As you probably know by now, real estate is a subject that’s near and dear to my heart — quite literally. My wife is a real estate agent. My sister is a real estate agent. My dad opened his own agency in the 1950s and still works from a home office today as he approaches a tender 80 years old. It’s not just personal, though; real estate is all about small business and I try to watch what’s happening in the industry as much as possible.
Lately, I’ve been watching Google take one baby step after another, pushing into real estate as quietly as Google can do anything. Last night, I wrote about Google’s latest step on Search Engine Land: Google Builds out a National Real Estate Search Engine. The creation of individual “place pages” for property listings is Google’s latest step toward building out what I believe will be a challenger to any web site, big or small, that offers property listings. The article has apparently earned a lot of buzz today around real estate circles, and I want to point out two posts that caught my eye:
Author Brian Boero says, rightly so if you ask me, “Sure, Trulia, Zillow and a hundred other online real estate sites do this. But this is Google, folks – a force so large that it can upend entire categories overnight.”
Despite the apparently contrary headline, I think author John Rowles and I are in agreement on what’s going on here. He makes the smart suggestion that Google could turn the Local Business Center into a Local Property Listings Center and allow the property owner and/or real estate professional to manage the listing the same way local businesses can manage their business information. Says John:
“Given that option, it’s easy to see how people, who are as distrustful of real estate agents as they have ever been in the wake of housing bubble, might migrate to a real estate information platform that is outside the industry’s control and has the added benefit of the familiar Google user experience.
When Google puts something like this out there, THEN its time to freak out if you are NAR, a local MLS, Move Inc, an IDX vendor, etc..
Until then, enjoy the borrowed time.”
Borrowed time. I think that’s a great way to put it right now.
Pay Per Click Management – for your business or a not?
Although search engine optimization (SEO) is an excellent way to get free traffic to your website, it’s not all of the available traffic. Even more exposure for your website can be gained through Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. Research shows that nearly 70% of targeted visitors to a website come through free search results, the remaining 30% come through PPC campaigns. One major benefit of using PPC campaigns is that it enables you to attract the other 30% of customers that you would otherwise be missing altogether. PPC does cost money and it can cost a great deal, however, a properly managed PPC campaign can easily pay for itself. Many PPC management companies in the are experts at creating and optimising successful and economical PPC ad campaigns.
Speedy and Highly Targeted
A major advantage of a campaign is that it is highly targeted to people that are searching for what you have to offer. A professional PPC management company can easily find the right keywords and test them properly, helping make your campaign very cost-effective. Conversion rates are easily measurable if you have knowledge of proper tracking methods. You can collect data related to conversion rate, cost per sale and click-through rate (CTR), allowing you to measure the effectiveness of your ad. Another huge advantage is that all of the vital feedback from your ad testing is immediate. Ad results are available very quickly, and can be adjusted and retested in a short amount of time.
Test, Test and Test Again!
Knowledge of testing various campaigns to determine which will be most effective is vital in helping spend your marketing budget wisely. A professional PPC management company has the expertise to identify keywords for testing, determine maximum cost per click, write effective ads, create compelling copy, conduct detailed tracking, and make adjustments as needed to maximise the effectiveness of your advertising pounds. Without in-depth knowledge in all of these areas, a PPC campaign can end up costing much more money than it needs to. The profits gained from your investment in hiring professionals to manage your PPC campaigns is well worth the cost.
Track It!
The biggest pitfall encountered by inexperienced PPC managers is the lack of knowledge when it comes to tracking. It is absolutely crucial to know precisely what traffic you are receiving, where it originated from, the keywords that were used, where the user went using those keywords, and which keyword combinations get the best results. A successful campaign includes not only selecting and tracking the correct keywords, but determining proper bid prices, writing good ad copy, creating compelling landing pages, creating search engine friendly links and headings, streamlining usability, and writing those all important calls to action. Professional companies managing PPC campaigns are highly skilled in tracking every aspect of a campaign and adjusting all of the crucial items to maximise your PPC profits.
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How social networks benefit your web presence.
Why blogging and micro blogging is important.
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How to Add Social Media to Your Press Release Strategy
Before the web came along, small businesses often had very little control over the publicity they could generate in the press, even when sending out press releases. They had to submit their news to a traditional press distribution or media wire service, which was often expensive and provided no guarantee that their news would ever be mentioned anywhere in a newspaper, magazine, or other publication. Reporters and editors were completely in charge of which press releases were deemed newsworthy enough to be published, and the rest were basically ignored.
Things improved greatly for small businesses with the development of online press outlets that allowed submissions from all types of companies, large and small. One main benefit of these sites was that even if your news wasn’t “picked up” by a major news outlet or site, at least it generated some new, high-quality inbound links back to your business web site, providing you with some additional exposure online and helping improve your search engine rankings.
Now with the explosive growth of social networking sites, small businesses have another great opportunity to gain extra publicity and online exposure by incorporating social media into their corporate press release strategy.
When thinking about a press release strategy for your small business, consider creating a comprehensive plan that includes your web site, online media outlets, and social media sites. For example:
Web Site:
* Be sure to have a “Press Room” or “In the News” section on your business web site. Include the latest press releases for your company, and also provide a link to a press release archive for older news releases.
* If you are a Chamber member, always submit your release to your local Chamber of Commerce. These organizations love to promote news from their members, and Chamber publications are typically well-read by the membership and others in the community.
* Submit your press releases to any other organizations or professional groups to which you belong, or to other sites in your industry that accept news releases about your type of business.
Online Media Outlets:
* There are hundreds (or probably thousands) of web sites that are news-related or niche sites that publish news from press releases submitted to them. Many are free or very low cost, and will accept press releases from all types of businesses. Just do a Google search to find the online press release sites that fit your budget and your industry.
* Optimize your press release for the keywords that you also target on your web site. Use keywords in the title and subtitles of your release, as well as through out the body of the press release.
* Always provide links from your press release back to your web site. Better yet, provide links to specifically optimized landing pages that target the keywords or the subject of your press release (e.g., a new product announcement).
Social Media Sites:
* Include links from your press release to your social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. This helps drive traffic to your social media sites, and may provide the spark needed for your release to go “viral”.
* Use Twitter to announce your press release, and link back to your web site’s Press Room or the landing page for the release.
* Put your optimized press release on your Facebook page, preferably in a custom tab where your optimized release can help boost your site in the search engine rankings (regular “wall” posts don’t help your rankings)
* If your social marketing profiles have been set up correctly, the press release can be published automatically to all your social media and bookmarking sites with one single action on your part (such as a blog post).
Press releases are an excellent way to publicize your company, build inbound links to your web site, improve search engine rankings, and promote news or events going on in your company. Because of the web, small businesses now have more access than ever before to get their news (and links) in front a huge audience without the approval of traditional news reporters and editors.
By adding social media to your press release strategy, you can create a comprehensive plan that not only takes advantage of your web site and online media outlets, but also uses social media sites to distribute your news further on the web, help keep it visible longer, and ultimately extend the reach and effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Advertising Local Online Tips to Effectively Getting Your Local Business Advertised Correctly
Getting targeted advertising is crucial and can be a serious money saver. Advertising local online is not that difficult if you use the proper tools and techniques. For example, you need local leads if you are an accountant that has a local office. You then should not waste your money on general online advertising that attracts people that live out of state. You have no benefit when you get a visitor to your site that lives in China. These two examples are why you need to have a geo targeted advertising solution.
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What social media networks can do for your business
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I live in metro Portland, OR so there is several larger known local websites that I can use to advertise locally. One of the most popular local online advertisers is Craigslist.com. To be exact it’s http://portland.craigslist.org. Many businesses post their ads in the appropriate section. A good tip is to put your business phone number in the advertising post. Not that you get more phone calls, but it makes your advertising more believable. You can use this method to attract many leads online in your local area. Just a fair warning for you is to ensure you keep up with their rules. Craigslist has very strict rules to protect their users. Failure to adhere the rules can quickly get you banned from ever posting your local online advertisement.
Kudzu.com is another very popular website for advertising local online. Post your business listing in the appropriate category. As a bonus for good companies your customers can give you a rating score. Also notably give you a good testimonial if you deserve it. Kudzu’s search engine can provide very good targeted results. For example, you can good several results for plumbers with in 25 miles of zip code 30339. Additionally, you can sort by the ratings and review the comments given by users. Another fair warning is that you need to be aware that there is a potential for a bad review that can affect your business. Just understand that you can rebuttal them and I suggest you do. But potential customers know that no business is perfect. You just need to ensure that you have many positive reviews then the negative ones.
CitySearch.com is another great resource to advertising local online. It’s very similar concept to Kudzu.com. Just like kudzu it’ll provide all the reviews and scores from your customers. Word of mouth advertising and having a loyal base of customers is critical in having a successful business online. My suggestion is to ask your customer to give you a favorable rating at citysearch. Normally your customers are not very good with the internet. Take advantage of this and ask them to rate you right on the spot. I always have my laptop around me connected online. After my work is completed I ask them to give me rating. This way they won’t forget.
It isn’t so simple advertising local online by using Google, Yahoo or MSN (Bing) search engine advertising. You can purchase keywords that are specifically from seekers that live in the geographical area you choose. It’s setup where you can choose the country, state, and even the city location of the information seeker. It is a very good way to advertise locally. This can pin point your potential visitors to your site.
Whether you have been purposefully ignoring local search, or simply are not aware of it’s potential impact to your overall marketing strategy — you may want to reconsider your position. Local search marketing can really pay off for “bricks-and-mortar” businesses. It can provide excellent opportunity for garnering both foot traffic and website traffic.
Even as early as 2005, an article in MIT Technology Review, April 2005, “E-Commerce Gets Smarter” reported that for every one dollar U.S. consumers spend online, they spend another five or six dollars on offline purchases that are directly influenced by online research.
Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, says — “We think search is a very viable advertising segment that produces great results and great leads for advertisers. But it has to be managed properly.” It also provides a way to claim more space in the local search engine results pages, thus increasing your chances of getting that valuable consumer click-through to your business profiles and listings. Ultimately, these click-throughs result in sales and increased profits.
As a example, if a local user searches for “pain-free dentistry” and a dental practice has it optimized correctly, there is a very good chance that it will appear prominently in the local search listings. Ideally, a local user will acquire dental related information from the main website of the close proximity dental practice, and thus be influenced to seek out their services. The goal is to shorten the consumer’s path from searching/researching to making a purchase.
Further proof is presented in a study by The Kelsey Group and ConStat, 74% of U.S. households now use the Internet when shopping locally for products and services. This huge trend can no longer be ignored. Even more evidence of this growing trend in local search is presented by The Kelsey Group’s Annual Forecast, which shows that local advertising is shrinking. Going from $155.3 billion in 2008 to a forecasted $144.4 billion in 2013. This means that nearly $11 billion that would normally have been spent on traditional local media (newspapers, Yellow Pages, direct mail coupons, etc.) will shift to local search, social networks, mobile and similar digital media spends.
Bulbwired.com has years of experience in local online search marketing and can manage all aspects of your local online advertising. Call 866.376.7772.
Link Popularity is one of key area to increase your site page ranking and search ranking. Incoming links are just like votes in election for your website however there is point as we have to emphases on quality links rather quantity. Valuable links are like 100 of poor links equals to 1 quality link. In this article, I would like to explain how differentiate quality links and how to get them which will effect and improve and strengthen your website ranking.
Mistakes in Link Building
It is never too late to focus on the right direction to get qualified incoming links. Here is few mistakes those may follow by SEOs, Link Builder or website owner and webmasters.
1- Focus on Quantity than Quality: It is the quality of incoming links that will bring your website at 1st page so always you should look for qualified incoming links rather quantity. 2- Link Exchange or Reciprocal Links: Link exchange or reciprocal links should be avoided. 3- Ignorance of Check and Balance for Links: If you don’t check and balance your listings periodically, you may lose your hard gain incoming links 4- Purchase Bulk Links: Search engines become very intelligent these days, you can’t make them fool by purchasing bulk links, because search engine check your incoming links frequency as well with time 5- Paid Links: Paid links can be very healthy but if they are used as a part of the strategy, if you have no idea of how many paid links you are going to have, that can upset your link building campaign.
Do You Have Categorized and Simplified Database?
In link building campaign, your database is your key to success; it is the backbone of your overall link building strategy. If you have a poor database, which is not categorized and simplified, you can’t be comfortable from your link building strategy.
Try to have categorized and simplified database, make a master database with following mentioned fields.
Important Fields for Master Database for any Link Building Campaign
1. URL
2. Direct Link (Direct Link of Submission or Registration)
3. Industry Type (Show Biz, Construction, Telecommunication…)
4. Link Type (One Way, Reciprocal, Paid)
5. Link Style (Anchor link, Title Hyper Link, URL Link, Vote Link)
6. Link Period (1 Year or Life time)
7. PageRank (1, 2, 3…10)
8. Title Limit (Characters Limit)
9. Description Limit (Characters Limit)
10. Keywords Limit (Characters Limit)
Insertion & Update Your Master Database!
Your master database (structure) is ready, now You need to make it valuable by inserting data to it, it requires an on-going updates. Don’t let anything go away as it can be used for your current asa for new projects
Does anyone else find it surprising that so many site owners are reluctant to provide outgoing links on their website. Somehow they have come to believe that providing relevant outgoing links from their site can be harmful to their results in the search engines.
When you send your visitors to a relevant resource, this is not a bad thing. This is a good thing.
Relevant sites does NOT mean competitive sites.
Definitions of Relevant on the Web:
Having a bearing on or connection with the subject at issue; “the scientist corresponds with colleagues in order to learn about matters relevant to her own research” wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Evidence or information that has enough value to prove something significant to a case.http://www.attorneykennugent.com/library/r.html
If you write an article and would like to provide evidence of what you are saying, you should provide your resources within the article. Those MUST be credible resources. For example, if I write an article about website credibility, the site I point to in order to back up what I am saying must be an EXPERT on the topic, such as the Stanford Guidelines for Website Credibility. This method (used properly) gives your pages MORE value, not less. It also adds to the relevance of your page to the topic.
Incoming and outgoing links are not just about making pages filled with links. It is something that can be blended into your website in multiple ways, as it pertains to the specific page.
Think about the common interests of your target visitors and you will have no trouble deciding if a link is relevant to your site.
If you want to see your money fly away try these more than common mistakes in PPC. These mistakes will give your money wings faster than a Redbull, you want to get really stupid with it add Vodka. Pay per click advertising can be a quick way to get targeted traffic and GEO targeted for that matter. Plug in a list of keywords, write an ad, set a daily budget and let it rock.
If you can get a listing towards the top of page one, you can potentially get hundreds if not thousand of visitors. However, you can also get your butt handed to you. Here is couple of pay per click (PPC) adventures gone wild. Hopefully you can avoid these very fundamental mistakes.
I had this product all ready to go and was determined to use pay per click advertising. The product was great, I felt that there was no way it wouldn’t sell. So I lined it all up, set a daily budget, got a list of keywords, wrote a couple of ads to do an A/B split test and let the campaign go live.
That month, I ended up spending well over $1,500 and all of 4 sales made. Losing money is not one of my favorite things to do. Well, after some examination and a course in SEO and PPC I realized I made 2 very simple mistakes, critical yet simple. The first was that I didn’t restrict the ads to justthe US and Canada or English speaking countries for that matter. I had them going all over the world and getting loads of traffic, however, to places that couldn’t possibly want my product. The other blunder was, I ran the ads on content sites where the CTR is notoriously high and conversions horribly low. The combination smoked me out on this product very quickly.
The other fundamental mistake I made, and BTW, I only made these mistakes once. I didn’t set the cost per click to a max amount and set my daily budget to some astronomical figure. I won’t even go into how much money I lost on that one until I realized what the heck I did. My journey in this sector of Internet marketing has been a nightmare even though it didn’t need to be. I have learned a great deal from Aaron Wall’s course SEObook.com, the money I spent with him has been saved many times over.
Pay per click advertising can be extremely effective, but you MUST know what you’re doing. Two things I will leave you with here;
1) “Do not try this at home” – hire a pro or learn from a pro!
2) My Dad used to say, “Don’t go to a Dentist to get your haircut”, I think you get my point.
Last night, I wrote about Google’s latest step on Search Engine Land: Google Builds out a National Real Estate Search Engine. The creation of individual “place pages” for property listings is Google’s latest step toward building out what I believe will be a challenger to any web site, big or small, that offers property listings. The article has apparently earned a lot of buzz today around real estate circles, and I want to point out two posts that caught my eye:
targeted visitors to a website come through free search results, the remaining 30% come through PPC campaigns. One major benefit of using PPC campaigns is that it enables you to attract the other 30% of customers that you would otherwise be missing altogether. PPC does cost money and it can cost a great deal, however, a properly managed PPC campaign can easily pay for itself. Many PPC management companies in the are experts at creating and optimising successful and economical PPC ad campaigns.
Link Popularity is one of key area to increase your site page ranking and search ranking. Incoming links are just like votes in election for your website however there is point as we have to emphases on quality links rather quantity. Valuable links are like 100 of poor links equals to 1 quality link. In this article, I would like to explain how differentiate quality links and how to get them which will effect and improve and strengthen your website ranking.
If you want to see your money fly away try these more than common mistakes in PPC. These mistakes will give your money wings faster than a Redbull, you want to get really stupid with it add Vodka. Pay per click advertising can be a quick way to get targeted traffic and GEO targeted for that matter. Plug in a list of keywords, write an ad, set a daily budget and let it rock.