Ryan Ward's Blog: All Categories

I had a closing today where I represented the buyer. We asked for a home warranty to be included at no cost to the buyer and at a cost of no more than $500. So, we got to the closing table and as I looked over the settlement statement I saw that there was a warranty on the statement, but, it was for $319.

I always order my warranties the day of closing and had done so today just about 2 hours before the closing and I knew that the one that I had ordered for my buyer cost $469 and was more comprehensive than the one that was on the settlement statement. While the buyers, sellers, closing attorney and both of us agents were sitting at the table, I said:

"I believe that this is the wrong warranty. I ordered the comprehensive warranty which was $469…

A quick update to the goings on in the Atlanta real estate market are in order as we start heading in to spring. This is the time of year for tulips to peak their budding leaves out of the ground and even more of them to get pushed back down by an ever growing number of real estate for sale signs. This year expects to be no different than in years past from that perspective, but, there is the potential problem that much of the left over inventory from last year that remains on the market combined with new inventory may cause a continued oversupply of homes.

Time will tell if that happens. for now it does in fact seem that there are a growing number of interested buyers beginning to land on some homes with more interest and more are jumping in and kicking…

I have taken the week off and not spent any real time with the contest in the last week as I have been quite busy with the actual real estate part of my job. That's a good thing. I've fallen back to 5th place in the contest in that week as I see lots of others have kept quite busy by participating in online blog discussions, writing articles and more. So, my strategy for the last week has been to watch and see what others are doing/have done and see if there is anything new to learn.

So far, it seems to be those who have strong domains to start with and adding some extra link pop to a post with the aforementioned methods. One entry however, has quite a different approach. Eric Blackwell has gone the 'team' route and it seems to be working well as he sits…

This one is short, but, squidoo has a really nice interface and a good deal of authority that might play well into this contest on its own or as an additional page to help your contest entry. I created a page here for the contest. What you will notice is that I actually added something of value in the form of the video to wards the bottom of the page. It's a youtube video that I had made for something else, but, it works quite well and adds a little fun to the contest.

So if you need a little boost and you can write something creative, then adding a squidoo lens might be worth your time and don't forget to check out my entry for the greatest real estate agent in the world contest. Feel free to swing though and post a comment as to what you actually think…

So here is my next tip to help keep your blog posts ranking well like my entry in the contest. If your not technically inclined or don't have a WordPress blog, this one won't apply, but, if you do this one can really help. Part of the problem that most of us have with blogs is that we can get a post to rank well and then it slips away into search engine oblivion. Here is something that can help keep all of your posts indexed.

The only way I can I knew how to do this was to post an entry on my real estate test blog, but, here is the premise: If you can keep all of your posts indexed and each post links to all of the other posts you will have created a better internal linking structure. This way each post can contribute some page rank to all of the posts.…

As an update to the contest, I will be posting something related to what I am personally doing fairly regularly for a couple of reason:

Also, the goal for all of us here is to apply what we learn to our websites for our own business as well as to our clients. Both of those should in turn help consumers. I think these are good reasons to be in the contest.

So one thing that I did was to post free online press releases. Well, one was free and the other one cost a dollar. It used to be free, but, I though that for the contest it would be worth using and you guys can judge for yourself. Mike Taylor used this one here before I did so I give his…

I am sooooo tired of harping on this, but, I don't know what else to do. Real estate agents and brokers continually link to websites like Trulia and the rest increasing their rankings at the expense of our own. In the last week, they have found themselves on the first page for more terms in the Atlanta area and it is out of ignorance that this is happening.

THEY DO NOT PROVIDE CONSUMERS WITH ACCURATE INFORMATION! - at least not completely as it appears they do. Nor do they provide consumers with accurate listings and still agents put their little widgets on their websites thinking that they are helping consumers.

Are you an agent with a Trulia widget? What's wrong with you?

Why on earth would you, a professional do that to yourself and to consumers? The…

This contest has taken on a mind of its own now and entries are pouring in and the competition is extremely stiff. No telling who has the best chance to win at this point, but, I still think that it will be fun and a learning experience. To that learning experience - In my first REW blog post about this, I talked about the importance of utilizing the categories within the blog.

Today, I think I will talk about some of the more mundane aspects, but, probably the most important. For me, the best way to get links for so meting is that of truly unsolicited because the person linking to you is doing so simply because they want to. This is where you should ask yourself. So when you write, do you write things that that people want to read> Is it funny, helpful…