Ryan Ward's Blog: Technology

Unbelievable would be what I thought when I first saw it. Poor business decision, if that's what it is would be the reality. You see, MSN has some very unusual search results here in Atlanta. Typically, the most frequently searched term by consumers looking for real estate will be "city real estate" and in Atlanta, MSN returns the same website something on the order of 498 out of the first 500 search results! Here's a screen shot:

O.K. So I guess it's not exactly the same result - they are all subdomains of the same website. Now if you were a consumer searching for Atlanta homes for sale using the most used keyword phrase, do you think it might be a good idea to serve up the same website over and over again like this? Seriously.

Here is the search…

What? That's right! I have joined Team Eric - and I have thrown all the weight of my entry behind it. I found out where I stacked up so now it's time to give back to those who have the most to gain from a victory - Eric Blackwell. Besides, what would I do with another REW website with a custom IDX? I already have one.

And one more thing - I want to help prevent some other people from attempting to sneak in the back door just before the contest ends to claim victory. This will mean that my entry will begin to fall - it already has because I did this a few days ago and Eric should now be benefiting from the additional strength passed on from me now. For any of you following the contest, you might have seen some shifting taking place on the first page over…

Recently there was a big bloggers conference here in Atlanta and I missed it. For good reason, but, missed it none the less. Anyway, seems a big topic at the event dealt with "web 2.0". A search for web 2.0 from wikipedia suggests that what it is more than anything is the idea that we should be creating more interactive websites. Sort of take some of the anonymity away and get users involved. I'm not sure as to its effectiveness in general, but, it seems like something that we should all be trying to shoot for - make it easier for consumers to contact us. More of an evolution of ergonomics and methods of contact rather than some really new great idea.

So I've fooled around and added a new tool, Plugin actually, to my Atlanta real estate blog for…

In an effort to improve marketing for all of our listings, I've finally decided to add single property websites as an additional marketing tool. These single property sites have been around for a long time and agents have been using them during listing presentations to woo their prey into listings, but, the truth is that these sites do little more than garble up the internet with more junk as none of them (at least none that I have seen) do anything except inflate the agent and seller while not really performing well in the search engines. Now, before I get comments about this post to the contrary, let me say that this is a generalization. Of course there are agents around that know how to effectively market on the internet and many have been able to use…

No Joke! I received a phone call late last week and I answered it in the typical way and the man responded by saying that he found me online and that I was supposedly the greatest real estate agent in the world. Certainly I thought that this was a joke, but, as it turns out he had a serious question and was seeking advice from the greatest real estate agent in the world. He turned to Google and that's how he found me. funny as it were, the man had a question that the greatest real estate agent in the world certainly would know better than to answer.

So I thought I would share that even though this is, well, at least I thought was an obscure phrase, I actually received a phone call from it. I can't help a disenchanted buyer by answering legal questions…

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…