We’re going to take a quick second to finish the series we we’re doing a couple of weeks ago because I don’t want to leave anyone in the dark.

Before we get into the last step (for this series) I want you to sit down and write several descriptions about what your site is about. Kinda like your keywords but more of a brief summary.

All there is left to do now that we are happy with our site/blog setup is to submit it to the search engines of your choice. Once your website is submitted it will be up to you to keep your website full of good content and keep the search engines coming back.

A good site to use when submitting your website to search engines is http://www.FreeWebSubmission.com This site lets you submit to multiple websites all at once and does a great job of it.

Just remember that because your website is submitted to search engines that doesn’t mean people will find it. It is mainly your job to keep your content good and to let people know what your blog is about and where they can find it through commenting on other blogs, emails and general socialization.

Have a great day,
Real Estate Technology Online

I know this blog has become more of a “news central” for the Blackberry Storm but that’s ok because I think you’re as excited as I am about its release. I got an e-mail about 2 days ago that said the release date will be November 21st 2008. That’s next Friday! YAY!

As you already know I will be first in line to pick mine up and do a blog post on the features of the phone and how I like it. Stay tuned and check back on the 21st of November.

Thanks,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

Hello again everyone,

I wouldn’t call myself an impatient person all the time. Only when there is something new I want. Like the Blackberry Storm. I have literally been bugging the poor Verizon people weekly to find out any information I can about the release date of the storm. When I ask “When does the storm come out?” I always get the answer “They don’t tell us that”.

Well today was a little different. I am currently in Orlando FL at the NAR convention 2008 and I ran into the big Verizon Wireless booth. When I asked the young lady behind the booth when the storm was being released she said…….”They don’t tell us that!” AHHH! It drives me crazy. I then went to another area of the NAR expo and found the actual Blackberry booth. I figured where better to get the information I need than from the source.

I approached another young lady at the Blackberry booth and asked her the same question. As she began to mutter the words “They don’t” I had to stop her and tell her my story. She gave me a sad look and handed me some pamphlets about the storm hoping to make me feel better. At this point I knew I had to pull out the big guns to get the info I needed. I started to ask her all kinds of technical questions about the storm like processor speeds, EVDO rev, storage capacity, OS capabilities etc. and finally she leaned over and whispered “There’s one here if you want to play with it.”

HOLY COW! There’s a storm at the convention and she is willing to let me play with it. FINALLY!! I obviously agreed so she took me behind a curtain behind the booth and handed me a real fully functional Blackberry Storm. I was in heaven. The phone is everything they said it will be.

She asked me not to take any pictures or videos of the phone because it was not even supposed to be at the NAR convention much less activated and turned on. So I did the reasonable thing and recorded a short video while she wasn’t looking. Below is a very short clip of me holding the final blackberry storm. I hope you enjoy it and from what I can tell this phone is going to take things up a notch.

Thanks,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

Part two in our series is going to ensure your website is “search engine compatible”. Now that we have discussed the keywords and key phrases you are going to use in part one we can actually go into the guts of the website by discussing how to keep search engines happy with your site.

The first area we have to look at is what are the search engines looking at? What makes a search engine dislike you? Search engines have small programs or “scripts” that run called robots. These robots search through your site looking at your “code” and “content”. Things that turn robots off are things like pop-ups, an over usage of pictures instead of text or all flash and no text content.

The key to keeping search engine bots happy is simply valuable easy to navigate content. Just be sure to keep your methods ethical and your content valuable. I tell people all the time that most search engines have gotten to the point where if your website truly deserves to be number one in the search result it will be.

Now for those of you that build your own site or have one built the following is for you. Make sure your “meta” tags are all relevant to your content and keywords. Always make sure your internal pages link back to your homepage so bots do not get lost or hit a dead end. Use external CSS whenever possible. If your using flash have a text version available for people without a flash player (iPhone users).

What this all comes down to in a nutshell is - the most important part of your website is how valuable and relevant your content is to the spectrum of visitors you are trying to appeal to. Like I said in step one the search engine world is a giant popularity contest and even if you have a sure fire way to become the most popular site on the net people will never consistently return if your content is no good and remember returning visitors shows Google that your content was worth coming back to.

PS - Our LIVE Real Estate Technology show will be aired Saturday 8pm instead of Sunday 8pm. We will be out of the country starting Sunday morning.

Have a greay day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

So you’ve seen Jeff Turners instructional videos and you’ve wondered to your self…”How does he capture his screen into a video like that?”

Well we have searched the internet universe up and down to bring you “Debut“. Debut is a free screen / video / audio capture software that can create very nice screen capture videos for your website or blog.

The features of Debut are listed below and you can read more and download the software from NCH Software

• Records video in many different file formats including .avi, .wmv, .flv, .asf .mpg, .3gp, .mp4, .mov and more
• Ability to record from:
  • Camera (webcam)
  • Video Input Sources with a USB Capture Device see here…
  • Screen. Almost anything you can see or play on your PC can be recorded.
• Records audio with the video (optional).
• Multiple video and audio encoder settings.
• Snap-shot saving feature.
• Text caption and timestamp features.
• Ability to adjust resolution and framerate of the output video.
• Color settings and video effects for the output video can be changed.
• Lets you record for set specified durations (h:mm:ss).
• When recording period is over, you can either stop recording or create a new recording and continue.
• Mirror recordings to a network or backup drive to keep your video files safe.
• Can be set to automatically send video via email once the recording is completed.
• Can automatically transmit video files via the internet using FTP.
• Find and play recordings ordered by name, date, format or size
• Ability to burn directly to DVD with Express Burn Plus.
• System wide hot-key assignment to control recording while working in other programs.
• Debut Video Recorder has an incredibly intuitive and easy to use interface.
• Compatible with BroadCam Streaming Video server to distribute your recording.

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

Today I got the chance to speak with Matt Fagioli about his innovative “blogging brokerage” and also about his technology panel at the upcoming NAR 2008 Expo.

Matt is a pioneer in the new “blogging brokerage” frontier and I couldn’t agree with this business model more. If you stand back and really look at what this type of brokerage is doing it’s a no brainer when someone asks what brokers will still be standing after this hard economic time.

We already know that almost 90% of people go to the internet first to buy/sell/invest in real estate. This makes a blogging brokerage perfect. The idea is that if you only have a website it’s going to be very difficult to stand against the larger brokerage companies when it comes to the internet, but if you have a blog where all of your agents can post topics about real estate in your area it shows an always evolving web presence that will always stand out among search engines.

If you would like to contact Matt Fagioli about Diamond Dwellings his email is matt@diamonddwellings.com

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

We’re going to get into our new series about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The video above is a brief summary from our live show last Sunday night (www.realestatetechnologyonline.com/live).

Before you ever get in front of a computer or meet with a web developer you have to grab a pen and paper to ask yourself a question.

Question 1 - What do I want my website to be found for? or What will people be searching for when they find my website?

That question will lead you into the first step of your SEO plan; “Keywords”. Search engines work by using what is called “robots” to search through the text and links of your web page to find certain repetitive keywords. After robots search your site they use your “keywords” to associate what your site is about to what people are looking for from the search engine.

Take your pad and pen and start to write down words or phrases that you want your site associated with. These phrases can be “real estate agents Denver” or “relocation specialist Denver ” really whatever you want to associate yourself with.

Now that you have your certain keywords/key phrases you’ll want to make sure these key terms are maximized by using the Google Adwords Tool. This tool will show you how to tune your key terms to get the most out of them.

Once you get to the tool type in your first key term such as “real estate agents in Denver”. My results show that on average 110 people search for that specific key term each month. Now looking further down at those results I can see that the search term “Denver real estate agent” is searched for on average of 40,500 times each month or “Denver real estate” is searched for on average 165,000 times each month. So just using that one tool I have tuned my key phrase to appeal to 165,000 people instead of only 110. That’s a huge difference.

We’ll that’s it for part one of SEO. Get settled down and find out what keywords / key phrases will work best for your site and maybe next we’ll actually start on the website.

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

Hello again everyone,

I’m here with my friend caffeine and we are very excited about how the text messaging widget has done in the “real estate industry”. It has been 4 days and we’ve had around 200 agents implement this widget into their website/blog. I really give all the credit to my three favorite websites/people (in no order).

-MyTechOpinion.com
-Agent Genius
-The Jeff Turner

Now that the widget craziness is over I can get back to my blog series about agent websites and can start the new series about SEO (search engine optimization). If you want the widget click here.

p.s. - I swear the text message in the video was not planned and if you were wondering about the greatest and most potent energy drink on the planet that was featured in my blog it was the Rockstar - Blue. (be careful with it)

Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

Get It Here!

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

“What in the world should I put on my website?” I get this question a lot and the first thing I always ask back is “What do you want your website to do for you?”. Amazingly this always has a way of puzzling real estate agents. They never seem to sit down and think what their website should so for them.

The first thing I think a website should do for you is generate leads. Generating leads is how you make your money so of course that should be priority one and maybe even the only priority. After that realization we then have to figure out do we want buyers, sellers or a little bit of both? Right now I am in a buyers market like most of the country so I have tuned my website to be more friendly to buyers, but still work well with sellers if needed.

By tuning my website I mean I have made it easier to acquire buyers over sellers. I did this by giving buyers the number one thing they want most - A PROPERTY SEARCH - this is they key to generating traffic to your site. You have to have a way for buyers and even sellers to search the current market. Now since I have that taken care of my next priority would be to pre-qualify these new buyers. This is done with a giant button that says “Get Pre-Qualified Here” and when the potential buyer fills out that short form there info is sent to my preferred lenders and the process begins.

Now for sellers I can provide and quick “Find out what your home is worth form” that will set me up to do a market analysis for them and hopefully lead into a listing if I want it. For the most part I am currently not trying to take on any new listings but I will if they present themselves.

Some quick features you may want to add are Videos, Text Messaging and a fun/open description about yourself. These things can add a lot to your site.

I’ll go over more in the video above but for now just remember to make your siute fun and useful while keeping it simple.

-Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online