75 Percent of People Buy Their Home Online – Realtors – Are You Ready?

Real Estate Internet Marketing is gaining a lot of importance these days, and is very important for those engaged in selling real estate online.  According to a survey conducted by a top-rated magazine, more than 75% of people now depend on the Internet to buy their dream home.

Since many Realtors have their own sites on the web with features such as pictures of properties as well as floor plans, it has enabled the potential customers to experience hassle-free home buying.  A website not only allows a Realtor to promote listed properties, but also to promote the services they render.

But, there is such a large number of real estate-related websites that it has now become an overwhelming process for a particular real estate website to get ranked high among the search engine results.  Herein lies the role of real estate internet marketing.

A large number of proven real estate internet marketing techniques are now adopted to improve the ranking of a real estate-related website for better search engine visibility, such as search engine optimization, search engine submission, pay-per-click marketing, link analysis, affiliate marking, and e-mail marketing. Among which, perhaps the most prominent one is search engine optimization, or SEO.

Real Estate SEO contains a series of strategic and technical solutions including a selection of the most appropriate keywords, preparing search engine friendly content, linking and submitting the website to major search engines like Google and Yahoo.  All of these factors work together to enhance a real estate agents’ website ranking in the search engines for real estate related keywords.  Although real estate SEO work can be done by business owners themselves, it is better to seek assistance of an experienced SEO firm.

A reputable SEO firm conducts a detailed analysis on your real estate business as well as your target markets, apart from structuring your real estate website with appropriate search terms, synchronizing Meta title and descriptions, and formulating link popularity programs.

Any Realtor who’s serious about competing online should move forward with proven real estate marketing techniques like real estate SEO.

Until next time…

Follow Me on Twitter!

Ed

3 Things To Avoid When Emailing Your List

3 Things To Avoid When Emailing Your List

When you decide to have an opt-in list, it is not just a matter of sending your subscribers your promotional newsletters or catalogs.  There are many things to consider in avoiding many complications.  While there are so many ways you can make people subscribe to your list, there are also some things you must do to avoid subscribers from wanting to get off of your list. 

Aside from that, you also want to avoid any problems with the law and your internet service provider.  There are many laws and rules that are designed to help protect the privacy of the internet users from spamming and unwanted mails. With the popularity of the electronic mail as a medium for marketing because of the low cost, many company’s have seized the opportunity and have flooded many people’s e-mail accounts with promotional mail.

But, with an opt-in list, you avoid this annoyance because people subscribe to the list; they want to receive the newsletters and promotional materials.  They have consented to being on the list by subscribing themselves, just don’t forget to put an unsubscribe feature (everytime) in your opt-in list so you avoid any confusion.  There may be times when an email account was provided when the real owner didn’t want to subscribe.

It is essential that you keep your list clean and manageable.  Arrange it by using the many tools and technologies available for your opt-in list.  Don’t worry; your investment in this marketing strategy is well worth it with all the coverage you will get which will likely be converted into sales then to profit.

Keep yourself and your business out of trouble and potential run-ins with the law and the Internet Service Providers.  Keep your operation legit and clean.  Your reputation as a legitimate businessperson and a legitimate site depends on your being a straight and true marketing strategist.  As a tip, here are three things to avoid when emailing your list.

1) Take notice of your unsuccessful sends. These are the e-mails that bounce.  Bounced emails, also known as undeliverable messages, are those messages that, for whatever reason, were not successfully received by the intended recipient.

There are bounces that happen or occur because the server was busy at that time but can still be delivered at another time.  There are also bounces because the inbox of the recipient is full at that time.  There are those bounce messages that are simply undeliverable forever.  The reason for this is that it may be an invalid email address, a misspelled email address, or an email address that was abandoned and erased already.

Manage your list by putting markings on those that bounce.  Erase an email account from your list so you have accurate statistics and records as to how many are actually receiving your mail.  You may also want to check the spellings of your email addresses in your list.  One common mistake is when an N instead of an M is placed in the .com area.

2) Always provide an unsubscribe feature on your site and an unsubscribe link in your e-mails.  When someone in your list files a request to be unsubscribed, always take that request seriously.  If you don’t take them off your list and keep sending them your e-mails, you are now sending them spam mail.

When you are reported as a spammer, you and your business can get into a lot of trouble.  You can be reported to the authorities and maybe blacklisted by many Internet Service Providers.  You will lose a lot of subscribers this way and many more potential subscribers.

3) Do not provide pornographic or shocking and disturbing content in your newsletters.  It is hard to decipher the age of the recipient and many complaints may stem from these.  Controversial issues also are to be avoided to not be branded by your subscribers.  Stick to the nature of your site and business.

Always remember these tips so you can have a healthy relationship with your subscribers as well as staying within the boundaries of what is allowed in sending e-mails to an opt-in list.

Until next time…

Follow me on Twitter!

Ed

What Does It All Mean?

Have you ever stopped for a moment and thought about the progression of information technology (namely, The Internet and Computing)?

If anyone has any doubts about where the future of their business lies, just watch this:

 

 

Comments?  Would love to hear what you think. Click the comment link below the Social Bookmark links and sound off.

Until next time!

twitter

 

Ed

 

Updates Without Your Permission

Holy cow!  One of the two monsters of the Internet is at it again.  For all of our newer clients who have not followed my thought processes over the years as to the “Two Monsters” I so lovingly refer to, they are “Google” and “Microsoft”.

 

Microsoft has begun patching files on Windows XP and Vista without users’ knowledge, even when the users have turned off auto-updates!

 

In recent days, Windows Update (WU) started altering files on users’ systems without displaying any dialog box to request permission. The only files that have been reportedly altered to date are nine small executables on XP and nine on Vista that are used by WU itself. Microsoft is patching these files silently, even if auto-updates have been disabled on a particular PC.

 

It’s surprising that these files can be changed without the user’s knowledge. The Automatic Updates dialog box in the Control Panel can be set to prevent updates from being installed automatically. However, with Microsoft’s latest stealth move, updates to the WU executables seem to be installed regardless of the settings — without notifying users.

 

When users launch Windows Update, Microsoft’s online service can check the version of its executables on the PC and update them if necessary. What’s unusual is that people are reporting changes in these files although WU wasn’t authorized to install anything.

 

For users who elect not to have updates installed automatically, the issue of consent is crucial. Microsoft has apparently decided, however, that it doesn’t need permission to patch Windows Updates files, even if you’ve set your preferences to require it.

 

To make matters even stranger, when I search on Microsoft’s Web site, there is no information at all on the stealth updates.  Let’s say you wished to voluntarily download and install the new WU executable files when you were, for example, reinstalling a system.  You’d be hard-pressed to find the updated files in order to download them.  As of this writing, you either get a stealth install or nothing.

 

Microsoft appears to have no malicious intent in patching them. However, writing files to a user’s PC without notice (when auto-updating has been turned off) is behavior that’s usually associated with hacker Web sites.  The question being raised in discussion forums is, “Why is Microsoft operating in this way?”

 

It’s important to note that there’s seems to be nothing harmful about the updated files themselves.  There are no reports of software conflicts and no reason to remove the files (which WU apparently needs in order to access the latest patches).  My biggest gripe is the mechanism Microsoft is using to perform its patching, and how this mechanism might be used by the software giant in the future.

 

On another note pertaining to Microsoft and their updates, Microsoft patched four vulnerabilities this month, but you’re still not entirely safe.

 

There’s a dangerous unpatched vulnerability, and the bad guys are actively exploiting it.  Until Microsoft releases a fix for the severe vulnerability involving Visual Basic, guard your systems against files that have a .vbp (Visual Basic Project) extension.

 

We considered putting a server-wide block on incoming email that contained a .vbp file attachment, but taking that step would keep you from running any legitimate VB projects.  So instead, I’m just sending you a MAJOR CAUTION FLAG to NOT open any attachments that may find their way to your in-box that has a .vbp extension unless you are absolutely, positively, without any shadow of a doubt, sure of who sent it to you, and that whomever sent it is free of any infections in their Visual Basic programming.

 

Finally… some readers last week expressed concerns about the recommended resource I referred you to (Secunia) to scan your system for outdated files, wondering about it’s safety.  Let me emphasize, the scan is safe, it is free, and can take you a couple of steps further along in the “Protect Your PC and Data at All Costs” goal.

 

Since their privacy policy seems to be hidden on their site, I did a little digging and found it (for those who even care)… and it can be found here:

https://psi.secunia.com/?page=privacy

 

If you had problems running the scan on your system for some reason (a few select users apparently encountered errors), it may be due to you either having major system files out of date, cookies disabled, or a couple of other things that I am not going to get in to in this post.  My only suggestion is, try it again, and also sign up for their software update reminder service.  It too is free, and they will not spam you or sell your address to any third parties.

 

I ran my system through their scanners again yesterday, (only a week after updating everything the first time) and found two more outdated applications that need to be updated to prevent vulnerabilities.  So again, I encourage you to bookmark their site, and make it a weekly part of your PC Maintenance to scan your system for outdated applications.

http://secunia.com/software_inspector/

 

That’s it for today!  Be safe, and have a great weekend.

 

Ed