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.

Common grammar blunders to avoid.

I won’t lie. Affect and effect still trip me up sometimes. I’m guessing I’m not alone.

In general, the easiest way to remember if you should use affect or effect is to first figure out if your word is a noun or a verb. Affect is generally used as a verb, and effect is usually used as a noun. Not sure? Try this: If you can replace the word with the noun result-and your sentence works and has the same meaning-you should use effect. Otherwise, you should use affect. Unfortunately, sometimes, effect is used as a verb and affect as a noun. No wonder we all still have trouble!

99% of the time, in your own writing, you’ll be using effect, the noun, or affect, the verb. Learn to tell the difference between those two parts of speech, and remember that effect is a noun and affect is a verb, and you really should have very little trouble. But how do you remember which is which?

Here, I bow to the superior knowledge of Grammar Girl. Click here to visit her Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing on effect and affect.