Do You Know The Power Of A Link?

The power of linking is underestimated by most bloggers. Google puts a lot of importance on links that are coming into your blog and those that connect one post to another post on your blog. The latter is called internal linking.

You don’t want to have a lot of outbound links. If you get too many outbound links the search engines will view you as a resource site and not a content rich site which determines where in the search you will end up.

DO NOT buy into link farms. These can be very dangerous and have you thrown into the ‘google sandbox’.

There is a lot that you can learn about SEO but the 2 most important things are writing good content with proper keywords and inbound and internal linking.

I advise that in every 2 paragraphs ideally you should have one link pointing to another page or to somewhere else on that same page.

Most of us do not fully utilize and optimize our blogs with internal linking strategies. Here are some ways in which you can more fully use internal linking in your blog posts.

In case you do not know how to add a link to your post, it is very easy to do:

Use Anchor text for all your links. This is one of the most important and easy SEO things you can do with your blog and website. Your anchor text should be keyword rich. Use the keywords you want to be found for in your anchor text.

What is anchor text? When you type in your post, ‘Click here to search all Wellington Florida Luxury Homes For Sale ‘ that is anchor text.

Now I would click on the link image on the toolbar and add my URL into the link box, ‘http://www.Wellington-luxury-homes.com.

Then when someone clicks on the text that I wrote like the above text, Click here to search all Wellington Florida Luxury Homes For Sale it will go to my website. When you add the link, the anchor text will be in blue font color. That tells people that if they click on the words they will be going to where you linked those words to go to.

Do not use the name of your website and write your whole web address in your post because then you are not fully optimizing using your keywords. I see a lot of posts where the whole address is right in the post and the URL is not keyword rich. Like for instance: http://www.anyrealtyinnowheretown.com. Those words should go in your link box but not in the post itself.

Use keywords in the text part.

Also when you are using links internally make sure you do not use shortcuts to certain pages within your site. Type out the entire URL within your page you want your visitor to go to. If you are sending them to another post use the URL of that post, don’t send them to just your profile page unless that is where you want them to go.

• For each post concentrate on only a few longtail keywords per post. Don’t try to go and rank for every keyword in one post. Target those specific keywords and learn how to use them effectively throughout your posts.

• When you are using internal linking add it throughout the body of your post rather than just listing all the links in a row. So in each paragraph add words that are a part of what you are writing about and turn those words into links. Linking within your page adds more relevance  and internal value to your link.

• You can go back to some of your older posts and add internal links to some of your newer pages of relevance. This way you add some valuable link juice and give it some rank boost.

If you would like to learn more about SEO and how to implement these strategies you can click here to read about my SEO To The Top Webinar.

Do you own your Real Estate Business?

This may seem like a strange question, and for some of you it will be a 100% absolutely, yes I do answer.  Particularly if you are the owner/broker of a real estate company.  But that isn’t actually what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about your online real estate business:  Do you really own it?

For example, how many of you have, as your primary email address:  SuperAgent@aol.com, or SuperAgent@yahoo.com, SuperAgent@cox.net, or even SuperAgent@gmail.com?  If you do, who owns that email address?  It doesn’t look to me like you do.  Rather, it looks to me like AOL, Yahoo, Cox, or Google own your email address, and they are simply letting you use it for a while.  I wonder how long they’ll continue to do that?  Forever?  For a year?  For a decade?  What if they start charging you for their service, or impliment anti-business rules for their “free” email accounts?  After all, each of those businesses can decide to do whatever they choose to, since they own the email account.

For bloggers, let’s look at another very common example of NOT owning your business.  Is your blog at Blogger.com?  Is it at Wordpress.com?  Both of those sites allow you to create a free blog.  Each has some sort of rule about blogging for business, which many people ignore, and for the most part, so do the sites.  But tomorrow they could actually start enforcing their own rules, and shutting down blogs, or even just sending you a nice fat bill each month.  How prepared are you to lose months or even years worth of blogging over night?  Speaking from experience, when I accidentally deleted the first 100 of my own posts from my blog, and thought I had NO backup, your heart will sink to the floor, and you will think the world is crashing in around you, if that happens.

The fix for both of these problems is relatively simple and relatively inexpensive. For each, I believe you need to start by purchasing a domain name that you OWN. At GoDaddy.com a domain will cost you around $10/year, but if you are nice, I can show you how to get one for a buck or two less.  So for the cost of 2 cups of coffee at Starbucks (and feel free to cut out two trips this week to pay for your domain, if cost really is an issue), you are well on your way to ownership.

For the email problem, I highly suggest you find a Microsoft Exchange hosting provider for your email.  MailStreet.com is a good choice, with pricing plans starting at $13/month.  For more ideas, Microsoft has this list of Exchange hosting providers.  Why do I recommend an Exchange solution?  Because it works.  And it works well.  With Exchange you’ll get integration with your email, calendar, tasks (to-do list), and contacts all in one application.  Exchange will push your email, contacts, and calendar entries to your smart phone real time.  And of course all of these companies provide web mail support, so you can view your email from any computer anywhere, if your laptop crashes on the day your smart phone is run over by a bus.

For me, the beauty is in the real time integration with my iPhone, although Blackberry users will benefit just the same.  There’s nothing like having your phone notify you of a new email as fast or faster, than your desktop computer does.

For a good, and a bit less expensive solution, you might also consider using Google’s business apps version of Gmail to have Google host your email/calendaring, which allows integration with a smart phone.  I don’t have any experience with this solution, but I have heard it works well, and the full blow business account is only $50/year.

To own your blog, there are a number of hosting providers you can choose from, which will allow you to use download the free software from WordPress and host your blog.  As a side benefit to being hosted, you’ll get to pick any theme and any set of plugins you desire in WordPress, which will further make your blog truly unique, and thus truly yours.  GoDaddy will host your blog for $10/month, however they are not very tolerant of blogs that get a lot of page views for that price, so while it can be a good place to start, with success, you may outgrow them.  Many people believe the leading hosting provider is currently MediaTemple, however HostGator and A Small Orange are each well thought of.

At this point, you may be wondering what I use?  My solution isn’t for everyone, but it works well for me.  In my office, I have a Windows Server with Windows Small Business 2003 installed, which gives me remote access and a Microsoft Exchange server.  Sitting right next to the Windows server is a Linux server, which hosts my blog (actually, it hosts many blogs).  Because I already had a T1 line coming into the office for phones/internet, and I have the skillz to build and maintain these servers, doing it myself was a no brainer.  I know a few agents across the country that self-host, but only a very few of us.

There are more choices than what I’ve given here, but hopefully I’ve given you some nuggets to think about and places to start looking if you don’t yet own your online Real Estate Business.

Google Search, Right on Your Blog…

Sometimes, especially with blogs, you want to give your readers

the opportunity to search your site with a “Google style” search.  Well, in the interest of sharing, Google will allow you to configure a search widget that will search only your site.  Go to Google.com>more>even more then custom search.  It will allow you to configure a search bar however you would like.

Keep in mind that studies have shown that people prefer to browse your site for information and that if they did find you via a search engine search, they’ll want to see what they were looking for within about 2-3 clicks.  If they are using the custom search, you may need better navigation.

Happy Holidays!
Rob the Tech Guy

Google Chrome Browser Debuts

So the geniuses at Google have now officially taken on Microsoft head on with the launch today of the Google Chrome Browser, a direct IE7 competitor.  Here is Google’s official statement from their blog yesterday.

They indicated that they would be releasing it today in over 100 countries for Windows users, with Mac and Linux to come closely on it’s heels.  Although I can’t yet find where to download it.  More to come as I test FlexMLS, TopProducer 8i and others in the new, more powerful browser.

Oh, lest I forget, in a truly unique manner, Google launched Chrome in a Comic Book that was circulated like wildfire around the Internet.

Enjoy…

Rob the Tech Guy

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