Realtor Websites – Real Web Results Blog

The most valuable thing you have is your time and how that time is spent will determine your wealth, health, and happiness.

Ever since the inception of the web, there have been many opportunities to participate in activities that are a waste of time. I first wrote about this long before there was such a thing as blogs – but the issues were the same. Back in September 1999 I wrote an article titled “Get off the computer and back to work!” in my newsletter that was subscribed to by thousands of Realtors at the time – the forerunner of this blog.

Spending your time maintaining a real estate blog at one of the many blog communities may just be a colossal waste of time. Yes, I know that statement is politically incorrect but I did not say blogging was necessarily a waste of time – just the reasons most agents give for frequently writing blog posts at blogging communities may no longer be valid.

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In addition to having my own web server, I use the services of over a dozen web hosts and in some cases have multiple accounts with each. I have usually done a bit of research prior to signing up with a new hosting company and have generally had few problems until recently.

It seems that the barriers to entering the web hosting business have lowered to the point where almost anyone can now set up shop as a web hosting company and present the appearance of a large, stable, and experienced web host – even though they may have entered the business only a few months ago and be flying by the seat of their pants. Continue Reading »

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From time to time I hear from Realtors who are concerned that if they link from their site to outside resources they are just creating a way for visitors to leave their site. I used to hear this concern more than I do now as in the past this fear was widely planted by some template companies who were trying to attach a benefit to the framed sites they were offering. Now most template companies, in attempts to make their products more search-engine-friendly, have stopped using frames (on their main entry page at least) so they are not promoting this “benefit” as much as they used to.

When Realtors do express concern over linking out from their site, here is my usual response… Continue Reading »

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Don’t you hate spam? I used to receive over 1000 spam emails a day and it used to drive me crazy. I would wake up in the morning to find 600 in my inbox waiting for me – now there are just 6.

The best part is that stopping all of that spam costs nothing – it is absolutely free! Continue Reading »

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Realtors are increasingly discovering the world of blogs and are beginning to use them to convey information about themselves and the real estate market in their area.

A blog is really just a web page you can post content to even if you do not have any web development skills.

A Realtor can use a blog to post listings, real estate news, interest rates, and it can be branded and publicized to reflect a local real estate market to attract regular visitors. A blogger just needs to find something good to write about everyday, but can be short.

Blogs are easy to set up and there are tons of good free blogging software out there, like blogger.com which hosts this blog.

Now there is a brand new search-engine-friendly directory that lists real estate blogs and also blogs of industries affiliated with and servicing the real estate industry. The directory is brand new – in fact this blog is the first one to be listed. You can find it at http://www.real-estate-blogs.com.

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I was just going through some of my website statistics and was surprised to find that over 30 percent of visitors are now using a browser other than Microsoft Internet Explorer. This is a very large increase in the past year and it is important that website owners and webmasters understand that websites do not display the same in all browsers.

If you design your website (especially if you use a Microsoft product to do so) and never check to see how it displays in some of the more popular non-Microsoft browsers like Firefox and Netscape you may be interested to know that your website may look horrible to 30% of your website visitors. In some cases it looks so bad that visitors will leave immediately.

It is probably not a good idea to be turning off a rapidly increasing number of website visitors!

If you only check your site in one other browser -I would suggest you do so in Firefox which is available for free at http://www.mozilla.org/. Firefox and Netscape display pretty much the same as far as I can tell and those two browser’s make up the lion’s share of MSIE’s competition.

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Where I live, this week has been Spring Break and the kids are off school and in need of activities to keep them occupied and out of mischief. So, I figured it would be a good time for my pre-teen son and I to head up to the family camp along the shores of the Winnipeg River in North West Ontario and take care of some work that needed to be done there.

The lengthy drive was quiet and peaceful – because “modern times” allowed my son to watch DVDs on my laptop the whole way (with head phones on as a bonus for dad!). Once we arrived at our destination, we found that there was still a couple of feet of wet snow in the bush so had to put on snowshoes and make the trek through the bush on a trail we shared with deer carrying our gear with backpacks and hands full. It took two trips to pack all our gear in – You would be amazed at how heavy a notebook computer becomes when carrying it through two feet of snow! Continue Reading »

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When building a website it is always a good idea to look at other successful sites and see what they have done so you can find clues as to what you can do to be just as successful. Some decide that the easy solution is just to copy some of the content or duplicate the meta tags. Those that try the unscrupulous and illegal route will be very disappointed!

It is not that there may be a risk of being caught – it is 100% certain that you will be caught. Not only will you eventually be caught and face the potential embarrassment of having your crime publicized throughout the internet where anyone searching for your name and/or business will find that you are an unethical crook – the tactic does not work. Continue Reading »

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Now when you visit this Blog you may also add yourself to the new Real Estate Directory! The directory has search-engine-friendly pages of course and accepts entries for websites of Realtors, web designers, mortgage pros, SEOs, lawyers, appraisers, home inspectors – anyone associated with or servicing the real estate industry is welcome.

Category and sub-category suggestions are welcome – if I left out your category please let me know.

A reciprocal link is required and if you place that link on your site beforehand the software will list your site immediately. The sooner you submit the higher up on the page you will be – so why not do it now?

There is a link to the directory on pretty much every page of this Blog and it can be found in the “Resources” section at the bottom of the right hand column.

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Remember when you get hit the “send” button and not have to worry about your email reaching its destination? Remember when someone sent you an email you always received it unless they entered the wrong address?

Those days are long gone I’m afraid to say – killed by spammers. Not a day goes by when I hear that someone has been sending me email that I have not received and likewise for emails that I send. These missing emails are seldom found in a spam filter – at least not one that you or I can access. Rather they disappear into the ether – most likely stopped by an ISP or hosting company’s software.

That certainly devalues email and since email is such a big part of the internet – the incentive to use the internet as well. I understand Bill Gates is working on a solution to replace email – it can’t come soon enough.

From my own observations it seems that web mail has a better chance of getting thru than mail from an email program residing on your own computer – not because it is on your computer but because the email is not going thru your ISP and/or web host. Maybe it is a good thing that Gmail, Hotmail, and others are now offering better services for free. I may have to abandon using Outlook and Thunderbird and try using web mail full time.

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