Well Google has officially announced what most of us have been seeing for quite sometime. .  Yesterday in an Australian Blog a Google employee announced that Google will now be adding Real Estate information to it's Google Maps.  The new "Real Esate" tab will include such things as property information, photos, for sale or rent information, and even AdWords.  If the Street View is available of the property then that will also be included. For right now all this information is being pulled directly from two data bases.  The most prominent one being Prudential. 

To those of us who follow Google on a regular basis we have already seem this in Google Maps.  The fact that Google has officially made the announcement is really the news.  

This will have far reaching ramifications not only for the folks searching for a home to but but also for web design and SEO.   I for one have seen  this as a very positive move by Google and can only help both Real Estate Agents and Potential Buyers.  It looks like Google will soon have a National MLS Service Database.

Once I have had a chance to better analyze this for you I will go into greater depth my thoughts on how this will benefit agents, buyers and sellers as far as Online Marketing Services for Realtors are concerned

Another fantastic web design by Nancy Golliday.  Job well done Nancy.  This maybe one of my favorites.

In todays Jacksonville Fl Time Union newspaper.  No names have been posted yet:

A crackdown on mortgage fraud has resulted in indictments of 24 Jacksonville-area real estate professionals in connection with at least $244 million in loan amounts for 200 pieces of property, federal authorities said today.

The people indicted worked during the housing boom in positions such as small business banker, title company employee and owner, mortgage broker, mortgage banker, employee of a real estate development company, real estate agent, Realtor, home builder, real estate investor, title and closing agent, and real estate appraiser.

They are among about 100 people being prosecuted by federal authorities after an intensive, nine-month investigation of mortgage fraud in the Middle District of Florida, spanning the metropolitan areas of Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa and Ft. Meyers.

“You will be caught, you will be prosecuted, and you will be sentenced to significant jail time,” U.S. Attorney Brian Albritton said today at a news conference in Jacksonville.

Recently I did a talk for a Broker friend of mine at his weekly sales meeting. Basically it was a talk about what great SEO does for a website.  After the meeting was over I spent a few minutes in Bob's office talking about what we had just discussed.  He made a statement that I found interesting that I wanted to pass along here. 

He told me that many Real Estate Agencies he knows of no longer have sales or training meetings.  Instead the training and sales meetings have been replaced with emails and online training.   People are now reviewing PDF's or PowerPoint presentations of weekly sales and listings instead of attending meetings. 

I found this a little shocking and wondered why in an industry that is so heavily dependent upon customer contact and personal services why an agency would do that.  I would think that the contact that Real Estate Agents get from one another is not only a very necessary human bonding event but gives each agent the feeling that they are not alone.  The knowledge dump alone in these meetings could be very beneficial.

My question to this community is this true of your agency or do you still do sales and training meetings and how often?

Wow I had no idea I was so busy the last 4 weeks that I did not blog Part 2 of this series.  Wow! Sorry about that.  In case you forgot here is Part 1.

Ok, how do you get backlinks removed that you no longer want linked to your site?  It is not too hard to get them removed and I have had about a 90% success rate at doing this.  Sometime this process takes persistence and patience, but it can be done.

First you must determine if your site is linked back to by a directory site or a website.  I have had almost 100% success rate in getting backlinks removed from websites .  I have had closer to a 90% success rate in removing backlinks from directory sites.   

Website owners are usually reasonable people who may or may not realize that they are linked to your site.  It may be that their web designer or SEO company are using  the website owners site to build a huge link farm.  This is done a lot by SEO companies that only have only the SEO company's interest at heart,  The SEO companies will link every site they have worked on to each other using Blackhat SEO.  Good backlinks are important and when you have a real estate website you do not want porn sites linked to your site.  Usually an email to the website owner will resolve this issue for you. 

Site Directories can be a bit more difficult but do not fret, they can be resolved with an email as well.  Though it is not  usually in the Site Directory's best interest to remove a link, most will be happy to do it.   Keep in mind that it can take many emails and pleas of help to get some of these Directories to remove the link back to you.  Do not give it and keep after them.  What ever you do always be polite and professional.   

In the next blog I will you some tools you can use to check what neighborhood your site resides in.

It is all about Location, Location, Location; even for your website.   Do you know who has linked back to your website?  Do you know if all of your back-links are links you would want linking back to you?  Do you have adult sites or gambling sites linked back to you?  Is your current SEO Company only producing good links back to your site? If you do not know, then you may be in for a big surprise or worse yet banned by a search engine.

Recently a former client of mine called because his website had dropped off of Google.  It was no where to be found.  After a checking I discovered that his current SEO Company had done a massive back link campaign for him.  They did 500 back-links for him in a 3 day period.  The majority of the back-links were from adult services and gambling sites.  A huge mistake for anyone to do.

First, 500 back-links in 3 days can be red flag for the search engines.  Google tends to see this as blackhat seo and can knock your page ranking down to zero.  Anytime the search engines see massive irrelevant back-links to a site you are looking to get banned.  Especially if the sites are directories whose sole purpose is to create massive back-links.  This is what happened to my former client.

Google tends to like to see back-links developed over time in a more organic way.  Listing your site with directories that are relevant to your site is very important.   Commenting on blogs that have similar content as your site is also excellent.  It is a slow process and can not be rushed.  If it is rushed or down wrong the search engines will look at this as spam and your site will be removed.

So what can be done to check to see if your site is a bad neighborhood or not?  How do you remove the back-link you do not want associated with your site?  How do you get the search engines to re list your site? What tool can you use to check your back-links?  You will have to read my next blog for that information.

Q - What is the difference between pigs and SEOs?
A - You can learn to respect a pig

Q - What have pig's & SEO's got in common?
A - SPAM

Q - What's the difference between a seo consultant and a used car salesman?

A - The used car salesman knows when he is lying.

Q - What's the difference between an SEO and an artichoke?

A: The artichoke has a heart.

Q - What do you do if you see an SEO drowning?

A - Take your foot off his head

Q - What is  the definition of SEO SPAM?

A - Site Positioning Above Mine

A man walking along the beach found a bottle. When he rubbed it, lo and behold, a genie appeared. "I will grant you three wishes," announced the genie. "But there is one condition. I am a SEO’s genie. That means that for every wish you make, every SEO in the world gets the wish as well - only double." The man thought about this for a while. "For my first wish, I would like ten million dollars," he announced. Instantly the genie gave him a Swiss bank account number and assured the man that $10,000,000 had been deposited. "But every SEO in the world has just received $20,000,000," the genie said. "I've always wanted a Ferrari," the man said. "That's my second wish." Instantly a Ferrari appeared. "But every SEO in the world has just received two Ferraris," the genie said. "And what is your last wish?" "Well," said the man, "I've always wanted to donate a kidney for transplant."

SEO consultant talking to his assistant, "Hey, we're ranking for duplicate content."

Assistant to consultant, Really? "How often?"

This is probably not the best title for a blog but my wife made me clean up what I had originally written as a title.  Good thing I listened to her or I may have regretted writing the other title.  You are probably wondering why I am so ticked this morning?  It takes a lot to fire this old Georgia boy’s tractor up but some SEO scam artist got me going.

I spent about an hour on a telephone conference this morning with some independent Real Estate Brokers and Agents talking about how to do SEO during an economic downturn.  The conference was going really well when several Brokers brought up how well they were doing,  Well we all like to hear success stories and I for one can always pick up a nugget or two of new information that may help me and my clients.

Two of the Brokers use a well known SEO company.  The Brokers were very pleased about their first page Google placement.  On the service this sounds good and is very impressive.  But a couple of questions later and the truth emerged.

The search terms they were being found under were not search terms people would ever use to search for a Broker/Agent or homes for sale.  In fact when I checked the search terms being used I found there was only 5 other sites in the world using that term.  So no wonder they were showing up in the number one position for that search term.  So as not to embarrass the Brokers I have cleaned up the search terms so they can not be indentified.

Here is the search term they were in position one for on Google:

Hometown State USA real estate and homes for sale or rent in Another Town but Same State

No matter how you broke this search term down they could not be found in the first 10 pages of Google.  The search terms you would expect to be used were not used and these Brokers sites were non-existent for the most used search terms for their area. The Brokers told me they had each paid over $5000 for this SEO Company to work on their sites.  They were promised by this SEO company first page placement for their selected search terms.

Brokers and Agents are professionals who spend their time getting listings, showing homes and selling homes.  Many of you do not have time to do the SEO for your websites or research the best search terms to use.  That is why you trust and rely on an SEO professional to give you the best information possible.  Many of you trust these people enough to give them thousands of your hard earned commissions. 

SEO Companies who do business like this make it all the harder for honest hardworking folks like myself to make a living.  Once an Agent or Broker have been burned, they are less likely to trust any SEO Company again.  Who can blame you.

Stories like this really fire up my old John Deere tractor. So over the next several weeks I am going to share tools and tricks with you that will help you make some good educated choices.  So whether you are thinking about hiring an SEO Company or checking on the one you currently use, you will be better informed.

Excellent Post.  I always enjoy reading posts from you.  Thanks again and keep up the good work.