Think of it this way:

A website is a bricks and mortar storefront, (Really it is the new store front of today but that’s entirely another post). How easy the door swings open is how easy it is for search engines to index. But here’s the kicker, (and a big giant ass kicker to some), if there is nothing inside your store worth going in for, then no one will go in, including search engines. It’s not that simple but close.

More and more people who understand this concept are winning the SEO battle. They treat their websites like a real store on a real street. They make it look good, inviting, social and interesting to the niche they want to attract. They change it up, keep it clean and easy to get around. The more people who visit the website, or should I say: The more crowded the inside of that store becomes the more popular it becomes – to search engines too. Go figure: it’s just . like . real . life.

If you see a crowd of people in a store, you go in, even if the door is a little hard to open. You are going to find your way in.

Not a believer yet?

Why then do I come up 2nd or third on a Google Search typing in the words BC Ferries Assured Boarding? Because it’s more interesting than the boring static government regulated website. People comment here creating more activity. You go there because you have to, you come here because you want to.

I found a great article that lists the importance of SEO techniques and other factors considered when everyone else is trying to shoehorn a site into search engine existence. The highest ranking factor is popularity among other things. but here are some of the things I found listed low on the SEO importance list that you may find interesting.

HTML Validation to W3C Standards is of minimal importance (a good thing for this site – let me tell you)
Server/Hosting Uptime minimal importance
Use of XML Sitemap(s) 29% minimal importance
Social Media/Social Graph Based Ranking Factors minimal importance

Surprisingly

Geographic Location of the Host IP Address of the Domain 57% high importance (wouldn’t have thunk it)

Check it out yourself at http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors/

We’re all familiar with blog posts and one of the familiar parts is seeing a number of  links at the bottom of every post wanting you to “share-this-article”. They are called Social Bookmarks. People who are active in the blogosphere push those buttons because it nice. It’s a new social etiquette like letting others on the elevator first or holding a door for someone, clicking those links helps the blog owner increase search ratings. Bloggers and commenter’s are usually one and the same and we have our blogs we like to visit. They become friends.

This blog has never been about search rating but it is fun to watch traffic after blogging some opinionated article and experiment with different forms of SEO. I never added any social bookmarking links because they are ugly. (but who cares about my opinion). A few clicks for the sake of ruining the look of my page wasn’t worth it.

Enter the Sexy Bookmarks Wordpress Plugin found during a search for client work over at TribalYell. As soon as I found it I knew it was a winner and it would soon be on my blog too. Easy to install like any plugin in the latest versions of Wordpress. Click “add new” in your plugins menu, search for “SexyBookmarks” and click install. Go to the admin section for Sexybookmarks and choose which bookmarks to display. Enjoy.

So now you see them, Feel free to click on them. The makers of the Sexylinks plugin will thank you.

MyRealPage

The video embedded below is provided by myRealPage and demonstates how to connect your blog to  Windows LiveWritter, one of many free third party blog editing software available.

You can view that release here.

Mobile listing solutions are going to take over as devices become more powerful, Connection speeds increase, displays more beautiful so websites don’t have to adjust to the scale as much. The term “mobile” might even become a word of the past (when describing online versions) as everything is expected to be online everywhere all the time. It’s just going to happen.

The future of the Realtor’s website will need to be more community driven. If their farm area is a certain location then they will be expected to have everything about that location on their website, listing every single business, every event, every listing and how about rentals? Oh, but there are community sites out there already doing this you say? Not really. It cost money and takes time to maintain a site like this. The paid links are not a good representation of what the community is. After all, paid links are what pay the bills.

A community site must be free to the community it serves. As more small business owners realize how important it is to have incoming links from outside sites pointing to them, they will look to a real community site that will list them for free and allow them to log in and list themselves for free, allow them to log in and post events, allow them to log in and take ownership of certain aspects of the community site and even guest post on the community blog. And yes, there will be real estate listings with walk scores, maps and much more. A successful Realtor will own this site.

A site like this is easier to maintain and keep current than most real estate sites are today, (those that do update their sites). It’s conceivable that a Realtor would hardly have to touch a site like this other than to confirm registrations (done through email) and farm the people who have logged in to get more information on the listings. They can go back to doing what they do best.

By providing this valuable resource to the community where a Realtor does business, their perception among those who live, work, play, list and purchase in the area can become a lot higher than it is now (below that of a used car salesman at the moment).

In summery a community site must have:

• Maps with walk scores
• Free organized listings of events and businesses
• Community blog for community postings
• A registration and login for the community
• A “mobile” version

Some Realtors are already starting this.

Richard Branson, although from a well-to-do family, values personal adventure and risks more than some with less to lose. We understand Branson's Personal Brand.

Personal Branding is becoming an important topic as social media continues to be discovered. Most industries are starting to get it.

Realtors: with the addition of Social Media bringing about a change in marketing directions it’s now more important than ever to step up your branding. That is to say, ditch the old school slogans and awards and become authentic with who you are.

A Realtor’s business life and personal life mix on social media to the point where (I have read) that some create two different accounts on social media networks. Some good recent posts on the subject can be found here and here. What’s worse in my opinion is they have one account and only write about their business  activities, market reporting and name dropping. These Realtors seem to follow each other too. A better alternative  would be to follow your friends and community who happen to be your client base and not talk business, (but bring it up when asked or the opportunity arises).

Let’s do a case in point

(first a disclaimer): For this case-in-point I am going to pick any old slogan out of the hat and in no way intend to intentionally pick on anyone in particular. The fact is the slogan I choose to use as an example will sadly be in use by many Realtors – so you’re not alone if it’s yours.

“Vancouver’s Family Home Specialist”

Let’s choose that one (or something like that anyway- you’ll get the point). If this is a Realtor’s slogan but they don’t comment on family blogs, write blogs about family, advertise on family websites to support them, talk about family matters on Twitter and Facebook and don’t have a following of people with the same interest then what is the point? Their branding is not authentic and everyday people can now see this.

What I’m talking about here are some new concepts in marketing. Conversational Marketing, Permission Based Marketing and a Seth Godin’s new favourite, Leading a Tribe (which people are picking up now and calling Tribe Marketing). This type of marketing all begins with an authentic brand and story that are based on your values.

Realtor’s are always on when it comes to marketing. Anyone could be a future client. Why not just make your life easier and deal with people you choose, create a fan base and deal with all the residual business that naturally comes in as well.

Remember, with all things being equal people do business with people they click with. Even more importantly, with all things not being equal, people still do business with people they click with. So go out there and have real conversations online.

Don’t worry, you still use your regular email address. Only now you get the functionality of instant messaging, website integration, drag and drop photo sharing, community collaboration, website content writing, Twitter integration – oh and email too, but the list goes on.

It’s all based on HTML 5 which has become the standard for all modern web browsers which means it will not run on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) without plugins. That’s because Microsoft IE is not considered a modern web browser in most developer’s tribes.

Ambitious as hell. The demo at the Google I/0 ended with a standing ovation.

I have not done it justice trying to explain what Google Wave is here. The best explanation I have found, which I encourage you to read, is here. Register to be the first to sign up here.

I sent an email to their appeals email address. It’s been about 18 hours and I have not heard a thing.

I don’t use Facebook for much but I use it a lot. Everything I connect to online feeds into my facebook account. This blog for instance, my meetup groups, twitter: it all feeds Facebook and there many friends commenting on what I’m doing. I seem to be using Facebook for it’s intended purpose of social networking so why this sudden death of my account without warning?

It makes me look at a lot of social networking companies with a lot of suspicion. What if I built up a business network of customers and associates on Twitter to find it all gone one day?

For now I have this blog. Even though the design isn’t finished I’m going to have to use it to keep those who care updated.

Inspiration

Things on my blog are a bit of a mess right now. The inspiration is in my head and on scribbled notes but the funnel to my phalanges clicking the mouse in CS3 and the theme editor in Wordpress is a much slower process. The style sheets are not right, (the green must go), the categories are out of whack, the menu bar is not the way I want it and the resource links to my business are not ready, because that business is still being created.

But I want to be publishing rather than perfecting. So I will be perfecting on the fly.

This blog is a self hosted Wordpress website that uses child themes for design. I offer $5-6/month hosting perfect for setting up single property websites and blogs using Wordpress.  I will talk about that some more at a later date but contact me if you want to get started on that now. Enjoy!

MSNWorm.FU is a worm that spreads through MSN Messenger. To do so, it opens conversations with the infected user’s contacts and offers them a file as if it were a photo for the contact to accept and consequently become infected. The file is sent together with sentences such as:

“me puedes marcar en esta foto de facebook?” (can you tag me in this facebook photo) “me cerraron mi cuenta por subir esta foto. si esta muy mal?” (they closed my account for loading this photo. Is it that bad?) “viste esta super fiesta de año nuevo?” (check out the New Year party) “toma, esta perfecta esta foto como wallpaper” (here, this photo is perfect as wallpaper)

The file is usually compressed in a .zip file to avoid being detected by the Messenger.

DirDel.A is a worm that reaches computers with a folder icon, to fool users into running it. When run, it does not display any message or open any folder. This malware replaces folders in different directories with a copy of itself. For example, if there is a folder called Example, it creates a copy of itself in the same directory called Example.exe and deletes all the original folders and their content.

This worm spreads by copying itself to all the system drives and shared folders.

P2PShared.AB reaches computers disguised as an email file, with names related to trademarks, such as Ikea.exe. To spread, it copies itself onto the shared files of P2P programs, with names of programs, disks, and so on. For example:

Youtube Music Downloader 1.0.exe

Absolute Video Converter 6.2.exe

FOOTBALL MANAGER 2009.exe

Password Cracker.exe

This worm also spreads via email by sending spam emails with subjects such as You´ve received a Hallmark E-Card, and an attached file called postcard.zip which contains malware. See image here

In addition, this week PandaLabs has informed about a new phishing attack used by Facebook as bait. French users received a message inviting them to view specific content in Facebook. When they did, they were redirected to a fake Facebook page, similar to the original. Any details they entered were sent to cyber-crooks.

More information here:

http://pandalabs.pandasecurity.com/archive/Facebook-Phishing-Site-Targets-French-Users.aspx

You can thank my friend David Anderson at Technically Yours for this information.

There are a lot of things in life I don’t know whether what I am doing is right or wrong. I’m not talking about murder or robbery, more of the questioning of thy self.  such as, do I compromise myself too much? Or, should I say something to so-and-so about some such thing? Was taking this contract a good idea? You get the picture? It’s not a big concern, Nothing in life is concrete, but occasionally I run across the things that feel 100% correct.

Taking time out of a busy day to teach a child to ride a bike. Going for a run. Riding a bike to work. These things all feel 100% correct. I think it has something to do with my underlying motivation for deciding such actions. If the motivation to choose something or move in a certain direction is pure then the feeling is peaceful and pure. 100% correct.

It’s not brain surgery to tell if altruistic actions are 100% correct but they serve as a great way to compare feelings to other things I do in life.  When making a decision I, 1) check my motivations, 2) look for gut instinct and then 3) review logical thought only after the first two pass the test. Lately in general and for the most part my life feels 100% correct and it feels new and vibrant.

A new blog using my own domain name that is my name, (no handle to hide behind), hosted and maintained on my own server, which I’ll talk a bit about later. I’m off the grid man. Welcome to my new personal space.