Ryan’s team is focused on working with big brands and companies in very difficult markets, and my market in Hawaii is one of the toughest.

[Tony:]  Tell us about your SEO philosophy briefly.

[Ryan:] I’d first like to thank you and the people at GeekEstate for allowing me on here. It’s a privilege and I hope to offer some fresh ideas for 2011.

Real estate agents usually just want links anywhere, but my marketing philosophy is to build valuable relationships online which will build the foundations of a very strong brand that will keep you around for the long term. Over the years I’ve realized just how important online relationships are, just as in real life. Relationships lead to the highest quality, most relevant links and drive laser targeted social media followers into your network.

[Tony:] Ok question 1 – After all these years we are still focused on building links.  How is that changing these days?

[Ryan:] Links are still the most important factor for SEO, and real estate keywords are always competitive. When you’re competing for the golden keywords you’re going to need more than article marketing and directories.

Going into 2011, having high quality links is going to be more important than ever!  Google is going to be looking at links very differently in 2011. How do I know this? You could say I socially stalk certain known Google employees, especially those in the spam departments. One of those employees has recently stated the following;

“Some really dramatic changes to how we use links are on the way. (Sorry I can’t say anything more specific. This is a really sensitive area.)”

Google has failed to fight the over targeted optimization problem. There is simply just too much spam! We have been telling clients not to build anchor text specific links, especially if they’re getting a good amount of content marketing and guest blogging. Over optimized anchor text looks very unnatural and in the long run, is most likely going to get you into trouble.

We’ve been able to achieve positive movement in the SERPs while ignoring exact match anchor text links, focusing on natural link building. We recommend utilizing the following:

• Get your office listed on Foursquare.com, Yelp.com and Gowalla.com and get some links.
• Link bait that targets the local market ie “25 Places To Find Deals In $insertcityhere”.
• Local, ultra high blog commenting. We’re talking 300-1000 word replies. Get involved for the branding, not the link.
• Ignore the no/dofollow issue and only focus on quality, related sites.
• Sponsor local events or get involved with local charities…emphasis on getting involved in your community.
• Building legit and quality social media profiles so your are quality.
• Stick to high quality content sites like Suite101, Associated Content, InfoBarrel and others for any content marketing.
• Guest blogging on local or market related blogs

The old saying that quality over quantity has never been more true.

[Tony:] You keep telling me to build my Facebook business page. I still don’t get exactly what it’s doing for my business.  How do I use Facebook to actually get business from it?

[Ryan:] People are spending endless hours on Twitter and Facebook.  While your profiles are time consuming to manage, they are becoming crucial. A Facebook Page is basically a 2.0 newsletter and can be an insanely valuable marketing tool. I’ll only talk about the big two here, but there are hundreds of interesting social media networks and apps for real estate. These sites are also your gateway to targeting local followers, but also for building key relationships that lead to link opportunities your competition won’t be able to touch!  Both Google and Bing are now counting social participation into their algorithms.

[Tony:] So how does Facebook help my SEO?

[Ryan:] First of all, it’s not just SEO.  Your company Facebook page is the best marketing tool next to the search engines. A lot of agents scoff at the idea of spending money on building up a FB following, but if they don’t, the competition will. Agents are not interested because they’re not generating leads, but if you give it time, those followers will turn into leads. You may not get the phone calls right away, but down the road when that follower needs an agent, they’re going to remember you for being such an awesome “Facebooker”.

Once you have people liking your page, you can constantly keep your brand/name locked in their brains as they see your content in their stream. You can hit their inbox through the Fan Page which makes for a killer marketing resource…just don’t spam or over do it.

[Tony:] Ok let’s talk about Twitter.  I confess that I don’t get the appeal of Twitter and I never know what to Tweet. What should I be doing there?

[Ryan:] I get a lot of moans and groans about Twitter from real estate agents. In a lot of industries it can be a HUGE waste of time. But when it comes to networking in a local market, it is a powerful weapon, and the local market is what a real estate agent should be all about. Make use of Twitter’s search tool to find local users, and utilize a GUI such as Hoot Suite to monitor your city/area for the most active users. I advise agents to get listed in directories such as WeFollow and Twibs because they allow others to find you as well (plus you get a link).

Besides allowing you to spew words to locals at 140 characters per message, having your Twitter account listed on other Twitter apps can get your content indexed within minutes on Google and Bing. To top it all off, a lot of those sites also provide followed links to your Twitter profile, and your homepage. These are non anchor text specific links that help build your brand.

[Tony:] I think I have like 9 followers in Twitter, seriously.

[Ryan:] It takes time but there are ways of attracting a more follows quicker than most. If you want droves of followers, run a local contest. We recently helped an agent run a contest from his Facebook Page that required users to post something to their wall, and the result was astounding. The contest prize was a night out for couples that included a romantic dinner topped off with a night over in a local luxury hotel. This is great for two reasons. The agent had over 2500 new followers to his Facebook Page, and those trickled into his Twitter profile as well for over 150 local followers. We were also pleased to see the contest get picked up on a couple of local blogs which netted him some great links.

Don’t just Tweet and post about your listings or business related items. Mix in 50% fun in order to not only keep the followers interest, but attract new people to your flock. This will further your branding and lock in those people who’ll need you down the road or refer you to their friends.

[Tony:] I’ve been blogging for 10 years now, does it even matter anymore? Do people read real estate blogs and do they even help my SEO these days?

[Ryan:] For an agent, your blog is very important. It lets your readers get a sense of who you are, it lets you share news and media, nets invaluable links and siphons people into your social media accounts. A lot of agents we start to work with usually have a very boring blog that nobody is going to read. Tony, your blog is great.  You could easily be Oahu’s best known food critic if  you ever decided to change professions.

[Tony:] Well, food is more interesting than real estate.

[Ryan:] The most valuable use of a blog for agents that we’ve seen through research and data, is targeting long tail keywords. Use your blog to target that long tail and funnel that reader to your listing. Some topic suggestions I’ll throw out are;

• Luxury listing blog posts with unique pictures and video that you took (if possible)..everyone loves luxury!
• Write about local businesses and do interviews with local business owners such as interior designers, landscapers or anything in the home owner vertical.
• Topics like, “5 Homes under $price in $cityname”, “3 Great Neighborhoods In $city With The Best Schools”, etc.
• Use your blog to embed your Youtube videos, Flickr pictures and other social content.
• Write on topics that let you beef up your internal linking to pages that might not be getting enough link love.
• It never hurts to mix business with pleasure and entertain as well as inform. Connecting with your community through your blog will do wonders for your business. I challenge you to do a blog post every day for a month and look back on the results. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

[Tony:] Thanks Ryan for your insights.  I have to go find something interesting to Tweet and blog about now.

Connect With Ryan Clark: http://www.linkbuildr.com

Think about it – you could make a street level tour of a neighborhood for a potential buyer and incorporate it into your listing for people who aren’t familiar with the area.

In the world of maps, this may be a game changer. Watch the video and consider the possibilities for selling real estate!

Microsoft Street Slide

From the Google blog: “You can now view them with a single click — no need to download, save, and open files with a desktop application when you just want read them. The Google Docs viewer that allows you to view .pdf, .ppt, and .tiff files in your browser now supports .doc and .docx formats too.”

All you have to do is click the “View” link at the bottom of your Gmail, and you can edit the file by clicking “Edit online.”

So now that you can use Excel, Word, and Powerpoint online through Google Docs, do you even need to buy MS office anymore? For the fairly simple tasks that real estate agents and brokers perform everyday, what functions does the desktop version of office provide that the Google cloud doesn’t?

From the website: “The MapQuest 4 Mobile downloadable application provides easy access to Directions, Maps, and Local Search. With MapQuest 4 Mobile you also have the ability to integrate your saved maps and directions on MapQuest.com to the MapQuest 4 Mobile mobile application. To start saving your maps and directions generated at MapQuest.com”

Mapquest 4 Mobile

Via Lifehacker: MapQuest 4 Mobile features voice guidance, off-route assistance (it can automatically re-route you), point-of-interest integration, and plain-text search. (being able to simply search for a location by name is great.) The maps and directions are all downloaded as you go from MapQuest, so it’s also a very lightweight download (“offline” GPS apps are often several gigabytes); the downside to that is that it won’t work if you don’t have a data connection.

MapQuest 4 Mobile isn’t as polished as Google Maps Navigation. It doesn’t rotate the map based on the direction you’re heading, no Street View, no search by voice, no traffic information.

MapQuest 4 Mobile is a free download.

It’ll be interesting to see whether this competes at all (either in its current form or what it morphs into) with vehicle tracking systems in the future.

There’s been a lot of chatter about some of the newer listing scrapers and IDX wordpress plugins and what they can do, and what the value is or isn’t of having a spiderable IDX products.

I’m interested in this topic because I got a spiderable IDX in May of 2009 from Real Estate Webmasters. So far the numbers look good, but I want to know what the potential is, and whether people’s concerns about the topic have any validity. So, for my own research (and yours), I’ve decided to do a case study on my blog that looks at the effects of having a spiderable IDX on my site, and on sites that have higher authority than mine. I’d like to see where my traffic will be in a year or two!

Also, after reading all the posts at Active Rain and Geek Estate Blog, I decided to speak with Morgan Carey of Real Estate Webmasters to see if he could answer some of the most common question/concerns regarding spiderable IDX.

Question: If I have an indexable IDX, will I get a duplicate content penalty if others also have an indexable IDX?
Answer: No, that’s a myth. From Google itself: “Let’s put this to bed once and for all, folks: There’s no such thing as a ‘duplicate content penalty.’ At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that. Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.” Furthermore, although it is true that everyone is starting with the same “data set” – not everyone will implement it as effectively or in the same manner. Diversification and creativity makes having this kind of data hugely valuable if leveraged correctly.

Question: Will a spiderable IDX help my site compete with the big guns (Redfin, Trulia, Zillow etc.)?
Answer: Yes of course. It’s weird – folks seem to be thinking now that the “cat is out of the bag” about spiderable IDX (we have been doing it for over 6 years btw, it’s hardly new) that there is “no point” in having spiderable IDX because companies like Trulia or Zillow also have spiderable listings (many powered directly by MLS feeds),so don’t even try to compete. The fact of the matter is – there is a very small amount of these super powerful aggregators out there, and there are 10 spots on the first page of a search engine. Even if you couldn’t outdo these sites, why not be in the fray? #4 for any keyword on the first page is really not a bad place to be. That being said – although these sites from a “domain” perspective are very powerful – they must distribute this power to their most popular / desirable targets and cannot possibly dominate or even focus on all listings in all areas. Many times just by having a spiderable IDX and a decent site, our customers easily outrank the big guns on address and MLS # related searches. One thing is for sure – without spiderable IDX – you aren’t even on the field, let alone in the game.

Question: I have a high authority site, great rankings – if I add spiderable IDX how will this change my stats?
Answer: Well, check out Jay Thompson’s case study, or take Gary Ashton‘s site. Gary got a spiderable IDX at the beginning of January, this year. You’ll notice the massive jump in the number of pageviews on his site:

His traffic’s also increased over the previous month by about 45%, while his bounce rate has dropped by 36%. Users are spending about 2 1/2 times as long on the site, and they’re exploring an average of 8 pages on the site, whereas before when he had an iframed solution, people were only visiting about 2 pages on the site.

Question: I have spiderable IDX and I only have a few hundred pages indexed – why not all of them?
Answer: Chances are you do not have the authority (domain) required to keep that many pages indexed. A solution is to improve your overall pagerank, and also work on your internal linking and architecture as much as possible to leverage the pagerank you do have. Still not the end of the world though – that’s probably 350 more pages driving traffic to your site than you would have had without it. Chin up – keep building links and working on your site structure, and your pagecount will reward you with a ton of long tail traffic over time.

Question: There are many websites (with as much or more pagerank as me) in my area that have spiderable IDX. How can I compete?
Answer: Again, build your authority / pagerank is step one – whoever has the most juice (domain) has the best chance. However, there is something to be said for differentiation & augmentation. If you can come up with creative ways to rewrite your information using algorithms (titles, meta data etc.) so as to provide a “different look” (layout) and additional information on the page, then your chances are far better to generate additional long tail traffic than those simply using “out of the box” spiderable IDX. Also try to find unique ways of getting your users involved – does your MLS allow after-listing comments? Why not have users contribute comments about their favorite listings, thereby adding valuable visitor-generated, “unique” content to the page?

Here’s a question brought up by Jeff Corbett: Does the SEO value evaporate, since everyone will effectively have the same content?
Answer: I would say that everyone needs to make sure that outside their IDX data, their site has unique, quality content, period. This will help differentiate your site from the rest of the pack. As for the listings themselves, as I mentioned above, you can modify your titles and meta data to make your listings different from everyone else’s. Focus on the basics of good SEO, and the listings will only help your site in the rankings–as well as improve user experience. BTW – unless you are in a market like Austin, TX where everyone seems to be on the ball (example http://www.jimolenbush.com), then chances are you only have to compete with 1, maybe 2 sites – again, although it’s not exactly a secret, it’s also not like anyone is taking advantage. How long exactly do you want to wait before everyone but you does have spiderable IDX and there is actually some competition? Life rewards originators.

Question: Is there anything people should be aware of before they decide to get a spiderable IDX?
Answer: Realtors should stay away from IDX vendors with RSS feeds – these people are violating the NAR’s guidelines with respect to their obligation as vendors to protect IDX data from scraping or misappropriation. If the MLS board was informed (and educated as to why) RSS should not be allowed, chances are they would pull the feed. Furthermore, any solutions (such as the DS IDX wordpress plugin Jay Thompson references in his post) – should be avoided as well. My feeling is that because these plugins put complete control into the hands of untrained webmasters with no regard for regulations or compliance, the various boards will very soon pull the feeds (and perhaps the vendor agreements) of those not adhering to the quality standards expected of IDX vendors. The boards already have enough problems with members reporting members on items that are not even real issues. Imagine what will happen to a board’s compliance staff once these IDX’s (now in the control of untrained webmasters / Realtors) start gaining popularity. The MLS board is going to have so many legitimate complaints, they will virtually become buried. They obviously don’t want that, which is why they have “approved” vendors and a compliance process in the first place. Any spiderable IDX company however that does have a compliance department, and is responsible and “accountable” with regards to the MLS boards’ terms of use should be fine.

Google Map Buddy

I saw this on Lifehacker last week, a great Google Map tool for real estate.

Google Map buddy allows you to easily print out wall-sized satellite views of  a neighborhood for your listing, or make a full-page street map of the neighborhood for a buyer.  I can think of a few real estate applications for this tool.

Maybe use it to keep track of your company’s listings?

From the maker’s website:

* Capture Google Maps images offline and store them on your hard drive
* Print out maps of entire cities at zoom levels that would take hours to put together

If you have ever spent hours print screening your Google maps into Paint and stitching them together you NEED this program!

Map Buddy is a free download for Windows only.

Got any other ideas on how to use this for real estate?  Comment please…

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After dozens of changes and experiments with my own campaigns, I offer the 7 most important things I’ve learned about drip campaigns for real estate:

1. People hate HTML rich emails.  If your drip emails have lots of colorful HTML and banners, they might suck.  If you want people to read your emails, then keep them simple with no banners and pictures of your happy home selling face.  Nothing says “SPAM” like a colorful email that looks like it came from Best Buy.  People are more likely to respond to auto-responders if they don’t know it’s an auto-responder.
2. Long emails suck.  You don’t read long emails from anyone, not even people you like.  So why would anyone want to take 5 minutes to read a email from a real estate agent?  I’ve found that the most effective emails are about 3-4 sentences.  If a prospect can read it in 15 seconds, he might actually take 5 more seconds to reply.  (I sometimes use emails with no caps in the sentences. That looks authentic, though a little amateur.)
3. Give people a reason to respond, or your email sucks.  If your email doesn’t ask a question or give the reader a good reason to reply, will they?  End your email with something like, “When are you thinking of moving?”  Or, “Let me know what you think of this house.”
4. Emailing too frequently might suck.  If you email me every week, I’m eventually going to mark you as ‘junk’ in my Google account.   Don’t email people every week if they aren’t moving for a year.  If a buyer has no time frame for moving, then once a month is plenty, maybe even too often.  Early on in my career I had everyone getting a weekly email with properties.  The vast majority of those people opted out of my emails within a few months.
5. Irrelevant emails suck.  You can’t just have one email campaign, because you don’t just have one type of client. Buyers should get buyer emails, sellers should get seller emails.  Prospects with no set time frame should get long term, spread out emails that just remind them you are there.  You want a custom email campaign for each types of lead, prospect, and client you are working with.  And by the way, those are 3 very different types of people I just mentioned.  A lead is not a prospect, which is not a client, yet.
6. If you don’t send properties, your emails might suck.  I say “might” because not every drip email needs to show properties. But if you have a buyer, chances are they would rather see properties of interest than your pretty face.  Sellers want to see homes sold or listed in their neighborhood.  If you know anything about the recipient, sending properties of interest is your best bet.
7. And lastly, for the love of all things email, don’t forward jokes or trite little stories about your cat.  I am actually on one Texas agent’s list and she forwards jokes to her entire sphere of influence (including me) about once a week.  Let me assure you, her emails suck.

Classic – The hardest about switching to the Pre is losing my old Palm OS apps, and Classic is a paid application ($29.99) that allows you to keep all your old favorites, including the Task manager, Memos, calender, etc., and most importantly, to sync with your old Palm Desktop application. Palm OS has thousands of applications, way more than the iPhone does, though not as pretty. Classic will run them all, so if there is any hesitation to let go of your 10 year old Treo and the Palm Desktop, there is no more excuse.

Sprint Navigation – The Pre comes preloaded with the best phone based GPS navigation I have ever seen, which is miles better than the iPhone’s Google Maps app.  This GPS is actually better than my car’s factory installed GPS!  The Sprint Navigation application finds your location within 5 seconds and has voice prompted turn-by-turn navigation with 3-D mapping, so you can keep your eyes on the road or view the map as you’re driving.  It comes fully loaded with maps, and the GPS has been perfectly accurate even deep within downtown, fully surrounded by buildings.  You can enter addresses is or navigate to your Contacts lists or businesses nearby.  Set favorites, memorize locations, anything that a $500 GPS system can do, this baby can do it! This app alone makes the Palm Pre worth every penny of the $99 Sprint asks for it.

Palmbook – It’s free, it’s fast, it’s way better than the preloaded Facebook app in the Pre.  Palmbook has several features that preloaded app doesn’t, including the ability to take photos and upload them directly to your wall, comment on people’s posts, look up friends, switch between your newsfeed and your wall.  The preloaded version only allows you to update your status, view your newsfeed, and nothing else.  Palmbook is great for live Facebooking your real estate activity. In just a few seconds you can take a picture of a house you’re showing, add a caption, and post it to your wall.  So all your 500 Facebook friends can see that you’re out there selling homes!

Twee – The simple yet effective Twitter app for Pre. It does one thing only, but isn’t that the beauty of Twitter? If you want people to stay up to date on your activity by Twitter, this is the quickest way.  You can easily include a picture, and with a 3 megapixel camera and built in flash, Pre pictures turn out pretty nice.

REPayment – A free Loan payment calculator that works on the old Palm OS, so simple it’s beautiful.  No need to carry a financial calculator, REPayment does one thing and does it well. It calculates the Principal and Interest (P&I) on a loan amount with a specific number of payments.  Runs on Classic only, so you’ll need to buy that app first.

PDF Viewer – Does exactly what it says.  Put your contracts, listing sheets, and whatever documents you might need onto your Pre via the USB drive mode, and you can view all your files while on the road. Pros – you can key in page numbers easily and zoom in pretty far, so there is problem seeing tiny contract wording or moving about within a long document.   Cons – There is no landscape mode, and the search feature is just about useless.

Trapster – A popular traffic advanced warning app, which works pretty well and relies on social aggregation of traffic camera, speed traps, and other traffic events. Trapster will warn you in advance about speed traps, traffic cameras, and checkpoints ahead.  Mapping is fully integrated, so you’ll see all the interesting points marked on a GPS guided map. Warnings are given based on distance from current location as well as the intersection names.  You can’t use Trapster while using the Sprint GPS, as the phone just can’t handle 2 GPS apps at once.

Evernote – the note taking and information app to put down anything from notes and photos to webpages and business cards. More than just note taking, you can include photos, set reminders, capture thoughts while showing properties, and set bookmarks. Clients often ask questions while viewing a property, and Evernote is the place to write it down.  Evernote synchronizes your accounts between your desktop, online, and Pre. It’s easy-to-use and lets you search from any screen. Evernote also lets you take a photo of a business card and it will automatically add the right fields to your address book!  It doesn’t always work, but when it doesn’t, it’s easy to change the fields.  It can also convert handwritten text so your notes are instantly searchable, though if you have chicken scratch like I do, you might have some problems with it. Basically if you have information that you would normally put on a scratch paper, Evernote is the digital alternative.