As the new year approaches and you make plans for your online marketing efforts, one of them surely is creating more pages for your website or blog.  Your plan may be detailed, outlined weekly, or one that has a simple goal of adding “X” number of pages and posts.  One of the main problems of sticking to that plan is the actual creation of content for those pages.  The excuses for avoiding creating new website content are numerous: “I don’t have time”, “I don’t... 

To say the Bugatti Veyron is a car would be like saying the statue of Liberty is just a statue.  This super car has ridiculous stats.  It hits 60 mph in just 2.5 seconds and has a top speed of 253 mph.  Of course along with that super performance comes a super price tag of over $1,600,000.  In the December issue of Car And Driver, they cover this vehicle in all it’s glory.  Besides it’s freak show performance, I found it interesting that the car gathered so much attention. No matter... 

 This past weekend I was helping my wife search for a new-used car.  As I am the designated “car guy” of the family I was happy to pick up the cause to look for a vehicle.  The used car market is pretty soft so I was definitely hunting to find a deal.  After searching through a few websites I felt like I easily could have been searching for real estate.   There were a few problems that I ran into while I was searching:  Different websites returned different available vehicles... 

1000Watt Consulting is an organization that has released some stellar reports in the past and this one is no different.  Their study of Real Estate Broker websites produced some interesting analysis and some great calls to action for change.  I think when the magnifying glass is applied to websites across the country, as they did in this report, it is a great opportunity to see how some brokers are making real strides to connect with their next customers and how sometimes the smallest of changes... 

Whenever we are helping real estate professionals learn more about the topic of making their websites stand out among the thousands of competitors in their local market, we always talk about content.  Differentiating your website with content is one of the MOST powerful ways to demonstrate market expertise.  Besides putting up content about cities and neighborhoods, we get asked “What about school information?”.  Joe and I always take a moment before responding because there are complications... 

For many that start with traditional real estate training, some of the first things that you learn about are methods such as farming and getting in touch with your “sphere of influence”.  With both of these methods you learn that you must stay in touch with them on a consistent basis so you can be at the forefront of their minds when it comes time for a real estate need.  Keeping a consistent touch will enable your sphere and farm to send you business month in and month out.  The funny... 

As we all pour through various blogs and RSS feeds striving for those great “tips” to give our website the best chance in Google we sometimes miss the obvious.  Google actually provides a webmaster help center to help you make your site easier to understand by Google.  Now, before your eyes roll into your head thinking this is like a tech nightmare with odd formulas that can only be understood by Stanford PhD’s, think again. Here is what the Google Webmaster Guidelines says about... 

These famous words were spoken by Proximo (Oliver Reed) to Maximus (Russel Crowe) in the movie Gladiator.  Maximus was a magnificent Gladiator, but he made the kills to quickly and did not embrace the crowd.  Proximo was trying to teach Maximus the lesson that if he embraced the crowd, got them to cheer for him to be their champion, then maybe, just maybe he would win his freedom. As we know from the story it took Maximus time to realize the art of the fight that would win the crowd.  At first... 

One of the biggest challenges that agents run into when developing their websites is what to put on that first page.  Before you get out that 8 x 10 glossy photo we thought it might be helpful if we gave you a method that both visitors and search engines will like.   Keeping that first page of your real estate website simple and making your visitors aware of the areas you cover will create visitors who stay longer and give the search engines an easy way to know what your website is about. Look... 

Although 2008 has thus far been a challenging year for many real estate professionals, one of the best aspects is that everyone has been forced to look at actually doing some marketing (I know crazy to think that you can’t do 15 sales a year by showing up to an open house for an hour on a Sunday, but I digress).  For many agents that has meant entering the world of online marketing. As real estate agents we are often drawn to the instant fix.  Just “buy this now” and you will...