3 Tips to Improve Your Search Rankings

With costs rising it’s nice to be able to do some work yourself and see the improvements.  Getting your real estate website to dominate the search engines is the process of Search Engine Optimization.  You can do most of this work yourself, and the items you can’t do, you can get a web developer to help you with.  Doing this work yourself (and managing others) will save you thousands annually.

Here are 3 tips that you can do yourself to start climbing to the top of the search engines.

1. Create Unique Web Content – Share your expertise with the world.  You are an area expert so let people know about it by writing up detailed information.  Let people know about neighborhood boundaries, quiet streets, home sizes and more.  A page can be as simple as 300-400 words which takes less than 30 minutes to create.  Keep in mind a professional copywriter can easily charge $100-$200 for a single page so you are saving some serious money by taking the time to write your own pages.
2. Create a Sitemap – A sitemap is a simple list of the pages on your website.  Create this page and make sure it is easily found on your website.  For bonus points (and major benefits) create an XML Sitemap for your Real Estate website.  You don’t have to do this on your own as you can ask your web hosting company or your local web developer to do this task for you.  It’s a quick task that takes less than 20 minutes and has huge benefits each and every month.
3. Stick with it – One of the best ways to do well in the search engines is to consistently update your website.  Put together a simple plan (can be as simple as 1 new page month) of what you are going to do on your website each and every month.  Get someone to hold you accountable to ensure you stick with it.

Most of all, have fun!  Getting to the top is fun and will help you generate a large number of leads for your real estate business.  When you want more free courses, or you want a online real estate training we are happy to help.

Services for Pam Davis

Pam Davis served this community for many years.  Her tireless dedication to the success of the real estate community will be missed.  We will be able to honor her memory at her services on Monday, December 15th @2pm.

Location informationis as follows:

Bay Shore Community Congregational Church

5100 East The Toledo (corner of Granada)

Long Beach, California

Reception to follow services.

12 ways to get 3 new deals in the next 45 days

Let’s face it adding more transactions, helping more people, and getting out of survival mode is everyone’s goal. I have always heard that when you are ready the right person will appear to help you.

Just over 4 years ago my brother and I met our coach, Todd Bates, and his systems along with his coaching have helped us continue to grow our business and move forward regardless of what is happening in the market.

Todd is coming to Long Beach on December 11th and will be coming to the training center at Cardinal Pacific training center.

This will be a rare opportunity to get to see Todd Live and in person. His events fill up fast and his information is extremely well laid out and he will share how he himself took 30 listings a month every month regardles of the market, on a shoe string budget, and with nearly no one to help him.

This is an event that can’t be missed. You can get all of the details at:

www.3NewDealsinLA.com

Help Rebuild Long Beach One Home at a Time

Raise your hand if you have heard of Rebuilding Long Beach or visited the website at www.RebuildingTogetherLongBeach.org. Ok if you haven’t then you are missing out on a great organization that is literally helping people in Long Beach who can’t afford to help themselves and we sometimes can’t fix things themselves because of disabilities.

This group is the local version of “Extreme Makeover” without the TV crews, giant budget, and TV Ratings. They are out doing the work to help improve people’s lives and they need some help so that this 100% volunteer group can keep helping people.

First task visit their website at www.RebuildingTogetherLongBeach.org and then let’s look at a few ways that we can help this very worthy cause.

• Donate Via Pay Pal at their website – http://www.rebuildingtogetherlongbeach.org/give.html
• Volunteer – They are always in need of people to help them repair homes and carry out their mission.
• Sign up for Ralphs card and enter their number of 83877 – http://www.rebuildingtogetherlongbeach.org/ralphs.html
• Link to their website – Make sure that people know who they are and send more traffic to them.
• If you know someone in the large scale media let them know about this group – Press will help them help more people so let’s make sure people know about them.

I encourage everyone to visit their website at http://www.rebuildingtogetherlongbeach.org/index.html. You will find more detail about what they do, who they help, and how you can take part in changing peoples lives in your very own backyard.

Voting Begins Today for PWR Board Members

Today everyone should be receiving an e-mail if you are part of PWR about voting for directors for next year. It is important that everyone take time to vote as these directors shape the rules by which all of us work by. I like to say that I vote just so I can complain later if things don’t work out.

In fact it would be great if a very own member of our broker preview won a spot on the board and we all have the opportunity to make that happen. Now this is an unsolicited endorsement of the candidate of Thom Colby. Our very own Thom Colby is running for a 1 year term.

I have personally been on two committees with Thom at PWR and I have to say that his ability to handle issues and get people working in the same and positive direction is amazing. Take the time to visit:

http://www.pwr.net/

or click in the e-mail that you visited today and make sure to vote for Thom Colby!

Geoff McIntosh shares on Technology

Geoff McIntosh, Broker/Owner of Main Street Realtors, shared technology with the broker tour this morning.  Everything from how quickly technology is changing our world to to using online systems to manage transactions.

Here are some of the highlights:

•   Online Transaction Mangement using companies like planetre.com or Relay.
• Did you know… YouTubeVideo

Dick Gaylord @ Long Beach Broker Preview

Richard “Dick” Gaylord, president of the National Association of Realtors ® will be speaking at our Long Beach Broker preview meeting.  Listen to his message on how hard working Realtors will still have wonderful success in this real estate client.

• Flier for Long Beach Broker Preview – Dick Gaylord

Buyer Sues Real Estate Broker

Article from the New York Times.

Feeling Misled on Home Price, Buyers Sue Agent
By DAVID STREITFELD
Many resentful buyers may seek redress from the agents who found them a home and arranged its purchase.

Special Guest Speaker – THOM COLBY – PWR 2008 MLS Committee Chair

This is a great networking opportunity to meet other local agents (and affiliates too!) – bring your property flyers and pitch your listings.  We look forward to seeing you!!

 We meet at 8:30 a.m. (Sharp!) at Khoury’s Restaurant located at 110 North Marina Drive, Long Beach, CA 90803 (in the banquet from just behind the Salon by the Sea).

Hope to see you this Thursday!

Long Beach Broker Tour Bulletin

Find out what is going on at the Long Beach Broker Tour.   In December we were working hard and made a big push on the canned food drive to help out the Long Beach Rescue Mission.  Here is a Bulletin from our December 6th meeting so you can see what you have been missing.

Long Beach Broker Tour Bulletin December 6th