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An Interview with GooTube.net founder: Roldan Aquino
2007-03-20 17:23:59
Well… unfortunately, Inman news beat me to the punch, by just a few days!!! But I’m still going to post this. It’s an interview with Roldan (Dan) Aquino, the founder of GooTube.net, a fairly new mashup combining real estate video with google maps. Here it is… When did you found GooTube.net? I started GooTube last August 2006 as a mashup of Google Map and YouTube videos, hence the name GooTube. It has since evolved into a video-sharing site where members can directly upload videos via the VideoEgg platform. What are you trying to accomplish through the services of GooTube?:   My goal is to make GooTube an easy to use site for realtors and small business owners where they can showcase their videos and self-made commercials online. A lot of real estate agents and developers are starting to leverage the Internet to have their services and Inventory closer to the masses and GooTube can be a valuable tool for them. I want GooTube to be the home


Is Creating Creative Content a Completely Contrived Curse of Crazy Conspirators?
2007-03-19 16:35:51
At the risk of stepping on a couple of toes, I’m going to post a quote from a comment that was made recently in a real estate community website. I was in an argument about reciprocal linking, and the commenter with the opposing view had this to say: “Let’s not go down the road that “good content” will generate large numbers of one-way links. By and large, the world is not standing at the ready to link to the content of an agent broker site, based on some sort of remarkable content. Anyone who promises that is misleading their readers. It rarely happens that way.” Those of you who read this blog regularly, will know immediately that I couldn’t DIS-agree more with the above comment. Frankly, I think it’s ridiculous… but I wanted to use it as a spring board to talk about something. Namely, blogging… and the SEO benefits that naturally come with an active blog. Do you have a blog yet? Are you actively writing articles and po
Read more: Creating , Content , Crazy

FusedWorld.com — Filling the Online International RE Gap
2007-03-19 06:13:26
I just found an interesting new startup via programmableweb called FusedWorld.com.  (BTW, programmable web is one of those great sites that you’ll want to have in your rss feeder… anytime a cool new online tool or mashup is created, I’m the first one to know about it.) Anywho…  fusedworld looks to be a very cool new international RE website.  They were stared in December, but are just now getting a decent amount of daily traffic.  The site is essentially a property search website that allows visitors to list their own properties and search for free.  They are currently claiming over 8,700 listings which also include rentals. The mediterranean and EU currently claim the most listings, but interestingly enough, over 1,500 properties are ascribed to middle eastern countries as well.  Currently, all listings are free.  Here is a quote from the site: Submit an unlimited number of listings with an unlimited number of pictures, videos, 360-degree presentation
Read more: International

Project Blogger… A Competition For Blogging Coaches
2007-03-14 05:24:00
Since when did we have official blogging coaches?? This is an interesting phenomenon that has spawned only recently. There have been a plethora of “how to” blogging blogs out there for a while, but since when did it turn into legitimate business? Project Blogger , is a contest that was started by Jonathan Washburn & Jim Cronin that is a essentially a contest between blogging coaches. Each coach will pick a blogging beginner, and coach them into blogger-stardom. The “potential” list of judges includes: * Matt Heaton, CEO ActiveRain * Robert Scoble, famous ex-Microsoft blogger: Scobleizer * John Battelle, Federated Media - Author of The Search * Errol Samuelson, new president of Move, Inc. * Rich Barton or Lloyd Frink, CEO or President of Zillow * Galen Ward, Shackprices.com * Matt Mullenweg, Founding Developer of Wordpress If this can actually be pulled off…it could be huge. It could potentially catapult the “real estate” blogging c
Read more: Blogging , Coaches

All Blogs Google…
2007-03-13 20:51:11
Official Google Blogs   AdWords API Blog Blogger Buzz Google AJAX Search API Google Analytics Blog Google Base Blog Google Blog Google Checkout Google Code Google CPG Blog Google Custom Search Blog Google Data APIs Blog Google Docs & Spreadsheets Google Enterprise Blog Google Librarian Central Google Mac Blog Google Maps API Blog Google Reader Blog Google Research Google Talkabout Google Testing Blog Google Video Blog Google Web Toolkit Blog Inside AdSense Inside AdWords Inside Google Book Search Inside Google Desktop Webmaster Central Blog And a few of my other favorite blogs about Google: www.MattCutts.com Google Weblog The Google Cache Google Blogoscoped Google Blog Search Google Earth Blog Google Maps Mania Unofficial Google Weblog News.com Google Blog Technorati Google Search Tags: google blogs, blogs, blogging, blog, favorite blogs


SEO Quick Tip of the Day —> #14
2007-03-12 19:04:45
Here is Today’s Tip: ________________________________________ Authority links are extremely important.  This means that you get links from pages that have alot of weight and importance.  Examples would be DMOZ, Wikipedia, Yahoo Directory, etc.  We’ve already covered getting listed in DMOZ, but you may be interested in how to get into wikipedia.  There are a few tactics you may want to consider.  (Keep in mind that Wikipedia has now added the nofollow tag to it’s links.  But it is still getting indexed, and you never know when the tag may be lifted.) Anyways, you could always try to add your own business or name, but chances are, unless you have some other claim to fame besides real estate, it will probably be removed.  You’ll have a better chance of getting included if you write a great informative article about a topic, and link it in as a resource on a pre-existing article.  Don’t include any advertisements or flashy graphics on the article page
Read more: SEO , Quick

SEO Quick Tip of the Day —> #13
2007-03-09 23:28:26
Here is Today’s Tip: ________________________________________ Want to know one of the fastest ways to pick up links??  Blogging.  It has got to be the single fastest ways to acquire links.  Write a popular story, and people will start linking to you like crazy.  Don’t have a blog yet?  Try Wordpress or Blogger.  They are both insanely easy to set up and maintain.  Blogging is in and of itself a HUGE topic, so I won’t get into too much detail, but just keep it in the back of your head. If you are serious about starting a long term link popularity campaign, blogs cannot be overlooked. ________________________________________ Tags: SEO , Search Engine News, Search Engines, blogging, link popularity, blog
Read more: Quick

SEO Quick Tip of the Day —> #12
2007-03-05 23:35:08
Here is Today’s Tip: ________________________________________ One more note on the directory submissions… I definitely don’t recommend submitting to the directories that require a reciprocal link back to their directory. First of all, reciprocal linking really isn’t the best practice anymore. Second, people rarely pay attention to how linking from their own sites effects ranking. If you have a bunch of links that point towards directories, and link farms, it says something in the eyes of the Search Engines about the quality of your site. ________________________________________ Here are a couple related articles: –> Reciprocal Linking Is Dead –> Healthy Website Linking Practices Tags: SEO , Search Engine News, Search Engines, Google, link strategies, incoming links, link popularity, reciprocal links
Read more: Quick

The Perfect Fit
2007-03-02 20:53:06
More and more people are reaching retirement with their health, financial stability and a new perspective on aging. For many in this group, a home or condominium in an active adult community is the ideal setting. The benefits of these communities include property management, social activities, being surrounded by peers and more. When looking to buy in a “55 and over” or similar style development the key to ma- king a good purchase is research and comparison shopping. Each development is different and you want to choose the one that is right for you. Here are several things to consider: In addition to asking price, inquire about related fees. There will likely be an association fee for services such as maintenance and snow removal. Other potential expenses include pool costs, clubhouse fees, and the like. Ask about penalties. Some associations charge if you sell the unit or home before a certain date. That timeline and related consequences are usually outlined in the contrac
Read more: Perfect

How to Make $125K Tax-Free in Addition to Rental Income
2007-03-01 22:58:39
If you are an avid real estate investor who likes to keep rental properties for a reasonable period before selling, then there is a way for you to make $125K tax-free over and above the rental income you receive. For this scenario, we will assume you are single simply because those that are married (even though you could double your tax-free income potential) would not want to do what is required. If you are a real estate investor and single, then you could incorporate a strategy that allows an extra tax-free income, up to $125K annually, in addition to the rental income you receive already. This program takes time to set up, but you may already be in a position to get it started. The only drawback is it requires you to move every 2 years, which is why it is likely that married couples do not want to do this, especially if you have children. How does it work? It is actually very simple. You acquire a reasonable number of properties, you must have at least one rental property to mak
Read more: Addition , Rental , Income , Rental Income

SEO Quick Tip of the Day —> #15
2007-03-21 08:23:29
 Here is Today’s Tip: ________________________________________ Try to steer away from reciprocal linking… It is soooo 2004.  There is plenty of evidence to show that reciprocal links have been discounted in recent months by search engines, and may even get you penalized.  In the eyes of the search engines, they want to see natural linking practices.  This means a nice steady stream of links to your site from a wide variety of domains.  Reciprocal links are a natural part of a site’s linking structure, but when the search engine starts to see that over 20% of your links are from sites that also linked back to you, it may look a little fishy.  They might suspect that you are trying to manipulate the system…  keep in mind, these aren’t actual people reviewing your websites, they are complicated algorithms that check for all of these factors. Anyway… that was a long was of saying that you really shouldn’t waste your time with reciprocal
Read more: SEO , Quick

Is Your Website Mobile Web Compatible???
2007-03-26 21:54:53
I came across some interesting articles lately about mobile websites. It is actually a blossoming industry at the moment, and supposedly there will be some 300 million people by 2010 that will be using mobile phones and PDA’s. Have you been to your local cell phone shop lately? It’s hard to find a phone that doesn’t offer access to the internet. There is definitely some room for growth, but many experts seem to think that it will become a very competitive marketplace. So what does that have to do with the real estate industry? Alot I think. There are 2 vital tools that real estate agents already use effectively, that adapt perfectly to a mobile environment: Maps & listings Maps are already wide spread on mobile phones on many different levels. You have the stand alone mapping apps, the mobile versions of mapquest & Google maps, and even gps enabled phones that point the way. But, to my knowledge there isn’t a solid surefire way to get access to
Read more: Mobile

Link Away! the tag has been removed
2007-03-29 08:46:19
I just decided to remove the <-nofollow-> tag from all of the links in comments on this blog after reading this article from Andy Beard. After pondering… it makes alot of sense. Shouldn’t we be encouraging people to post comments? Letting their links be indexed is a great incentive! I don’t know what I was so worried about… I have moderation turned on, so nothing will slip by. I have to approve everything anyway. So link away!! Your comments and links are welcome here. I ended up choosing this plugin for wordpress, and it worked flawlessly. You can get a larger list of “dofollow” plugins here. For those of you that need a further explanation… a <-nofollow-> tag is added to links when the webmaster doesn’t want the search engine to follow that link, therefore bypassing the SEO benefits. It is commonly used on message boards, and on comments in blogs, as these are places where spam can accumulate rather quickly. Tags
Read more: removed

SEO Quick Tip of the Day —> #16
2007-03-30 02:55:34
Here is Today’s Tip:  _______________________________________ A popular term in the SEO industry is Link Baiting.  It is the act of trying trying to get other websites to link to yours through various means.  It could be anything from a popular story, a contest on your website,  a controversial topic… anything that will encourage other people to link to you.  It can often become viral in nature, creating a community buzz around a certain topic. There are many creative ways to link bait… we will cover many of them in this series, but I wanted to familiarize you with the term. One of my favorite link baiting tools is the “informational hook”.  Write about something really interesting… what are you an expert in?  Are you saavy to secrets you are willing to share in order to create some buzz and links to your site?  Some of the most common are top 10 or top 50 lists.  If you don’t have any ideas, borrow from some of your favorite blogs
Read more: Quick

SEO Quick Tip of the Day —> #17
2007-04-02 21:11:04
Here is Today’s Tip: _______________________________________ Teach yourself to use a very basic html editor like frontpage or dreamweaver. I’m embarrassed to admit it… but I use frontpage for alot of things. I just make the changes to alot of my websites and save them straight to the server. It works great for small changes. When you know how to edit basic html… it will allow you to make about 90% of the onsite changes needed for basic SEO . Just learn how to use ctrl-F to find keywords, and get proficient in copying and pasting… You’ll be surprised how much you can do with some very basic skills. All the complicated stuff can be done with a front end editor… without having to worry about complicated languages. Developing thoese very basic skills has helped me tremendously. When you know how to create a simple text webpage, text based links, titles, descriptions, and a few other small things… you basically have all the onsite
Read more: Quick

Who wouldn’t want to work for Google?
2007-04-03 18:09:04
Google : This year’s FORTUNE #1 Best Company to Work For in America With its stock at $483, this midsized company of about 6,500 employees receives 1,300 resumes every day. So why does everyone want to work for Google? Here are just a few of the perks Google employees enjoy: Engineers spend 20% of their time on independent projects Free Gourmet Meals Google will help you buy a hybrid car by contributing $5000 towards your purchase As employees struggle to juggle life with a new baby in the home, Google will reimburse them up to $500 in take out food On-sight Services Include Oil changes Car washes Haircuts Gym Washers/Dryers (free use and free detergent) Dry-cleaning Rock Climbing Wall Massage Chairs Games Rooms Snack Rooms And my personal favorite… You can bring your best friend to work every day… providing they don’t cause any trouble. I’ve always heard that living with a pet can improve your quality


The Top 10 Most Common SEO Mistakes
2007-04-05 10:08:40
These are some of the biggest mistakes I have seen people make when trying to optimize their websites to rank well in the search engines… 1. Bad titles. Titles are literally the first thing that search engine spiders see when they look at your website, and often your customers too. They are a great way to tell a search engine what your page is all about, and they play a significant role in ranking if used properly. Place your keywords in the title, but don’t go overboard. Here is an example of a good title for a page optimizing for Phoenix real estate: “Phoenix Real Estate, Phoenix Homes For Sale - John Smith Realty”. Also, don’t forget to change your titles. Each page on your site should have a different title optimizing for that particular page. 2. Bad Content or No Content. Do you have one of those cookie cutter real estate websites that comes with pre-written “how to” articles on real estate? Dump ‘em. They look good on a new si
Read more: Common , SEO , SEO Mistakes

New Yahoo! Real Estate Forclosure Center
2007-04-05 00:48:20
Reatlytrac.com and Yahoo ! Real Estate have joined forces to offer the newly redesigned Yahoo! Real Estate Foreclosure Center . This new service provides: 1. online search for foreclosures 2. analysis of trends in the foreclosure market 3. education about buying foreclosure properties As the current real estate market slows, foreclosures are on the rise and Realtytrac.com claims to publish “the largest and most comprehensive national database of foreclosure and bank-owned properties.” Incorporating it’s services with Yahoo! Real Estate is a step to further Yahoo! Real Estate’s “goal to present consumers with the information they need throughout every stage of the home buying process” - general manager Michael Yang.
Read more: New Yahoo

SEO Quick Tip of the Day —> #18
2007-04-09 21:04:19
Here is Today’s Tip: _______________________________________ An always controversial way to get links: Buy them. This is pretty straight forward… you decide what kinds of sites you want linking to you, and you go about purchasing the links. Most of the sites that offer text links are very detailed in their offerings. Most listings will offer information like: Description of the site (type of content on the site. Real Estate, cars, news, etc.) Date the site was begun Alexa Ranking Page Rank (PR) Whether it is a home page or sub page Number of quality incoming links How many links that will be accepted What part of the page the link will be listed on and number of characters Based on these factors, you can usually find links that would be a pretty good fit for you. The primary issue is probably price for most people. Some links can get very pricey depending on the quality. The other issue has to do with Google’s position on link purchasing. For the sole purp
Read more: SEO , Quick

Real Estate Videos — The Good, The Bad, The…
2007-04-11 07:33:06
Since we are at the dawn of the online real estate video, I thought I’d do a few reviews… pointing out the best and worst attributes of each video. And hopefully, you can learn some useful tidbits that will help you when it comes time to create your own real estate videos. I’m posting all the videos from youtube, so the quality may not be as good as the originals. ____________________________________________________ #1. Very professional feel, and decent quality for a youtube video. Definitely not done by a pro videographer, but definitely passable. Great narration and lighting. The music is a little cheesy… it sounds like an 8-bit Nintendo game. I’m not sure most buyers will want to watch a 9 minute video unless they are already interested in the house. I realize that this video was probably made for a realtor’s website, but since it is listed on youtube, it should at least have an email address. The video itself has no contact informatio
Read more: Estate , Real Estate

Remax.com — Quietly Providing Nationwide MLS Listings
2007-04-12 17:46:52
Tell me if I’m off in left field here but… I don’t read much about Remax.com in the blogging world. Of course Re/Max is well known in traditional media. I even see their television commercials now and then. But no one seems to be talking about their website. I’ve been having some talks lately with a friend of mine that works in the IT department at the Re/Max headquarters (Our office is only 15 minuts away from his). And he specifically works on the Remax.com website. First of all, if you aren’t familiar with the site, let me review it for you… As you can see, they claim to have millions of listings available to view. My first question to my friend was, how is this possible? Where is the data coming from? Well first of all, all of the Re/Max listings are shown (of course). And the other listings seem to be coming from multiple MLS boards from around the country. When I asked my friend how many were represented, he didn’t know but was confide
Read more: Nationwide

Friday Fun Post
2007-04-13 21:44:43
_________________ Going to Paris? ________________________________________ How do you get there again? ________________________________________ Better bring a bathing suit… Tags: fun, google maps, google, swimming
Read more: Friday

SEO Quick Tip of the Day —> #19 —> Banner Exchanges Are Dead
2007-04-13 19:10:04
Here is Today’s Tip: _______________________________________ Remember Banner Exchanges?? Maybe you are one of the few that still uses them… for that, I’m sorry. There are tons of other ways to drive traffic. Here are the reasons why banner exchanges are dead: They draw traffic away from your site. You never know what pages your banners will be placed on. (you want links from quality pages right?) Many link exchange programs have been shown to cheat customers out of clicks. Do you really want to have to place some one else’s ugly banners on your site? There are a plethora of better ways to drive traffic to your site. Banners are simply becoming very tacky. (I’ll review the click through rate of banners, and why banner advertising is also dead in a later post) Tags: seo, banner exchange, search engine marketing, sem, real estate marketing, online marketing, internet marketing
Read more: SEO , Quick

Re/Max LeadStreet Statistics
2007-04-13 19:08:51
As a follow up to my post on the Remax.com website, here are some stats that I found interesting about Re/Max’s LeadStreet program: Tags: remax, re/max, idx, real estate marketing, mls listings
Read more: Statistics

HitTail.com — Still One of the Best SEO Tools Out There
2007-04-17 20:00:30
If you read this blog every once in a while, you have probably heard of Hittail.com, a free service that allows you to discover “long tail” keywords, thus allowing you to optimize for those words, and drive more traffic to your site. I wrote about hittail back in November of last year when it was launched. I wanted to post a brief update on the services of HitTail since I’m such a die hard fan. I got an email about a week ago from Mike Levin (the creator), talking about the new “plus” service they are now offering: HitTail’s premium service has been released, and as you are one of our beta testers we want to thank you and invite you to take advantage of the limited time low price for the premium service. The full price for the service is $9.95 per month, but before April 30th, you can sign up for only $4.95 per month or $49.95 per year and lock in the price* on the same low level for as long as you remain a HitTail customer! A look at their websit
Read more: SEO , Tools , SEO Tools

Top 10 Internet Marketing Scams
2007-04-16 16:45:50
____________________________________ I’m getting so sick of honest people getting ripped off, that I thought I’d write a post on some of the most common internet marketing scams out there. ____________________________________ 1. “We’ll Submit Your Website to Hundreds of Search Engines!” – Bad idea. This is one of the worst internet marketing scams. First of all, there are 4 primary search engines that handle about 95% of all internet searches, so submitting to anything other than the primary 4 is pretty much useless. Second of all, search engines don’t like submissions. There is alot of documentation to prove this. SE’s simply like to find websites on their own through incoming links to the site. In fact, they have gotten so good at it, that it doesn’t take weeks or months for a site to get indexed anymore. If there are incoming authority links to the site, it can be indexed in a matter of days. The last issue has to do with the f
Read more: Internet , Marketing , Internet Marketing

Urgent Update — Google Now Offering Property Search Within The Search Results!!
2007-04-19 19:09:02
Hold the phones!!! Google just took a radical step into the real estate arena by offering a property search tool right within their search engine results pages for real estate related searches! Here is a screen shot: This is huge! I’m extremely interested to see the kind of press that this generates over the next few days. I guess we’ll see if it’s just a test or not. The listings of course are coming from Google Base, and are showing up with the slick Google maps interface. Time to get all of your listings on Google Base NOW!! Google is so powerful in the number of searches it pulls that this coud really level the playing field. Once agents and brokers catch on with how to get their properties listed, it could overpower and trump services like Trulia virtually overnight. Stay Tuned… Tags: real estate news, real estate marketing, online listings
Read more: Urgent , Update , Search

Who, What, When, Where, Why & HOW To Conduct a Killer Interview
2007-04-19 18:37:59
_______________________ Conduct ing local interviews to post on your blog or website is one of the best ways to generate new customers. Who will you interview, What will you talk about, When will you schedule it, Where will you conduct it, Why is it important, and HOW will you attract more customers? _______________________ I certainly don’t claim to be an expert in this subject. I know that some traditional journalists scowl at the idea of lay people conducting interviews. Trust me, it’s been known to happen (read the first comment on this post). The game has totally changed since the dawn of the blog, and you; yes YOU have every right to interview anyone you want. The exciting thing about interviewing is that most of the time you get to choose the topic, interviewee, and format. Here are 5 interview ideas, and why they could help your business create more customers: 1. The Local Interview — This is one of my favorites. It is perfect for you real estate agents t
Read more: Killer

HousingMaps.com — Keeps on Truckin’
2007-04-18 23:05:28
I haven’t heard much about HousingMaps.com recently… If you’re not aware, it is a Google maps mashup that takes real estate listings from all of the most popular cities on Craigslist, and plots them on the map.  The listings that have pictures also include them in the short drop down description. It’s a pretty neat little tool, and is a nice break from the tedious line by line text on Craigslist. Listing aggregators are only going to get more popular with consumers, and this is yet another reason why your listings need to be on Craigslist, and other sites like Trulia and GoogleBase.  This can be done fairly easily with sites like Postlets.com and Vflyer.com Tags: housingmaps, craiglist, google base, google, real estate


Digg.com Works! But For How Long???
2007-04-24 17:35:42
_____________________ Despite all of the controversy surrounding Digg , it can still be a great way to drive some traffic. Case in point: we recently had a story perform pretty well on Digg, and it drove quite alot of traffic to the site. I realize that 25 diggs is really nothing compared to many of the popular stories, but it actually shows what is possible when people like the content. I don’t spend much time on Digg anymore… I used to submit all of my posts there, but gave up eventually when I could never get more than 5-10 diggs. It seemed that the story would get buried since people saw that I was the author. From all the articles I’ve read on the subject, there seems to be an elite group of top members of the site that dominate the entire community. But for all the bad press, the site still seems to work to a certain extent… It drove traffic to my site from another user that found my article interesting enough to digg. One other thing I’d like
Read more: Works

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