Hi,
My name is _____ and I work for _________, a provider of high
quality, custom content for a wide variety of industries. I was impressed with http://www.realestatebloglab.com and can provide you with free, professionally written blog articles crafted specifically for  you.
Your Benefit:
Based on your direction, we will prepare a custom article related to real estate. The post will be professionally written and edited and provided free of charge.
Our Benefit:
In exchange for this free article, we simply ask that you provide us a link in the content of our article to one of our client’s websites. Of course you will be able to decline the article if you are not satisfied with the content or with the linked URL

In Exchange for Free

I have to remember this one.  I’m sure I can find some places I can use this.  But none with a straight face.

Real Estate Related

This is my first clue they haven’t read anything on the site.  If they had even read the homepage blog topics they would know this site isn’t about real estate.

Cooling Strategies for Rack Mounted Cloud Servers

This is the topic I would like them to cover, right up there with fragistats and muffler bearings.  Oh and let’s not forget radiator caps for 67 VW Beatles.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab In Exchange For This Free Article

One of those “features” that RE agents seem to love is SLIDESHOW.

NEVER USE NEXTGEN GALLERY SLIDESHOW

Dave, are you kidding?  No, I’m not kidding.  Please get over it and move on to the best thing for listing images,  Thumbnail Galleries.  I say this for a couple of reasons.

First, as a web guy.  You don’t want to create an unpleasant and frustrating experience for your visitor.  Nextgen slideshows can do this in two ways:

1.  If you didn’t configure the slideshow, or you have a plugin conflict all your view will ever see is this:

2.  When I’m looking at listing photos, I don’t want to see a slideshow.  I didn’t come for a movie.  I came to quickly see if this place has what I’m looking for in a home.  I want those thumbnails to scan quickly and enlarge when I want more detail.  I don’t want a slideshow to sit through.

I want to know there are 15 or 20 or 40 images I can tell that with thumbnails.  I can tell if a Youtube video is going to be long, but a slideshow, I have no idea how long it is going to take to see it; that is if it ever loads.

So please, do your views a favor.  Show the listing photos in a gallery, not a slideshow.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Nextgen Gallery for Real Estate

Another way of putting it, Real Estate Porn.  I a session at BlogWorld a couple of years ago about travel blogging, the speaker called it travel porn. Travel porn is people looking at pictures of far off places they would never visit themselves but would like to dream about going there someday.

The beauty of IDX search is this:  No one is limited to viewing only homes they can afford.  Buyers can spend hours on your site looking at homes they could never purchase, but should they win the lottery, would consider it.  It is that desire to hope and dream and look at all those homes they would love to have that keeps them on your site.

But don’t forget, this applies to IDX that is ON YOUR site, not a sub-domain on the IDX Providers site.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab The Hidden Value of IDX on Your Site

Where are you Going with Your Site?

This is one of the most significant questions you need to keep in mind at ALL times.  It is the first question I ask of potential clients.  The answer determines what kind of site and functionality we build into it.

Let’s take this site.  The Real Estate Blog Lab.  What are they keywords I’m trying to rank for in the search engines?  What are my long tails and Short tails searches?  What do I need to focus on to rank for the search terms I want to rank for?

The Answer.  I DON’T HAVE ANY.  There is nothing I want to rank for with this site.  Do I want more traffic to my site?  I’ll take it, but do I want it?  Not really, I don’t have a bunch of affiliate links or ads I’m selling on the site.  I have a luxury with the Lab.  I’m not looking for business from it, I’m not promoting an event, a service, or selling a product or service.

This means If I want to load down this site with a 100 plugins and it takes 15 seconds to load, so what?

Other types of sites where this applies

• Hobby sites
• Event Sites  (There’s no competition, if you are BlogWorld you are BlogWorld)
• Most Photo Blogs  (very little competition)
• Niche market sites (again where there is very little competition for the search)

You get the idea.  There are sites like these that have little or no competition for rankings. They don’t need to be careful of page load times.  They can pretty much do whatever they want.  No leads to capture because people want what they have anyway, that’s why they come to their site in the first place.

But if Your Site is a Real Estate Business Site . . .

You don’t have the luxury of kludging up your site with lots of Eye Candy and bells and whistles that slow your site to a crawl.  Well, you might get away with it if you want to spend a couple of thousand a month to an SEO company to “Get You On Page One of Google”.

I troll ActiveRain for Bad Practices

I’ll admit it.  I get a few good post ideas from reading posts on Active Rain.

I see so many REALLY BAD IDEAS there promoted as “REALLY GREAT” that most of the time I can’t read more than one at a time. There are way to many topics to go into.  One of my favorite.  Change your permalinks to something that is better SEO.  Oh do they mention that this will cause your site to return all 404 page not found errors to visitors until your site is re-indexed unless you are some kind of 301 redirection in place?  No, they always seem to leave that part out.

Overselling on your Website – The kitchen sink syndrome

Let me BURY you in information and content.  There was a site a few months back in Florida that was being held up as a “beautiful” example of an RE site, it has accordion sliders (2 of them) on the home page, lots of things like mortgage calculator, (We all need that calculator) and on and on.  And on my High Speed Cable connection it only took 18.9 seconds for the homepage to load.
At Mcds Free WIFI it took over 30 seconds for the home page to load.  Oh, yeah, that’s a powerful example of what an RE site should be like.

Page 1 or DIE

Let’s face it, you have to be on page 1 and preferably position 1 – 5 to be considered viable placement.

The one other location that is sometimes useful is top of page 2 but that is a consolation prize at best.

Therefore, the most important question you have to keep in front of you at all times.

What Kind of Site Do I Have.

The second question?  What is my Target Audience. But that’s another story.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab What Kind of Site Do You Have?

I can’t tell you how many postings I read on various forums for RE that are focused on getting people to leave comments.  Let me tell you straight up.  Comments are frosting.  You don’t need frosting to survive.  You need LEADS.

I don’t care if anyone ever leaves a comment on my RE blogs.  Quite a few comments I do get come from real estate agents trolling for back-links.  Now and again there is a question from a consumer about a topic.  But I don’t need comments on my site.

Of course I enjoy getting comments, but I don’t NEED comments for my blogs to be a success.

What I do need are people that give their contact information because they want a service we are providing.  Being a real estate site there are RE services which we provide and no they aren’t white paper articles on Selling or Buying a home or market reports to which they can “subscribe”

They are four buttons which I believe should be easily found on every real estate site wanting to capture leads.

Button 1.  Search For Homes

I fought paying for IDX on our site for years.  Finally I gave in biting the bullet and providing IDX search (By Diverse Solutions) on my primary RE site.  It was and is the best $1000 we spend every year.  Does it capture leads.  YES it does.  Do we farm them?  No we don’t, we leave them to search as much as they want without requiring registration.  Do they register?  Oh, yes they do, we have over 1000 registered users searching for their next home.

Why would they register if you don’t require it?  It is the only way they can save their custom searches.  It is like pre-screening your leads.  We used to have 20 free searches then require registration.  I can’t even share some of the email addresses that were given so they could keep on searching.  Let’s just say the WTF@gmail.com or a variation of that or a Disney character were quite common.  Now we only get the names of those that want to save their searches.

Button 2  Home Finder

There are the DIY folks that want to do their own searching, and there are others that don’t have or want to take the time to search.  These “Leads” are people that simply want to input their criteria for a new home and have listings sent by email to them that match their criteria.  A form listing the most common wants and needs with a “Additional Comments:” at the bottom is great for getting leads which are then setup in the MLS with a client portal.

Button 3  What’s My Home Worth?

Those first two buttons are for buyers.  This one is for sellers.  Fill out the form and get a CMA.  Of course we all know you can’t give a complete CMA without seeing the condition and amenities of the property.  But getting potential listing clients to fill out the form is a foot in the door to a potential listing.

Button 4  Relocation Package

Back to buyer; relocation buyers.  These are future leads.  People that aren’t actively looking for a home but are thinking or planning on moving to your location in the future.  Putting together a relocation package is pretty typical, why not offer it on your site.  You send them out anyway.  And when you send the package offer to set them up with a client portal to receive listings to give them an idea of what homes are selling for that match their criteria.

Location, Location, Location

1. Above the fold (No scrolling to find them).
2. Probably above all those social media buttons you offer for people to connect on . . .
   You want to connect with them directly not just by SM  Put those buttons first.
3. Upper Left corner (first choice) upper Right corner (second choice).
4. Make them prominent, easy to see, BIG is better.

If you don’t have these four buttons where they can be easily clicked you are missing out on lead capture for your site.

Comments are frosting, LEADS are the main course.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Real Estate Blogging – Call to Action

I’m sure there are a couple of you reading this have played a video game or two.  You have probably played a racing game or some kind of combat game where you had so many credits to work with and you had to outfit yourself with those credits.

Well, Google has/is changing the rules of the game.  They now give us a 100 point scoring system. We get those 1o0 points to work with and spend wisely.  The ones that will keep their site closer to the 100 will rank higher.

P3 Plugin Profiler

Let’s face it, one of the things we all love about WordPress are the plugins.  We can use plugins to change and shape our site into a lot of different configurations to present our content.  Need an event scheduler, calendar, slider (don’t get me started on sliders) gallery, you name it and you can find a plugin.

But plugins can be very expensive in terms of points.  They can slow our page load time down significantly impacting our overall score on the Google 100 point system.

So we have to choose wisely.  Asking these question for each and every plugin.

1. Do I have plugins activated that I’m not using?
2. Do I really need this plugin for my site?
3. Is there a way I can do this without a plugin?

If you have activated plugins you aren’t using, deactivate them;  better yet, delete them.  You can always install them again later if you decide you need them.

I have used some plugins that I really liked.  Design Chemicals Jquery Accordion Menu comes to mind.  I like that plugin and how tidy it makes my sidebar menus appear on site.  But there is a very large overhead to using them.  So on most sites, I don’t

You have toe weigh the advantages over the weight a plugins adds in Page Load Time and impact on your 100 points with Google.

Sometimes we have plugins for convenience.  You would rather just type in a shortcode than use the embed code.  But at what cost?

Now we have a tool that will help you determine the cost.  Yes, it is another plugin.  But you don’t have to keep it active all the time.  And it isn’t loaded when you site is viewed.

Below are two screenshots taken after running a scan of active plugins.

Notice on this first one that the Woopra Plugin for analytics is a hog.  In the second shot you will see how the site performed without that plugin activated.

With Woopra Plugin Deactivated

Do I have to give up Woopra analytics?  No, I simply need to copy the analytics script to the theme footer after my Google Analytics tracking script.  It was just easier to use the plugin.

The P3 Plugin Profiler is a great tool to help you decide which plugins you want or need and which ones you can give up and turn off.

You get 100 points, use them wisely.

Oh, and the reason the charts don’t lightbox like they used to, I turned it off, it wasn’t worth the price in page load time.  I’m searching for a light weight lightbox plugin now.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab P3 Plugin Profiler

I migrate a lot of WordPress sites in a year.  I’m guessing between 70 or 80 sites in the last year.  Most of those from one hosting company to another.

One thing often overlooked are email accounts.  Yes, your domain email account is setup in the hosting account.  No matter how many times you ask “Do you have email on your domain?” the answer often comes back “I use Gmail”.

Then a week after the move I get an email like “My email at me@mydomain.com aren’t coming in anymore?”  No kidding.

There is a disconnect in the brain when it comes to domain email.  Move the domain, and you have to move the domain email.  They don’t come along automatically.  A new email account (same email address, but new account) has to be created for those emails to have a place to arrive.

They will route to the domain and if there is no email account by that name on the domain they will bounce back to the sender.

I know there are some RE coaches that recommend you have an email address tied to your domain name.  Personally, I don’t see that as a plus.  Gmail is perfect for business and well respected.  AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo mail Juno, LOL  that’s another issue.

If you do have email accounts tied to your domain, be sure to set those up on your new hosting account so your email will be un-interrupted.

Why post this now?

It happened again this morning. “I haven’t gotten my email for the past 4 or 5 days”  . . .

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Changing Hosting Companies – Don’t forget the email

You go on your way and find a couple others you want to try out as well.You found half a dozen plugins that had updates so you updated them

Maybe a week goes buy and one day you notice something doesn’t look right.  Oh, something is missing. Or you find something funny out in the margins or at the foot of your site.  Where did that come from?  It must be a plugin, but which one?

Date Installed On Plugins

One thing I’ve been wanting for a long time is to have the date installed somewhere on the plugin screen.  Better yet, I’d like to be able to sort the plugins by date installed/updated.  This would let me do a better job of debugging what went wrong.  As it is now I’m left trying to remember which were added, which were updated and I start deactivating and testing.

Plugin Memorandum

A new plugin showed up on the dashboard today and it isn’t what I wanted but for the time being it is better than nothing.  It lets me put a memo on the plugin screen under the plugin.  I can now add a date activated or updated.  Leave notes about the configuration or anything about this plugin I want to remember for future reference.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Plugin Memorandum

DS Mobile Script

Diverse Solutions has been rolling out a mobile script that you can install on your site to take your visitors to your search page directly to your DS mobile search page that you can configure from the DS  Control panel.  I love it.  Gives you total control over the mobile visitor and you can setup custom pages for them to see and a custom search for them to view etc.

Be careful how you install it.  The instructions on the control panel say to paste the code in the header of your site before the </head> tag.

What they don’t tell you is if you do that for the main site header.php it will take every visitor to your site no matter what page they are trying to access from their mobile device to your DS Mobile page.  EVERY SINGLE MOBILE VISITOR TO THE DS MOBILE PAGE.

Why?  because you put the script in your header.php file which is the beginning of ALL your pages not just your search page.

The Solution to installing DS Mobile on a WordPress Blog

The solution isn’t very hard if you know a little code and have FTP access to your site.

You have to create a custom page and header template for your DS Search page.

Here is a quick way to do that (I’m using the TwentyTen theme in this example).

1. Copy the header.php and page.php file from your theme directory to your computer.
2. rename the header file to be header-search.php
3. copy the DS Mobile script into that header-search.php
4. rename the page.php to search-page.php
5. Add the page template tag to the top of the search-page.php file
6. Change the call to the header to be the header search.php
7. Upload them to your theme folder
8. Open your Search page in the editor and use the new search page template

Sample Page Template code

/**
* Template Name: One column, no sidebar
*
* A custom page template without sidebar.
*
* The “Template Name:” bit above allows this to be selectable
* from a dropdown menu on the edit page screen.
*
* @package WordPress
* @subpackage Twenty_Ten
* @since Twenty Ten 1.0
*/

This is the one from the TwentyTen one column template   change the template name to Search Page

Change the header file call in the Search Page template

Close to the top of the page you will see:

get_header(); ?>

Change this to

get_header(search); ?>

Once these steps are done your visitors will only go to the DS mobile page for the search page and not every page or post on your site.

As with all site modifications, once you have completed these steps, test it by using your mobile device to access your site.

Don’t forget to configure the mobile page on your DS control panel, don’t just copy the script to your site.  Scroll down on that page and fill in the information you want to convey to your mobile search visitors.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Diverse Solutions Mobile Script

One of the changes in a recent WP release was a new permalink option.  It used to be that if you wanted the Post Name as the permalink structure you would enter that in the Custom Permalink field as /%postname%/

Now that option is available as a selection just above the custom option field.

I Want to update my Permalink Structure

Four years ago the SEO experts (you know an expert is a has been drip, right) were recommending including keywords for your category names then using a permalink structure of

/%category%/%postname%/

Probably good advise at the time, however, times change and the move toward shorter permalinks happened a couple of years ago.  Therefore, for the past couple of years every new site I setup I use the /%postname%/ structure.

I’ve always wanted to go back and update my older sites to use this simpler structure, but didn’t want to deal with having to create a 301 redirect for all my content and wait for it to be re-indexed with the new structure.

I’ve seen plugins like Redirection which can be fine for one or two redirects, but honestly for one or two I prefer to do it in the .htaccess file and not use a plugin.  And if you don’t use Redirection correctly you can really screw up your site.

Permalinks Moved Permanently

This little plugin is perfect for this situation.  It intercepts a request coming from the search engines to the old permalink and redirects the visitor to the new one while letting the search engines know this is a 301 permanent redirect.

Nothing to do but install the plugin and activate.

Go change your permalink structure and that’s it.  Now just wait for the new permalinks to be indexed.  After a few months you shouldn’t even need the plugin active on your site.

For the Paranoid

I say this as one of the Paranoid.  If you want to verify this, run a site search in Google and page through till you come to a post showing the old permalink.  Click on it.  You should be taken to the post and it should show the new permalink structure in the address bar.

How to do a site search

For anyone new at doing site searches:

Open Google and enter in the search field site:yourdomain.com   The results will show you how many pages/post you have in the google index.

Have you been putting off updating your Permalink Structure?

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Permalinks Moved Permanently