About a month go I had an out of town prospect visit my web site looking for a home in my area. They gave me a call informing me they loved all the information on my site and could I help them find a home in my area. The husbands' job was relocating them in a month and the wanted to buy instead of rent since the housing prices were so affordable. I kept in contact and sent them information and by the time they came in town we narrowed what exactly what they were looking for to 5 homes.

After 2 weeks they arrived in town and I proceeded to show them these 5 homes. The second to the last home filled there exact need and you could see it in there face this was the home for them. I'm not the type to pressure my buyers and they decided they would wait till they came back into town the following weekend to make an offer. To my surprise they called me that Tuesday letting me know they would be in town wednesday to make an offer but wanted to view it one more time. I called the listing agent to set up the appointment and he said the seller would be away during this time.

We showed up at the agreed time and to my surprise the sellers were standing at the front door. We greeted each other and I told them my buyers were going to view the home and I would see them later. The seller said in an arrogant voice "We aren't going anywhere just hurry up and look at the dam house". Ignoring him I started showing the house but the seller decided to follow us around. We got in the kitchen and I pointed out that one of the cabinet door glasses had a large crack. They were in the middle of saying it didn't matter they would replace them anyway when the seller blurted out "there's nothing wrong with his cabinets and there isn't anything wrong with his house". That is when the yelling started between the sellers and my buyers started.

I quickly got my buyers out but the damage was done. Even after them cooling off they decided they did not want to deal with the seller and would just rent a house. Prior to this they were willing to make a full price offer which I pointed out was overpriced, with 20% down payment, and were willing to pay go 10% over the listed price if another offer came in. They weren't even asking for any contribution from the seller. We would most likely be going to the closing table this week if those sellers had just taken a nice long walk.

That is the question I want to ask everyone today. I have read so many articles about the negative effect of duplicate content it really scares me to do. Even if I wrote the content myself and repost it I'm told it is a bad idea. When I first started my blog on my website I was told I shouldn't repost any of my activerain blog to it.

My question is have any of you done it and what were the effects from it. Did the search engine lay the hammer on you or did you get a boost from it. I ask because there is one other person blogging about real estate in my area. Every time I go to his blog to see what he posted I get a familiar feeling while I read. So I start digging and find that it is an exact reprint of the local paper or a website reporting about a local event. I mean word for word not even a summarization of the report. My deal is a lot of people seem to be reading it.

Now i'm not jealous or anything but it bothers me because I don't feel right doing it myself. I work hard to write a good post and it take something very valuable from me which is my time.  If anything I might write a summary of a report in my own words. That takes time though, and lately I have been to busy to make a regular post every day. I could do like him and copy paste what do you think.

I know this is a sore topic just here on activerain so please give me your opinion.

Here are a few links on the subject:

http://activerain.com/blogsview/55710/Lessons-in-Copyscape

http://activerain.com/blogsview/116666/Setting-The-Record-Straight

http://activerain.com/blogsview/The-big-deal-about-duplicate-content?3365

http://activerain.com/blogsview/Duplicating-Your-Blog-Content-Friend-or-Foe?461

Ok , after reading various post I have decided it's in my best interests to take down the link exchange pages to my website.I am doing this because I have fallen in my search engine rankings. This is not good for business.

Some time in May I had a goggle Pr of 4. Then all of a sudden It dropped to 2. I figured I had done some thing wrong and tried to change up a lot of the content in my site. This caused a change but not what I had hoped. I was on page #1 for various search terms but dropped to page #4 or lower for most. My visits also dropped by 2/3 of what I was getting. Leads dropped to about 2 a week from about 10 a week.

Thats when i really started to worry. So I started reading up on seo to see what i was doing wrong. The only thing I could come up with were In these articles.

http://activerain.com/blogsview/129469/Matt-Cutts-of-Google

http://activerain.com/blogsview/122351/Advanced-Access-Helping-Agents

http://activerain.com/blogsview/105675/AA-Penalty-Over

http://activerain.com/blogsview/141424/My-Google-Penalty-is

I guess I got the penalty too . So now I won't be doing anymore link exchanges. When I checked many of those link backs were missing on others site anyway.When I fist exchanged the links they were there. I guess the removed my links as soon as I accepted there's. I wrote about this before. I will link to people through blogs and work on my blogging so others will link to me. I cant afford to take another hit to my business.

My only other concern is should I delete the links to directories. 

We have rental Avaliable if you would like to see some call me at 915-241-6671

Or to veiw whats avaliable visit   

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• 1,545 sq. ft., 2 bath, 3 bdrm 2 story - MLS® #340240   $138,950 - Priced to sell

East Gate, El Paso  -  A beautiful well taken care of home in a very quite neiborhood. With a lovely fireplace and a Balcony connected to the master bedrrom. There are ceiling fans in every room, and tile throughout the first floor.

Property information

I am a Reservist that has been on active duty the past year and a half. I got of off active duty the beginning of February so I am just getting back into the groove of things. I need to sell some houses so Monday I thought I would do a little prospecting by door knocking. I live in Northeast El Paso so I decided that is where I should start.

Now this is brave of me since I am afraid of dogs. I mean I have one of my own, but I'm scared of other people's dogs (if that makes any sense). If I see a dog in the yard I have a habit of skipping that home unless the owner is outside with a smile on their face. One bit me a few years ago so I am very careful.

Well I got to house number 13 and everything seemed ok. I opened the gate and walked up to the door and knocked. No one answered so I was turning around and heard the scariest words of my life "get em boy". I didn't stop to look and just took off running and hoped the fence. Just my luck as I was doing my Carl Lewis impression my pants leg got snagged at the top and I fell face first on to the concrete. I wasn't hurt bad enough to forget that there was a vicious dog after me so I jumped up to see where he was.

I looked around and all I saw was a little boy and the Taco Bell dog (a Chihuahua).

A few years back there was talk of Ft. Bliss being closed due to a lack of water in El Paso Texas. That belief was wrong and now we know there is plenty of water in El Paso. The Hueco Bolson aquifer is our primary underground water source. It is now believed to have an almost indefinite supply of water. It is not our only water supply though.

The largest inland desalination plant is being built on Ft. Bliss. It will produce about 27 million gallons of water a day. This means along with a few other local water sources, El Paso Water Utilities could produce 347 million gallons a day. The average daily is only 140 million a day. The best thing is it is said to be more brackish water underground than in the Hueco Bolson.

Ft. Bliss is expected to have about $2.6 billion in construction. This is going on to support the 20,000 soldiers and 30,000 family members expected to arrive at the post over the next 4 years. Most of this is to put in place a new infrastructure at Biggs airfield. This includes new ranges, a new commissary, Post Exchange, housing, office, medical centers and more. The construction work is to be bid on and so far most of the major contracts have been given to out of town builder.

Most of the local builders do not have the experience at bidding government contracts. This does not mean they will completely be left. Some may find work through sub contracting while others may still get lucky and win a bid. There will be plenty of work either way since many of the soldiers will find themselves living off post. There are many developments off post that are being worked out to deal with such a large demand of incoming renters and potential buyers. With the army trying to make it so troops would be at a unit longer, more people may just buy instead of renting.

John Rogers

El Paso, Texas Real Estate

www.johnrogershomes.com

If you live in El Paso, Texas you know how important Ft. Bliss is to our city. What happens with the post effects our local economy in every way. That will not change but the effect will be felt even more now. Over the next 4 years Ft. Bliss will nearly double the number of soldiers with the addition of 20,000.

The post and the city came out winners in last year's BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) decision. Ft. Bliss was demeaned the new home of the 1st Armored Division relocating from Germany, a field artillery brigade and other units coming from Fort Sill, Okla., and Fort Hood. With these soldiers comes up to 30,000 family members.

Ft. Bliss won out because of all the land and training area available to the post. There were concerns earlier that El Paso would run out of water. But a scientific study revealed there was more than enough water to support the city and post for hundreds of years. There will be a lot of construction going on and I will do my best to keep you updated.

John Rogers

El Paso Real Estate

www.johnrogershomes.com

If you have planned to buy a home in the near future the last thing you need to do is start using your credit. This will hurt you credit score, which is what your interest rate is based on. Even some small purchases here or there can get you disqualified form your maximum loan amount.

Couple years ago I was helping a single mother with 2 teenage daughters move into there first home. She did everything I advised her to do and was qualified for the home she wanted. She was even qualified for grant money for first time homeowners. We found the perfect home in the area she wanted to live in, and wrote up a contract that was accepted within the hour. Every thing was going perfect and in her favor until we got the call from the lender.

Her teenage daughter went on a shopping spree with the credit card she had given her and maxed the card out. This took $20,000 off her maximum loan amount, and she would have to come up with more money to get into the home. The seller decided to put the home back on the market and before we got every thing straightened out the house sold robbing my buyer of her dream home.

Don't rob yourself of the dream of owning a home. Get a free credit report at http://www.annualcreditreport.com/ There is no penalty for checking your own credit. If there is something you can pay off do it. Most importantly save the credit purchases until after you close and the lender funds the loan.