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Archive for November, 2009
(7) Things EVERY Realtor Should be Doing to Sell your Home!
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The (7) Things EVERY Realtor Should be Doing to Sell your Home!
Those agents who are still out there doing the right thing, probably do just about all of these already, but it’s a great reminder. Before listing your home you should always meet with a few Realtors to find out how they plan to market your home. Not all Realtors market equally, so it is critical that you know whether you are getting the best bang for your buck.
1. “For Sale”
You should have a sign placed in your front yard and back yard if it backs onto a major roadway. The sign should identify the Realtor, the Realtor’s company and give a phone number. Make sure that there will be someone at the other end of that number from morning till night, seven days a week to answer the phone. They should be able to answer any questions from house-hunters.
Some Realtors are adding a phone number that buyers can call to get details on the properties. A new technology available is an application for the mobile phone that allows buyers to view the property details and even pictures right on their cell phone. This is available with some of the more innovative Realtors.
2. Fliers
A box of fliers can be attached to the For Sale sign. They should include a picture of your home and a description of its size and features. You should be given a supply of fliers to replenish if you see they have run out. You need to have a contact to call for more. Your Realtor may also distribute fliers to homes in the area. Your neighbors may have friends who are looking for a home like yours.
3. Preview your home to other Realtors
The tour usually takes place within the first week or two that your house is on the market. The purpose of this is to make other Realtors aware of your property so they return with clients who are looking for specific types of properties. You may want to offer a perk such as donuts and coffee to entice agents to attend.
4. Multiple Listing Service (MLS)
The Multiple Listing Service is a database of all the homes for sale in a given area. Your Realtor will submit a listing that details your home’s qualities and attach photos. Other buying agents or potential buyers will see it when searching the database for properties that match their criteria.
5. Advertising
Your Realtor should be advertising in local newspapers, magazines and most importantly, the Internet. According to a survey conducted by the National Association of Listing Agents®, 93 percent of homebuyers use the Internet to search for homes.
6. Open houses
These are meant to bring potential buyers through your home and create some word-of-mouth interest. Sometimes the people that come through are just snooping, but they usually tell other people about your home and that may bring a sale.
7. Showing Your Home
Your Realtor should be the one to coordinate times to show it to potential buyers and for other agents and their clients to see the home. Your agent should give you enough warning that viewers are coming so that you can tidy up the house. He or she should also give you feedback from the people that tour your home, which will help you improve it for the next showing.
If you calculate what your Realtor spends to get your home marketed and shown, you will soon realize that the commission they charge is a fair one.
Message
Richard Simpson
1st Advantage Mortgage
Desk: 770-623-6341 Cell: 404-788-4420
Office: 11285 Elkins Road, J-8, Roswell, GA 30076 e-Mail: rsimpson@1stam.com
Web site: http://www.1stam.instantlender.com/
My Blog: http://atlantahomesaleshelp.com
Active Rain Blog: http://32bbc51.activerain.com/
10 Reasons I LOVE Living in Atlanta
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I’ve had the good fortune of traveling to different parts of the U.S. in the last couple of years, and even though I love visiting new places and basking in the beautiful weather of L.A., gorgeous scenery of Seattle, or awesome urban feel of downtown Chicago, I find myself being increasingly thankful for living in Atlanta, GA
What’s sad though is when I do go places and tell people where I live I receive their impression of Atlanta, GA is that it is a big city and that you are just a cog in the wheel of life where people will ghost you rather that acknowlege your existence……… that’s just dumb.
Atlanta is a great place to live for the following reasons:
- Family – almost all of my family lives within .30 hours of us and they live in parts of the city. I’ve gotten older and as my nieces and nephews have been born, I find myself wanting to be closer to those I love most. It is my number one reason for loving living here; this is where I have lived for the past 30 years.
- The People - for the most part, Atlantans are just nice, friendly, helpful and courteous people; Atlanta, Georgia is “Family,” and is just a great place to raise a family!
- Short Commutes - I don’t have a big commute (my office is 6 miles from my house), but you can get almost anywhere with the Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) ; area in around 30 minutes or less.
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport –All flights connect to the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Hub to go to another city, Our airport is SUPER easy to get into and out of and you will move quickly through the TSA security to your gate.
- Underground Atlanta – this hip, awesome historic part of downtown Atlanta has put us on the map as one of the many destinations that vistors want to see.
- Georgia Aquarium - is the largest aquarium for fish in the world and just received the 2 millionth vistor to view the Aquarium last month. It is awesome learning experience for your kids!
- Coca-Cola- was born in downtown Atlanta and is based here. The Coca-Cola museum presents the 100 year history of Coca-Cola that everyone can enjoy.
- Sports — Take your pick, Braves, Hawks, Falcons, Thrashers, NASCAR
- Hi Musuem- State of art musuem of some of the greatest art in the world.
- Stone Mountain Park- Fun for the entire family for a week
- Martin Luther King- ; Home of Martin Luther King with the memorial and museum in his honor
There are of course many reasons to move or live elsewhere, but after living here for most of my life, despite the once in a 500 year flooding we just lived through , I sure do love it here … and after all, I can always hop a plane and visit an exotic destination anywhere in the world from the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport non stop.
First thing to do before buying a new home is to check your credit report.ui
Posted by: | CommentsFirst thing to do before buying a new home is to check your credit report.
When you’re ready to purchase a home you should contact a loan officer or mortgage planner first. There are so many options and programs open to home buyers that you may want some assistance in planning the best mortgage for your needs over the lifetime of your mortgage, especially if you plan to stay put. You may want to work with a lender that allows you the choice of paying your mortgage twice a month and save yourself tens of thousands of dollars over the life of the loan.
First thing to do is check your credit report. In the USA you can check your report for free twice a year with all three credit reporting services (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion). Credit is very important these days, and the rate you get when buying a home will be a reflection of your credit score. A poor score will mean a higher rate.
- Always check for errors which are very common and can take a long time to correct. If you monitor your reports, you can catch mistakes early.
- Please make all your payments on time. This will result in your getting the very best rate and keep your score high. Why pay sometimes hundreds of dollars in fees?
- Old accounts count! Even if you don’t use certain cards much, the length of your credit history is a portion of the factor in your credit score.
- When you spend your accounts to the maximum, you’ll bring your ratios way over the top. If you have your credit card debt alone at half your credit limits, it’s factored into your ability to purchase. Happy house hunting and enjoy the extension on the $8,000 tax credit and you still have time left on the Georgia $1800 tax break.
There’s More to SEO than Rankings
Posted by: | Comments There’s More to SEO than Rankings
RECOMMENDED
Keyword Discovery
More effective than Word Tracker. More precise than Overture. Based on over 20 billion searches.
Free SEO book
new for 2009
Sticky SEO
Winning Strategies
for the New Algorithm
Best SEO book
updated for 2009
Don’t get banned
by the search engines.
handy e-book
of top SEO tips
Detailed SEO guide
Number One
In Your Niche.
step-by-step guide
to SEO tactics
By David Leonhardt
Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions in SEO is that ranking at Google and Yahoo is all that counts in search engine optimization. Potential clients come to me with a single goal: “Get me a top-ten ranking at Google.” Some will also mention MSN, and a few will rhyme off a list of search engines and want to rank well at the top 200 of them.
It is time to separate fact from fiction.
Yes, I can get you a top-ten placement at Google. But…
1. If the placement is for “dirty brown shoes”, it probably won’t help your shoe store one bit, even if I get you the first place ranking. Few people are actually searching for that term.
2. Being number ten might not help much either, depending on the term. People searching for “Essential Nectar liquid vitamins”, will probably click on the first result they see, or at least on one of the “above-the-fold” results that do not require scrolling. On the other hand, someone searching for “liquid vitamins” might check through two pages of results to familiarize herself with the options available.
3. If your title tag reads like a cheap list of search terms, it will not be enticing. For instance, if it reads: “vitamins, liquid vitamins, multivitamins, multi-vitamins”, you might skip over it in favor of the next result that reads “Liquid vitamins from the Liquid Vitamin Supplements Store”.
4. If your description tag is a mess, people will more likely skip over your listing, even if it does rank number one, in favor of one that sounds like what they are looking for. Google and others use the description tag usually when the term searched for is found in it, so make sure to include your key search terms in a description tag that actually reads well.
Predicting traffic from SEO results
I recently responded to a forum question, which went something like this: My site ranks number one for this term at this engine. The term is searched this many times per day, and the engine has this percentage marketshare. Can I expect this many visitors?
That’s not an SEO challenge; that’s a math problem: searches x marketshare = visitors
I responded with a few factors that override mathematics in the SEO game, including the site’s title tag and description tag, as well as whether the term lends itself to scrolling. I also pointed out that it depends on the title tags and description tags of the competition, too.
Another factor that makes predicting traffic difficult is the abandonment factor – how many people click on none of the results because they get interrupted or confused, or abandon the search for a new one because they find themselves off-topic or searching too broadly.
It also depends on how many sponsored links there are and how they are marked. Often at Yahoo and Lycos, for example, there are so many ads that the average searcher might never scroll a screen or two to see the organic (natural) results.
And, of course, it also depends on the color of the walls in the room the searcher is clicking from, the weather outside and how well they slept last night. But there is little you can do about that.
What you can do is to work with your SEO consultant to choose the most effective search terms for your business and make sure he develops a title tag and description tag that sell to both humans and the search engines. Then make sure he is monitoring not just the rankings for your key search terms, but also the description used by each of the search engines.
A good ranking at Google and Yahoo is just one measure of your SEO consultant’s success. A more complete evaluation is that he is your partner in building long-term, targeted traffic
Dear Bill Gates, You Clever Fox
Posted by: | Comments Dear Bill Gates, You Clever Fox
RECOMMENDED
Keyword Discovery
More effective than Word Tracker. More precise than Overture. Based on over 20 billion searches.
Free SEO book
new for 2009
Sticky SEO
Winning Strategies
for the New Algorithm
Best SEO book
updated for 2009
Don’t get banned
by the search engines.
handy e-book
of top SEO tips
Detailed SEO guide
Number One
In Your Niche.
step-by-step guide
to SEO tactics
By David Leonhardt
Dear Bill Gates.
You did it. You casually left a live grenade at the Grand Charity Gala and walked out of the room to see if anybody, especially Google, will notice.
Once again, you have created an innovation in marketing that is poised to take the world by storm. What I love about it is how you have just tossed it out into the public for all to see, and yet nobody seems to be noticing it.
Flitting from forum to forum, everyone is talking about your new MSN beta search engine, but nobody seems to have discovered the secret marketing bomb you left ticking there.
Google sure was clever with its PageRank gimmick. In fairness, PageRank is not just a gimmick, but it was marketed as much more than it is — the big ka-boom that sets Google apart, despite being only a small part of its algorithm.
But your ka-boom will be bigger. You have actually given searchers like me control over my own rankings. While other search engines are talking about “personalized search”, you’ve given us the levers to incrementally change rankings in searches themselves.
You are probably aware that webmasters are kicking the tires on your new search engine to see how high they rank. Those who are more adventuresome or who earn their living understanding (or trying to understand) search engines are taking some of your special features for a spin. Most of those features are fairly mundane. Like “links to” (although it might just be the most comprehensive listing on the Internet – hint to webmasters) and “language”.
But what’s this at the very bottom, almost falling off my screen?
Results Ranking.
Hey, this is cool. I can control the results myself. I can give more weight to recently-updated sites, which is great when I am following a breaking story (After the America’s Cup, I do not want to find all the pre-race predictions, for example.). Or I can weight the results in favor of static pages if I am trying to find again the health information I had read last time my daughter broke out in blue and green splotches all over her body.
And you let me decide whether to weigh heavily exact matches, if I know exactly what I am looking for, or approximate matches if I know only that the itchy splotches come from some rare Polar virus transmitted by stampeding trans-Atlantic penguins.
I even get to choose to boost rankings for popular sites or, if I’m feeling like a rebel, for less popular sites. Yes, you have even appealed to my deepest psychological mood swings. This is really cool.
But what really counts is this: I control MSN!
I can just imagine the TV ads you have already planned: The ad character (a student, a construction worker, a nurse?) says, “Move over Bill Gates, I’m in charge now.” The voiceover says, “Search MSN” PageRank will taste like yesterday’s chewing gum.
I decided to find out if I really do control MSN, using one of my client sites. It sat at #3 for its top search term.
I turbo charged the popularity lever to 100%. Whoa. My client lost a spot. What does that mean? Somebody who does not rank as highly as my client got a boost by weighing link popularity higher (and, by extension, on-page content lower).
This tells me that my client’s on-page content is in good shape. It also tells me which competitor has the best backlinks to check out.
PageRank was an effective gimmick for wrapping webmasters and SEO consultants around Google’s fingers. But this results ranking thingy could wrap both the public and webmasters around MSN’s fingers.
Just one word of advice, Bill. Results Ranking? Is that the catchiest moniker you could give it?
Bill, you are to be congratulated for devising such a clever marketing tool, and for purposefully leaving it right out in the open like a live grenade without even a hint that it is there. That is what you did, isn’t it? You did do it on purpose, didn’t you?
Five SEO tip to improve your search Engine Ranking
Posted by: | CommentsFive SEO Tips To Improve
Your Search Engine Ranking
RECOMMENDED
Keyword Discovery
More effective than Word Tracker. More precise than Overture. Based on over 20 billion searches.
Free SEO book
new for 2009
Sticky SEO
Winning Strategies
for the New Algorithm
Best SEO book
updated for 2009
Don’t get banned
by the search engines.
handy e-book
of top SEO tips
Detailed SEO guide
Number One
In Your Niche.
step-by-step guide
to SEO tactics
By David Leonhardt
“Dear David: I just created a website on baby toy safety. What should I do to make sure gazillions of people find me through the search engines?”
I can’t promise you gazillions, but there are a few things you should do to make it easy for search engines to find you. I assume you have already decided to submit your site to the major search engines and directories. I assume that you will develop some sort of linking strategy (hopefully a better strategy than most websites use today). I also assume you will have picked key search terms for all the pages on your website.
Beyond that, here are my top five tips for making your website easy for those “gazillions” to find it.
http://www.seo-writer.com/reprint/five-seo-tips.html
1. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but search engines don’t read pictures. Make sure your key search terms are written out in text, not part of a graphic title you hire somebody to prepare for you. That also means you should not just show pictures of toys, but also write out the names, and possibly a keyword description with the title.
2. Have several pages of articles related to your website’s topic. Use a different keyword search term for each article. For instance, one article might use frequently the term “safe toys for babies”, while another might use the term “baby safety”.
3. What’s the URL of your website? Your name won’t help you there. Your key search term will. In this instance, I might pick www.baby-toy-safety.com, for example (if that is one of your top keyword phrases). Hire somebody who knows what he is doing to develop the right keyword strategy for you BEFORE you choose your domain name.
4. What’s the title of your page? I don’t know how many times I see titles such as “Article” or “Contact us”. Don’t expect the search engine robots to get all excited about that term. And don’t expect anybody to search for that term, either. Much better to title your page “Free article on safe toys for babies” or “Contact the *Baby Toy Expert* today”. By the way, this is the single most important place to include your keyword phrases.
5. What about that navigation menu that appears on every single page of your website? Does it say “Contact the baby toy expert?” Or “about the baby toy expert”. Or links about baby toys?” Need I say more?
If your website is about life insurance, you have little hope of hitting the front pages of any search engine. “Life insurance” is such a competitive search engine marketplace. Unless, of course, people are searching for a very specific and rare niche. Even then, I suspect you will need much more than these five tips.
In fact, there are dozens, if not hundreds of things you can do to win the search engine race. These top five search engine optimization tips are a great start, whatever your website is about.
Are you a Bill Clinton Webmaster
Posted by: | Comments Are You A Bill Clinton Webmaster?
RECOMMENDED
Keyword Discovery
More effective than Word Tracker. More precise than Overture. Based on over 20 billion searches.
Free SEO book
new for 2009
Sticky SEO
Winning Strategies
for the New Algorithm
Best SEO book
updated for 2009
Don’t get banned
by the search engines.
handy e-book
of top SEO tips
Detailed SEO guide
Number One
In Your Niche.
step-by-step guide
to SEO tactics
By David Leonhardt
Post-Florida Google Pulls Back the Fig Leaf
One of the most frequent questions I get asked about my ebook, Don’t Get Banned BY The Search Engines , is whether I amended it to include post-Florida Google. “Florida” is the code name that search engine optimizer wizards gave to a November, 2003, shakeup at Google that left many webmasters covering themselves up with makeshift fig leaves while dangling upside down above the proverbial crocodile moat.
I am tempted to explain that, “No, I did not amend it, because nothing has really changed.” But just try telling the world that Bill Clinton did not have “sex” with Monica Lewinski. Yeah, right.
So I take the lazy way out and I just say, “Yes.”
But the guilt has been creeping up on me, grasping at my skin, gnawing away at my bones, chewing on my heart, mauling my conscience, and spitting out my toenails one by one. So this is confession time. Don’t Get Banned BY The Search Engines has not been amended to include post-Florida Google.
Is this because I am peddling stale goods? Am I leading people astray? Do I have a clue what’s going on? “No”, “I hope so”, and “Maybe”.
In fact, nothing really has changed at Google, and webmasters who have been following Google’s guidelines can just keep doing what they have always been doing, just as Presidents who follow public decency guidelines can keep doing what they are doing (until we vote them out of office for other reasons, of course).
“But I followed the guidelines, and I still took bullets in several vital organs,” I hear many webmasters say. In fact, very few webmasters have been following Google’s guidelines. Most have been following the Clinton what-can-I-get-away-with fig leaf guidelines.
Remember that Bill Clinton never had “sex” with Monica Lewinski. Technically. Honest, he did nothing wrong. He followed the rules by not having “sex” with Monica Lewinski. In fact, he was seen in public not having sex with Monica Lewinski on several occasions.
And webmasters follow the rules by not linking to “link farms” or “overoptimizing”. Sure, they will link to sites that have nothing to do with their site’s topic, but not to a “link farm”. And they will “exchange links”, but surely that does not violate Google’s” uniquely democratic nature of the web” principle. As long as you are not actually caught publicly stuffing the ballot box, how could Google possibly suggest that you are doing so?
So here are my post-Florida rules:
You only link to relevant sites, because that’s what you know Google and your visitors want. Keep doing that.
You don’t exchange links, because that would be stuffing Google’s ballot box – and that is NOT something Google wants. Keep not doing that.
Your link does not appear on many useless “links” pages, where it has to share PageRank with dozens of other web sites. Keep not doing that.
You accept links only from relevant web pages, because you know that’s the only meaningful traffic … and that’s what Google wants. Keep doing that.
Your links look different on different web pages around the Internet, because that’s how a democratic process would create your links. Keep doing that.
You keep adding relevant content to your web site, because that’s what you know Google and your visitors want. Keep doing that.
See? No change. And if there is a change, it simply means that you were not following Google’s guidelines in the past. Oh sure, technically you might have been following Google’s guidelines, but technically Bill Clinton didn’t have sex with Monika Lewinski. Another round of fig leaves, anyone?
Google implemented “stemming” along with the Florida update, or more likely a few weeks earlier. Since your inbound links are varied and often unique, you probably already are taking advantage of stemming, so it won’t bother you. And since you write meaningful copy for your visitors, you probably already have all the stemming you need right in your copy. You are ready to really excel in post-Florida Google.
Google is also implementing a “communities” factor. Since your inbound links all come from relevant web pages, you are already part of the community. You are already well placed to succeed in post-Florida Google, right?
Google has implemented “penalties” for some typically overoptimized terms. Actually, I think penalties is probably the wrong word, but that is what most SEOs are using. Since you write quality content, meaningful headers, and don’t cut and paste the same phrase over and over in every possible place, you are ready to conquer Mount Google.
In other words, if you were following Google’s guidelines, not the Bill Clinton fig leaf guidelines, just keep doing what you are doing. For the rest of you, isn’t it time you dropped the fig leaf and wrapped yourself up in something a little more substantial that will weather the high winds of Google’s next big storm?
And, “No.” I did not amend Don’t Get Banned BY The Search Engines to include post-Florida Google – because I never advised people to follow the Bill Clinton fig leaf guidelines
SEO case study
Posted by: | CommentsSEO Case Study
RECOMMENDED
Keyword Discovery
More effective than Word Tracker. More precise than Overture. Based on over 20 billion searches.
Free SEO book
new for 2009
Sticky SEO
Winning Strategies
for the New Algorithm
Best SEO book
updated for 2009
Don’t get banned
by the search engines.
handy e-book
of top SEO tips
Detailed SEO guide
Number One
In Your Niche.
step-by-step guide
to SEO tactics
On-page SEO or Off-page SEO?
Your Search Engine Ranking By David Leonhardt
There is a raging debate over the relative importance of on-page search engine optimization and off-page optimization. This case study that offers presents some intriguing findings.
When I began working for the client, Dotcom-Monitor Web Site Monitoring, its site was bouncing between #8 and #10 at Google for “web site monitoring”, the most competitive search term in the sector. They wanted to get closer to the top. As I write, the site sits comfortably in the #3 spot. And the #4 spot, too!
But the client decided then to hire me for a second job. To get them equally high in Google rankings for “website monitoring”. Note the distinction between the two terms.
All pages on the site were optimized for the term “web site monitoring”. Nowhere on the site did the word “website” appear. So I was really just going through the motions to see where the site ranked for “website monitoring”. Much to my surprise, it already ranked #231.
The off-page SEO crowd will say that it is because there are links pointing to the site with the term “website monitoring” in the anchor text. As far as I know, there were none. Links all used either the company name, the URL or “web site monitoring”.
So there was no text on the page and no link text off-page. The only possibility was that there were inbound links from pages that had the term “website monitoring” somewhere else on the page. This clearly states the case for arranging relevant links.
The first step I took was to alter the home page. I slipped in the term “website monitoring” into a few places, including internal links and headings. I did nothing else to the site, nor anything else off-page. Within a few days, #231 was #34 … just from a very light on-page optimization.
The next step was to build a few links. I watched the site climb to #30 a few days later. With fewer than ten links optimized for “website monitoring”, we hit #16 on Google.
PAPERWORK NEEDED by 1st Advantage for a loan approval.
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Richard Simpson 770-626-6341 e-Mail: rsimpson@1stam.com
PAPERWORK NEEDED by 1st Advatage Mortgage to approve your loan.
To apply for a loan, you will have to provide the lender with detailed documentation of your financial history.
We (the lender) will request a credit report from a credit agency and will verify the information provided in your loan application. Be prepared to give us (your lender) the following:
- Social Security numbers for both you and any co-borrowers
- Copies of checking and savings accounts statements for the past two months
- Evidence of any other assets such as bonds, stocks, or money saved in retirement programs (i.e. 401k or 403b program)
- Recent paycheck stubs
- W-2 withholding forms, or income tax returns for the past two years to verify your income and proof of employment
- The name and address of someone who can verify your employment
- Residence history for the past two years
- Sales contract for the purchase of a new home
- Homeowner’s association information with contact information if
Richard Simpson
call 770-623-6341
