Your RSS Subscriber Count (Part 3)

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:11:04 -0500

By now, if you've been following this short series on RSS, you should have a firm understanding of:

What RSS is
What it means to be an RSS publisher
How to locate your RSS feed
How to sign up with feedburner
How to add a feedburner subscription form into your sidebar

If you happened to miss those first 2 posts, you can click below to review:

The Ultimate (& Practical) Guide To Optimizing Your RSS Feed (Part 1)

How to SuperCharge Your Activerain Blog With Feedburner (Part 2)

In this 3rd and final post of this series, we're going to get into detail about improving your RSS subscriber count, analyzing your Feedburner statistics, promoting your email subscription, and how to add options into your blog posts.

First... Analyzing Your Feedburner Subscriber Data

If you recently subscribed with Feedburner, you may not have a huge subscriber base to speak of (and that is ok). RSS subscribers are notoriously hard to build and keep.

Here is a screen shot of what your Feedburner subscription page looks like:

Notice, the bulk of subscribers are through email. This is extremely common, as it's the easiest way to subscribe to your feed.

Now lets look at "item use" within the side bar. This will show click activity within your feed for a set amount of time. This is a very interesting way to see which of your posts are the most popular, and what activity happened within your feed and when.

Most of the stats within feedburner are self explanatory. What I want to really point out is the fact that these stats are separate from any other website tracking statistics you may have access to.

For example... you typically use Site Meter or Google Analytics to track your visits, referrals, etc. But now that you have a Feedburner feed, you can also track stats on your RSS feed. This is hugely important. The point of offering people the RSS susbription options is to allow them to read your content on their own terms. They may sign up once, and never return to your site again even though they are a loyal reader to your blog through email.

So just keep in mind that the feedburner stats are something you're going to want to keep your eye on along with your regular analytics in order to get an accurate picture of who is actually reading your content.

How to Promote Your Feedburner Email Subscription Form

Next I want to go over a few ideas for promoting your Feedburner email form. In my last post I went over how to add the feedburner form into your ActiveRain sidebar, and hopefully you were able to install that properly.

You've probably noticed by now that the html form I showed you last time isn't compatible in many places. You can't place it into AR posts, and you can't place it in your email signature. Unfortunately, there are many places you can't place an html form. But, the good news is that you have other options.

Just because you don't have a nice form to give to people doesn't mean you're out of luck. At this point, I think it would be helpful to point out where you can get a hyperlink to your email form. A hyperlink has ultimate versatility. You can attach it to a banner or button, you can put it in your email signature, you can create a text link... you can use it just about anywhere.

But, to get the link you need, you'll have to follow a couple steps.

First, navigate to your Feedburner feed. Mine is at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/CRENARBlog

Then, follow these steps:

Make sure to hang on to this link. Bookmark it, write it down, whatever... just don't lose it. You'll want to use it later.

Now, let's just create a simple link in our AR blog post that allows people to subscribe via email...

so...

Pretty simple so far right? Remember, you can take this link just about anywhere to allow people to sign up via email.

In my opinion, your email subscription tool is one of the most powerful in your entire arsenal. You should be promoting it religiously everywhere you leave a footprint online. You can even promote it offline if you have the means. I had a student that sent out blog announcements to their SOI offering a free $5 Starbucks card for the first 50 email subscribers. It was a great way to build awareness and get new subscribers.

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In the last part of this post, I want to review a few tips for building your subscribers.

Tips on Increasing Your RSS Subscribers

Write Great Content - Ok, ok... it's not earth shattering, but you have to have a solid base to work from. If you write bad articles, building a subscriber base will be excruciatingly difficult.
Write Consistently - This was found to be one of the number one reasons why people UN-subscribe from a blog. Lack of consistency will kill you. Even if you can only realistically write 2 posts per month, that's better then setting a 1 post/day precedent, then not writing for 3 weeks.
Give Some Incentive - People like free stuff. A gift card can work well, but if you're working on "the cheap", try offering a free e-book to subscribers. If you promote it right you'll create a great value, and build your subscribers at the same time. If you really want to get advanced, you could offer exclusive content in the feed itself. This would create a sort of "secret tips" feed that only your subscribers can see. There is a post here on how to do it.
Don't Just Promote It On Your Blog - If you're like most bloggers, you probably have a pretty large online footprint... Social Networking, Forums, Bookmarking, Social Media... these are all places where you can promote your feed. We typically use our websites as a signature, but why not our RSS URL's as well?
Publish a Full RSS Feed - It's tempting to want to publish a truncated version of your feed to try to drive traffic back to the site, but it rarely works like that. What you end up doing is just making people mad. This was listed as the 3rd most popular reason why people UN-subscribe from blogs.
Place an RSS Icon in a Prominent Place - This is an easy one, but you'd be suprised how much it can help.
Seek Out People that Didn't Confirm - One of the frustrations of Feedburner is that it's a double opt-in system. It' good for protecting spam, but sometimes people will try to subscribe but never confirm their subscription. These people are listed in your Feeburner account. Simply email them again asking them to confirm their subscription.
Stay on Topic & Don't Overpost - These were both popular reasons why people UN-subscribed from blogs. If you write a mortgage news blog, don't write about what you had for breakfast. No one cares. And if you're a prolific writer, try to keep it down to 1 per day. Each post you write should be very high quality. If you have too much to say try using Twitter as an outlet...
Write Great Content - Um... did I already mention this?

Well, I hope by now that you have a firm understanding of what RSS is and how it can become a very powerful tool for promoting your blog.

If you have any questions about anything I covered in this 3 part series, please comment!

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This is the part of the post where I ask you to subscribe to MY blog!! ;-)

From: The Publisher's Guide to Understanding RSS

Real Estate Website Review Service (Screenshots)

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:03:10 -0500

I wanted to share some screen shots from some of the most recent website reviews I've been conducting lately.

If you didn't already know... a few weeks ago I partnered with the Real Estate Tomato to launch a professional real estate website review service. For a long time now I've recognized a need for real estate website owners to have a service that would give an accurate and balanced review/audit. There was really nothing out there like it.

Most real estate professionals these days have websites. But let's be honest... very few of them are succuessful or profitable. I beleive there is a reason for that, and with a little help, I strongly beleive that most real estate websites have lead generating potential. One of the keys to that success is through higher ranking in the search engines.

The reasons I believe these reviews are so needed in the real estate industry is twofold:

First: There are plenty of tools out there that allow you to collect data on keywords, competition, structural analysis, etc. But there are very few tools that actually synthesize the results for you in an understandable form. None of them actually. In all cases, it’s up to you to take the information and figure out how to implement it on your website.

Second: There are SEO companies out there that will give you a site audit and website review. But these services don’t come cheap. In most cases you are looking at $2,000+ for a website review/audit that goes into any kind of detail about your site.

Conclusion:

The real estate industry could use a no-nonsense webiste review service that is: scalable, inexpensive, and easy to implement. That is the reason I'm offering these reviews.

Here Are the Packages That We’re Offering:

#1: Standard Website Review: ($99)

Keyword Suggestion Report
Volume of Searches for the Suggested Keywords
Structural Analysis Report (Crawl Testing, Error Reports, Structural Integrity)
Full Backlink Report
Detailed Anchor Text Report
Google Current Ranking Report for Suggested Keywords
Detailed Beginner’s Guide to SEO (e-Book)

#2: Advanced Website Review: ($149)

Includes the entire Standard Website Review Package
Meta Tag Suggestions for Top Pages (based on research from the Standard Review)
Competitive Analysis Report (identifies your top competitors)
Competition Reverse Engineered Report (intense research on your competition)
Link Building Guide (e-Book)

#3: Comprehensive Website Review: ($199)

Includes the Standard and Advanced Website Review Packages
SEO Resource Guide (e-Book)
1 on 1 coaching (1 hour)

Screenshots: (click to expand)

These reports are completely customized to you and your site and have no pre-prepared materials included (except in the included e-books).

I'd love the opportunity to impress you with one of these reviews. If you're interested, please click on the button below for more information and how to order:

Please let me know if you have any questions about these reviews. I'd be happy to discuss it with you.

Your Advocate For Online Success,

Justin Smith

Justin@RealEstateTomato.com

720-670-0742

How to SuperCharge Your Activerain Blog With Feedburner (Part 2)

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:00:50 -0500

Disclaimer: You don't necessarily have to have an Activerain blog to apply these principals.

In my last post, I reviewed the basic concept of RSS and how it can be used as a syndication tool. Alot of people use RSS readers, or have signed up to RSS via email without even knowing it... but many people don't seem to grasp the value of being an RSS publisher. If you have a blog, you ARE an RSS publisher whether you knew it or not!

If you don't have a solid understanding of RSS, don't know how to find your own feed, or aren't yet signed up for Feedburner, make sure to read my last post to review before you move on with this one.

Click Here to Read My Last Post:

The Ultimate (& Practical) Guide To Optimizing Your RSS Feed (Part 1)

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Moving forward, you should have a firm understanding of what RSS is, how to find your RSS feed, and how to subscribe with Feedburner. As I went over last time, Feedburner is a great tool for expanding the reach of your RSS feed and essentially gives your readers more options.

Understanding Feedburner Email Subscription Options

One of the primary benefits of using Feedburner is the ability to let your readers subscribe to receive future articles via email. If you don't understand the significance of this... trust me... it's huge. The ability to "push" your content to subscribers is revolutionary. And email delivery does just that.

So let's cover the basics.

First, you'll need to activate this feature within Feedburner. Login to Feedburner, Navigate to the "Publicize" tab, Click "Email Subscriptions" in the sidebar, and click "Activate". I highly recommend that you keep the default settings.

Now that it's activated, let's review some of your choices. The first screen will immediately give you an option to create a form to capture new email subscribers. Let's put this in our ActiveRain sidebar to give people more subscription options.

Setting Up A Feedburner Email Subscription Box in My ActiveRain Sidebar

Step 1: Copy and Paste the html in the box as shown below.

Step 2: Navigate to "My Settings" in your ActiveRain account. Under the "Blog Description" box, paste in the html code for the email form. If you are up for it, you can even change the text that appears within the box. The default says: "Enter your email address". I like mine to be more descriptive... something like: "Enter your email to receive future articles:".

Step 3: Admire your fine work. Go to your blog and make sure it looks ok.

Before you're finished with the email subscription options, make sure to visit the "communication preferences", "email branding", and "delivery options" sections in feeedburner to set those up. While you're at it, go ahead and activate "Ping Shot" which is just below "delivery options".

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Now that you have an email subscription box set up, lets quickly review one more option in feedburner. Navigate to the "Optimize" tab, and click on "FeedFlare". This is a unique option that allows you to add extra features to the bottom of your feed. In this example, I've chosen the ones that I like to use, but the choice is completely yours.

You'll find a host of options within your Feedburner account that I don't have time to review here. Many of them won't apply to you unless you plan to post podcasts, place advertisements in your RSS feed, or want to Geotag your post with a location. So you don't really need to worry about most of them.

Now that you have Feedburner set up properly, and have given your readers an easy way to subscribe, the only thing left to do is promote your feed which I will covering in my next post.

~Homework~ Get your Feedburner email subscription form set up on your blog. Then, make sure to subscribe to this blog so you can read the third and final part of this RSS Series.

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In the 3rd and final part of this RSS series, I'll show you how to:

Improve your RSS subscriber count
Analyze Feedburner subscriber data
Promote your email subscription form
Add Subscription options to blog posts

Click Here to Read Part 3!

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Please comment if you have any questions!!

From: The Publisher's Guide to Understanding RSS

The Ultimate (& Practical) Guide To Optimizing Your RSS Feed (Part 1)

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:02:59 -0500

RSS is such an interesting technology. It has truly spearheaded a complete mind shift in the way people design, look at, and interact with the internet.

When I first read an e-book in 2003 about this new RSS technology that was becoming more mainstream, I have to admit, it was a little fuzzy. The only RSS readers available were software programs you had to download and install. Only a few sites even published RSS feeds, and the few popular blogs that existed only had a handful of subscribers. But even in my ignorance, I ran out to get a blog realizing at the time, that it was one of the fastest and cheapest ways to publish your own RSS feed.

Now look at where we are today! Most sites that publish content on a regular basis have an RSS feed. All blogs have one, or multiple feeds. We have over a dozen very high quality web based RSS readers that keep getting better, and subscription options are more plentiful than ever.

Awareness of RSS is still growing, and it has really begun to pick up steam in the last 2 years. Even for people that aren't very technically saavy... it's easier than ever to get them plugged in as an RSS subscriber through new easy to use tools.

Still Unclear About RSS? Here are some resources and a video that will help:

Great Video Explaining RSS:

If you are just getting started, I highly recommend the new version of bloglines, which can be found at: http://beta.bloglines.com or Goolge Reader. Both offer easy ways to subscribe to new feeds, and are realy easy to manage. I particularly like Bloglines because it has a great folder organizing option, and automatically checks off articles you've already read.

Quick Steps to Getting Started as an RSS User/Reader/Subscriber

Really quick... if you are still unclear about how to sign up to an RSS feed, I'll make it really easy for you:

Step 1: Make sure you have Firefox 3.0, or Internet Explorer 7 or 8 installed.

Step 2: Navigate to a website you want to subscribe to.

Step 3: Find the Orange RSS Icon in the browser bar and click on it. (some sites don't have an RSS feed)

Step 4: Choose Your feed reader

Step 5: Visit your RSS reader to make sure you subscribed (optional)

~ Homework~ Go sign up for an RSS reader and subscribe to 10 blogs or websites. This will get you familiar with the RSS technology, and prepare you for what we are going to cover next.

Do You Publish An RSS Feed? If You Have a Blog, Then The Answer Is YES!!

In this 2 post series, I want to review not only what it means to be an RSS user/reader/subscriber, but what it means to be an RSS publisher! If you're reading this, I can safely assume that you're an ActiveRain member that has an account. If that is true, then you have your very own RSS feed! I want to show you how to use it to it's full potential.

*** This section will explain how to find your ActiveRain RSS Feed. If you need help finding your feed on an outside blog, please comment and I will help you. (Keep in mind, some blogs have multiple RSS feeds!)

First, let's find your RSS feed. Navigate to your ActiveRain blog, and scroll down until you see the RSS chiclet in the right sidebar. Or simply type in "rss" after your blog URL, like this: http://activerain.com/blog/YourARusername/rss

This RSS feed is important, it's your lifeline to your readers. One of your primary goals as a blogger is to get as many people as possible to subscribe to your feed. The beautiful thing about RSS is that your content will be pushed to your subscribers. You won't have to trust that people will come back to your blog every time they want to read your articles (which isn't likely to happen).

Your Activerain RSS feed is a great tool, but it has it's shortcomings....

What is Feedburner, and Why Should You Care?

Feedburner is a Google owned company (as of recently), that is in the business of RSS delivery. In a nutshell, they will take your plain old RSS feed, and will provide a number of services including: more browser flexibility, more subscription options, subscriber statistics, RSS email delivery, and alot more... Feedburner is your RSS feed on steroids.

If you are serious about getting RSS subscribers, giving your readers more flexibilty, viewing subsriber stats, and delivering your feed via email, then I HIGHLY suggest you sign up for feedburner.

Getting Your RSS Feed Set Up With Feedburner:

Step 1: Sign up for an account at Feedburner.com

Step 2: "Burn" your RSS feed. (tell Feedburner to start managing your RSS feed)

Step 3: You're done.... wasn't that easy? Now you simply need to promote your feed.

~Homework~ Find your RSS feed, and get signed up for Feedburner. Then, make sure to subscribe to this blog so you can read the second part of this RSS Series.

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Feedburner is an essential tool in any blogger's arsenal. My post next week will cover advanced tactics to optimize feedburner.

Learn How to:

Set up Feedburner email subscription options.
Add an email subscription box to your ActiveRain blog.
Add social bookmarking options into your Feedburner feed.

Hope to see you there!

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Please comment if you have any questions!!

From: The Publisher's Guide to Understanding RSS

How to Maximize Your ActiveRain Blog's Search Engine Ranking

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 04:21:03 -0500

This post was stirred out of the overwhelming number of questions I get about how to optimize an ActiveRain blog and profile for the search engines. I realize that many of you have outside blogs, and only use ActiveRain as a supplemental blog, but that is ok! Your AR blog is still a very powerful tool, and one that should be optimized properly so it can be successful not only within the AR network and Localism, but on search engines too!

Here is a Basic SEO Quiz For You…

“What is the number one thing search engines look at when deciding to rank your site in the search engines?’

1. Page Content

2. URL’s

3. Title Tags

4. Incoming Links

Any ideas?? Well, if you answered #3, you answered correctly. Title tags, or Meta Titles are the most important factor in search engine ranking. Of course all the above are important, and #4 is a close second, but Titles have consistently shown to be the most important attribute to search engines. And don’t take my word for it, take a look at this study that polled the top SEO experts in the country on what the top factors were.

What is a Title Tag???

Let’s start with the basics. For those of you that aren’t really saavy to website architecture, this may be helpful.

“A Title Tag, or Meta Title Tag is an HTML element placed on webpages to help identify the page”

It’s commonly used by search engines to determine what a page is about, and thus help rank that page for keywords included in the Title Tag.

Where Can You Find a Title Tag?

Most pages on the internet have a Title tag. You just need to know where to look. Here are 2 places you will probably see Title Tags most often:

The easiest way to determine what the Title Tag is for any given page, is to look at the top part of your browser when looking at a page:

The other place where you can find titles commonly is in the search engines themselves.

So… with the understanding that title tags are the most important part of search engine ranking. What can YOU do about it? A few things…

Title Tag on Your Activerain Profile Page

Many people on ActiveRain have utilized this feature already, but for you newbies out there, and others that may not have realized why this was important, take note…

When you type in a first and last name for profile, it automatically becomes the meta tag title of your profile page, and is used on may places of the site to identify you. So make sure to tell people who you are, AND the areas you serve (including keywords that will help you rank better for your profile page).

Want proof that this can help your ranking? Take a look at this:

Title Tag on Your Activerain Blog

The Title Tag on your blog works much the same way as your profile page. Whatever you insert as the Blog Title becomes the Title Tag of your blog home page. My blog home page is at: http://activerain.com/blogs/hismove notice that the title tag is the same as the title of the blog. In other words… I want to use the keywords that I want to rank for the most as the title of my blog.

I don’t suggest creating a blog title that simply reads: “Las Vegas Real Estate”… Use something that separates you from the pack. Something Catchy, memorable, etc. But DO include some relevant keywords in the title… that is the point of this whole post. Showing you how to customize these titles so you can rank better.

Title Tag on Activerain Blog Posts

Ok, so this part may be basic for some, but I’ve found that so many people simply don’t understand this concept.

When you post a blog post, the title of that blog post automatically becomes the Meta Tag Title of that page. This is also true for many other types of blogging platforms: wordpress, blogger, and Typepad all use a similar system which is one of the reasons blogs rank so well in the search engines.

So, what is the significance to understanding that blog post titles become Meta Tag Titles? Hopefully, you’ll think alot harder when it comes time to writing your blog post titles!!!

Not only do post titles need to describe what you’re writing about, but they need to include keywords that can help that post rank higher in the search engines. If you don’t include strong keywords in that title, don’t expect to see that post ranking well.

I hope this short tutorial was helpful for you in understanding why Title Tags are important, and how you can maximize them in the search engines.

Please comment if you have any questions!!

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Is Your Real Estate Website Eating Itself???

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:40:57 -0500

Keyword cannibalization is an important topic with any website. It typically becomes a problem when over zealous website owners and designers decide they want to choose 1 primary search term that they want to rank for.

Definition of Keyword Cannibalization:

“The act of placing the same keywords or phrases on multiple pages of a website in titles and content in order improve ranking in the search engines… leading to confusion with search engines on which page to rank in the results.”

This is extremely important to the general health of websites. I see people so often trying to rank well for certain keyword phrases using this technique. But unfortunately, their efforts are misguided. Placing the same keyword in every title, every page, and every piece of content you create is a very bad idea. The common misguided notion goes something like this:

“Well… I really want to rank well for the keyword “Las Vegas Real Estate”, so I’m going to place that phrase in every title and every piece of content I create. After all, Google loves keywords, and the more I use it, the better chance I’ll have of ranking.”

Let’s explore why this doesn’t work:

Google ranks each page of a website independently of each other

You may have a home page, and 10 articles that all include the same keyword phrase in the title and body… but guess what? Only one (possibly 2) of those pages are ever going to rank in the search engines for that specific keyword phrase.

Using the same keyword doesn’t help gain extra relevance

Creating multiple pages with the exact same keyword phrase in the title and content does not force the search engine spider to interpret the site as being more relevant for that same keyword phrase. All it does is force the spider to choose which page is the best. One page will rank, and the others won’t show up at all.

The quality of your content will suffer

If you are using the keyword “Las Vegas Real Estate” in every title of every article, what are you readers going to think? Need I say more???

You are severely limiting your search engine traffic potential

Many of you probably understand the concept of the long tail by now. It works. Don’t get me wrong, “Las Vegas Real Estate” is a great keyword. But do you really want to put all your eggs in one basket when there are literally thousands of variations of that phrase that could do just as good or better? Why waste your time trying to get every page of your site ranking for the same term when there are so many others out there waiting to be ranked for? Think about it.

——

Meta tag titles are typically the biggest problem with keyword cannibalization. Not only on the home page, but on sub pages and article pages as well. Each page needs to have it’s own unique title. This will give you the most likelihood of ranking for many different keywords and give you the most traffic potential.

Probably the most common place for keyword cannibalization is in blogs. People will create blog post titles that are often very similar to each other, and this becomes a problem because most blogs are set up by default to make the article title the meta tag title. Thus creating the keyword cannibalization effect with multiple articles.

Tips on Avoiding Cannibalization

Write unique Meta tag titles for your home page and sub pages. Use specific words that describe that page. If you can’t think of anything besides “Las Vegas Real Estate”… seek professional help. Or try this keyword suggestion tool.
If you have a blog, make sure your article titles are unique to what you are writing about. Using variations of a keyword are fine: “Las Vegas Condos”, “Las Vegas Real Estate Agent”, but don’t over do it. Try to appeal to your readers first, and to the search engines second!
Choose which pages are the best candidates for certain keywords, and send internal links with the anchor text of those keywords to that page.
Start broad on your links, and build out. Your home page and top level pages probably have the most potential for ranking with more competitive broader terms. Make sure you target those tougher terms on your top level pages (shallow pages), and work on the more specific long tail keywords with articles, and blog posts (deep pages).

~ Secret Tip ~

If you are really struggling with how to title pages, and can’t think of any more good keyword phrases to use, try using a good keyword research tool. Google Keyword Suggestions, SEO Book’s Keyword Research Tool, or even Wordtracker or Nichebot. Start by searching for a broad term, and use the results to find the most relevant, and the most popular keywords for your page. You may just find that the keyword you wanted to use in the first place doesn’t get as many searches as you thought… and that there was a related phrase you should have been using all along. Hint: I do this every time I write a new article…

So go get to work! Remove all those duplicate Meta tag titles. Do some keyword research. I think you’ll find that with a little work, you’ll see a much bigger return on your investment with broader search traffic.

Original Article:

Is Your Website Eating Itself Through Keyword Cannibalization?

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Related Articles:

Long Tail Keywords vs. Short Tail Keywords

Is Your Market Saturated with Other Bloggers?

The Top 10 Most Common SEO Mistakes

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Branding a Real Estate Business on the Search Engines

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:06:33 -0500

The opportunities for Internet business branding on search engines has really come as a revelation to me in the last couple of years. It’s such a simple concept, but one that many SEO practitioners and companies don’t understand. This concept of branding has brought me so much enlightenment in the area of search engine marketing, and helped me to understand my overall purpose as an internet marketer.

Here are a couple of brief definitions of branding just for reference:

“in marketing, the sum total of a company’s value, including products, services, people, advertising, positioning, and culture”

“in marketing, the use of logos, symbols, or product design to promote consumer awareness of goods and services”

We all know the classic branding examples: Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Etc…

But what about branding online? To some extent, we see the same branding efforts online from many of the big companies. This usually comes in the form of banners, text ads, video sponsorships, etc. That’s all fine and good. I don’t question the supreme wisdom of Madison Avenue in this regard. But what are companies doing to brand on the search engines?

This is obviously an important question as search engines command such a huge amount of traffic and eyeballs. It would seem like such an obvious place to build brand awareness through higher visibility in search results. But sadly, so many marketers skip this step and go straight towards the “SEO drug” that so many people are hooked on these days: higher ranking.

I’m full aware of the temptation of purely going after higher rankings, it looks good, it boosts your ego, it’s impressive to show to clients… but it doesn’t always translate into more success in the long run. SEO is so much more than simply achieving higher rankings. And I want to point out some of the reasons why that is the case.

Search Engine Branding With Meta Tags

This is talked about quite often in the SEO space, but it is hugely important, and I want to spend some time covering it. Meta titles and descriptions are very important here. When you include company names and even tag lines in your Meta tags, you are maximizing your branding potential because that is what people see on the search engines.

Here’s an example for a “Car Insurance” search on Google:

What’s wrong with this picture? Everyone on the page has branded properly in their meta titles and descriptions except for autoinsuranceremedy.com Have you ever heard of them? I haven’t. But I have heard of all the other companies on the page. Coincidence?… or just poor branding?

Let’s take another example for a local real estate search:

Imagine this as a scenario: a first time home buyer is considering a purchase 6 months down the road. They have no idea what to do, and they have been researching for properties in their price range, good real estate agents, and information about the local area. They happen to use Google on a regular basis, and are doing multiple real estate related searches. This is where branding can make all the difference in the world. Take a look at the above results. Who is branding and who isn’t… Just because a title says La Jolla Real Estate, (which was the search term) doesn’t mean people are going to click it… and even if they do are they ever going to remember who you are? Of course, you may get lucky, and they might like your site and bookmark it for later. But the more likely scenario is that they will go right back to Google the next time, and the sites that displayed their brands in the results through meta tags will gain the mind/brand share.

Meta tags play a huge role in this online branding process because that is what people see in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages).

So what did we learn here? Place your name, company name, or site name in your titles and descriptions. Here are a couple of examples of good use:

You can see that placement tends to be different based on preference. I personally prefer to have the brand in the front of the title tags on my top level pages and money pages. And move it to the back on deeper level pages like articles, and product pages. The point is that you are building brand awareness with every search result that you appear in by placing the brand in the titles and descriptions.

Not Convinced Yet? Ok, here are a couple studies that prove my point:

A report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Nielsen NetRatings suggest that “27 percent (of survey respondents) were more likely to name a specific brand if it was in the top spot of the search results page.” (Sponsored Listings Effectiveness Study, July, 2004).

And again, a report by the Dieringer Resource Group, which surveyed 3,000 respondents regarding their online purchasing habits, found that 60% of the respondents’ brand opinions were changed or enhanced as a result of online research (American Interactive Consumer Survey, June, 2004).

The problem that I’ve found with many SEO consultants is that they don’t come from a marketing background, but from a technical background. Thus, they can fall into the trap of trying purely to acheive that higher ranking, but not pay as much attention to effective search marketing in terms of results.

I admit that I am still learning how to be a good marketer first, and an SEO second… but understanding how to brand in the search engines has definitely opened my eyes to see a deeper purpose in my SEO efforts.

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This article was originally published on my Searching Solutions blog:

Ultimate Guide to Internet Business Branding on Search Engines

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How to (Mis)-Manage Internet Real Estate Leads

Justin Smith | SEO, SMO & Blogging Consultant (Searching Solutions) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 09:50:09 -0500

If you’ve never checked out Chris Pollinger’s blog, you need to. His insights always impress me, and I’m a regular reader. One of his most recent posts is about why he is frustrated with the real estate industry, and it really hit home for me.

In case you didn’t know, the Christian Real Estate Network is a lead generation service. When you strip everything else away, that is what it really boils down to. We generate real estate buyers and sellers around the country that want to connect with a real estate agent. We then send out these leads to one of our members which totals around 1,600 currently.

I share Chris’ frustration when he isn’t able to get agents to follow up on leads. It is truly maddening to get a followup email 2 days later from the client saying that they were tired of waiting, and made an offer with another agent.

Why is that?? In such a tough market, I would think that agents would jump over their own mother’s to get leads, but it just isn’t the case. In his post, Chris talked about agents becoming jaded with lead generation companies, but I’m becoming jaded about the general service of real estate agents! I’ve grown up my whole life around the real estate industry, and I’ve seen enough to know that some agents simply get it done, and the other 90% just sit around and wait for deals to fall into their laps. It’s unfortunate that the 90% even exist, because they simply give the other 10% a bad name.

Here are some basic tips for the 90% of agents that don’t know how to manage real estate leads. (translation: common sense for the rest of us)

1. Pick up the phone, look at your fax machine, and check your email

Pretty incredible insight huh? Isn’t it the most amazing advice you’ve ever heard? I should tour the country as a motivational speaker or something. Of course I’m being facetious… or am I?

It is seriously shocking how hard it is to get in touch with some real estate agents. When we send leads out to our agents, we call, fax, and email the information just to cover all bases. But it never ceases to amaze me how many clients aren’t contacted.

2. Email and call the client immediately

Again… I should win a pulitzer for this stuff. I have a personal theory that 80% of internet based real estate leads are lost in the first 12 hours. And that is probably a huge understatement. People on the internet want instant satisfaction. They don’t want to have to register for something, they don’t want to fill out long complicated forms, and when they are requesting information, they want it now. Don’t make them wait, or you will probably miss out on the lead.

3. Be persistent, but don’t harass

Your average person is unlike your average real estate agent. They will actually return your call if they want to talk to you. If they don’t want to talk to you, they won’t call back. Calling them everyday for 2 weeks is not going to help. Be nice, be persistent, but know when to “take a hint”.

4. Put buyers into the loop immediately

Don’t wait until after you’ve had the chance to visit with the lead in person. You need to put them on a listing drip campaign immediately. This means you will need to get their basic criteria during the first phone call or email. That way, they will be getting active listings emailed to them right after you first talk which will gain their trust, and may even get you an easy sale if they see something they like. There is nothing worse then showing 50 properties with gas prices these days.

5. Long term clients still deserve the same level of service

This is one of my pet peeves. Just because you get a lead that isn’t ready to do something for 6 months doesn’t mean you should kick them to the curb. It’s just bad service. The best agents recognize that they can’t live paycheck to paycheck and will have solid effective ways to stay in touch with people over the long term. A simple email or phone call every couple months is sometimes all it takes to stay on someone’s radar screen. I can always tell a good agent… they are the ones that send us a referral fee from someone we sent them 3 years prior.

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If you are one of the 90% (you know who you are), please clean up your act. The simple courtesy of returning phone calls would be a good start.

Ok… my rant for Chris and myself is over.

To read the original article, click here:

How to (Mis)-Manage Internet Real Estate Leads

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Justinnerd's Blog on ActiveRain

My Personal Experience with Getting Listings Crawled by Google

Then I got the call that changed everything...

First, I'm not completely sure what I should do with this information. Should I share it with the world, or keep it under my hat?

Third, I'll be honest... I'm selfish. I'm not sure I want to release it on a broad scale because there might be some business models I can create out of it.

Bringing Out the Nerd in You

Listen to Tomato Radio Today At 3pm PST: We're Getting a Behind The Scene Look At ActiveRain with Jeff Corbett (VP of Operations).

15 Quick SEO Tips for Real Estate Bloggers

9 Super Easy Blogging Participation Tips

Contents:

Here is part 5 in this series on Blogging Tips:

And it just keeps on growing... please comment if you have a tip you'd like to share (I'll give you credit and a link from the original post).

15 Tips For Improving Your Blog's Content

Contents:

Here is part 4 in this series on Blogging Tips:

And it just keeps on growing... please comment if you have a tip you'd like to share (I'll give you credit and a link from the original post).

14 Easy Tips to a More Successful Blog

Contents:

Here is part 3 in this series on Blogging Tips:

Blog Design & Features:

And it just keeps on growing... please comment if you have a tip you'd like to share (I'll give you credit and a link from the original post).

16 Helpful Tips For Better Blog Formatting & Structure

Contents:

Here is part 2 in this series on Blogging Tips:

Basic Blog Formatting & Structure:

Ultimate List of Blogging Tips - Part 1

Contents:

Here is part 1 in this series on Blogging Tips:

Tips For Getting Started With Blogging:

How to Break Up With a Search Engine Robot

Breaking the Heart of Your Favorite Search Robot

“Let’s Just be Friends”

The Messy Break Up

“Let’s Agree To See Other People”

Don’t Be a Stalker

Like this post? Please Stumble it! Click Here

For Halloween: The Top 25 Funniest Google Ads Ever!!

What can you learn from these ads??

Enjoy!

You Know When You're a Social Media Rockstar When...

…over 50 people change their avatars on Twitter just to celebrate.

Happy Birthday Jeff Turner!

10 Free Tools For Investigating a Competing Website

Competitive Research

10 Free Tools For Researching Your Competitor’s Website

#1. SpyFu.com

#2. SEODigger.com

#3. SEOmoz Tools

#4. WebsiteGrader.com

#5. NicheWatch.com

#6. SEO For Firefox

#7. Compete.com

#8. LinkDiagnosis.com

#9. SearchRascal.com

#10. Google & Yahoo

The Value of Social Networking Relationships

Guide To Using Avatars For Online Marketing

Branding, Facial Awareness, and Improved Visibility

Some Twitter Examples:

Services You Need to Sign up For if you Haven’t Already:

Other Places Online That Allow Avatars:

Tools for Creating Avatars:

Final Tips:

Related Articles:

Online Marketing Help Center Reaches 5,000 Members!

Online Marketing Group Update on ActiveRain

The Art of Exploding Your RSS Subscriber Count (Part 3)

First... Analyzing Your Feedburner Subscriber Data

How to Promote Your Feedburner Email Subscription Form

Tips on Increasing Your RSS Subscribers

Real Estate Website Review Service (Screenshots)

The reasons I believe these reviews are so needed in the real estate industry is twofold:

Conclusion:

Here Are the Packages That We’re Offering:

How to SuperCharge Your Activerain Blog With Feedburner (Part 2)

Understanding Feedburner Email Subscription Options

Setting Up A Feedburner Email Subscription Box in My ActiveRain Sidebar

In the 3rd and final part of this RSS series, I'll show you how to:

Please comment if you have any questions!!

The Ultimate (& Practical) Guide To Optimizing Your RSS Feed (Part 1)