A collection of ideas, useful sites, tools and tips
for my real estate colleagues in Silicon Valley and elsewhere 
by
 Mary Pope-Handy

How is Your WebSite or Blog Performing?

How Good is Your Site? Find Out!

Google's PageRank system is a really helpful measure of success on the web. I blogged about it on my Active Rain blog, What is Your Site's PageRank?  A good place to check your PR (and that of your competitors) is here: PRChecker.

You can run a free analysis of your website by using  Website Grader. The site will ask for your contact info but it's well worth it. This is a fairly fast, comprehensive analysis of how your site is performing. Better still, you can compare yours to a couple of competitors to see how yours stacks up. I highly recommend this site.

Meta Tag Analyzer - check your tags!

 

Who's Linking to Your Site?

Here's a tip for your website - check the links attached to your site (s). If you go to Google, you can see who's linking to you (and bringing you traffic and moving you up in the search engines) by using the word "link" with a colon, followed by a space and the site you want to check.

Example, on Google, type: Link: yourdomain.com
  

For instance, if I want to check the number of links to my oldest site, www.PopeHandy.com , I would type in     Link: PopeHandy.com    and the result is here:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=Link%3A+PopeHandy.com
and I can see that there are about 1300 links coming and going.

Web Tools and Free Stuff

Finding folks (even renters): www.ZabaSearch.com
Free Websites for real estate professionals:  www.Point2Agent.com
Free places to blog: www.RealTown.com, www.ActiveRain.com (invitation to join AR link),  www.Blogger.com, www.Typepad.com
Free Newsletter to email: The California Association of Realtors has a free newsletter that members can email to their clients, did you know that? Visit www.CAR.org and click on the link on the left side for Client Direct, which is the name of the newsletter.
www.Joeann.com

Education and Books

No Blogger Left Behind: Classes offered periodically - check the web for scheduling 

Epro Certification Training: $25 Discount when signing up through me
(no date – this is a course you do on your computer at your own pace)

Certified Residential Specialist courses - these are offered locally and all over the country, feature great education and an incredibly reasonable price for the content. (The CRS designation is, in my opinion, the most valuable of all available desginations - it represents great classroom work and also a lot of transactions). Each year, CRS members and others meet for a great educational seminar called Sellabration that happens the end of January (usually in Vegas but in 2008 it's in Hawaii). Extremely worthwhile.

Book: The Real Estate Technology Guide (by the guys who created the epro course), $24.95  

Book: The Rainmaker Guide to Online Marketing (by the guys who created the epro course), $28.00 

Book: The Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller (but not just for KW agents) - available everywhere.

Book: Get The Best Deal When Selling Your Home In Silicon Valley (shameless plug for book by Mary Pope-Handy and Ken Deshaies) 

Virtual Assistants

eRainmaker.com (drip email campaigns)
GooderGroup.com (Resources)

IVAA.org (International Virtual Assistants Association)

IAVOA.com (International Association of Virtual Office Assistants)

REVANetwork.com (Real Estate Virtual Assistant Network)

IREAA.com (formerly CyberStarVA)
www.RealEstateCoach.com
www.RealEstateChampions.com
www.ByReferralOnly.com
www.GoStarPower.com

News Sources

www.RealtyTimes.com  Have your speakers turned down - they blast a video that blares as soon as you visit.
www.InmanNews.com  (subscription but free to read that day's news in AM and PM)
http://www.Realtor.org/  (a lot of this info is free, great resource)
www.DeadlineNews.com  (stories by Brokerick Perkins, also compiles info from many sources)
http://www.realtor.org/rmodaily.nsf  Realtor Magazine Online (news and info - more than what is in the print edition)

Stuff You Should Do

In addition to time blocking, prospecting, following up, and eating 5 servings of fruits and veggies each day, Google yourself and Google your listings. Then Google the areas where you work and sell and Google your competition.  

What happens when you search for your own name on the web? Can anyone find you? If a client wants your phone number, will he or she go through the maze at your company's site? Probably not. Most likely, that person will put your name on a search engine and hope to immediately find you and your phone number. Don't be hard to find!!  There are two EASY and NO COST places to make sure that you are found. One is to get on Active Rain (invitation link to join Active Rain) and another is to list yourself on Linked In. There's no need to do a pay-per-click, these sites have enough Google Juice for you!

Why Google your listings?  First, you want to see what your clients see: is everything where it's supposed to be? Are photos all showing up? Check it out. Secondly, you want to know if your listing is appearing with bad information. I once had a listing that was previously listed by three different agents and some of that "old stuff" was still out there: Google Garbage! Worst of all was a higher price that was not correct!! 

Photo Fixes for Websites and Blogs

If you blog, you need photos (they don't hurt your static websites, either) and graphics. The easiest approach it to shoot your own and then crop and adjust them. If you really need stock photos and don't want to pay for them, try www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net. Selection is limited but you can't beat the price!

A very cool photo tool is www.Picnik.com. It's no cost and lets you do tons of neat things to your photos online, such as adding drop shadows and creating collages such as the one shown here, which I did. No registration required!

Downloadable, very useable software that's also free comes from Picasa, a Google tool. Find it at www.Picasa.com.

And if you are using a PC with Windows, don't forget Paint. You can import a PDF into paint and easily convert it to a jpg file. Or sketch out something and save as a pdf. I've done this and while it's not elegant, it's a good way to convey your information.

Want to create a graphic image for your site or blog? 

There are many free tools available (such as Paint and Picnik.com).  I blogged about how to create this type of thing on Active Rain and show how you can do this easily and at no cost:
http://activerain.com/blogsview/757597/Creating-Simple-Graphics-for-Your-Blogs-An-Easy-How-To