Ubertor Real Estate Blog

I have mentioned in the past that we work hard to ensure our system follows Google Webmaster Guidelines. Most times that does not mean a lot to our clients as they don’t understand what the guidelines are or how they effect their website. I received an email this morning from a client in Sooke that recognised the value of our system and how effective it is within Google.

“Just thought I’d drop you a quick note with some feedback. I am really impressed with the service I have received so far, and with how easily my new site was indexed by Google. There is hardly any content on it yet and I was already easily found on several searches I ran. On my old site, I spent countless hours trying to decipher the Google guidelines - with Ubertor I didn’t have to do anything. Thanks a lot and keep up the good work.

-Tim Ayres - Royal LePage Coast Capital Realty www.sellingsooke.ca

Curious about Google’s Webmaster Guidelines? Here are the design guidelines:
- Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
- Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
- Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
- Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
- Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images.
- Make sure that your TITLE tags and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.
- Check for broken links and correct HTML.
- If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.
- Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

If you have any questions about these, please feel free to contact us.

As I have mentioned in the past the Ubertor real estate agent website system is completely integrated with Google Analytics. Actually, we were integrated with Google Analytics when it was Urchin and not part of the Google Empire. If you have not opened your free Google account to watch the stats on your website, check out this quick video about Google Analytics as it will show you why you should be using this stats program. (VIDEO)

A few months ago I wrote about Google’s new feature in their Google Maps product that allows you to create your own custom map. A few of our clients have taken this opportunity to create a map for their website that breaks down their niche market area. Here are 2 examples of what can be done with this Google feature.

Google is expanding its empire into universities - with entire campus e-mail networks switching over to using Google’s e-mail service. Ubertor’s company email address were switched to Google’s Gmail back in June of 2006 when we were invited to become part of the Gmail Hosted beta test. We love it!

- Arizona State University, with 65,000 students did it.
- Linköpings University, (Sweden) with 26,000 students did it.
- Trinity College, (Dublin) with 20,000 students did it.
(hat tip)

Have you thought about making the change? Maybe you should.

Interested in learning more? Check out the next Real Estate Meetup on July 9th 2007 as the topic is “Using Free Google Applications to enhance your business”.

Learn from two of Ubertor’s team members about the latest Google tools that are available to you and your business. Rodney and Derek will discuss how these tools can be used, how Ubertor uses them and their unique benefits. Want to learn more about Google tools? specifically:

- Google Docs (Word)
- Google Spreadsheets (Excel)
- Google Calendar
- Google Mail (Gmail)
- Google Talk

Learn why Google’s new suite of web applications can increase collaboration and productivity for you and your team!

RSVP Here

Google has rolled out a new street level view to their Google Maps system. It actually lets you take a look around at street level so that you can see a sort of 3D view of a specific area. They have only photographed New York, Denver, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Miami but I’m sure more cities will be done soon. Check it out here. You can zoom around on the image, push it left and right as well as navigate down the street. What’s next? Live video from every street corner?
More here, here, here and here.

The Ubertor agent website software is integrated with Google Analytics and is a very powerful tool in watching and analyzing your website. If you have not added Google Analytics to your website yet, now is the time as their system has just been upgraded.

Check out the Google Analytics Blog to review the new changes.

Would you like someone to setup Google Analytics for you? RealtySupport.ca will do it for you for a small charge.

The Freakonomics guys have their say on the real estate market and the effects of Google. It will be interested to see where Google is going with their real estate related tools. Here is an interesting comments from the Freakonomics blog:

Google and the other big players have a very long term view of this service, while the everyday realtor doesn’t think more than 45 days out.
Combine the different business goals with increased competition and a poor market and we have a really fun drama starting to unfold.

hat tip: Jim Duncan

Many clients call me asking why they can’t find their website when they search a specific phrase in Google. I always ask them, well do you write about that phrase in your website?

If not, why do you think Google will know what your website is about.

Want to know the keyword density of your website? Add your domain name here:

You will see a Keyword Cloud.
A Keyword Cloud is a visual depiction of keywords used on a website, keywords having higher density are depicted in a larger fonts. Ideally your main keywords should appear in larger fonts at the start of the cloud.

Keyword Density is the percentage of occurrence of your keywords to the text in the rest of your web page.
It is important for your main keywords to have the correct keyword density to rank well in Search Engines.

Don’t like what you find?

Here are 4 things you can do to change the results:
1. start blogging about the keyword phrase (ie. Want to be found under “Portland Condos for Sale” then start writing about “Portland Condos for Sale”.

2. update your home page content to be more specific. Long copy works well. Check out www.ianwatt.ca
, he does this well

3. ensure your website is tied into Google Sitemaps (ask Ubertor Client Service Team for more information)

4. add a new page on your website specifically focused on the keyword phase that your interested in

hat tip: realstock

The official Google Blog announced a new feature to the Google Maps system that enables anyone to create a custom map for their website.

from the Google Blog - “Map-making: So easy a caveman could do it”

My Maps, a new feature that makes it quick and easy to create your own custom Google Maps just by pointing and clicking. You can add placemarks, draw lines and shapes, and embed text, photos and videos — all using a simple drag and drop interface. Your map automatically gets a public URL that you can share with your friends and family, or you can also publish your map for inclusion in Google Maps search results and for use on your real estate web site.

Why does this matter to you?

- you could create a Google map of all the restaurants in your farm area
- show where every loft building is
- map out the dog parks in a certain neighbourhood

There is so much more you can do. It took me about 5 minutes to create a map of a couple of restaurants in the Yaletown area of downtown Vancouver. You can see the map I created here.

Want to know how to make a map for your real estate agent website? Click Here to follow Google’s easy to follow instructions.

UPDATE - CNN writes about “Googling your Date”

Google your name! What do you find?

This is an important thing to do. Your clients and potential clients are “Googleing ” you - don’t you think you should know what they are finding?

Here are a few examples:

I started by Googleing myself (Stephen Jagger) and found the Ubertor blog, my Meetup.com profile, one of my personal websites, a few Meetup.com groups that I’m part of and the Yankee Blog Swap that I took part in a few months ago.

I Googled “Kris Berg” and found her blog, her website, a blog she contributes to and a few music references.

I Googled “Marty Pospischil” and found his website, a couple of his niche web sites, a blog article about him and a few other references to him.

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Don’t like what you found? Quickest way to change it is update (or create) your profile in some popular social networking websites. Start with meetup.com, upcoming.org, activerain.com and linkedin.com. Update your profile by adding some pictures, biography, testimonials, etc. Give it a few weeks and the Google yourself again.