Morgan Carey's Blog: REW Directory

On Wednesday, February 6th 2008 we will be launching our new backend for customer use as a beta.

We are very excited about the new funtionality that this system provides to our customers and with this upgrade this should make 2008 the best year ever for client closings from their REW websites.

This very affordable upgrade represents a complete overhaul of our backend including new CMS (With new wysiwyg editor) new featured listings management, and most importantly new lead management. Some of the more significant changes I will list below:

REW CMS: (Content management system) - Our system still includes all of the great features our customers are used to such as adding unlimited pages and sub pages. Creating custom titles, meta descriptions, meta…

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Well, it was a really long weekend - anyone following the "Not ranking for Real Estate Webmasters" knows what I am talking about. For those of you that don't - It appears that Real Estate Webmasters has been assessed a Google penalty (Dropping us a couple of pages down the SERPS) after a very long investigation and audit, and speaking to several notable search engine personalities including Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz.org (Rand you are a great friend, thank you) the general concensus is that we likely got caught up in the "paid links" net due to the fact that we do in fact sell featured listings in our directory, and technically we did provide a search engine friendly link - so although it was not our intention to "sell links" (Free listings get the exact same…

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Many of you read my post last night regarding Real Estate Webmasters all of a sudden not ranking for our own name in Google (Well several pages down) - Naturally I assumed there must be something going on - a penalty perhaps? Well we are not sure as tonight everything appears to be back to normal so it could have just been a google glitch. However when it happened I immediately went into SEO detective mode and started a full audit on both our outbound and inbound linking activities (Always a good place to start looking if you suspect a Google penalty) - In doing so, I realized that there are a few areas that could really use some tightening up if we want to be able to claim that we are in complete compliance with Google's terms of service.

Where to start?…

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I have been meaning to post this for a while as it is a question I get asked quite often so here goes:

For those of you interested in purchasing featured directory listings, you will find information in this post about pricing, features, benefits and the submission process.

Lets start with Features:

• The most important feature of a "featured REW listing" is the fact that your listing shows up at the very top of the directory, above any free listings or other content.
• Link to Blog: As with all REW listings, your listing will come with an additional link to your REW blog.
• Link to your listings: If you have added your listings to your REW Blog, a link to those listings will also appear.
• Link to your website: As with all REW…

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Members constantly ask what makes a good directory listing, or what should write for my directory description?

Ok where to start: I always tell people to write their directory writeup / description try to treat it like you just paid $10,000 for a high end locally targeted magazine. You want to get the most out of this investment, and to do so you need to provide your readers with certain things.

• Knowledge of the area: Identify with your visitors, show them that you are local and know the area. Touch on points like well known local features that your visitors will identify with, discuss the types of homes in the area, architecture etc BE THE LOCAL EXPERT
• History of service (If applicable): Talk about how long you have been servicing the area…

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On Monday, January 29th the NEW REW directory will be going live. Because we have gone to a database driven submission and management system users will have to resubmit to the directory in order to be in the new version of the directory. Here is a link to upgrade your account: http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/signup/

Here is a screen shot of what your new REW Directory listing will look like IF you read this entire blog post :)



We have also added a lot more features to the directory so now instead of just a link and description in the directory, users can upload photos or logos, have links to their website, listings, REW Blog and can be contacted directly via the REW directory. What hasn't changed is the fact that you get a great search… Read Full Post

Well the new REW directory is coming out soon and we need to put some final touches on the way listed agents and brokers are displayed.

Here are my ideas:

The agents will be listed with a photo or logo,  and the following in a business card style much like we have right now for our featured agents. A much greater focus needs to be placed on getting people to contact our members, not just provide them backlinks.

So for the business card part we will need the members to submit the following:

• Photo or Logo
• Phone Number (And Mobile if they like)
• Email Address
• Physical Address (If they wish)
• Office Name / Broker Office (Like REMAX Boulder or whatever)
• Link to Website
• Link to Listings
• Writeup - we don't want…

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Ok so we are going to be syndicating listings for our new REW directory so we must accomodate this feature along with our agent directory.

So what are our challenges?

• New look featured agent directory
• Listings pages (Features from Point 2 and REW)
• Relocation information

Where to start? That's easy, the homepage

The homepage needs to be setup so that it gives equal attention to the realtor side and the listings side (Perhaps even the relocation side)

I do like how homes.point2 has graphical click to start type boxes for agents and listings, we should look at something like this.

Of course we also will want to provide html text links to both the states and provinces. These should be prominant and we need to educate visitors… Read Full Post