I know we all would like to be in the top 10 when it comes to ranking well in the search engines. It takes time, knowledge, tweaking and patience. It can actually be a full time job…and top SEO professionals can make a LOT of money helping you get there.

Tapping the services of a full time, experienced SEO firm would be ideal, but for many of us in small business, this may not be an affordable option. So, if you don’t have a lot of time to learn and devote to the search engine optimization (SEO) of your site…and you don’t want to spend a lot of money…what do you do?

Visit this article that reviews many of the  factors influencing how well you rank on the search engines. A nice simple article on the main things you can do to help your site do better.

You can also contact GraphicalData for affordable assistance in “staging your website” for the search engines. We provide proven optimization and submission for GraphicalData websites to the primary search engines.

I often get calls asking to help an agent change around his or her website. I often can assist with an answer to a specific question, but many times, an agent wants a whole new look, and that is more than I can provide.

So, the answer is…if you currently have a standard GraphicalData website (or even an older custom design that needs refreshing) and feel that now may be the time to upgrade to a customized look, that is easy for our designers to do!

A customized look would include your own unique banner, designed with you in mind. Also your background colors, button colors and the like.

We can beef up the look and text content on your home page, and have additional content that can be added to increase the functionality of your site, including buyer and seller tips, interest rates (refresh daily), privacy policy, your loan officer if desired, area links, and other contents that you might have or want.

If you would like a more sophisticated look…the cool thing is that a GraphicalData site can become just about anything you would like it to be. And, it’s affordable too! Just contact us today at 360-698-1725…and ask for Toni our account manager. She will be happy to help!

For an easy on-line address to a listing on a GraphicalData website, you can place a listing’s MLS number directly behind your domain name separated by a forward slash (/). For example, you could have a clean link for promotion purposes by using this technique and creating an address of “yourdomainname.com/27017270″.

This is a great way to share a listing that includes your domain name for written advertising or when adding the link to an email.

You have to edit. There’s no way around. If you’re lucky enough to have a professional writer in your office, then you have it easy. Send your stuff along to him or her and get on with your other tasks. But, if you’re like many of us, self-editing is your only option.

Here’s a few tips I’ve learned in my own self-editing adventures.

1. Take your time. Give yourself as much time as possible between writing and editing. Maybe you only have a few hours. Write and then go to lunch or write something else. Then go back to your first piece and edit. If you have a few days, even better. A little time away from your writing will help you see it with fresh (and more critical) eyes.
2. Don’t edit on the fly. Writing is writing, and editing is editing. Write first, then edit. If you try to edit as you write, you’ll just have to edit again later, and you’ll frustrate yourself with over thinking what you’re writing.
3. Use your voice. And I don’t mean your writing “voice” I mean the voice you sing with. Read your work aloud. You’ll catch awkward phrases and all those misplaced homonyms that spell check will miss.
4. Share the load. Give officemates or even family members an opportunity to look over what you’ve written. This should help you improve clarity and catch remaining problem phrases.

What about you? What methods do you use, and what tips can you share for making self-editing more effective and efficient? Let us know in the comments!

In my last post regarding ranking well in the search engines, I provided a link to an article about “Top 10 SEO Factors”. This post is a follow-up article in regards to what can provide barriers to search engine spiders or robots trying to crawl your website.

Visit this article to find a brief look at the top 10 mistakes made by website designers or those endeavoring to optimize a site for the search engines…and how to correct them.

Did you know that you can post Your Most Recent Sales to your Website?

What is cool about this is that it can include not only your own listings that have sold, but also any sales that you have made (since you own half that side of the transaction).

This is easy to set up. First, create a new page. Then select the “Sold Listings” module to reside on this page. Insert the mls #s for any of the sold listings. You can name your button/page “Sales History”, “Sold Listings” “Recent Sales” or anything that works for you.

This feature will hold up to 40 sold listings, and will keep them for as long as they are in the MLS database. Should you require more than 40 listings, consider adding two pages and dividing them into “Home Sales History” and “Land Sales History” or the like and you can probably include them all.

One thing, since older sales drop out with age when the MLS drops them, consider overwriting the old MLS numbers with your latest. This technique will always ensure having a full house of  recent solds.

One of the nice features of a GraphicalData website is that you have the ability to add pages and content to your own website. You would normally use the “Page Layout Tool” (found in the Page Content Options) when adding content to your website pages since it has a friendly interface (like a simple Word or Publisher program).

Another means to add text, or paste  HTML or scripts directly into your website is called the “Text” tool found in the Page Content Options. This is a good tool option to use if you have some tricky html or script that you want to paste in (some Flash script for example).

The reason? Sometimes the “Page Layout Tool” tool can modify content tags the next time you open the page in it. In other words, you can paste something into the editor…save it…and all is cool until you open it again to tweak or the like. On opening, it tries to “clean up” or “modify” certain pieces of HTML tags or script that it perceives as incorrect, and in the process things may change from your original look. This can be confusing and frustrating.

If pasting HTML or script into the “Text” tool, it leaves the code intact. And if pasting text, it goes in easy too. Of course if you know some basic HTML you can embellish here as well. [IMPORTANT NOTE: Be sure and select the “Do not format my text” box before saving to prevent any unwanted Paragraph <P> tags  (would create extra paragraph returns).

This tool might be worth experimenting with, if you have a challenge with the “Page Layout Tool”. You could create a test page with the light bulb turned off so that it doesn’t show to the public, play with it and see how it works for you. Worth considering those few times when things seem to not work correctly with the other Editor tool.