In a recent announcement from Google this morning, their new social media platform is expected to launch soon. The service is called Friend Connect. Now any website owner can provide social features to its visitors. All you have to do is add a snippet of code and features such as user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications will run immediately without programming.

David Glazer, director of engineering at Google said "Many sites aren’t explicitly social and don’t necessarily want to be social networks, but they still benefit from letting their visitors interact with each other. That used to be hard. Fortunately, there’s an emerging wave of social standards — OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, and the data access APIs published by Facebook, Google, MySpace, and others. Google Friend Connect builds on these standards to let people easily connect with their friends, wherever they are on the web, making ‘any app, any site, any friends’ a reality."

Friend Connect is currently in limited beta stage and only a few sites are using the applications and features. Friend Connect will be open to more sites in the next few weeks as Google receives feedback from site owners and developers about how well the product is performing.

Here we go with yet another installment of our walkthrough of Aaron Wall’s guide to link building and how it applies to real estate. For this week, we’ll cover review sites and blogs!

41. Amazon Reviews - There are so many real estate books out there that you’d be missing out on a lot of link building and networking possibilities if you weren’t going onto Amazon and writing reviews of the ones you read. Of course the more insightful the comments the more opportunities you’ll have to put your own spin on them, demonstrate your expertise, and then make mention of your background. You don’t have to beat them over the head with a pitch to your site; even simply mentioning your business name would help.

42. Amazon Product Lists - Also don’t forget to make product lists that are specific to real estate in your area. For example you could make a list of products that tell people all about the Napa Valley lifestyle, maybe another one specific to just wine. And make sure you mention your background

42. Alexa Reviews - You can also review sites on Alexa. So focus your constructive and critical eyes on some high-ranking real estate websites and use that chance to show people why you are a trusted resource for real estate advice.

43. Publish reviews on product and service review sites like ePinions and Yelp. They will give you yet more opportunities to raise your voice and establish rapport with people who are making buying decisions.

44. Leave testimonials! If you’re heartfelt about it and you are good with words, then a positive testimonial on your favorite products or websites sent directly to the webmasters can lead to direct links or at least mention of your full name (which is easy to search for, because you’ve done everything you can to optimize for your name… right?).

Until next time!

With Yahoo on the Ropes, Who will challenge Google as online search continues to grow and also move into the new web 3.0 frontiers, mobile, messaging, video? And where will the online marketing environment shake out in 2008/2009?

Google is the clear winner from the whole Yahoo/MSN non-deal. With the end of takeover talks, Yahoo now finds itself needing to prove what its vision for the future is. Profits are flat this year after two years of declines, and although Microsoft has walked away from a $47.5 billion buyout bid, they are still hungry to take over the company and will be back.

Yahoo is now coming to Google to serve some of the search listing ads, as a good temporary opportunity to make money. This buys them some time perhaps, but still doesn’t stem the tide of Goggle advancing march forward. "If part of Yahoo’s mission is to become a one-stop shop for people looking to buy all types of online ads, then outsourcing search … seems like a step backwards," analyst Derek Brown at Cantor Fitzgerald said. Where Google is today: Google last month reported 42 percent revenue growth in the first quarter, and shares spiked 3.9% off the news of Yahoo fallout.

How does this relate to Search Marketing and Sponsored-Link advertising? Well, image an environment where adding Yahoo search to your campaign is as easy as clicking a button in your Adwords interface. That will make using Yahoo a viable addition to your campaign, and for less money as Yahoo generally converts at a cheaper cost. There could be a great benefit for those online advertisers, taking advantage of relatively under-priced ads. One of the big fears is the growing hegemony of Google. Monopolies usually translate to higher costs and less services for consumers. With Yahoo and Microsoft essentially failing to grow in the marketplace, Google is more and more the one-stop shop.

Advice: Take advantage of the Google/Yahoo advertising partnerships as they arise. That might mean more effective and cheaper PPC campaigns. Keep a keen eye on Google as they increasingly lead the online search and advertising movement. Invest in Search Engine Optimization, to insulate you from these advertising giants and their increasing costs!

This may come as a surprise for some but the people who are the most successful with self-promotion aren’t actually promoting themselves. They promote useful ideas to the public. Their products and services benefit the person who is actually using them. Take craigslist for instance, it is built on the simple business model that benefits everyone. People spend hours every day searching for jobs, housing, rentals, pets, dates. Craigslist directory offers millions of services for any area of your life.

When finding a new strategy to promote your business, try to seek momentum and ride it. Sean “P Diddy” Combs knows how to find the right momentum in business, and he isn’t called “the king of self-promotion” for nothing. The Motown records intern has risen the ranks to CEO when he introduced the world “the greatest rapper of all time” Biggy Smalls.

He is a mogul who knows his hook and brings an interesting angle to the promotion of his business. In February of this year, P Diddy’s line Sean John was displayed during New York Fashion Week along with chic designers like Marc Jacobs and Donna Karen.

“It’s going to be the way I present myself,” P Diddy said before the showing of his line “and my style is a little bit different than other designs. I don’t know if I’m gonna [be able to] turn water into wine, but I’m gonna definitely turn it into some Kool-Aid."

Make sure your message is the most important thing—not the amount of money you spend. A website called 37 signals said an interesting analogy about how companies fail at gaining customer’s respect. “Companies that spend tons of ad/PR dollars to convince people their products are worthwhile are like guys who spend lots of money on gifts and dinners to woo a woman. What kind of relationship are they really building?”

Think of your business as a relationship. You must start with a foundation of strong communication and that you care about the other person’s interests. In order to “offer something of value” you need to listen to what they want.

This post is based on a conversation I had with a client earlier this week. They are based in Dallas – Fort Worth, and their area of expertise is Short Sales. This client serves a very specific niche of real estate, but during our initial intro call they mentioned they wanted to appear in the search results for terms like “Divorce” and “Real Estate.” There was a couple of things I thought were interesting or maybe concerning:

1. The client thought they could rank for such broad terms.
2. The client felt these were applicable keywords for their business

What I thought would be a usual intro call became an education of how search engines determine natural results and how important selecting keywords are to your business, especially if your specialty is specific to certain properties or transactions.

If you all have been reading this blog, clearly you are ahead of the curve, but you also have a strong idea of how search engines determine natural results. While I won’t go into a full explanation with you all the client above was not so lucky. Her website is new, lacks inbound links, and most importantly there is very little relevant content on the site, especially for her Short Sales expertise.

Once we defined what key terms were applicable putting together a real marketing plan could be realized. I encouraged her to think from the perspective of a potential client, someone looking for exactly what she does. More than likely clients would not be searching for her services by going into a search engine and querying “Divorce.” However, I venture to say someone searching for “Short Sales Dallas” would be right up her alley. The first thing she needed to do was install unique, rich content targeting her specific keywords. So over the next few weeks we plan to write content serving those terms. We’ve also begun a Pay-Per-Click campaign reaching out to potential clients for quicker web exposure. We took a step back and are not targeting broad terms, but again only the keywords that are applicable to her niche.

The ROI has been encouraging. She will most certainly doesn’t have the volume of traffic had we targeted “Real Estate” or “Divorce,” but the visitors to her site are now highly qualified and have searched for her actual services. She is reaching her niche, and with the upcoming addition of her content pages I am willing to venture over the next couple of months we will see strong growth in the natural results.

Lessons Learned:

1. Identify what keywords you are trying to serve and are they too broad?

2. Identify your specialties or niche and create a marketing plan to capture visitors searching for those needs.

3. Think like your potential clients. How would YOU find you?

Getting traffic and having great branding for your site is one thing. Converting these people that get to your site is another. If you’re like me or any other website owner then you probably care more about the results you actually get from your site and not how many people are just coming to it (unless of course you are monetizing your site with ads).

The tip for this week is to give you some insight on how to convert the actual people that are getting to your site - assuming that people are already getting there.

Real Estate Marketing Quick Tip 2

This one is going to take a little planning and research. Sit down and start thinking about what you do better than anyone else in your business / area. I recommend trying to make a list of about 10-15 things that you can offer a prospective client better, faster, more effectively, more efficiently than your competitors. Not sure what your competitors do? Go to their sites and see what they push in your face. Once you have done all this then, and only then, can you get down to my second tip for you to make your site work for you:

Plan out the top 3 things you want people to do once they get to your site and put them on your site.

In case you’re asking what I mean by "things for people to do" here’s a little more clarification in the form of some examples:

1) Click on your "Contact" page to provide you with their email, name and phone number

2) Subscribe to your email newsletters

3) Call or email you for a free market analysis report or home evaluation

Getting the point yet?

Although the 3 examples above are considered pretty weak these days they still represent having a plan of actual "calls to action" to entice people to provide you with their contact information. You really need to be much more creative these days to generate leads from your website as people are much more savvy and will find how to get what they need somewhere else without having to provide any information. This represents much more of a reason for you to really plan what you can offer people to entice them to become a lead for you, whether they know they are becoming one or not.

Here are some examples of "calls to action" or lead conversion tactics that I have seen that still work comparably well against your typical "contact form" or "have questions?"

• Make a prominent button on your homepage that offers people "Automated Email Updates" of properties only within their search criteria. The whole catch here is that this is automated, meaning that they don’t have to ever talk to you if they don’t want to. Don’t get offended….you’re getting what you want (their email address to add to your email marketing list) and they get those free email updates which save them time for searching thousands of different sites
• Offer useful articles for buyers, sellers, renters, investors, etc. Don’t advertise the typical, "Tips for Buyers" or "Tips for Sellers" articles as those are so boring and overplayed. Instead, feature some specific, useful articles or newsletters about something like "The Top 5 Things to Save You Money When Buying a Home" or "Learn How to Get $25,000 More When Selling Your Home"

Making sense?

These things should not be borrowed or stolen from other sites; they should be specific to you and what you can realistically provide better and faster than anyone else. Also, do not rely on these or stick with these indefinitely. Change them up, split test them, see what works, fine tune or throw out anything that doesn’t work.

Whether we all might like to think otherwise, a website is never "done". if you let it sit, then it will do just that….sit and do nothing for you. So, get creative, think about your business and what you can offer and use those to entice people once they get to your site. A good gauge when creating these things would be to just ask yourself if you would provide your personal information for what you are offering. If not, then what makes you think it will make someone else want to?

Good luck! Feel free to send us your ideas, privately or via a comment, as we will be more than happy to let you know if you are on the right track or not. We have seen just about everything and know what works and what doesn’t so try us!

We see it time and time again - someone switches website design companies, buys a new domain name and/or decides to redesign or re-develop their website without proper consultation or forethought. The usual outcome? Not good!

Most website owners don’t know the necessary steps that must be considered and many times implemented in order to assure that any value in their existing website does not get lost altogether.

That time is no more; I am going to provide you with the necessary things to consider before your website is moved / overhauled and also the essential things to implement when you are ready to make the move and/or bring in the bulldozers.

Please note that recommendations are different for moving to a new IP address.

I highly recommend that you consult with an SEO professional before trying to implement any of this yourself if you do not have a good understanding of the concepts and reasoning behind these steps.

BEFORE You Move / Overhaul Your Website

What kind of natural value does your website currently have?

Only once you become aware of what your site’s natural value is should you even consider moving or completely overhauling your website.

• Check your site’s key terms and phrases to see where they are ranking in the search engine’s natural results. Moving or completely overhauling your site may cause your new site to lose those established rankings as search engines need to re-index all of your new information.

  Not sure what your site’s keywords are?

• Check your site analytics to see which keywords are bringing you the most traffic
• Contact an SEO professional to run a complete analysis of your website

• Analyze your site’s backlinks that have been accumulated over time. Moving or completely overhauling your site will most likely cause multiple broken backlinks, thus significantly hurting the value they have been sending your site.

  Not sure what your site’s backlinks are or how to check them

• Check your site analytics to see which websites / urls are linking to your website
• Contact an SEO professional to run a complete analysis of your website

DURING the Move / Overhaul of Your Website

Test the Move Process

• Move the contents of one directory or sub-domain as a test

• Use a 301 redirect to permanently redirect the pages on your old site to your new site

301 redirect: tells the search engines that your site / page has permanently moved

 
Double Check the Search Results of the Pages on Your New Site

• Make sure these new pages are getting picked up, indexed and displayed correctly by the search engines

• When you feel comfortable that the move is working correctly, then move your entire site

• Do NOT do a “blanket” redirect of your whole site as it is not the best solution for user experience

• Use “page-to-page” redirects for optimal results and the best possible user experience

• Assure that every page on your old site is at least redirected to some new page with similar content

 
Changing Your Domain for Rebranding or Redesign?

• Move your site first

• Then launch your redesign
  *This keeps the variables to a minimum and makes unexpected behavior easier to troubleshoot

Check both External / Internal Links on Your Site AND the Backlinks to Your Site from Other Sites

• Check ALL internal links within your old site and update them to point to your new domain

• Contact the webmaster of each site that has links pointing to your site to have them update those urls

• Once your content is in place, use a link checking tool like Xenu to weed out broken legacy links

AFTER the Move / Overhaul of Your Website

Don’t Trash that Old Domain

• Retain your old website domain for at least 180 days

Utilize Webmaster Tools

• Setup a Google Webmaster Tools account

• Verify ownership of your new site

• Create and submit sitemap listing the URLs on your new site

• Keep your old and new site verified in Google’s Webmaster Tools to review crawl errors and  404 errors

This whole process is most definitely not simple or quick. However, these necessary steps will help to ensure that any value that your website has accrued does not get completely lost. Although a lot of this is somewhat more technical than average website owner is used to, it is all very essential to a successful search engine optimization start up and maintenance campaign.

As always, if you need any help along the way, our team is more than happy to assist you in this whole process. Just let us know by emailing us or dropping us a comment below.

In addition to your website, why not build a social networking platform that will not only enhance your site’s visibility, but connect you with clients and colleagues. Ning is a social media platform that allows you to create your own social network. Ning offers advanced customization where groups can tweak their site’s appearance, blog, post videos and photos, play music and participate in discussions.

Chase Nation, the voice of Reno and Tahoe real estate, has built its social media network using Ning’s platform. Chase Nation has become a successful network, which contains about 317 members. On Chase Nation members can post discussion threads, view the latest market trends or search through the MLS.

The real estate market has hurt most real estate professionals across the country so I thought that there was no better time to reach out to everyone with some free and more importantly, extremely useful, advice to help real estate professionals make their websites more effective.

I am going to kick off this series of useful real estate marketing tips with something that is so obvious and easy that you just might kick yourself for not thinking of this already. This tip will help to make your site more effective in terms of usability, functionality, visitor retention and lead generation.

Real Estate Marketing Quick Tip 1

Grab someone who has never seen your website before. Make sure to get someone who will not be completely creeped out with you practically sitting on top of them and staring at them as they surf the Internet and your website. Once you have this person, ask them to sit down at a computer and go to your site. Are you ready for this mind blowing tip? Here it comes…

Watch how they interact on your site once it opens.

That’s it! No seriously, that is the tip. Bear with me if you are cursing at me for making you read this far.

One of the main things that site owners and marketing professionals neglect is how people actually interact with a website. Most people in the industry and those with websites rely so much on site analytics, data, numbers, etc. One thing we are all overseeing is the simplest of them all - how does someone who has never seen your site interact with it the first time they get there? This golden question might just be some of the best marketing research you have ever invested in.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of site analytics and usability trends, but I have learned more in 10 minutes with a couple friends looking at and using a site I created than I have straining my eyes over any set of data for hours. Human interaction and personal observation is so much more telling and useful as it is live evidence of how people actually see and interact with your site.

Some things to observe when they are on your site:

1) Where do they click first?

2) Since you are sitting right there next to them they will probably ask you questions, so - What questions do they ask you first?

3) Listen for comments or sounds of frustration or elation from them (i.e. mumbles, grunts, laughing, smirks, etc)

4) How long do they stay on any given page?

5) Do they seem to be enamored and/or annoyed by any given element?

Some things to collect from them once they are finished:

1) Immediately upon exiting the site, ask them what they remember the most about it

2) If they are willing, ask them to sketch out your homepage. You will be amazed at how helpful this is because it will tell you what really stuck in their mind and if your site’s main page was memorable or not

3) Last but not least, ask them if they would send the site to their closest friends and tell them that they created it. This is a good one, because it forces them to be honest with you. If they are comfortable passing off your site to someone who respects them then that tells you that you just might be on the way to having a great site.

Simple right? Don’t feel bad if you haven’t done this yet. It took me months before this simple observation of actual human interaction fell off the idea tree and hit me square in the head.

DO these simple things and I GUARANTEE you will learn so much more about your site than you thought you knew or any other website expert has already told you.

Remember that traffic, numbers, cpc, stats, and all of those other metrics don’t mean much if they are not producing results for you. Results will not come if people simply don’t enjoy your site.

So get going. This is something you can do right now. We would love to hear your results. As a matter of fact, I am going to be providing our loyal readers with a Real Estate Marketing Tip every week….NO SIGN UP, NO CHARGE, NO OBLIGATION - just really useful, practical advice to make your site more effective.

People often have a misconception that business isn’t personal when, in fact, it really is. It can be so personal that the same strategies you conduct in business can be used to seduce someone behind closed doors. Don’t forget how psychological business is, and if you don’t analyze your consumer’s behavior there is no way you can be successful. Know your audience; we say in business—mirror your desired; we say in seduction.

When you mirror people, you focus intense attention on them. Once people have a sense of the amount of effort you are making, they will find it flattering. You have chosen them—separating them from everyone else. The more intense focus you have on their moods, the more stimulating effect you’ll have on their vanity. When you are mirroring someone and trying to close a sale, do not stop at the person they have become and what products and services would be good for them right now; enter their mind at the ideal person they would like to be.

Realtors, reawaken the fantasies your clients had when they were young girls wanting the perfect five-bedroom house with a flower garden and huge backyard, or young professionals wishing for a high-rise condo in the big city. Make your customers feel like they can be the person they want to be through your expert opinion.

Everyone is a narcissist. As children we were only interested in our own body—narcissim ran on the surface. The older we get the more psychological our narcissim becomes: we are absorbed in our own tastes. We love ourselves, but what we love more is to see our own tastes reflected in another person. Play along. Don’t spend hours trying to study the human mind, just reflect their moods and tastes. Mirroring people is a form of hypnosis and it is the most successful persuasion you can do. It will give your clients the feeling that they are in control of their lives by having you indulge them with their tastes.