Obviously I have done a poor job explaining to people exactly how powerful WordPress really is and what it is capable of doing. So let me explain.

WORDPRESS CAN DO ANYTHING ANY OTHER WEBSITE CAN DO!! Sorry for shouting, but I want to make it crystal clear that WordPress can do anything any other website can do, only easier.

Q. Why do most WordPress websites look like a blog?

A. When WordPress is installed; it comes out of the box looking very plain and with a blog on the homepage. That can be easily changed.

Q. Why do a lot of WordPress websites look plain, boxy and unattractive?

A. Out of the box, WordPress is a lean, mean, coded website. It is a very powerful website engine, but there hasn’t been any cosmetic work done on it. Think of it as looking at the metal chassis and engine of a $1,000,000 race car; it’s extremely powerful, but the “pretty stuff” hasn’t been added yet. A lot of owners of a WordPress website either: 1. don’t care about the way it looks because it’s a personal blog. or 2. Haven’t gotten around to hiring someone or buying a theme for the website.

Q. I want my website to look extremely professional, and I’ve heard WordPress has to look a certain way. Is that true?

A. Absolutely false. Traditional website developers have a “core” code they use for their websites. The code they use is the foundation for their websites and is either something they have developed or something they purchased. They upload this “ready made” code and begin to customize it based on what their clients have indicated they want it to look like.

WordPress is simply making an extremely powerful “core” website code available for FREE for everyone to use. It is then up to you to customize it or hire someone else to customize it for you.

Q. Isn’t a custom WordPress website expensive?

A. NOT NEARLY as expensive as it is to hire a professional website firm. Traditional website developers will easily charge $5,000 to build you a custom website that looks however you want. A WordPress developer can customize your blog however you want for a fraction of that. Typical prices for a custom, unique, never-before-seen WordPress website will cost you less than $1,000. Contact me to get you in touch with a great custom WordPress designer!

Q. $1,000 is still to expensive. What are WordPress themes all about?

A. I said it would cost around $1,000 for a “CUSTOM” designed WordPress website. If you are okay with a template, something that others on the internet have, it will cost only a fraction of that. Prices range from FREE to $100.

Q. Aren’t the template WordPress websites ugly and unprofessional?

A. They can be; I’ve seen some pretty ugly template WordPress themes. The unprofessional WordPress themes are typically the free ones. Below are some examples of beautiful WordPress  template websites I did for some clients; which by the way are still customizable.

http://everettviewhomes.com
http://lorikoblinsky.com (beta)
http://condobeacon.com
http://loans4veterans.com
htp://gilbertperalta.com
http://augustambrosial.com
http://wpchemist.com

Q. This all sounds too good to be true. What’s the catch?

A. There is no catch. With advances in technology, we are seeing amazing products being sold cheaply or being given away. WordPress makes its money using a similar platform that Google.com does. WordPress makes it money from big corporations and selling various other products (none of which you will probably ever need).

Q. How do I start?

A. You can set up a WordPress blog for free by yourself. I’m not going to lie, it’s complicated; remember you are dealing with a real website, with real servers. We have prepared a 23 minute instructional video, a checklist and an eBook for FREE. Just click here and fill out the form;  we will send it to you right away!

If you don’t want to mess with it, or you can’t figure it out. You can always hire us. We will not only get everything set up, and provide a beautiful website, but we will consult with you regarding your online goals and provide a 2 month blogging plan. We provide a foundation to get started, not just a website.

Please check out some of my previous work and happy clients.

http://everettviewhomes.com
http://lorikoblinsky.com (beta)
http://condobeacon.com
http://loans4veterans.com
htp://gilbertperalta.com
http://augustambrosial.com
http://wpchemist.com

Please contact us if you have ANY questions!

“As you sew, you shall reap”

Please see the attached flyer!

Keller Wiliams Realty Everett
500 SE Everett Mall Way
Suite B200
Everett, WA 98208

A Little History

A blog A.K.A. web log, began in 1990s as a way for people to express themselves online. Attention seekers could write a journal about their personal lives or about a hobby and attract people who wanted to discuss their lives or hobby further. Search engines would read these blogs and categorize them based on a genre and or keywords. So people looking on online for apple pie recipes might come across a pie blog, written by someone across the country. It wasn’t long before businesses saw how this could change everything. You could now write good content and attract customers instead of traditional expensive advertising. If you owned a flower shop, all you had to do was consistently write about flowers and you would get new customers via search engines. Isn’t that cool?! Well, it is, as long as you aren’t being pressured by your peers or boss to write in order to attract new customers.

Who Shouldn’t be Blogging!

I’m not sure how this whole blogging in real estate craze got started. Regardless of how it got started, if you are a real estate agent, no doubt your broker or company has been pounding blogging down your throat for the last two years or so.

Let me start by saying, you don’t need to blog, there are other very effective ways to get business. Blogging is simply a way to attract consumers online. Blogging consistently is no different then other “freeish” types of lead generation. Consistently Blogging is basically like consistently doing open houses, calling FSBOs or expireds, calling renters, doing home buyer seminars, geographical farming, calling your sphere of influence, prospecting at your child’s school or sporting events, etc. Blogging is simply a lead generation tool. If writing isn’t your strength, if your passion is being face to face with people, if your prefer to consistently do home buyer seminars, then don’t worry about blogging. Your clients probably aren’t going to care if you aren’t a techy blogger and social media “expert”.

Who Should be Blogging!

Now, let’s talk about the real estate agents who should be blogging. The bottom line, is if you have the time and dedication to spend an hour a day consistently for 12 months, then you should be blogging. If you blog for a month and don’t sell a house and quit, then you are just another statistic. You need to identify a niche, perhaps a specific city or group of neighborhoods. Or perhaps you want to blog about REO properties in your town. The idea is to identify a niche, a group of keywords you can talk about over and over again. If you just blog about various things with no common theme, you will get nowhere with that. A woodpecker doesn’t live by pecking a thousand trees one time; it survives by pecking one tree a thousand times! If you have the ability to write or delegate writing, then blogging may be for you.

Blogging Isn’t the Wave of the Future!

I think there will always be clients who find their real estate agent by asking a friend, family member or co-worker for the name of a real estate agent they know. It feels good to know you are in trusted hands. Even though most home buyers go online at some point to look at homes or research interest rates, there are still a large number of people who will call a friend of a friend, despite the dozens of emails they are probably getting from real estate agents who have captured their email address. There will always be that element of face to face contact in real estate sales. So don’t have a panic attack that blogging and social media are going to take over everything.

What do I Start if I Want to Blog?

Is you feel blogging is for you, congratulations. Now the work begins…first identify your niche and the 12 or so topics within that niche that will be the focus of your writing for the next several months. This step is CRITICAL!! If you consistently write for months, but your blogs have no common theme, Google doesn’t know what to do with you. However if you consistently write about adult family homes in your town, you will quickly rank for those keywords and you will begin to get traffic. If you consistently write about VA related topics and how they might relate to your local area, you will get traffic from people looking up VA related terminology in your area.

BE CONSISTENT!

The next step is to purchase or built a website with blogging at its core. That is where WordPress comes into play. If you want to blog, but you don’t know why WordPress is the most powerful blogging tool on the internet, then you need to call me.

Please contact me to talk if you need help getting your blog started. Take care!

I have seen just about every real estate website company on the market. From AgentImage to Z57. I have met hundreds of agents who all seem to have the same complaint, “my website doesn’t provide me any business”, and oddly those same agents don’t know why. They all pay $30 – $50 a month for their website and never get anything back in return. Why is that?

Most of these website companies are being honest, when they sell them a website. They sell a website that can search the MLS and looks relatively decent; but that’s where the website ends. Unfortunately websites that draw traffic and provide business need to go A LOT further than that.

I understand that productive real estate agents don’t have time to extensively study web design, web marketing, search engine optimization, keyword density, blogging techniques, etc. I know you have real estate matter to attend to. The problem is if you know nothing about websites, then you don’t know why your website isn’t performing for you. You certainly don’t know what to look for in a better website. I recommend you pick up “Web Marketing for Dummies”. It’s a great introduction to successful website design and a solid reference as to what is wrong or right with your website.

Whether you plan to employ a team member, hire someone to build a website or plan to do it all yourself, I highly recommend you employ WordPress as a website/blogging platform. Here are 6 reasons WordPress is superior to almost ALL template website platforms on the market.

1. Cost- WordPress is free! Yes, FREE! The only thing you need to pay for is the domain address and hosting. Hosting on average is a whopping $8.00 a month, plus the annual cost of your domain, which is around $10.00 a year. Plus, you OWN the website; you’re not “renting” the website like you are with most other companies.

2. No limits on design- This one is huge! WordPress is a blank canvas, what you do with it is up to you. You have several options, you can purchase a “skin” or “theme” which is a pre-made design that you use as your website. You can also have a customized skin made, which will look however you want, no limits! The costs for themes/skins range from $0.00 – $100.00. Custom skins can be a few hundred dollars. Almost all of which are one time costs.

3. Easy to Customize- WordPress is legendary in its customization abilities. Depending on the skin/theme you are using, you can easily add things to the website that you want. For example, social media buttons, newsletter links, individual listings, images, etc., can all be done easily because in most cases no web coding is required.

4. Easy to Use- WordPress is legendary in another area; its easy to use back office. WordPress makes writing blogs, writing content, adding pages, and making changes extremely easy. That is huge, when compared to real estate website companies who want to charge you to make changes or add anything (which is almost criminal). Adding something to your WordPress website is as easy as updating your Facebook!

5. SEO- Search Engine Optimization is a very important factor. Every agent I know wants to be ranked high on Google for local real estate searches. As an example “Denver bank owned mobile homes” might be something that a consumer looks up on Google. In order for your website to be found for that term, you generally need to have content on your website that mentions “Denver bank owned mobile homes”. In addition, you need to have keywords, URLs, title tags and meta descriptions that reflect those search terms. WordPress makes it very easy to do all of that. I have seen agent websites that made SEO difficult or impossible to do.

6. Blogging- WordPress was originally built and is still built with blogging as its core function. No other blogging platform has mastered the art of SEO, readability, user functions better then WordPress. If you aren’t blogging, you are truly missing out on dominating your niche.

Adding something to your WordPress website is as easy as updating your Facebook!

I know this blog is very technical, and I apologize for that. I try my best to make my blogs easy to understand. So, let me leave you with this. If your website is plain, looks like everyone else’s, has little to no content, hard to customize, difficult to blog on, then I know you aren’t getting ANY business online (am I right?). If you want real estate leads to find you online, then you need to make the change to WordPress. I barely scratched the surface on the features and functions of WordPress and how they can help you in your online goals. Do yourself a favor, do some research.

When you’re ready, check out this FREE 23 minute tutorial on how to do everything yourself! You’re welcome!

If you have questions, please CONTACT US and we will help answer your questions and get you on the right path.

Of course I am talking about searchable/indexable IDX vs. framed IDX.

What is a framed IDX?

Framed IDX is the traditional way home are pulled from your local MLS and displayed on your website. When a search engine like Google, Bing or Yahoo, visits your website in order to collect data and rank you with their algorithm, they basically don’t see your IDX or any of the content. All the search engines see is the content you have written above, below or to the sides of your framed in IDX. So if you have nothing written on that particular page, then the search engines will virtually nothing to use to rank your website.

What is a Searchable IDX?

Searchable IDX is the latest in IDX technology. Each IDX company that offers a searchable IDX operates differently (much like a framed IDX). A searchable IDX basically takes the data from your local MLS and instead of displaying it on your website in a frame; they display it in text format. So when search engines visit your website to look for content, they find tons of content on your website. The theory is that the more homes you have displayed, the more content there is, which ultimately means search engines will index your websites “content”.

A little history…

When searchable IDX technology first came out a few years ago, it was very exciting stuff. However it was easy to forecast certain problems that might arise, such as duplicate content problems, SEO issues, copyright issues, etc.

Many agents felt this was going to be a magic pill, a cure all for their SEO problems. Of course that has not been the case. In short, Google and other search engines aren’t stupid. They have ways of figuring out that your website is not truly producing this content yourself. It is their job to provide only RELEVANT search results. So if you and dozens of other real estate agents have the same dynamic content, that isn’t really going to help you.

Google is not stupid!

My opinion…

1. Do I believe in searchable IDX technology? Absolutely!

2. Does it need to be paired with a well built website, with well written content? Absolutely!

3. Is searchable IDX the future of IDX? Absolutely!

I will say that if you can afford to have a custom searchable IDX built that is TRULY different and unique then you will be able to fool the search engines for quite some time. However that will easily cost you several thousand dollars, plus a lot to maintain. But it might be worth it….

So, where to I weigh in on the IDX debate? I think you can get profitable traffic to your website with a framed IDX as well as a searchable IDX. Your website needs to fill a niche; it needs to fill a void in cyber space. If your website is authentic and you continue to add content and or pages over time with either a framed IDX or searchable IDX, you will continue to gain the respect and trust of search engines.

If your website is authentic…you will gain the respect of Google

Try to remember the story of the tortoise and the hair….

If you have any questions, or would like a website/idx consultation please feel free to contact us.

How to use WordPress features and a few others to easily fight spam and bots!

Take a few moments to protect you and your visitors from spam and bots!

There is nothing worse then working hard on blogging, SEO or simply building your website and your brand, only to have your first comments and inquiries be from “bots”. Bots are automated visitors that spam your comment boxes in order to farm for email addreses, leave links to their website and sometimes to place dangerous spyware on your website.

WordPress makes it very easy to stop these spammers dead in their tracks. We will cover three simple techniques to make your website spam proof and keep your comment section clean.

1. Captcha Plugins. I’m sure everyone has seen “Captchas”. A Captcha is a human verification form which asks the visitor to read an image and type the letters and/or numbers into a form box. Only humans can read the image, which makes it impossible for bots to complete the form.
   1. Here are several captcha plugins:
      1. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-captcha/
      2. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-captcha-free/
      3. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/si-captcha-for-wordpress/
2. Email Images. The best way to have your email spammed is to place your email in text on a contact page or anywhere else on your website. A good practice is to either spell our your email addresses (gilbert AT wpchemist DOT com) instead of (gilbert@wpchemist.com). As of now, bots cannot read email addresses when typed out.
   1. Another option is to use paint to type your email address and then save it as an image. Notice the following email address is actually an image and not text. Bots cannot read an image.
3. Form Box. Another alternative to email addresses is a form submission box. Depending on the form box you are using, you can alter it and rename all of the fields.
   1. SurveyMonkey.com is a great way to not only control spam, but to automate email campaigns for those who fill out your forms. It’s free and you can create as many forms as you want. Here is a great example of form box http://productivityjunkies.com/products/how-to-self-host-using-wordpress-org/
   2. The WordPress Plugin “Contact Form 7” http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/ is an easier alternative to surveymonkey, but it doesn’t have email campaigns.

There are a lot of ways to protect yourself from spam and bots, but whatever you do, just choose something.

Once spam has gotten out of control and your email address has been sent all over the internet, there it is typically too late.

If you have any questions, and would like further instruction, simply:

Or are you just kind of writing real estate blog posts to write real estate blog posts?

Take a look at this Make It Happen Monday video. I share some key areas to focus on in creating effective blog posts and landing pages for your real estate business.

What can you do to not only optimize for Search Engines but optimize for the prospects?

The problem with long blog articles or even online news articles is how boring and hard they can be on the eyes and attention span. Personally I get exhausted just looking at a blog entry, when all I see are 5 paragraphs of plain text. Images, large blockquotes, indents, links, highlights, bolds, videos or almost anything else can really help guide the reader and keep their interest sharp.

Many studies have shown that readers have a tendency to “gloss” or “skim” over articles. You can use WordPress’ built in visual editor to easily make the important parts or highlights stand out. That will help those readers who are skimming find the parts you want them to see before they navigate away from the page. The best part is you can easily make those alterations without knowing code. The visual editor in WordPress has dozen of buttons that does all the work for you.

help your reader out by breaking up the page with easy visual editor buttons in WordPress

What are some things I can do to spice things up?

The basic idea when designing the blog article is to visually break up the article; which gives the readers eyes things to focus on so they don’t get bored and click to the next website. As I mentioned before a good blog will have images, large blockquotes, indents, links, highlights, bolds, videos or anything else that can help guide the reader.

Where are all the buttons located?

Please see the screen shot below which will show you where all of these buttons are using the same number label.

1. The Kitchen Sink: The kitchen sink is a button in the WordPress visual editor that opens up all the options in the visual editor for you to use. It’s important to click the button to ensure all of your editing options are available.

2. Images: adding a small thumbnail, like in this blog helps invite the reader to the blog, but also the right image can set the tone or summarize the article before the reader reads anything! WordPress has built in “featured image” link that makes placing an image on your blog only a few clicks away!

3. Large block quotes: Large block quotes are common in newspaper and magazine articles. It’s a good idea to choose something from your blog you want to stand out. A straight forward sentence or powerful statement makes for a good block quote. Simply highlight your and click the blockquote button.

4. Indents: indentation simply provides a grammatical correct way to display your blog, but is also visually appealing when compared to a block of several paragraphs with no indentation. Refrain from using tab; instead use the indent button provided in the visual editor.

5. Links: outgoing links do several things. It makes your blog look and feel alive, gives credit to websites you care about, appeals to search engines, but they can also keep visitors on your website when you link to other articles on your site. Creating a link in WordPress requires no code, but only to know where the link button is.

6. Highlights: increasing the size of your text is important to the reader but also to search engines. Highlighting and increasing text size on certain sentences tells the skimming reader where to skim to. It also sends hints to search engines what is most important about your blog article. Use the “Paragraph” button in WP visual editor.

7. Bold: bolding is similar to highlighting, but should be used to place emphasis on single words; as you don’t want an article in different font size too much. Again it helps keep your reader from losing attention and helps skimmers find important parts of your article before they leave.

8. Video: I shouldn’t have to explain why you should add video periodically to your blogs. Video is fun, grabs your users attention, but it keeps users on your site a lot longer and helps them remember you better. Plus a visitor is more likely to watch a 3 minute video then they are to read every word on a 10 paragraph blog post. Adding video from youtube.com or your computer is easy when using WordPress visual editor.

CLICK ON THE SCREEN SHOT BELOW TO VIEW BUTTON LOCATIONS

There is a lot more to the visual editor in WordPress to help you jazz up your blog posts. Play with the other buttons and see what happens. It’s the best way to learn.

Have any questions?
Still need help?
Feel free to…

It doesn’t really surprise me, but it always makes me shake my head when experienced real estate agents don’t know what an IDX is or even what it does.  For those who aren’t in the real estate industry or those who are and still don’t know what an IDX is, please allow me to explain.

IDX is an acronym for Internet Data Exchange or Information Data Exchange; depending on which techie you are talking to.  As Realtors we all know that our local MLS has a huge database of homes and content.  Consumers come to us to find homes or get the value of their home. You then turn to the MLS and perform a data analysis.  Consumers have long wanted to have access to that data and near the end of the 20^th century, the internet and advances in computer technologies made that possible.

IDX companies can now pull that data from the MLS (with MLS permission and payment of a fee) and put in onto a website for consumers to enjoy.  That’s all an IDX does.  It pulls MLS data and transforms the way it looks and displays it on a website you own.

If you don’t have an IDX on your website AND make it easy to find and search NO real estate buyers or sellers will spend ANY amount of time on your poor excuse for a website.

WordPress makes it easy to display your IDX.  I’m not going to go into specifics of what IDX companies are best; that is a whole other blog post.  However if you want to talk privately with me about it, please contact me.  I’m also not going to go into specifics in this post of how to create the pages or posts, (it would be a very long post).  Just contact me and we can chat.

What do I do with the IDX?

IDX companies provide a code for you to place or embed on a specific page on your website.  The IDX will display homes based on the parameters you set.  Each IDX company makes their product differently and how easy it is to embed will depend on the company.  However almost all IDX companies will have a back-end that will allow you to simply copy and paste a very long and complicated code directly into a page on your site.  Don’t ask how it works, I really don’t know, and I don’t want to.  All I know is that my two IDX companies do all the work for me, I simply copy and paste.

WordPress and IDX example

Let’s look at CondoBeacon.com for example. You will also notice that there are lists of homes pulled up on different pages with very specific parameters; bank owned lists in various cities, short sale lists in various cities, condos in various price ranges, specific condo buildings, etc. Your IDX company will most likely allow you to do specific searches (your niche), then allow you to freeze that code; for you to embed on your website.  It creates more pages for your consumers to view and gives them reasons to stay on your site.

Where should I put the IDX?

I recommend real estate agents utilize both the sidebar widgets and static pages to drive web traffic to your IDX.  Again, let’s look at CondoBeacon.com.  The sidebar has buttons, a quick search box and quick search links; which is present on almost every page.  The sidebar is responsible for over half of the clicks on condobeacon.

WordPress makes adding pages and posts very easy, so as long as the IDX you are using was built with somewhat modern code, there shouldn’t be any problems.

A few things to remember:

1. Not all IDX companies are equal.  Be sure of what you want your IDX to do, and ask a lot of questions before you decide which is best for you and your business.

2. WordPress and your IDX may look seamless, but they are two different websites working together.

3. Leverage your IDX; send your buyers there to do their own searches when applicable.  It will save you time and will probably do a better job of updating your buyers of the market then you will.

4. Try to use the IDX in pages, posts and sidebar widgets.  Consumers are on your site to see homes, don’t make it hard for them or they will leave!

Any questions?