Bart Wilson

As promised, here are the REAL steps you can take to get higher PageRank on Google.

Step One:

Find a half dozen other Websites, like ActiveRain.com, Curbed.com and others that you can organically type text with the key words for your local market. For example, if you are in Colorado Springs, then you want to use a sentence like this in the blog with a highlighted text (bold or bold italics) link to your website. Here's is how this gets done for Jamie Mades, of Keller Williams.

"....and for those military service personnel needing assistance with military relocation to the Colorado Springs area, we can help you make your PCS to Fort carson a smooth and bump free experience....."

Now Test this. Google the phrase: colorado springs military relocation

See? The site is page one on Google. This is how relevant TEXT links work. Jamie Mades is page one, #4 position when you Google that term.

Step Two: Write Press Releases

This is a necessary part of the mix. Old fashioned Press Releases. There are two websites that are my personal favorites. PRWeb.com and 1888PressRelease.com.

Write your Press Release and use the opportunity to keep it short, like 3 - 4 paragraphs and include your key words. This is where PRWeb.com comes in handy. Once you upload your press release, you can EDIT the key words within the PR to link BACK to your website. This is a huge advantage AFTER you launch your PR.

1888PressRelease.com is a good one to get your PR into all of the Social Media Networks. Voyager has several there now, and they give fast service. For FREE you can launch your PR. But for $50, you get GUARANTEED inclusion in Google and every other news PR RSS feed too including Social Media networks.

Step Three: Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Like the directions on any shampoo bottle, you HAVE to do this several times a year. A PR is not something you do once a year. Make it 5 times a year. 3 minimum. Blogging is good, but PR is better as the stories have the good chance of landing in a REAL print magazine or newspaper, too.

Step Four. Optimize. Optimize. Optimize.

When people go searching for a home in Colorado Springs, Pine Bluffs, West Palm Beach... whatever -- PLEASE don't bore the visitor with information that nobody cares about. If they find your website through a Search engine or a direct link they want to see HOMES. HOMES. HOMES.

Don't put recycled, borrowed, stolen or word-smithed tourism information, how well you know the local area, or how good you might be with horses on your landing page. It's no different than any bait and switch scam. Think about this.

If you were typing in the phrase, "Michelin tires for Toyota 4-Runner," and you find the site, Bob's Big-O Tires.com --- when you CLICK the link, your expectation is to SEE a home page or a landing page with Tires and perhaps a SALE price on the Michelin tires you are thinking of buying.

But if the Big-O Tire shop instead presents you with information about FREE Coffee and Dunkin Donuts... you might want to use the Browsers BACK button and click to find another website on the search results.

Next Time Home, Buyers are no different.

If they want to know MORE about you, then save the fluffy stuff about you, the photo of you and your dog for your biography page. Your landing page needs to be about HOME inventory. Pure and simple and NOTHING more.

To achieve really solid Google PR ranking, you need relevant text about real estate. REOs,. Short Sales. FSBOs. Local Neighborhood information. FREE Closing Costs.... okay maybe I'm getting carried away here....

So ends today's lesson. Your homework is to practice the steps outlined above. I want to see you CLIMB your way to the top of the real estate food chain.

If you'd like to learn more about getting Location, Location, Location for your website, I'm easy to reach.

Bart Wilson | Chief Marketing Officer | REALTOR Support Desk

The Real Estate Marketing Company

Tel: (505) 466-2483 iPhone: (505) 204-8097

Here they come again. More SEO bozos.

This one is called 123-Ranking.com. The website claims to boost PR (Google PageRank values). DO NOT USE THIS FIRM. DO NOT USE THIS FIRM. They are offering a $7 book, and their testimonials are 100% UN-verifiable. There is no tangible proof to their claims that their $7 book will do anything for you.

This site is no better than GoogleMoneyTree.com

Type in the domain and see for yourself: GoogleMoneyTree.com shows no results. No Website, either.

HISTORY of Linking 101.

In 1999 a small, unknown firm called Inktomi created a huge BUZZ with the introduction of "popularity text links." Anyone could point a text link from one site to another. This became a fast and easy way for Link Farms to crop up... automating the entire process. Any website with a few thousand links would easily rank higher and might be found on a natural search results page of Yahoo. Alta Vista, Excite.com. Northern Light or MSN. Today, many of these search engine sites no longer exist.

In 2003 (November) Google changed the way relevant links were counted. Larry Page, created Page Rank. A way of valuing that SOME incoming text links were more valuable than others. And lo -- the PageRank algorithm changes were born.

Today, PageRank is updated once every 3 months or so. The technology of PageRank is actually licensed from Stanford University to Google.

You achieve HIGHER PAgeRank values from Google if you follow the White Hat SEO technique of building natural, organic page rank the RIGHT WAY.

In my next blog post, I will GIVE you the SECRETS of achieving a higher Google PageRank for FREE. If you want to send me a check for $7 bucks that you would have WASTED on 123-Ranking.com, my address is below.

Voyager International

7 Avenida Vista Grande B-7 #428

Santa Fe, NM 87506

Bart Wilson | Chief Marketing Officer | REALTOR Support Desk

The Real Estate Marketing Company

Tel: (505) 466-2483

Just when you think you've seen it all with scams, mail fraud and collections agencies... another bozo pops up.

We get a FedEx collections letter in the mail today from a firm calling themselves NCO Financial Systems, Inc.

They want $14.03 and in big bold letters, use some pretty threatening language.

It seems such a small amount my first reaction was to get it paid. We must have forgot something.

Then I stop myself and I tell our front desk person to call FedEx.

FedEx has direct access to our bank and we get debited all the time. $14.03 not being paid just seemed a bit odd to me, so after we called FedEx and learned that no outstanding bill was around, we learn from a quick Google search that NCO Financial Systems has a lot of complaints. Click here and see for yourself.

FedEx says we don't owe anything.

And on CLOSER inspection of the debt collection from NCO Financial Systems, Inc... our name was wrong. And they cited no FedEx invoice that I was late on.

This is key: If you ARE late on a FedEx airbill, the original airbill number will be quoted on their collections invoice.

It's getting harder and harder WHO to trust these days.

But the NCO Financial Systems folks are just another bozo.

What's truly sad, is that there are probably hundreds or thousands of people who fall for this every day of the week. Considering that the idiots who started this company have yet to get busted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) this is a great way for someone to make a living by scamming other REALTORS other firms at the tune of 414.03 per pop. It's a real shame to see how easily we can all be falling for scams like these.

If you get a collections bill from UPS or FedEx disguised from NCO Financial Systems... it's a scam.

If you want to VENT about this and complain about a bad customer experience, go here. Customer-Circus.com

- bart

FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter and many other sites like these are where people are spending their time.

Facebook.com is fast becoming another cult phenomenon as it seems to have a pretty diverse group of young adults, and 40-something folks like me who each day, becomes more convinced and astonished at just how much business a REALTOR or brokerage can enjoy if you set up your FaceBook.com marketing the right way.

Google has become the place to satisfy a primal need for humans. It's where 84% of people go to shop or find something they want.

Once they find it, they click and then after folks absorb what they want from the search results... Google is no longer needed. Nobody socializes at Google.com because there's simply no need to. Google has no sticky, interactive social networking tools to make you want to stay there. No human fly Paper so to speak.

So far, Google has not really focused on getting into the Social Networking thing and if they did... it would be deemed a huge conflict of interest from the social networks where you see millions and gazillions of Google AdSense ads somewhere on these sites. Those in-text ads and flashy banner ads you see on the right side of thousands of blogs and other social networking sites.

When people and many office workers feel the craving to go to the water cooler and mingle... increasing amounts of people are getting hooked on FaceBook for sending and getting hugs, kidnapping your friends to another city, or if you want to send a bunch of Photoshop'd flip flops... then FaceBook is where a lot of Americans, a lot of your next time home buyers are at.

I've made some fun in the past about FaceBook and their 150 + applications of pure time wasters, but let's face reality here. If your next time homebuyers are here, and not hanging out at Google all day... it's not hard to understand that your prospects can and will respond to FaceBook ads for your brokerage, right?

It works. So if you want to REACH next time home buyers in their 25 to 40-something age group... FaceBook marketing is where you need to go today. I'm not advocating you stop your marketing dollars into Google. You cannot argue with the Wisdom of Crowds nor the numbers. But more and more people are hanging out at FaceBook.com and it'g going to become a pretty big part of the advertising landscape for our real estate business.

Borell & Associates is a leading industry analyst firm that tracks this kind of activity. Borrell predicts that 20% of all local businesses are advertising on FaceBook. More bad news for newspapers whose prices are only going up, because so many brokers and REALTORS have either cut their newspaper and real estate marketing spend or completely abandoned the practice altogether.

Here's the Bartman's Tips for getting yourself into a FaceBook page, then supporting it with Fans and FaceBook Ads.

Step One.

Get familiar with FaceBook's interface. Of all the video training sites (most of them are crap) there is one tool the Bartman can recommend to anyone on ActiveRain. This one form Amazon is way cool. It's a DVD that shows you how to get started on FaceBook and it also includes Twitter.com marketing and how to tidbits too. It's a lot of great training for just $99 bucks. Get it here.

Step Two.

Join FaceBook AFTER you watched the Video DVD. To accelerate your learning on FaceBook, it's a better idea to watch the DVD, then join FaceBook and then watch the chapters that you want to master. Like how to set up your own FaceBook page. How to start using it to link to friends, past clients who you helped sell their house or buy a house. Then move onto Marketing and advertising on FaceBook.

Step Three

Create your page. (This is under Groups). You create your home page so you can tell people about your brokerage or your ability as a REALTOR (or a small team) about what you do, what you specialize in.

Step Four

Create some compelling videos for YouTube. These videos can be recorded with the Flip Video camera, also on Amazon for under $150. Make a few video clips of your neighborhoods. Drive through the downtown and get your partner or colleague to hold the camera out the window as you drive into restaurant row, the arts district, etc. Then go back to your office, edit the video clips down to 90 second clips (max). Nobody wants to watch long videos -- so don't use your new skills on Facebook here to bore next time home buyers or turn OFF prospects.

The Golden rule of any advertising or marketing message here remains the same for Social Networking, too. LESS is MORE.

Once you have your videos uploaded to YouTube, make them public and turn on comments. Then take the same videos you have and upload 2 or three of them to FaceBook.com

Step Five

Call your Webmaster and grab the source code to put the Become a Fan on your website. This allows you to contact your past clients and get new ones and colleagues to become a FAN of your FaceBook page. You can practice this by becoming a Fan at our Voyager site. Click here and scroll down to the bottom of the page to see our FaceBook Fan Widget. Click the button, Become a Fan.

Step Six

If you want a lot of eyeballs, go to Facebook advertising and create a tiny ad about your Short Sales. REOs. Your work with FSBOs --- whatever. Then set your daily limit to like $4 or $5 bucks. Pay attention to the advertising suggested rate. This is cheap, and usually runs like .28 to .33 cents. FaceBook advertising is cheap cheap cheap right now. My thinking is this can't last for long, so take advantage of it.

Point the tiny Photo and Combo TEXT ad to your Website and start checking your traffic once a week.

As you do this, tell people to follow you FaceBook like you do on Twitter.

Step 7

In all your PRINT ads, meaning the postcards you send out, and any and all newspaper ads and real estate guide ads... tell folks about your FaceBook page. And your webmaster can and should PASTE in your icon dock at the top or bottom of your websites, a link bar that looks like the one below. See this? This lets Social Networking prospects that you are hip and with it. You are into the Social Networking scene.

This will help build and foster credibility for your business... and help you stand out when next time home buyers come looking for a new home. Plus it's a great add on piece to your PowerPoint mini presentation you do at any listing interview.

........

Bottom line, learn FaceBook now and get involved.

Someday. Tomorrow. Eventually. Three of the WORST times to start learning how to apply social networking and new media to improving your leads, and increasing your sales commissions.

If I can help anyone more on learning Facebook marketing, I'm easy to reach.

Tel: (505) 466-2493 (office) (505) 204-8097 (iPhone)

or email: voyager360@mac.com

- bart

Somedays, you want to take your M-16 and go postal. But that sort of thing hurts people and puts you in jail, so let's forget I said that.

How about getting your kids Soccer Boppers and going out and beating the crap out of your customer. Let's face it, we've all been there. You tell your client NOT to apply for any new credit cards... Don't get a new car... do NOTHING until AFTER we close. If you're too young to know what these are, some of the old timers with kids in twenties know what I'm talkinga bout.

Soccer Boppers are those inflatable pillows you'd put on your fists. So no matter how hard you bopped your kid brother or sister... nobody gets hurt and Psychologists have said it's good to release the "pent up anger."

Your customer shows up the next day, and wants to show you her new Toyota Prius.

Goodbye Commission. Come here. Put these on. Now let me beat the crap out of you for blowing my commission and your home loan!

Everybody has a breaking point. But we can't always fire our customers sometimes. Sometimes, nothing we say or do seems to resonate with a particular client. The aggravating part is that they seemed reasonable when you told them what to do and what NOT to do. Sometimes, clients appear intelligent and like they already have a brain. But sometimes... just when you really need that commission... they show up driving the sparkling new Toyota Prius five days before the loan locks and you know what's coming next.

I had my breaking point today with a client and I'm just not able to take much more. So today, I wrote a one page letter and sent it FedEx.

Perhaps some of you can share some of your horror stories of your last client melt down?

- bart