BETTER THAN BEATS FOR 2018 Let’s face it, we’re all suckers for a good marketing campaign. The Beats by Dre headphones are a great example of a mediocre product finding stratospheric success through marketing. When Beats by Dre headphones hit the market, they mounted a huge campaign that starred none other than Dr. Dre…
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Many online shoppers are familiar with Black Friday but may not aware of Amazon Prime Day. Others think if they are not an Amazon Prime Member, the deals of Amazon Prime Day don’t apply to them. NOT TRUE! We dig deep to uncover the best deals and specials that Amazon has to offer. Because these…
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Google Sets July Deadline for HTTPS We are right around the corner from Google implementing a major change on what websites people visit. In July, if your website doesn’t have a security certificate—AKA HTTPS—you can expect to see your traffic drop like a brick. The search giant is pushing for a more secure Internet,…
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We address questions and concerns about for real-estate guest blogging. What is real-estate guest blogging (or posting)? Will it increase my real-estate website rank on Google? Is it a safe, “white-hat” SEO tactic? What is the process for real-estate guest posting? What changed in Google’s algorithm? We also cover what you should avoid when guest…
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Zillow Announces They Are Buying Homes Yes, you heard that right…Zillow will now be buying and selling homes. Similar to the process currently in place with online home purchasing sites like Offerpad, Zillow will no longer be only selling advertisements on real estate listings…THEY WILL BE THE BUYER AND SELLER OF HOMES. Zillow will roll…
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The Best Bargain in Real Estate Lead Generation Looks to be Drying Up… What is it and why is it dying? Real Estate Lead Generation For years now, we have been working on providing holistic real estate lead generation. Although we primarily provide SEO for REALTORS, our overall goal is to provide a…
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How Google Algorithm Updates Influence SEO One of the biggest “black boxes” in the history of mankind is the Google Algorithm. It is responsible for dictating how money flows across the internet. With Google being the dominate search engine and millions of searches taking place every month, who ranks on the first page for a…
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Local SEO For Real Estate We have been implementing SEO for real estate for almost 17 years now. Although we have our own internal processes for ranking real estate websites, Google is constantly changing. In the past, a part of our overall process for ranking a real real estate website on Google has been implementing…
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A Statewide MLS for Louisiana? Rumor has it that some very interesting meetings have recently been held, with some of the major real estate players within Louisiana. The meeting was held by Louisiana REALTORS last week, by the request of mulitple brokers, to discuss the possibility of a statewide MLS, with another follow up meeting…
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DEAN Knows has partnered with IDX Broker To Waive Your IDX Setup Fee DEAN Knows has been working with RETS feeds and implementing IDX and VOW to real estate websites for years. Now, we have partnered with the best IDX Partner in the business, IDX Broker. This new partnership allows us to implement IDX on…
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SEO Case Study We have wanted to complete an SEO case study for a while now…document every step in ranking a real estate website. We have recently come across the perfect client to do just that – so we will be documenting the process of ranking a real estate website from no rankings at all to…
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WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CRAWLING AND INDEXING? Many terms are continually thrown around in the SEO world, many of which seem to be synonymous. Crawling and Indexing are a perfect example of two words that are used incorrectly. Whether or not the writer understands the difference in meaning, many SEO articles lead readers to believe…
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Ranking a Real Estate Website There are many ways to drive traffic to a real estate website. You can run Pay Per Click Ads, you can run Facebook Ads, you can blog and syndicate and almost an infinite number of other methods. One of the most challenging (but cost effective) methods for driving traffic to…
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SEO vs Pay Per Click One of the most common questions that come up when discussing creating a Digital Marketing plan is what is more effective – SEO or PPC. Many people are not sure of the difference between the PPC and SEO, much less which one is more effective. Just to get some…
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Real-estate sales are quite different from most sales. Many transactions have their entire sales cycle completed in a relatively short time (depending on the product). Real-estate sales, however, can take up to 18 months to come to fruition. The length of time of the real-estate sales cycle has tremendous implications on real-estate leads, how they are…
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Real Estate Websites for Agents – What You Need To Know I am asked all the time by agents….Do I need a website? Of course you need a website….What TYPE of real estate website is what we should be talking about. What you want your website to do and what you anticipate getting out of…
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Real Estate Websites – The Problems and the Fix DEAN Knows has been involved in Real Estate Websites since before many people were online at all. We were involved in putting Real Estate Listings online before IDX was even defined. We even have written about the history of real estate listings online. We wanted…
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Real Estate Websites and SEO There are many Real Estate Website Companies and the vast majority of them claim to include SEO. The claim is usually that the site will be SEO Optimized or Search Engine Friendly. That makes perfect sense, since it doesn’t do you any good to have a great real estate website,…
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Why Would My Website Rank Differently On Different Computers? I speak to people all of the time who say they are currently on the first page of Google for a particular search term. When I do a quick check, they are on page seven or eight. How do so many people think that they are…
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How To Use Social Syndication For SEO For some time now google and other search engines have been using social signals to determine SERPs. For those of you not familiar, SERPs stands for Search Engine Results Page (s). What a social signal is would be a tweet or a Facebook post contains links back…
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SEO Basics With all of the technical SEO, keyword research, content marketing and backlinks needed today for ranking your website on page one of Google, many people forget some of the most basic aspects of SEO. One of the very first ranking factors, which holds true today, is basic on-page SEO. The most basic of…
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In the Beginning It was not all that long ago when Real Estate Listings were not online. At least not like they are today. In the beginning, you had large, forward thinking real estate brokers that invested tons of money in websites and technology and figured out how to put their own listings online. Most…
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The Ultimate Guide to Real Estate Lead Generation The field of real estate has experienced very dramatic changes over the past decade. In July of 2004, housing prices were on the rise and the country’s unemployment rate was at 5.5%. A few years later, the Great Recession began, dealing a severe blow to the real…
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Real Estate Marketing Basics–Touching Your Sphere As real estate agents, we all know how important it is to stay visible to our sphere of influence. In the old days, that meant being active in the community, attending dinner parties and other social events. While being “social” we made sure to wear our name tags and…
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SEO Keywords For Real Estate Keywords for real estate SEO should be an easy task. You would think real estate keywords would be simple because there are specific search terms used, simply with the *city* added to the search. The main real estate searches are: *city* homes for sale *city state abr* homes for sale homes for sale…
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How to use Absorption Rate to Choose a Farm Area for Real Estate Choosing an area to farm in real estate can be just as important as the farming material itself. Many real estate agents choose to market to their own subdivision and that’s fine, but how do you choose what area to farm when…
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Website Development and SEO There are many Website Development Companies and the vast majority of them claim to provide Search Engine Optimization Services. That makes perfect sense, since it doesn’t do you any good to have a great website, if it doesn’t get any traffic. So what you mostly have are great technical website…
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How Much Does The Age Of Your Domain Matter? The age of your domain is an important factor in the way that Google ranks your site. Most people are aware that the older their domain, the better chance they have of moving up in the search results, but how hard is it to get…
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Staying as high as possible on search engine results based on specific keywords is seen as the ultimate prize in search engine optimization. However, over the past few years, Google (one of the biggest search engines in the world) has been implementing a number of algorithm changes that are designed to give searchers better and…
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What Does It Take To Be a Real Estate SEO Expert? Many people and companies claim to be experts in real estate SEO. Truth is most website designers, regardless of real estate or not, do not truly do any SEO Services. Many people are under the impression that when they pay to have a website…
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The Importance of Link Building in SEO Marketing Campaigns Search Engine Optimization is still essential for new and existing websites and Link Building is essential for that success. In fact, it is a crucial aspect of extending your brands reach on the web. With strategic SEO, you can also establish brand validity and awareness,…
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Domain SEO Metrics Explained! If you have ever looked at the Domain Metrics for your website or the back-links that refer to your website—your eyes most likely glazed over seeing abbreviations such as: PR, DA, PA, CF, TF and the like. There are many ways to measure the general effectiveness of a domain, we…
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What the Hell Is Local SEO Anyway? SEO Services continue to soar in global popularity because of the tremendous return on investment it provides. Having your business come up on page one of Google, when someone searches for your industry, is a no brainier for local business. If you are a bricks and mortar…
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Why Your Website Is Worthless Without SEO Without gas, your favorite truck couldn’t leave the driveway. And without wings, your private jet couldn’t fly. Simply put, without vital components, your asset can’t grow to its maximum potential. This also applies to marketing your products or services online. Your website on its own can’t go…
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Facebook Ads – How to Create a Successful Ad Yourself We all know that Facebook Ads are all the rage for an affordable, effective digital marketing campaign. In this article, we will cover some of the most important aspects of creating a great Facebook Ad. Many people are under the impression that Facebook Advertising…
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Real Estate Search Engine Optimization – More than the sum of its parts Real Estate SEO has many of the aspects of Search Engine Optimization in any other industry but has some unique attributes too. As in all modern SEO, to be be successful requires a holistic approach to Digital Marketing. When all of the…
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The Importance of Mobile Friendly Websites Google is the worlds largest and most popular search engine. As part of its recent updates and changes to its algorithms, all websites must contain high-quality and relevant content in order to secure higher page rankings and visibility on the Web. Mobile friendly websites are no longer optional,…
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Tired of Spending Your Money With Zillow? There Are Other Marketing Options! Are you a real estate agent or broker that advertises with Zillow? If you are, even if you are receiving an ROI, you advertising dollars could be better spent. Zillow is by far the most visited real estate website in the world. As…
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LinkedIn Basics LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. LinkedIn was launched in May of 2003, and it is mainly used for professional networking. In 2006, LinkedIn boasts 560 million hits per day and is ranked the 13th most visited site in the world. With that type of engagement, with all sorts of business people,…
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Could this Be the End of IDX? For some time now, The Realty Alliance has been working on a project called Project Upstream. There has been much speculation on what Project Upstream is and what it will do. We are now starting to see all the pieces fall into place with some recent changes in…
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Keyword Research – What You Need To Know The very first step in any SEO Marketing Campaign doing a substantial amount of Keyword Research. Keyword Research is looking deeply at what keywords you would like your website to be found for, then systematically choosing keywords to go after. True keyword research takes time and…
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On-page SEO vs Link Building Search engine optimization can be categorized in two flavors: On-page SEO and Offsite SEO. Basically, On-page SEO entails ensuring that your website pages, tags, titles and overall URL structure are optimized for keywords of your choice. On the other hand, Offsite SEO, or link building, involves ensuring that your…
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DEAN Knows brings all of the pieces of Digital Online Marketing together in a powerful synergy. Creating Online Marketing Systems with a holistic approach, customized for your business. SEO – Search Engine Optimization DEAN Knows is a New Orleans SEO Company that specializes in Search Engine Optimization – SEO – in…
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The WRONG Way To Use Digital Marketing For Real Estate I see a ton of real estate technology offerings that claim to offer some sort of benefit by using your listing data, putting it on their domain and they circulate the information with the hopes of lead generation. This has been going on for a…
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Have you ever wondered how after you visit a website, you later see advertisements for that product/service on Facebook? This form of advertising falls perfectly into why Marketing on Facebook can be so powerful. The entire social media advertising ecosystem is based upon “Targeting Your Audience” for your Facebook Ad. There is no better…
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Google’s Big Change – Has Your Website Been Hit? On Tuesday April 21st Google unleashed what could be a massive disruption for a large portion of the world wide web. The good news is everyone knew that it was coming and most website owners have made the needed adjustments. Has your site been penalized?…
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SEO Services are Vital for New and Existing Businesses New Orleans SEO professionals can truly help expand your business. They can also extend your brands reach on the web, while securing higher visibility across vast digital networks. From content creation and blogs to wed development and graphics, area specialists have the tools and expertise to…
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The Top 5 Benefits of Having a Modern Website For Your Business It is 2015 and it’s no longer secret, your website can make or break your business. Like any part of the globe, Brick and Mortar businesses are still around however, how their potential customers discover them has considerably changed. For many businesses, the…
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One-On-One Personalized Matrix Training MLXchange and Fusion Are Going Away! As most of you are well aware, both MLXchange and Fusion are going away and will no longer be accessible after February 25th. Some people are not comfortable with the new system. Because of that, DEAN Knows is offering personalized one-on-one training on…
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Professional Real Estate Photography Back in another lifetime, when I worked for a very large, independent real estate broker, I was tasked with improving the Sales Rate of our listings while adding to the broker’s value proposition to their agents and clients. After brainstorming and looking at trends, and up and coming technologies, I found…
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What to Expect in the Real Estate Industry for 2015 2015 will bring a world of changes into the real estate industry. The remnants, and potentially the most detrimental part, of the Dodd-Frank Act go into effect on Real Estate Title Companies and Mortgage Lenders. The new changes, called TILA-RESPA go into effect on August 1st.…
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Zillow & Listhub Break Up—Ray Charles Could Have Seen That Coming! Well, its official, Zillow and Listhub have broken up. After their 4 year affair, they are parting ways. For those of you that are not familiar, Listhub feeds Zillow listings—“a few hundred thousand” at the moment. Looks like Zillow will be creating their own dashboard for…
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The Louisiana Real Estate Commission in its 2014 session has made some slight, but important changes to how Real Estate Teams can be advertised. Starting January 2, 2015 (because Jan 1 is a holiday) LREC will start enforcing their new restrictions on Real Estate Team names. The new changes limit a real estate team to…
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Real Estate Marketing is ever changing. With technology becoming so front and center you can no longer rely on print advertising in the newspaper or Just Listed – Just Sold postcards to get the job done. So…where should you spend your real estate advertising budget in 2015? What is the golden ticket? Facebook Ads for…
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RESO — The Real Estate Standards Organization has been working for years on creating some standardization for how MLS refer to certain fields. For instance, where one MLS may say “Bathrooms Half” and some may say “Half Baths”. The lack of consistency has forced vendors that display IDX to Map each data feed for each…
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Facebook is constantly evolving and rolling out new features and functionality. It can be a full time job simply keeping up with the new, cool things that are now available. DEAN Knows thought we would list out some of the newer, little promoted features that you may find useful. Saving Facebook Posts Sometimes when you…
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The largest MLS in the state of Louisiana, GSREIN (the Gulf South Real Estate Information Network) is prepping to roll out an entirely new MLS system for their real estate agents. The new MLS system will be available to all real estate agents that participate in GSREIN in the first quarter of 2015. The new system…
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SOLD DATA in IDX Feeds It’s official. IDX feeds all over the country will now include the Sold Status. In a follow up to my post 2014 NAR Convention MLS Policy Changes— Sold Properties in IDX Feeds, we are happy to say that in the Greater New Orleans area– our MLS is slated to roll…
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For many years I have been attending the NAR Mid-Year and Annual Conventions with one of the highlights of each conference being the MLS Committee meeting. This is where the real changes that truly affect how our business runs are made. For years, these meetings have been held with great discourse and have lasted hours debating…
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Trulia is rolling out a new CRM (Client Relationship Manager) that is being offered directly to Real Estate Agents. Trulia One claims to bring all of your leads, including leads from other web portal competitors such as REALTOR.com, into one place. The CRM is touted to let you organize and instantly respond to your leads…
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Watch Your SERPS–A New Penguin on the Loose! How Google’s new algorithm change can affect the way your website it found… It has been confirmed that Google has updated its search algorithm with its newest Penguin update. Penguin has been changing the way Google ranks web sites since 2012. Most of the changes attributed…
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This is simply a page dedicated to the beauty of vacuum tube amplifiers. Although I am familiar with some of these, I have not personally auditioned all of them—this page is to exploit their beauty. I am personally a fan of tube amplification over solid state for purity of sound; as a secondary advantage, many…
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Stay away from people with Ebola. Its really that easy!
If you already have your family vacation booked to West Africa….you may need to find another destination.
I hope you don’t lose your deposit!
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Home cooking has had a resurgence. There was a time, not long ago, where to cook your own food at home was a hobby, like knitting or woodworking. Now, we see everyone trying to be a “home chef”. As someone who grew up in a family of cooks, with multiple restaurants and the best eatin’…
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Today we have more personal information on our cell phone than our grandparents could fit in their safe deposit box. When it comes to our business, the servers located at our workplace contain everything, and I mean everything, about our business including tax returns, accounting data, client information, contracts, order histories and other thousands of business documents.…
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Custom Blog Posts Made Easy DEAN Knows now produces custom, SEO rich, blog posts and post them to your website! A website, regardless of how great it has been designed, need ongoing, Custom Blog Content to drive traffic and be successful. One of the hardest things to do in controlling a website is constantly…
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Facebook’s Newest News-Feed Option…See First Most of us are aware that Facebook is a business. Facebook has more of a purpose (to its shareholders) than simply posting about what offends us, posting our favorite bathroom selfie or sharing a photo of our latest meal. Facebook is an advertising machine. All of the information you…
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Law Firm Website Design DEAN Knows builds websites for all different business verticals. All of our website designs are built for SEO from the ground up. Prior to designing a new website for a client, we do extensive keyword research and “theme” or “silo” the site based off of the results. We then implement…
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Who Dominates New Orleans Real Estate SEO? Search Engine Optimization — SEO for short — is the work behind getting your website to organically rank (not paid ads) for specific search terms. The sites that land on page 1 of Google for searches like New Orleans Real Estate or Homes For Sale In New…
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What Are Animated GIF’s Animated GIF’s are all the craze nowadays. They are those little, short videos, usually accompanied by some smart ass comment that really gets the point across. Since Facebook’s Newsfeed now automatically plays videos (did they slip that one by you?), I guess they didn’t feel that GIF’s would add too much…
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Redfin Real Estate Comes To New Orleans It looks like Redfin will be entering the New Orleans Real Estate market. Why does anyone care? There are a lot of new brokerages that open up (and many that close) every year. Well, Redfin was started back in 2006, utilizing real estate technology, a really slick website…
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The Power of Digital Marketing – My Story Below, is my (Dean Cacioppo) TRUE story of my debit card being stolen. As you can see below, I pursued all of the proper channels: I had multiple conversations with the Capital One Fraud Department I spoke with my bank Branch Manager I had multiple conversations with…
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NAR’s PLAN: KILL OFF THE LITTLE GUY? A few years ago, there were 2 MLS’s competing for membership. The large brokers in both markets only wanted one MLS and asked the two MLS’s to merge. The smaller MLS refused, as they needed the MLS revenue to finance their Association. So, the largest brokers, that had…
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With the internet being so centralized to everything we do today, its understandable that many business owners understand that having their website found on the internet is critical for success. Today, we no longer just sit in front of a computer at work or for an hour at night, we use our smartphones throughout the day.…
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Touching Your Sphere – Real Estate Marketing Basics Continued… Social Media With so many people spending so much time on social media, it is a perfect avenue to remind your sphere that you are in real estate. Its important to remember, you can’t make every single post on social media about selling yourself. Look at…
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Touching Your Sphere of Influence – Real Estate Marketing Basics As real estate agents, we all know how important it is to stay visible to our sphere of influence. In the old days, that meant being active in the community, attending dinner parties and other social events. While being “social” we made sure to wear…
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The Difference Between IDX and VOW Having real estate listings online has been a cornerstone for any modern real estate website for the last 5-10 years. And needless to say, a website should be a major part of any agent’s marketing plan. Although many real estate agents are familiar with IDX, many REALTORS may not…
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Real Estate SEO – Do Meta Keywords Matter? There are many challenges with real estate SEO. Search Engine Optimization, has become a very complex set of processes and best practices (regardless of what you read). One of the oldest references to SEO is the infamous “meta tag”. In real world SEO those words have many…
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Using GEO Marketing To Bring Customers To Your Local Business If you own a bricks and mortar type of business that relies on walk in traffic to generate review, we will show you one quick way to bring customers directly to your door using a Facebook Ad. In addition to Local SEO, localized Facebook Ads,…
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NEW WAYS TO “LIKE” A FACEBOOK POST We have all been there…we appreciate a Facebook Post, but “liking” it just didn’t get our point across. Now, Facebook has given us new options in expressing ourselves on the feeling that a particular post invokes. “Likes” Are Just Not Enough It has bee a quagmire…
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Facebook Ads – How To Get The Same Reach At A Fraction Of The Cost In today’s world of Digital Marketing, Facebook Ads are all the rage nowadays. We will discuss how to substantially Reduce Your Facebook Ad Spend while driving the same traffic to your landing page. If you have not run a Facebook…
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First…Why Do Personas Help In Website Design Anytime a new website is built, for it to be successful, you must first figure out what the goal of the website it. Some websites are designed to be an online business card – giving insight into the business. Some websites are lead generating sites, e-commerce websites are…
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Project Upstream – The Update If you have not read our first article on Upstream – we strongly recommend that you do that prior to reading this. In our initial post on the RPR – AMP – Realty Alliance project called Project Upstream we spoke about the possibly that IDX could be looking at…
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How to Utilize the SEO Pages on Kunversion Before we get started, I need to say that I have no official relationship with Kunversion. I have worked with agents and teams that use the Kunversion platform, so I have some knowledge of how their system works. At the end of the day, I am an…
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What Can Digital Marketers Learn From McDonald’s Change To “All Day Breakfast”? For those of you that are not aware, McDonald’s will be serving ALL DAY BREAKFAST starting October 6th. This calls for screams of joy for those of us who have shown up at Micky-D’s at 10:32 AM craving our Egg McMuffin and…
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Zillow Buys Dot Loop Whats That Mean For Real Estate Technology? Well, it looks like Zillow is continuing to make movements to take over the real estate world. Today, Zillow announced that it is purchasing Dot Loop and the deal is scheduled to close in the 3rd quarter of this year. Most people are…
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Slidell Real Estate Charts and Graphs Anyone who knows me, knows that I can be fanatical about statistics. As someone who lives and works in Slidell, I thought it would be nice to give the general community some Real Estate Statistics on the Slidell Real Estate Market. So, being the nice guy that I am,…
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