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You are here: Home / Archives for Technology

Technology

Real Estate Agents and SEO: Learn What Not to Do

October 24, 2016 by Matt Stigliano 1 Comment

SEO for Real Estate

This post is for all the real estate agents out there who read our blog…

According to https://localbrandmanager.com/local-seo-rank-tracker/, SEO, or search engine optimization, is a word that gets thrown around a lot. It’s an ever changing world of tips and tricks to help get your website noticed and many people don’t have the time or skill to learn it or keep up with it as it evolves. People can also find out more about our usa marketing seo and web design locations here. Real estate agents, hungry for more traffic to their websites, often employ SEO companies to help them boost their sites in search engine rankings so they can get noticed. Check out the Joy Hawkins Local SEO training review to know about the SEO services available in the market. What they don’t know, is how many of these companies are doing it. As someone who spends a lot of time fiddling and tweaking their real estate website, I know a thing or two about the internet. I wouldn’t call myself an expert, there are people out there with far more knowledge and experience (and I turn to them often for advice and information), but I do know enough to know that real estate agents need to stop wasting their money on some of the garbage tactics that I’m seeing more and more of.

SEO: The Linkback

One of the best known tools for generating better search page rankings is the linkback. Every time Google sees a link heading back to your site with appropriate keywords, it starts to think “wait a minute, if everyone is linking back to this site, it must be important” and when Google starts to believe something is important, it begins pushing the value of that site up in their search engine results. For this, you can get help from back linking services and Freshlinks offering outreach services. The more links, the better your exposure to people searching for keywords related to your website’s topic.

Links are not easy to come by though. Many sites block the search engines from seeing and cataloging these outbound links, so as not to open up the floodgates to a flurry of spam comments with no purpose other than to gain linkbacks. However, some websites use what’s known as “dofollow” to allow such links to be read and cataloged by the search engines. We are an example of such a site. We believe in a more open, sharing web where we are more than happy to give our fellow webmasters and bloggers what tiny little boost we can provide in return for them stopping by our site and opening up good conversation.

But, this same openness can be abused…and it is quite often. An agent or real estate brokerage pays a company oodles of money to “get them to page one of Google” and these companies set out to spam the internet with garbage comments on sites like ours that allow links so that they might get a bit of a boost from what we have created. We don’t mind giving anyone a boost (as long as they’re a legit company and not trying to do something scammy or nefarious). What we do mind is watching agents waste their hard earned money chasing a dream without any understanding of what it is they’re chasing or how the company they have chosen is going about doing it. We see instances on this site all the time of links back to agents, some that we even know and respect greatly, where the actual comment is nothing more than some gibberish in order to just comment for the sake of getting that link. What does that say about the owner of the website it is linking to?

An SEO Appeal To All Real Estate Agents

Instead of hiring these companies and throwing your money at them, take same time to understand what it is they are doing for you. But you can also view the page and get the required solutions. Get involved. Want a link on our site? Comment on our posts and leave your link in the field provided, but don’t just comment blindly. Take a moment to talk about the subject at hand – discuss, dissect, and add to the conversation. Give your thoughts, stories, anecdotes, and relevant additions. By being a part of the community, you not only get a link, but you also show people who you are. Agent from another company? Go ahead and comment on our website. We’d love to hear your thoughts. (Keep the need to advertise out of the picture – if you’re awesome, people will recognize that, we don’t need your phone number and company name plastered after every sentence.) We have a ton of content here on the site and there is sure to be something that you know a lot about or feel passionately about or even have some extra information to bring to the table (some of the posts are much older and as we know, rules and laws change, so maybe there’s an update that you’d like to discuss). We as an industry should be and can be more of a community – and we’d love to be a part of making that happen.

And if you’re an agent in San Antonio or surrounding areas, feel free to drop by and comment. I know in talking to many of you in person that you read our website. We love reading other blogs and we’d love to see more of them in San Antonio. Build a website and get involved in helping educate and inform the buyers and sellers of all the things we see on a daily basis. The more they know and understand what we do, the more we can do for them as an industry. Just stop wasting your money on junk services – we get the calls all day long, so we know what these snake oil peddlers are selling you. Don’t be impressed by fancy tech-speak and “we work with Google” sales tactics. You want linkbacks and a boost in your SEO? It’s right in front of you and you can get more out of some personal involvement than a poorly spelled, grammar destroying, nonsense filled post. Would you hire a doctor based on a comment and link if they posted an unfocused, rambling comment about the latest advances in neurology on a blog about the best ice cream in Texas? Probably not.

So come on over and have a seat. Read, comment, get involved, and boost your website’s SEO all while having a bit of fun with the real estate community. It’s not nearly as hard as those sales people make it sound.

PS If you’re a Realtor interested in blogging about local real estate and are looking for a new brokerage, let us know. We are always looking for ways to expand our website and the content we provide. Our website has grown by leaps and bounds over the past few years and we can provide you with a platform for your voice to be heard and your business to grow.

image courtesy of Christian Schnettelker

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: real estate agents, blogs, websites, seo

Nextdoor: A Social Network for Your Neighborhood

May 8, 2014 by khproperties Leave a Comment

Two Doors

Nextdoor Aims to Bring Neighborhoods Together Online

Nextdoor is a new online community focused on bringing neighborhoods together. The idea is simple, every neighborhood gets their own private site, where they can share and communicate about things local to their neighborhood. By connecting neighbors in an online space, communities can help each other with recommendations, stay safe and alert each other to crime in the area, and discuss issues that matter to them. There have been attempts at this in the past, but because the neighborhoods were not monitored, they often quickly became targets of spammers. Nextdoor alleviates that problem by making the websites private (and content is not searchable through Google) and password protected, plus they verify residency of members of a neighborhood. By doing this, they can keep the unwanted element of marketers and spammers out of the picture.

Watch the Nextdoor video for an overview of the thinking behind this new way to connect neighborhoods.

image courtesy of David H. Chu

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: neighborhoods, nextdoor, social network

New Search Capabilities with Our Website

February 4, 2014 by Matt Stigliano Leave a Comment

Polygon Searches for Homes

New Polygon Search Available

We’ve recently added a new feature to our map-based search that allows you to narrow down your searches even more. With the new polygon search function, you can draw any shape on the map and search within those boundaries. We use this capability for clients all the time in the MLS and we’ve now brought it to you. It’s simple to use – just go to to our search for homes section and click on the “pencil” icon in the lower right hand corner of the map. From there you can click and draw lines in any way you want, just be sure to close the shape by connecting your last line back to your starting point.

This polygon-shape search tool is very useful when you want to include specific sections of neighborhoods, combine several neighborhoods into one search, or even eliminate specific streets or homes from your search criteria. Give it a try today!

PS The polygon search tool also works on our rental search!

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: search, idx, homes for sale

Introducing SkySlope: Paperless Transaction Management

January 21, 2014 by khproperties Leave a Comment

Paper Mountain

SkySlope Brings New Capabilities to Agents

It’s not often we talk about the inner workings of our office on the blog, but our latest addition, SkySlope, deserves a mention. This year, we’re putting a bunch of new systems into place to help our agents work more efficiently, which benefits you – an agent who’s not bogged down in the small tasks can spend more time focusing on your real estate transaction and making your experience a much better one. Anything that improves your experience is something we want to be involved in.

Basically, SkySlope is our new paperless transaction management software. Instead of agents carrying around boxes full of folders filled with the various forms they need to make a sale happen, everything is now cloud based. All of their documents can be stored without piles of paper and the endless shuffling that occurs when someone asks for a form or needs information from one of those forms. But SkySlope is more than just that. While I won’t bore you with the details of how it creates efficiency in the office-side processes, believe me, it’s already a game changer for our office staff.

Along with having all of their documents available with just a few clicks, SkySlope also offer a digital signature platform – which we offer our agents for free – so any agent in our office can truly go paperless. With a few clicks from clients, documents can be signed and submitted with ease.

Over the next few months, you’ll see our agents using some of these technologies and we hope you love them as much as we do. Kimberly Howell Properties is always seeking ways to make the real estate buying and selling process smoothly for our clients and our agents, because the less time we spend shuffling papers around our desks, the more time we can spend connecting with clients and assisting them in making their homeownership dreams come true.

Agents – Are you looking for an office that embraces technology and gives you the tools without all the monthly fees and costs associated with them? Give Terri Saari a call at (210) 493-6888 (or email us at email hidden; JavaScript is required) and set up an office visit. We’re always looking for bright agents who want to join an office dedicated to bringing the best out of each and every agent and improving the client experience.

image courtesy of fsse8info

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: transaction management, skyslope, paperless

Why Don’t You Have a Gravatar?

December 23, 2013 by Matt Stigliano Leave a Comment

Gravatar Logo

What is a Gravatar?

A Gravatar is a small icon that appears next to your comments on blogs. Short for Globally Recognized Avatar, they help identify you as the author of a comment and overall make the internet a much prettier place. Although I think commenting on blogs is a dying artform (we’d much rather share the post on Facebook and talk about it there), I still think having a Gravatar is a basic function of being a citizen of the web. It’s free and it’s easy, so why not go grab one today?

First, visit gravatar.com and click on the big blue button that says “Create Your Own Gravatar.” From there, you will be asked enter an email address, username, and password. Once you do this, you’ll receive an activation email with a link to click on to activate your account. Once your account is activated, you will be prompted to add an image. Use whatever image you want to represent you: a profile photo, a picture of a cheeseburger, a funny e-card…the choice is yours. Now that you have that taken care of, whenever you leave a comment on a blog that has Gravatars enabled, your image will appear next to the comment instead of the dull, lifeless default image. Ta-da! Now leave some comments!

PS You can have multiple Gravatars for different purposes. I have one tied to my personal email address and one tied to my work email, so that way, I can leave different types of messages on different blogs depending on their subject matter. So go ahead, create one for all of your email addresses!

image courtesy of Daniel Semper and Gravatar

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: blogs, gravatar

One Admirals Way Website – Introducing 1AdmiralsWay.com

June 5, 2013 by khproperties Leave a Comment

One Admirals Way Website

One Admirals Way in Stunning Detail

Kimberly Howell Properties introduces a new single property website for One Admirals Way. This incredible listing in The Dominion is mind blowing in its attention to detail and finesse and for a listing like this, we wanted to really showcase some of what makes it so special. With the stunning photography of Craig McCasland, we were able to really showcase the homes beauty with a fully mobile-responsive website that highlights these amazing images. So take a moment and check out the site and let us know what you think. Be sure and check back often as we will continuously updating the site with even more intimate details of One Admirals Way, San Antonio’s most famous address.

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: admirals way, website, the dominion

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