Here are some gems worth reading (and watching):

Start by watching David’s “Blogging is so 2008” video:

Here is conversation on David’s Active Rain blog.

Then head over and read Rob Hahn’s response — Blogging is Forever: Branding vs. Lead Generation. 

Anyone that knows me personally knows that I’m a huge advocate for anything that improves the lives of others (see here, here, and here), so I have to highlight Benn’s two most recent posts — Using Real Estate Social Media to Broaden Community Non-Profit Efforts and 10 Steps to Organizing a Real Estate Social Media Non-Profit Community Channel

And finally, Justin Smith has some good learning to share about getting listings indexed — My Personal Experience with Getting Real Estate Listings Indexed By Google

There is some big news coming from the Google team in Australia today — real estate listings are now integrated in Google Maps. Previously, you had to navigate to the Housing section of Google Base to find real estate listings on Google. Now, you can browse real estate listings from inside the Google Maps interface. Exposing real estate listings inside Google Maps (which has way more traffic than Google Base) is likely to instantly drive up the number of referrals to their listing partners’ sites. The service was rolled out in Australia first, but I can already see the new real estate search options in a couple US cities I tested (Boston and Seattle).

Here is an example search with a few filters selected in Boston (click for larger version):

Clicking on the more info link of an individual listing brings up a screen that looks like this:

Here is the introductory video:

How does this impact you? If you are an agent or broker and not currently syndicating your listings to Google, you’re certainly missing out on some exposure to home buyers. Here is their FAQ if you have questions about how to get up and running. Sure, buyers may not naturally think to use Google Maps to find real estate listings, but Google is the largest game in town in terms of traffic; I’m sure they can and will figure out plenty of ways to drive more traffic to the real estate search experience now that it’s integrated inside Google Maps.

More coverage:

• Search Engine Land
• Property Portal Watch
• Mashable

Have real estate agents missed the boat when it comes to using social media? At what point does it stop being work and just become a hobby?

What's Your SMM Strategy?

I do believe that social media marketing (SMM) has a place in the modern sales repertoire, but not at the cost of other more efficient programs. It seems to me that an agent would want to start with a decent base (likely a blog) and then build outposts that lead back to that base.  I think Seomoz’s Rand Fishkin tackled the priorities well in his recent post.  Why spend so much time and energy on social media if your SEO is in the toilet?

Like many agents, I get quite a bit of business from referrals - a common argument for involvement in the re.net. The majority of my referrals come from three places.

• Past clients who are happy the services I provided them
• Windermere agents from Western Washington where most of my second-home buying clients live
• CRS agents who prefer to refer to an agent with this designation and the level of experience /expertise it represents.

NAR members should download the NAR Relocation Report for their area. Where are people really moving from when they move to your town?

For Chelan County, WA people mostly move here from Washington state . The first out of state county to provide us inbound migration is Los Angeles County CA - 11th in the list of counties. The total number of families that moved here from L.A. is less than 2% of the total.

On the other hand, Western Washington counties in the Puget Sound region - King, Pierce and Snohomish provided 28% of the total movers.

I rarely get any business from agents who I know or have befriended through my involvement in Activerain or Twitter. I’m sure folks would refer to me if they had clients, but the truth is, they don’t. The numbers in the relocation report back that up. I need to focus on getting referrals from Western Washington.

Do we really need additional networks like Zolve or Broker Agent Social?

Does it really make sense to have a Linkedin account that is just you connected to all your online real estate buddies from across the internet? Does it make sense to push your Facebook Fan page in the race to get 1000 fans if all your fans are really just other agents who hope you reciprocate?

Wanna be my friend on Facebook?

Shouldn’t your Linkedin account be filled with recommendations from clients who were happy with your services and would recommend you to others? Shouldn’t your Facebook Fan Page be a place for actual Fans?

Does it matter if you have 2000 followers on Twitter if half are other agents and the other half are spambots? I don’t Tweet for agents in Vermont or Texas. I expect my local news and chit chat would be boring. I hope they aren’t upset when I don’t follow them either. I tweet for my friends who I have met at Seattle Social Media Club. I tweet for Seattle area agents. I tweet for my new-found friends who work for the local newspaper or other local businesses. I tweet for all the people in Seattle who love my little faux-Bavarian vacation town and the recreation that surrounds it. I tweet to make connections that will lead to business or friendships.

Is your involvement in social media about points and followers or is it about running a business?

Having just upgraded to the new iPhone 3Gs, I was searching the online appstore at iTunes and found the Brand New iPhone App for the REBarCamp coming to San Francisco on August 4th.  The iPhone app allows you register at the event, track twitter and Facebook comments, pages and updates, gives directions, maps, location, times, who’s coming and more.

The new iphone app by MobileApploader is FREE.

I just downloaded the REBarCamp SF app on my iPhone and before I could fully investigate it’s functions and menus, I wanted to get something up on the one place I know other Real Estate Geeks go to find this stuff, The Geek Estate Blog!  Looking forward to seeing you at this years event, you can bet your apps that I’ll be there, and not without my iPhone.

I first met Geordie Romer at RE BarCamp Seattle a few months ago. During our SEO session, he volunteered his Icicle Creek site as a website to critique during the session, but we got a bit off topic and we didn’t really get to looking at the specifics of his domain. I again asked for volunteers (this time on Twitter) while at RE BarCamp LA and he again volunteered to be the guinea pig. To me, this shows he’s serious about improving his site’s SEO, so I spent some time reviewing the site and here are a few suggestions/observations:

1. To start, I should say I think this site is fairly well optimized for the search engines already. Of course it’s not perfect (no website ever is), but the basics are definitely covered; title tags, URL structure, keywords. Geordie’s blog is a Tomato Blog, so it’s no surprise the basics are covered — I’d actually be very disappointed if they didn’t have all these covered since they are a paid solution.
2. Create your own landing pages for your “popular searches” on this page. Right now, the “Leavenworth Condo Search” takes you to a page on your IDX site (seen here) and is iFramed in (click one of the links and notice the URL in your browser window does not change). I’d recommend creating a page like iciclecreekrealestate.com/leavenworthcondosforsale/ and framing that search result inside that page. Here is an example landing page for Emerald Bay on LagunaSeaside.com. Hopefully your IDX solution, IDXPro, can support this functionality. Your main search for homes for sale page should then link to every home search landing page you end up creating — and each of those landing pages should cross link to all the other landing pages.
3. Create a page on your site for your Leavenworth Information links and remove them from the sidebar. For a blog really geared toward attracting SEO traffic, I wouldn’t recommend having those external links in your sidebar because it means every single page on your blog has an additional 14 external links out. Instead, make sure the link to your “Leavenworth Information” page is prominent in your sidebar. Doing this will mean you’ll only have 1 page on your site linking out to those 14 resources rather than every page on your blog (194 pages according to Google).
4. Further optimize your “How much is my home worth?” page for “How much is my Leavenworth home worth?” by tweaking your title tag and H1 on the page. Additionally, add a short paragraph with some keywords that will help Google understand what the page is about. Then create a separate page for every market you cover. The chances of getting any long tail traffic for the term “How much is my home worth?” is fairly slim given the sites in the top 10 right now, but I highly doubt there are many people focused on localized searches for those keywords. Granted, you already rank number 1 for “how much is my leavenworth home worth?” — so this shouldn’t be at the top of your list of changes to make.

Hope this helps - if anyone else has any suggestions or observations, please leave them in the comments below.

Here are a few links worth checking out:

• Redfin adds free-text search and better neighborhood statistics
• Marc Davison has a two part series I’d recommend - Part 1: New brokerage model & Part 2: Repositioning for the future
• AgentWorx iPhone App- Your Real Estate Business at Your Fingertips

The latest release of Firefox (3.5) is now available for download. So far I am extremely impressed with the stability and speed. There are quite a few changes for a .5 upgrade, not the least of which is support for the long awaited HTML5 tags for audio and video. When fully implemented the web is going be a much better multimedia environment that will pretty much do away with the need for plug-ins to implement video and audio content. You’ll be able to enclose any file in a simple <video>yourcontent.whateverformat</video>.

HTML5 and the upcoming CSS3 standards will allow developers to create extremely powerful web based applications.

Additional changes in 3.5 include
-Support for downloadable fonts
-CSS Media Queries
-HTML5 <canvas>
-ICC Profiles
-Location Aware Browsing
-Available in 70+ Languages and more

If this version proves to be as stable and secure as advertised, it will certainly have Firefox back on track to keep stealing browser market share.

One of the dilemmas I face when launching a new Wordress site is whether I should use categories, tags or both to organize content. Both are good options, and when used properly, can be utilized effectively from an SEO perspective. Whatever you choose, stick with it. Changing from categories to tags or vice-versa, after you have a few hundred post will be a lot of work. Also, if you choose to use both categories and tags (and if you use a 3rd -  archives), make sure you only index one of them with search engines (to avoid duplicate content). This can be done using a plugin like the popular All in one SEO Pack.

Categories

Categories are pretty straight forward. You create different categories, then include your post into each matching category. As an example, if you have a post on GeekEstateBlog.com about “Mobile SEO”, you might place the article in the categories “seo” and “mobile”. Sweet and simple.

The great thing about categories is that they can be phrases (opposed to tags which are generally one or two words). Phrases are very useful when going after longer tail keywords.

Tags

Tags are a little more complicated, but also provide you will some added functionality. When you create your post, you add tags to it. So for the same post about “Mobile SEO”, you might add the tags “seo” and “mobile”. If the article was more specifically about optimizing for Google Local so it comes up on iPhone map based searches, you could also include the tags “Google” and “iPhone”.  The complication that arises from tagging is that it is very easy to go overboard with your tags. For the same post you could easily add the tags “Google Local”, “Maps”, “Mapping” and “Apple” (not to mention many others). This will dilute your tag cloud and make it hard for users to find content on your site.

The added functionality provided by tags cannot be overlooked, however. Say, after posting our article, you see a huge influx of traffic. After some quick research in Google Trends you notice that the amount of searches for “Mobile SEO” is increasing and you decide to create a few more posts on the subject. After creating these posts, you get even more traffic, and now you want to create a new “Mobile SEO” section of your site.

• If you are using categories, you create a new category, then go back through your old post and edit matching posts to included your new category. If this is just a few articles, no problem, but if it’s hundreds, this can be a daunting task.
• If you are using tags, you simply mash up 2 tags (or more) into a link like /mobile+seo/. So if Geek Estate were using tags the new link would be something like www.geekestateblog.com/tag/mobile+seo/. This will include all posts that have both the tag “mobile” and the tag “seo”.

If you decide to use tags like this, you could then create a set of links from within Wordpress with all your tag mash ups, name it categories, and use them in your sidebar in place of the category or tag widgets (this is a good option for those of you who don’t like the look of tag clouds). This will also provide you with the great benefit of being able to use keyword phrases which were previously reserved for categories only.

The one problem that you come across using tags like this is that you have limited control of your title tags and main page headings for these mashed up pages (which are crucial of on page optimization). This is solved using a great plugin from Netconcpets called SEO Title Tag.

Both categories and tags can be used effectively to organize content and SEO your blog. These days I tend to lean towards tags because of their flexibility. However, when you have multiple authors (like Drew does here on GeekEstateBlog.com) I would favor categories because authors can get a little crazy tagging posts.

For you Blackberry users who want to get Twitter up and running on your BB, Matt Dollinger at @properties (who I met at RE Barcamp Chicago) has put together a video explaining how to install and use UberTwitter.

Here are a few links I thought worthy of sharing:

• Looking for Hyperlocal Content? — Outside.in has a new product for publishers to add hyperlocal news to your website
• Posting to the Stream in Real Time with the Live Stream Box — Facebook pages can now have live chat and video
• 4 Ways To Add An Event Calendar To Your Wordpress Blog — get a calendar up and running on Wordpress
• Six Twitter Tools to Network Locally — a few apps to help network with potential clients online

I’m off to RE BarCamp OC tomorrow to discuss techy stuff with some fellow geeks — if you can’t attend the event, make sure to follow the #rebcoc hashtag on Twitter.

Zillow announced today that they have updated their recently released iPhone app. This comes very shortly on the heels of the much anticipated 3.0 upgrade to the iPhone operating system. According to the Zillow press release the most requested feature from the App’s user reviews included the ability to save searches, listing favorites and the ability to filter search results by beds, baths, status on market and price. All of these have been addressed in the update. One of the things I love about iPhone apps are developers that use the “Push” ability to show notifications directly on the “badge” (appliction button). For instance, the email program shows how many new and unread messages you have, or my TTD app will show how many outstanding things I need to do (I am testing the limits of that feature to be sure). Zillow has done the same to show how many new homes are listed that match your criteria. How cool is that? You can just glance at your phone to see if anything has changed, without the need to open the app and check the status. It sounds so simple, but it’s one of those simple touches that just seems to make things so much easier. We can finally start calling some of the devices “smart phones”. That’s a beautiful thing given the investment I have made in dumb devices over the years :).

In order to check out the new Zillow iPhone app you’ll need to update your iPhone to the new 3.0 OS update before you install it. The app servers seem to be overwhelmed this afternoon, just keep trying. Be sure to leave a review, Zillow has been very responsive to making sure that users are getting the feature and experience they are looking for in an iPhone app.

SEO is a confusing topic.  Many people run away from it because of a bunch of confusing jargon and the black box nature of Google’s ranking system.  Other people hire professionals to help boost their rankings.  I respect the pros that devote their lives to this field but I don’t feel that basic SEO is all that difficult.  In my opinion, SEO is something that should be hands on and done in house.  There is NO substitute for excellent content, however, it helps to have some back links from other internet sites to bring in people to see your excellent content.  If you are trying to tackle long tail keywords, this gets even easier because you aren’t up against so much competition.

Pick a strong anchor - There are countless articles on the web regarding anchor text.  Don’t get silly with it.  Make the anchor something that someone would ACTUALLY click on, not just something some keyword-packed garbage that clutter’s the site and makes you look like a spammer.  If you can use it in conversation within your content, even better, it gets counted as more relevant.

Spread out your links - This is not what you think.  Make sure the sites are linking between are on separate classes C IP ranges.  In other words, if your domain mydomain.com points at ip address 10.10.10.2, make sure the site(s) you are trading with are one a different ip range like 192.168.0.1 or even 10.10.11.2.  These are fictitious ip addresses but they are meant to illustrate my point.  Google gives more relevancy to OTHERS talking about you rather than you talking about yourself.  If you are on 10.10.10.1 and 10.10.10.2, those two addresses are in the same range so google decides you are just pointing two of your own sites at each other.  This is good for your user experience meaning that you need to cross link your sites so your customers have the benefit of finding all of your web properties but if you do too much of this, Google’s ranking system could penalize you.

Purchased links -  This is a waste of time and money.  Most of these sorts of services use link farms. Link farms are a kiss of death to your search engine ranks and I highly recommend you follow that link and read about them because you could potentially get blacklisted from a search engine altogether for appearing in link farm.

Reciprocal link trades - sometimes you want to link two or more of your sites together so that your clients can see that you have many web properties to serve their needs in different ways.  For instance, I use my blog www.rostadrealty.com as a portal to all of my web properties.  Conversely, I link from all of my other sites, back to Rostad Realty.  If you do this excessively, you could potentially drive your page rank down.  How much is too much?  Only Google knows.  It’s all locked up in Google’s black box algorithm and they aren’t telling.  Ultimately the SEO should never be at the expense of user experience.  I don’t think you really need to worry about too many cross linking sites unless your sites have no actual content.

ABC link trading concept

ABC link trading - Here is a way, if done correctly, to boost your page rank more dramatically compared to some of the other strategies.  Say that you own www.siteA.com and www.siteC.com.  Now you have a friend who owns www.siteB.com.  Give your friend a  backlink (with his choice of anchor text) from your siteA to his siteB.  Now, your friend will give you a backlink (with your choice of anchor text) from www.siteB.com to www.siteC.com.  Now you EACH have one-way links pointing at each other and google won’t see these as reciprocated links which are ranked lower.  By the way, there is no rule against using this strategy for yourself if you have enough sites at different hosting companies.  Here are the caveats:

• Make sure EACH site is on a different Class C IP range.
• Make sure you and your friend have similar traffic on www.siteA.com and www.siteB.com so that it’s an equal trade.
• www.siteB.com and www.siteC.com get a boost but www.siteA.com does not.
• DON’T get the bright idea to link www.siteC.com back to www.siteA.com.  That could be seen by Google as intent to manipulate your page ranking.
• Don’t get greedy with this concept or it will start looking like purchased links or trades which will be counterproductive.
• The trade should make sense from a user base standpoint.  If you are a Realtor, don’t do an ABC trade with a waterbed factory for instance.  Keep everything relevant to your content.
• Finally, most importantly, make sure you have the content to back up your efforts.  This is all a waste of time if you don’t have something to “close” the client or lead them down the next step of your funnel.
• Don’t do more than one of these without some additional reading and reasearch.  There are risks to this strategy but most of them stem around getting greedy or going overboard with it.

I will come right out and say that some of this is heresay.  Google locks their secrets away to protect them from exploitation.  Their ultimate goal is for people to find what they are looking for.  They are always re-evaluating what they are doing to make sure this goal is met.  This goes back to my advice that you need to prioritize quality of content over the any sort of SEO effort.  The BEST chance you have at truely getting instead Google’s head is by reading Matt Cutts’ blog starting with this post he wrote on page rank sculpting.  Matt Cutts is the head of the webspam team at Google.