So are you tired of just writing sentence after sentence in your blog? If you are your readers might be as well. After all we are in the new era of the web were bandwith is high and people have high speed access at home and at work so why would we only just write text? The answer is you probably shouldn't be just writing. So we thought we would give you 5 great resons to use multi media in your blog.

1. It adds a visual impact - nothing adds impact like a great picture. After all a picture is worth a 1,000 words right? So why not throw up a picture of what you are talking about. If you are talking about the benefits of improving a kitchen maybe a nice before and after picture.


2. Video says it for you - That's right a little video never hurt anyone. In fact you can upload your video to http://www.youtube.com/ and they will host it for you and give you the html to put in your page. We put up video on our Long Beach Home Blog so you can see a sample of what to do. That clip took about 40 seconds to record, 2 minutes to upload to youtube, and another 60 seconds to copy and paste the HTML they gave me into the blog. So for under 5 minutes I think it is worth it.


3. Sound is a great way to introduce your blog - we put sound on our blog as well using some easy to use software by in InstantAudio.Com. This software is great and is easy to use. By the way we use it to describe our properties on our regular websites as well.


4. Others aren't doing it - Want to be first? That's right many people aren't yet adding pictures, sound, and video to their blog. This makes you stand out among all of the other blogs that are available for a user to select. After all you are competing for readers and what better way to improve your blog by adding something that no one else will do.


5. Your readers want it - so if all of the other reasons don't convince you to do it your readers do want it. People want more out of websites and blogs than just plain text. They want entertainment with their information so give it to them!

In case you also are thinking we don't practice what we are asking you to do we have some video for you as well!

We hope that convinces you to add some multimedia to your blog. You can always check out ours for ideas at http://www.homeofthequeenmary.com/ and another great one we like is http://www.raincityguide.com/.

Labels: BLOG, internet marketing solutions for real estate agents, real estate agent website, real estate blog, real estate internet marketing, real estate internet marketing solution

As you are adding to your web presence, it is important that when you do add content that it is viewed by as many people as possible. Here are 5 tips to increase your page visibility:

1. Focused Content - Don't try to accomplish too much in 1 page. When you write a page concentrate on a particular topic (like california first time buyers, or condos in Long Beach) so the meaning of your page will be clear to visitors and to the search engines.
2. PPC Ad - Create a PPC ad on Google and Yahoo and direct it to your page. A nice targeted group of words and phrases can bring that traffic you are looking for.
3. Site Map - Make sure to update your site map to reflect that you have added a new page. Optimally you will have physical HTML page as for a sitemap as well as an XML sitemap. Keeping this up to date will help your the spiders to see you regularly update your website and bring them back more often :)
4. BLOG Post - As are are all BLOGGING, put up a blog post providing a snippet of information about your new page. Maybe it is about a new loft development or a new loan program, whatever it is, give a hint about it on your blog and link back to your website!
5. Internal Linking - Hopefully the content you are creating is somewhat related to other areas within your website. Link from one of your other pages in your website (optimally one that is indexed already) and link to your new page!

Following these 5 tips everytime you ad new content will belp increase the visibility of your new pages. With powerful Calls to Action, you will be able to quickly get some contacts out of those new pages ! Good luck.

Labels: BLOG, Google, PPC Campaigns, real estate blog, Sitemap, xml, Yahoo

RSS Readers

You don't have to have to book mark all of your favorite BLOGs and have to go back daily to check them right? You don't have to! Using an RSS reader you can subscribe to BLOGs and keep up to date as easily as checking your e-mail.

RSS is defined as Rich Site Summary or it's most popular - Really Simple Syndication.

RSS feeds have been in existence for a number of years, but now are finally hitting mainstream. If you have a BLOG, then most tools, easily allow your BLOG to be picked up by an RSS reader. As many of you may be new to finding RSS feeds, we thought it might be helpful to point out a few RSS Readers so you can make it an enjoyable experience keeping track of your Favorite BLOGs.

Google Reader - A wonderful FREE tool so you can keep track of the RSS feeds that are of interest to you. You can add it to your Google Account so you can check in like you were checking your e-mail.

NewsGator - They have a FREE version as well so you can sign-in and start using their powerful tool.

BlogLines - Create a personal web page easily that is updated with the news sources that are of interest to you.

Have fun adding your favorite BLOGs. Sign up for our real estate BLOG dedicated to the Long Beach real estate market - www.LongBeachHomeBlog.com

Labels: BLOG, real estate blog, RSS feeds

Google is by far the leader in traffic online for searches, so it is helpful to know how they are looking at pages and what they are up to. They actually provide a wonderful BLOG for webmasters so you can keep up to date on changes and make sure that you aren't going to fall into the Penalty Box!

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

Some of the posts are a bit more on the technical side, but please feel free to read through the ones that are of interest to you as there are some helpful posts. Enjoy!

Labels: BLOG, Google, real estate search engine optimization

As you are continuing to practice your SEO skills through development of content and use of tools like WordTracker to find the most often searched words, sometimes we lose track of which words are the ones generating traffic and which ones are actually leading to conversions.

Labels: BLOG, conversion words, google analytics, keywords, pay per click, PPC Campaigns, word phrases

Active Rain is a real estate BLOG community where you can learn from your fellow agents across the country. At the time of this post there are almost 43,000 members across the country. The website is easy to use and it helps you to demonstrate your expertise in an area.

Localism
Localism is the consumer side of Active Rain. The big benefit here is you can write about your local area. Some of the items you may want to write on would be:

• New Construction in your area
• Home Sales in your neighborhood
• New Home Loans that are available

Every post that you put up can reference going back to your website for additional information. This way you can provide great FREE information on your BLOG and encourage visitors to dig deeper by going to your website.

Labels: active rain, BLOG, real estate blog

Testing your landing pages is what can help you to get more contacts out of the same visitors! Landing pages are where you send your customers from you online marketing like pay per click. Often as soon as we get some results that we are happy with, we stop trying to see if we could improve those results :).

For simple testing of pages you may want to consider changing the following changes to different versions:

1. Display the same adcopy in a different format (i.e. with bullet points or bolded)
2. Drastically different adcopy to get he same idea across
3. Different colors on your page
4. Change Page Titles on each version
5. Provide a Guarantee on some versions and none on the others

The professional SEOs recommended testing anywhere from 3-9 versions! Try testing a few different landing pages with your real estate pay per click ads to see what has the greatest impact. A great BLOG post by SEOmoz, a leading SEO company in Seattle, put together an in-depth article so you can consider different aspects of Landing pages and how to convert visitors.

Labels: BLOG, lading pages, pay per click, real estate pay per click, SEO

In order to maximize your search engine optimization strategy for your real estate website you will want to have other wesbites link to your website. Increasing your inbound links is a way to increase your organic results in the search engines which will help in your overal search engine optimization strategy so you can generate more leads.

This sounds simple in principle, but it often seems difficult to know where to start to get websites to link to yours. Here are a few ideas:

1. Directory Links - There are some wonderful real estate directories out there, like www.realestateabc.com and others where you can pay a nominal fee to have a link to your website placed on their site. We get traffic every month from www.realestateabc.com and others.
2. Recriprocal Links - This meams to "trade" links with sites. If you link to them, then they will link to you. Make sure to keep within the same industry for maxmium impact. The effectivness of these links is steadily declining, but it can still help.
3. BLOG Posts - Posting on BLOG forums demonstrates your expertise. Often your profile on the BLOG shows about you and a link to your website!
4. Press Releases - Sending out press releases online can be a powerful medium. It gets your information out there and often they will want to say more about the author with a link to your website. Try http://www.prweb.com for your press releases online.
5. Community Websites - Participate in community websites where they feature additional information about those who participate. A great example of a site that started as a real estate BLOG but has a local area is www.ActiveRain.com which has a site www.localism.com where your posts about areas are read by consumers!

Try these 5 tips and watch your success in the search engines!

Labels: BLOG, inbound links, real estate search engine optimization, recriprocal links, search engine optimization strategy

It is often difficult to find out what keywords are being searched for on the internet. There are free tools out there so you can see what searches are being done, but they often rely with you guessing different combinations of words, which can be tiresome! We have put together a resource on our website so you can learn more Wordtracker with a FREE 3 page report.

If you are taking real estate search engine optimization seriously, then you will want to try a tool like, Wordtracker. They have memberships starting at just 1 week so you can develop a powerful word list! We have been using Wordtracker for quite awhile, and here are some of the highlights of how it works.

• Searches over 300 million searches to determine what searches are actually being made


• Visits 200 related websites based off of the term you type to find related terms


• Gives you the actual search volume of keywords for the last 90 days


• Allows you to save projects so you can keep track of your words while you are developing new content and PPC campaigns

Using a tool like Wordtracker can maximize your SEO efforts for your real estate website. The added benefit is you can use the same words for your BLOG postings and online ads. Give it a try for a week or try their FREE trial and see how many keywords you can discover!

Labels: BLOG, keywords, PPC Campaigns, real estate internet marketing, real estate search engine optimization, SEO