Ubertor Real Estate Blog

The guys over at sellsius point out a couple of fun tools to play with. The first one gives you the ability to spell anything using letters found in flickr. If you don’t like the look of the letter the system chose for you click on it and the system will try again. Here is what I made:

The other tool uses satellite images of building from Google Maps to create your letters. This one is a little less flexibility as you can’t change the letters that they provide, but it is still fun. Below, all of the letters are actually buildings or intersections:

Are you writing good quality blog posts in your website?
Would you like to learn how to drive more traffic to your website using these blog posts?

You can start by adding a link to your blog post and a summary of your article to websites like reddit.com and digg.com. Both are massive social news websites where the web site’s community “votes” for your article. The more people that vote for your article the higher up your post will rise on their website which will increase the traffic to your website. Give it a try. Write a quality blog post and then submit it to digg.com or reddit.com. Then watch your stats program to see the traffic spikes.

The real estate version of digg.com and reddit.com is realestatevoices.com. I wrote about their website a few months ago and it is definitely becoming a force within the online real estate world. Add your articles here as well. As it takes only a few moments to do it, but the exposure that your website can gain is outstanding.

Niki Scevak, the founder of realestatevoice.com has kindly included me in their “community leaders” section of their home page. A small list of great bloggers are included in the community leaders section and I feel privileged to be added to the list.

Need some ideas to write about? Here are some of our agents most recent posts:
John Jennings gives an update of the real estate market on the North Shore
Joel Carcone writes about his participation in the negotiations course at Capilano College
Jim Duncan gives a little description of his new listing in Charlottesville as it is “secluded yet close to everything”
Steve Church talks more about the WhatcomOpenHouses.com website that is new to the Bellingham area
Marty Pospischil shows pictures from his first annual client skating party (watch the slide show and you will see me)
Kris Berg updates us on the San Diego real estate market

UPDATE———————————————-
I just saw this on Athol Kay’s blog (who is not a client of ours - yet) but it shows some great results using the above websites:

Thanks to Ubertor

Just a quick shout out for Ubertor Real Estate Blog’s idea of submitting posts to Reddit.com. I have tried sumbitting to Digg and Real Estate Voices (and still will of course) but my Google vs NAR post on Reddit just went crazy.

My entire monthly readership DOUBLED yesterday with about 90% of all traffic coming from Reddit.com. In part it’s so dramatic because I’m still a new blog, but even so, very noticeable upswing in readership.

Thanks.

Athol Kay

Blogs Don’t Work! - I hear this all the time. Always from someone who is not blogging, or has never tried it. Well, I conducted a basic experiment the other day with a client and I wanted to show you the results as it speaks to why blogging is so powerful.

I was in Bellingham Washington last week doing some presentations and meeting with a few clients. I had an opportunity to sit down with Steve Church at the Muljat Group and discuss his website and blogging efforts. Steve is an excellent client of ours, very supportive, loves technology, always trying new things and open to new ideas. We were talking about his website (www.stevechurch.com) and how blogging can help him target terms in the search engines that he wants to go after.

I preach to our clients that your website can only be found in the search engines if your website contains text about the subject that you want to be found under.

Steve Church and I ran a little experiment.

I did some quick research and found a term that had been searched in Google 6 times in the last 24 hours, but zero websites targeting that term. The term was - muljat groupbellingham (with the words, “group” and “bellingham” together)

I logged into Steve’s website and wrote a short blog post about the Muljat Group and Bellingham Real Estate. Nothing special, just wanted to show how this could work.

Now, keep in mind, when you searched “muljat groupbellingham” in Google, Yahoo or MSN nothing came up. But my researched showed that at least 6 people were searching that misspelled term.

Not even 1 week later, if you search “muljat groupbellingham” in Google, Yahoo or MSN, Steve Church’s website comes up.

Now, I know this is an easy term to target as there was no one targeting the term. But keep in mind, no one, not even Steve Church was coming up when that term was searched in the search engines. Now that Steve has added the simple blog post, he is coming up under that term. It proves, that content is king and you can be found under the terms that you want. The more competition you have going for a specific keyword term will make it harder - but it can be done.

Blogging is a very effective way to gain exposure within the search engines. KEEP IN MIND, that blogging is not meant to be a bunch of posts targeting keywords in the search engines. Write for your readers first, then do a quick review for the search engines. If you write about who you are, the areas you operate in, the market conditions, etc you will be found in the search engines for those types of terms.

I have been speaking with the team over at the realestatechannel.ca about their upcoming launch and the services that they will be providing. They have been kind enough to give me a sneak peek at their website (small image included here) as well as show me some of the videos they have created. Their product looks great and it will be an interesting addition to the Vancouver Real Estate Market. If you are looking to learn more about what they do and want to take advantage of some pre launch pricing, give them a call.

Here is what their President sent over:

Introducing a New Real Estate Channel - For a New Generation of Buyers

An innovative Vancouver based company Pacific Real Estate Media Ltd. is announcing the launch of Vancouver’s only exclusive Real Estate Channel set to air on November 28th, 2006!
Independent TV, Broadband & Wireless based platforms, broadcasting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on the Novus Network Channel 80, and online at www.realestatechannel.ca
- Exclusive Property Video Showcase
- Specialty Programming
- Personal, Business & Neighborhood Profiles
- Video/360 Tours Archive online
- Full creative control on Personal advertisement

The Real Estate Channel offers an innovative range of affordable advertising solutions tailored to your specific needs. We are currently offering promotion rates as low as $88/month for a property listing. Please email info@realestatechannel.ca or call us at 604-671-4827 for more information.
.
Real Estate Channel
Pacific Real Estate Media Ltd.

Some interesting links:

- Pittsburgh Homes Daily puts out a challange (Golbetatselaer Contest)

- “Engineering feat” - Vancouver has the first Urban Costco

- Core of downtown Bellevue to get free wireless Web access

- Forecast predicts price gains likely to continue

Dexter Realty’s Tom Everitt emailed me about a new website that he created “…that exists solely for anyone who’s been involved in a real estate transaction of any kind to blow off some steam, share the pain or have a laugh at someone else’s expense.” There are quite a few funny stories on the site and it is worth taking some time to check it out - truerealestatestories.com. Tom has a hardcover book coming out that is going to include some of these stories.

A funny take on bloggers. Take a moment to watch the video

Thanks to Sellsius finding it

Blogging does not work!
Blogging is a fad!
No one is blogging!

Hmm, then why would there be a need for a Bloggers Lounge at National Association of Realtors Conference in New Orleans?

Blogging works, it is catching on, why aren’t you blogging?

Want to learn more… give us a call, come to our training, check out a Meetup, email us or ask our live chat.

I was chatting with Tom and Anita at the last Vancouver Real Estate Professionals Tech Meetup the other day and we had a great chance to talk about real estate technology as well as what is out and what is coming soon. It was a great opportunity to catch up and listen to what others were saying about the market. I just received a great email from Tom that included a testimonial about our products and services and I wanted to take a moment to post it here:

November 10, 2006

Hi Steve,

Just wanted to thank you for your ongoing help with our Ubertor websites.
As Realtors, we don’t have time to invest in website development and maintenance.
Ubertor is a great solution that offers quick and easy functionality with just the right level of custom features for our needs.

What we appreciate most from you and the Ubertor team is the level of support, quick response, and your dedication to training. We regularly learn something new and valuable from you that we put to immediate use to improve site exposure, content and overall performance.

We’ve attended presentations from other website designers all claiming to have the ultimate solution to Internet marketing, including the so-called VOWs. None have come close to the level of features, know-how, support, and ease of doing business offered by Ubertor / Combustion Labs.

We are big fans! Keep up the good work.

Anita Schmitt and Tom Davis, Realtors – Royal LePage Northshore
www.anitaschmitt.com www.furrycreekrealestate.ca

The Ubertor programming team made a few adjustments to the photos section of your listings this week. You will notice that the interface has changed a little, they have added more functionality so that you can more easily move the order of your photos around. Plus, now you can add 5, 10 or 20 photos at one time - making it easier to add as many photos as you need to your listings. Watch for more features next week.