Real Estate Marketing SEO Blog

Human Nature Sucks

I recently finished a long successful season of Coaching my kids youth football team. After 21 straight wins, my little guys came out flat for the Championship against a team that they had already beaten twice in the past two seasons. They got beat that day and pretended like they did not know what happened.

Isn't that the way it is though? We sell in good economic times like order takers more than marketers or salesmen. Then think doing the same thing will work in a tougher selling environment. 

We hope it will turn out alright, instead of making it turn out alright. We hope for better sales instead of going and getting them.

Are Your Tactics Hurting Your Strategy?

It has been said that the easiest sale for a salesman is to sell to another salesman. As entrepreneurs and real estate and mortgage professionals typically thrive on hype and puffery.

We love to hear a good pitch.

We get more susceptible as we think higher of ourselves. The person who swears you cannot hypnotize her is the easiest for the hypnotist. As we have learned all these cool gizmos and maybe we are first adapters we naturally have adapted an arrogance that creates blind spots in our critical thinking. Its natural and it happens all the time.

We naturally align with folks who will tell us that we are right. We all want to be right. And lets face it if we are early...

How Many Keywords do Searchers Use?

Percentage of U.S. clicks by number of keywords
Subject	October 2009	November 2009	Month-over-month percentage change
One word	24.03%	24.13%	0%
Two words	23.13%	23.14%	0%
Three words	20.53%	20.37%	-1%
four words	13.83%	13.84%	0%
Five words	8.13%	8.13%	0%
Six words	4.42%	4.43%	0%
Seven words	2.43%	2.43%	0%
Eight or more words	3.49%	3.54%	1%
Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending Nov. 28, 2009, and Oct. 31, 2009) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.

It seems one to three keywords still rules search. Typically, keywords become longtail as they increase in number.

PPC Showdown: Bing Vs Google

Every engine wants your ad spend. you can chose from AdWords at Google, Bing, and of course Yahoo.  So the knee jerk reaction is to jump on over to the big Daddy Google for your ads.  Not so fast.

Bing Has Better Click-Rate than Google, Yahoo! But AOL is even Better!

Chitika, an online advertising network claims that Bing gets better ad click-through rates (CTR) than Yahoo! and Google.

• 1.74 percent Bing
• 1.37 percent Yahoo!
• 0.98 percent Google
• 1.76 percent ASK
  
• 2.50 percent AOL

So this means that Bing users click a CTR that is 77 percent higher than Google users.

The post did warn that Google still gets 84% of all traffic. However, when comparing one Google visitor to a Bing visitor. The Bing visitor is more valuable.

Caffeinated SEO: "Speed" Important in SEO Rankings?

Google has been testing a new addition to their ranking system aptly called Caffeine. Why Caffeine? Because, the idea is that Google is looking for ways to speed up search.

In fact, Google has created a web speed resource page to help you do just that. It is titled, Let's Make the Web Faster. So it would seem that if by their own behavior Google is valuing Web speed, then so should you and I if we wish to get higher rankings (SERPS).

Four Ways to Test Your Site Speed

Home is Where the Heart Is

Yesterday I posted the selling lifestyle over greed article. Its a must read in reframing the sale of a home away from market timing and towards the home. It's the oldie but goodie idea of selling a house vs selling a home.

As luck would have it the brilliant Roy Williams sent his newsletter today as a Thanksgiving tribute. I am reposting some of his letter. Williams says that we all yearn for home because of a secret desire to be known. Like Norm Peterson in the TV show show called Cheers. Where everybody knows your name.

“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” - Maya Angelou

Selling Lifestyle Over Greed

The following is an article originally posted with housingtrendsenewsletter.com that  I wrote it in an attempt to illustrate the necessity of selling lifestyle value in today's real estate marketplace.

It is so easy to get caught in a "greed trap". Selling rising home prices, or multiple offers to insert a scarcity driver to motivate the buyer.

Here is an attempt to sell lifestyle:

I watched a very special movie last night called Marley and Me. I can only describe it as a journey of a couples life that was joined together with the addition of Marley the Dog.

The story was peppered with plenty of important symbols of one family's journey played out through children, spouses, career, choices and their three homes. Each home relocation changed over time.

Home Staging With Barb Schwarz : the interview

We interview Barb Schwarz, the inventor of home staging. Seriously. She explains to me that it was her theater background that inspired her to stage homes for sale.Barb was a terrific interview. She told me that anyone can learn how to Stage a home. And her organization is all about teaching Realtor s how to properly stage a home.

And get this. Home staging actually helps a home sell faster and for more. She is teaching Realtors how to work with banks to get their foreclosed and short sale properties sold. Stream the interview or download it for your Ipod.

• Creator of The Staged Homes Concept and Home Staging Industry
• Creator of The Accredited Staging Professional® Course
• Creator of The ASP® and ASPM® Designations
• Best Selling Author
• Award-Winning Professional Speaker
• Professional Real Estate Broker
• Founder and CEO StagedHomes.com
• Founder and Director of The Staging University®
• Founder and Chairwoman of The International Association of Home Staging Professionals® IAHSP.com
• Founder and President of The IAHSP Charitable Foundation®
• Creator of The StagingShoppingCenter.com