Fortunately we have our smart phones with 3G internet connections; otherwise our day today would have been almost completely worthless.

We were told that our internet connection was going to be set up this morning at 10:30, knowing that work would be mostly useless until then, I elected to play a round of Frisbee golf to start the day off. It was a great day for Frisbee Golf. Upon completion of an extra nine holes, the internet was still not at the office, but we decided to go get things set up the best we could anyways.

Once we arrived at the office, and still didn’t have internet, we decided that we would make some phone calls to try and acquire an additional table. By instinct, I went over the my computer to look up the phone number for the USU surplus, but wait, we didn’t have internet, so I couldn’t. At least I had my smart phone.

We spent the next hour driving around town and picking up the table. The hope was that by the time we were back, it would be working. It wasn’t. Time for more stalling. I couldn’t check leads, update my google docs, or any of the other normal tasks associated with operating an internet lead driven real estate brokerage. So being someone who doesn’t want to waste a time, I decided that the best thing to do would be to write a blog post, and here are the results.

Aged Sites Matter – As long as there is no indication of artificial link building.

I have seen many “old” websites that haven’t been worked on or modified in years, that are now relevant in the search results again. Most of these sites haven’t seen top 20 rankings since 2006, if ever.

My favorite penguinized result came from a search for “Logan Utah Real Estate” that brought up the Godaddy “Expired Domain” page for RobertJBrown.info. I made this five page site for Robert four years ago, it hasn’t been touched, or used since. Robert never actually provided me with any content for the site, so it just contains a bunch of filler text I made up on the fly.  The domain actually expired on April 8th. It’s never been relevant in the search engines. Yet now, suddenly appears in the search results. Why? I have no idea, but the only thing I can conclude is that it has some age to it. I can’t see any other reason; it’s a poorly built site that’s never gotten traffic before. The super baffling thing is that Google hadn’t crawled this site in at least a month. This domain was expired, and showing the godaddy “expired page,” When we saw that Penguin made it show up on the first page of Google, I encouraged Robert to renew it.

One interesting thing with the resurgent rankings of these old domains, is that it seems like only those sites that didn’t have any indication of “link building” are the ones showing up in Google. Old sites that had some SEO work done, aren’t doing so hot. It looks like Google is trying to reward old sites that haven’t tried doing SEO.

Quality Content Doesn’t Really Matter – While “Quality Content” is supposed to be the big focus of the Panda and Penguin updates, it almost appears as if the opposite has happened with some of the new search results. Several of the new high ranking real estate websites have almost no original content, and very few indexed pages. In addition, the Homes.com, Trulia’s, and Zillows of the world are dominating the search results right now with their canned, computer generated pages that provide no unique content other than showing the different listings for each city.

Sites With Valid Traffic Kept Rankings – The highly optimized sites, with lots of links seemed to mostly maintain their rankings, as long as they actually had traffic that stuck with the site. The websites with IDX feeds seemed to do much better than the “feeder” sites that redirected users to other sites for MLS searches. I saw several IDX websites that have never showed up in the search engine results before that are now actually getting some real traffic.

Exact Match Domains Suffered – Most of the exact match domains (domains where the keywords are the domains such as PhoenixHomesForSale.info exact keyword search for “Phoenix Homes for Sale “), seemed to really suffer in the Penguin rankings, unless there wasn’t a lot of external link building SEO done. It seems like those exact match domains that have been heavily optimized took a hit, but those that have had little or no SEO work done actually improved in the rankings. While PhoenixHomesForSale.info dropped in the search engines from #1 to #10 for that term, the not well optimized site UtahRealEstate.net (Only 52 incoming links, most no follow from yellow page type directories) jumped from irrelevant, to #2 for the highly competitive term “Utah Real Estate.”

Google knows that one of the tools internet marketers use to get rankings more easily is to purchase domains that are the keywords. That used to be one of the easiest ways to get high rankings. Because they can tell what keywords are in a domain, it looks as if they are trying to eliminate people trying to optimize for specific search terms.

From Matt Cutts remarks Another Step to Reward High-Quality Sites, Googles intentions are good. The internet would be a better place if we really could eliminate web spam, and reward the sites that actually provide useful content. Unfortunately, the latest Penguin Update isn’t doing the job. The search results haven’t improved, and we’re seeing more lousy sites show up in the rankings than we saw before.

While it doesn’t appear to be doing anything to reduce web spam, it is having an adverse effect on real estate search results.

The results of this change has lead the big national syndication sites like Homes.com, Realtor.com, Trulia, and Zillow to skyrocket in the rankings, while local real estate agent and brokerage sites have taken a hit.

On one sample search I did, homes.com came up as the top 4 search rankings.

The problem with these websites is that they don’t provide accurate information. Many listings on Trulia and Zillow are 4 years old, and Homes.com only has a portion of all of the available homes for sale, and many duplicate listings. Not only does Homes.com not have have the home listings people want, but their site doesn’t include relevent local information about areas that only local websites can provide.

Google’s mission is supposedly to provide the best possible search results. If this was the case, they would alter their algorithm to provide better results.

To me it looks like their real purpose is to provide more revenue from google ads. If a local real estate agency doesn’t get the website traffic they are used to having, they will be forced to pay for Google Ads.

Most Google users have become “ad blind.” They subconsciously ignore the yellow paid ads, and go directly to the organic results, because those are the results they trust. But, if the organic results start becoming less relevant, then the paid ads, which are gaining in quality, and will be clicked more often. Soon the consumer will start trusting the paid ads more than the organic results.

From a revenue standpoint this isn’t a bad move for Google. If it’s mission really is to provide the world with quality relevent information, then they really dropped the ball on this update. If their goal is to make lots more money by getting people who used to get organic traffic to start paying for google ads, then it looks like they hit a home run.

However, the fact is that with the changes in telecommunication over the last decade, many people prefer to communicate by text or chat. A text or chat message is less intrusive. You don’t have to worry about interrupting what someone else is doing because a half duplex form of communication gives the communicatee an opportunity to respond on their time table.

So while not using the phone may not seem like the most effective way to communicate with your potential clients, for many people it may be the only way.

Although it is partially the economy that is driving more and more people to buy inexpensive real estate, it is also partially the economy that has made so many inexpensive homes hit the market. When homeowners fall short of their payments, they may either lose their home, or try to sell it for a price that is much less than it is worth to try to cut their losses. There are lots of homes in the Seattle area that are priced below the market value because they are short sales or foreclosure homes. If you are interested in looking at these kinds of homes, please take a look at Washington State short sale.

Fixing up an older home is becoming a more and more popular way of saving money when buying a new home. There are hundreds of homes that would be perfect for undertaking a project such as this one. To see for yourself, visit the Seattle starter homes to find homes for you. It is not uncommon to be successful in remodeling a home, but there have been many of these projects that have completely backfired. There are three main items that are needed when fixing up a home: a little experience, lots of time, and enough money. Each home that needs to be fixed is at a different level, as well as the expectations of the fixers. This is why it is extremely vital that you analyze and evaluate to what scale the home will need to be worked on. Are you simply going to be pulling up and replacing carpet and painting the walls, or are you going to need to rewire circuit breakers, put in a whole new heating system, or another number of large projects? What is a rough estimate of what all of these fixes are going to cost? These projects are very time consuming, will you be able to make the time for it? All of these items will be well worth your time to sit down and evaluate to see if it is really going to be a good investment to buy a rundown home to fix up.

Another way to pinch pennies is re-decorating the frugal way. You would be amazed at what a little sand paper and some spray paint can do for an older piece of furniture bought for a few dollars at a garage sale or local thrift store. Ugly chairs and other pieces of furniture can be re-upholstered with the fabric of your choice to make your home unique to you. Wall décor is also something that has been a popular DIY item. There are hundreds of different DIY projects that you can find online to make your house look like a professionally decorated house.

So what are you waiting for? Find a house that can be transformed into the beautiful home you’ve been dreaming of!

Now, thanks to wordpress, any agent can make a real estate website. The wordpress platform is made for blogging. It’s simple to use and offers so much functionality. It’s also great for the search engines.

Here are the basic instructions of how to make a real estate website using wordpress:

1. Purchase a Domain Name.

Your domain, or URL, is the window viewers use to see your online content. An example is HomesForSaleLogan.com

I recommend using Godaddy.com to purchase domain names. The fact is that they are just affordable.

2. Purchase a Hosting Account

The hosting account is where the data is actually stored. The domain name points to the content that shows up on this server.

Bluehost is my favorite host at the moment. It’s not the least expensive, but it’s a fair price, and hasn’t given me any problems.

Here is another web host you can try if you’re looking for cheap. Right now it’s just $2.45 a month. I don’t know what the quality is like, but that’s really cheap.

Netfirms: Trusted Web Hosting for as low as $2.45/mo

3. In Your Domain Registrar (Godaddy). Point Your DNS servers in your domain registrar to your web host.

(If you purchase your website directly through the host, you actually don’t need to do this step. Many web hosts give you a domain name included with the hosting account.)

This allows the “window” to see the “content” you will display on your host.

4. Install WordPress.

At your host. This places all the wordpress files on the host computer so that you can start creating content for your website. This is simple to do. Most hosts have an easy to push “Install WordPress” Icon. If not, they usually offer this simple service through Fantastico, or Softaculous.

Now you’re set and ready to go. Now all you have to do is add content. If you plan to use your real estate website as for marketing, and to generate leads, you’re also going to want to pay for an IDX feed. This gives your website the ability to display all the home listings from your MLS.

We prefer IDX Broker. This IDX service integrates easily with wordpress, and offers some great features, and attractive websites. Here are a few examples of wordpress websites that have integrated content.

If you would like us to pay for a custom website design, and IDX broker integration, we can do that for you very at a very low price.

via San Diego MLS Will Require Listing Agent Contact Info on IDX Feeds.

Bad Call Sandicor. What year is it anyways?