Over the past few days we had one of our posts about Tucson Housing Bust come under attack by a couple of Bubble Blogs. It is our first, and we survived.
Being attacked by a bubble blog seems to be a rite of passage for an RE blog. We thought it might be appropriate to offer a badge to anyone that wants to put it on a particular post or series of posts that have come under attack.
I have created it in several sizes. Pick whatever fits the theme and style of your particular blog. Please feel free to copy and use any of these images on your blog.
I actually was using Hittail for quite some time before Mary at RSS Pieces mentioned it in her Top 10 Best SEO Web Tools. There are a lot of good tools mentioned on that post. I have used some of them and I’ve bookmarked that post and go back to it often.
I imagine that most of us do not utilize 1/10th of the functionality of the hardware and software we use. There are features we never use and some are so trusted we feel we counldn’t live without them. I use Hittail for one feature only. The rest are nice but the “Search Hits” tab is the only reason this window is never closed on my computer.
This feature lets me peek behind the curtain and see how, when, and from where, people came to our website and blog. Want to peek with me?
What are we looking at.
- First the date and time, this time is two hours ahead of Arizona time.
- The red x is so I can delete this and move it to an archive.
- The Peak behind the curtain.
Look at this, I can see the search engine or site origin of the search and the phrase they searched on when they came to the site or blog. Better yet, I can click in that URL and it takes me to the very search they used to come to us. I can tell where we ranked on that search, were we on the first page, or number 50.
I’ve learned that we are number one in google for some search phrases I didn’t even know about, but do now. So lets do a quick analysis of this single set of results. There are 15 results to a page. They are from bottom to top in time and the way you should analyze these pages.
Here is a brief description of what I learn about each of these results.
- google search, la encantada snow, Post 15 minutes of magic at La Encantada
page 1, position 2, posted on Dec 10, result on Dec 18. - zillow website, this is a listing we put on zillow and when we click the URL it tells me which listing they came to our site from. So I know that listing was seen.
- Google Reader, someone has our blog in a reader and they viewed it. Good.
- Blogsearch Google for Retirement Communities result Heritage Highlands a Gated Golf Community Page 1, Postion 9 Notice this doesn’t even contain Tucson in the search.
- Yahoo Search Winterhaven Tucson result Winterhaven Subdivision Photos Page 1 Position 9 This page is on our web site. There is a festival of lights there each winter and lot of people go there for horse drawn rides through the neighborhood. We get a lot of hits on this one.
- Yahoo Search u of a tucson real estate This one is gone, it shows it was on page 1, but not today.
- online real estate listings, A directory website some one clicked on our website from there.
- Google.ca search Tucson Golf Course Condos Page 1, Position 3, Our website home page.
- Google search Gladden Farm Page 1 Position 4 and 5 The first one to the blog post on Gladden Farm free water for Landscaping The second to our webpage with search of the Tucson MLS for Gladden Farms listings. The blog feeds the Web site, the website feeds the blog, the search engine sees both.
- Google search Tucson Housing Price 2005 Page 1 Position 3 Blog Homepage
- Someone was reading our Realty Times newsletter and clicked the link to our web site.
- Yahoo Search Barbara Lasky Page 1, All Positions, Nice someone knew to look for her name.
- Google Search Tuscon Slump Block Homes Page 1 Position 6 Page Tucson Ranch Homes on our web site. Notice Tucson is spelled wrong we have that spelling as a keyword in our metatags. The page it found isn’t about slump block but the words are found on that page.
- Google Search is water running out Page 6 Position 50, today position 76 Blog post Is Tucson Running out of Water Two things, again no mention of Tucson and someone actually was on page 6 at the bottom and clicked on our tucson link.
- Zillow website same listing 3 1/2 hours later clicked through to our web site. Two conclusions, First, “They’re back” someone is taking a second look at this house. Second, someone else has just looked at this same listing on Zillow and clicked on our website listing, either way we are getting interest in that listing and traffic to our web site.
This is just one page of Hittail Search Results.
Can you see what a great tool this is for analyzing your web site or blog.
Quickly here is what you do:
- Go to Hittail and register for an account.
- When you do you will enter the url of the site to track
- A single line of javascript will be provided for you to paste in each webpage or blog post.*
- Once this is done login to your Hittail Account and click on the search hits tab.
We have our blogs and website all hosted on the same hosting account and all under the main website so all traffic comes through on this one account. If you have separate locations you can set them up accordingly.
*How do I get this code on every page?
For the web pages, I use Dreamweaver and do a search and replace for the entire site since the javascript code goes in just above the close body tag /body I searched on that and replaced it with the javascript and itself.
For the blogs I placed the javascript code in the Template Footer just above the /body tag. It will be at the bottom of every post.
Hittails is a great tool to have in your box.
1. It helps me to pick the next blog post title or keywords.
2. It helps me decided the next webpages to develop for the site.
I’ll be adding more subdivisions and communities to the site now that I know they do get searched.
Like I said at the beginning, this is just one function of Hittail. Check out the first tab and see the Long Tails to your site or blog, the tail will grow with time, and be more meaningful. I can’t say enough about Hittail, I love this tool and what it is doing for us.
I’ll take a peek behind the curtain to a shot in the dark anytime.
Now this is what I call a man dedicated to marketing. Notice his card is for “Affordable Health Package”. So if you feel like things aren’t coming out as you had hoped at the moment, you have before you an opportunity to upgrade your health care to something more affordable.
I would recommend you wait to make the call till once you’ve left the room and you thought you hated those magnetic signs on the sides of agent cars.
I have heard of gorrilla marketing. This is my first encounter with urinal marketing.
I’m a bit surprised I didn’t find an agent card with a couple of listings and photos on the back. Maybe next time.
Oh, I hope I didn’t give anyone an idea. Ladies, you will have to come up with one of your own. Maybe, a foldover card placed on the tank next to the handle or velcro above the paper dispensor.
I have read that it is a good idea to have your keywords in the url. For a long time I didn’t know what that meant. Ok, so I’m old and not as quick to pick-up on somethings, but once I get it, I don’t let go of it easily. Sometimes it is hard to make the connections between terms used for web sites and terms used for blogs.
Once I started putting the keywords for a page in the url I noticed especially on MSN.com I was coming up much faster in the searches for those keywords. I continue to do that to this day.
Okay, for those as slow as me, here is an example.
I once had a page on our web site called
condos.html I changed it to tucson-condos.html
Yes, I set up a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file. If you don’t know what that means don’t worry about it for now.
Permalinks, are to blogs what keywords in the url are to web sites.
The default permalink structure in Wordpress is “page = 5″ I don’t know about you but I don’t think that is a keyword I would search on.
Until today I’ve had the permalink structure on this blog set to the default. You can read why at the Tiga Theme post. Today I changed that structure and you can see the difference it makes. Here is a google blogsearch on World Championship Golf Accenture Match Play There are two results I want to point out. First a post on Heritage Highlands gated golf from our Tucson Real Estate In the News blog. Notice the URL has the title of the post and the category of the post right in it. http://www.barbaralasky.com/tucson-real-estate-blog/tucson-real-estate-news/heritage-highlands-gated-golf-community/
Next is the post from one of our single property listing blogs on the Acceture match play. Here is that URL http://5378wdesertflora.barbaralasky.com/?p=5 This one is using the default permalink setting.
If you want your search results from your blog to have the title, which should be your keywords for the post in the URL then change the permalinks to a Custom Setting
/%category%/%postname%/
Anyone with other suggestions or comment, well you know what to do.
I’m using the Tiga theme for Wordpress on this blog and 6 others. I like the theme and the flexibilty using the Tigarator (anyboby else thinking Arnold here) for formatting the look of the blog quickly and easily.
There is one big bug. If you change the Permalinks to anything but the default the entire theme looses its formatting.
I’ve posted a message on the author’s web site about this issue and I’ve found many others using this theme posting about the same issue and not knowing what to do to get it back.
There are two options.
- Go into the Tigarator and turn it off with the checkbox and use the styles.css to format the theme.
- Set the permalinks back to default. If you do this all is forgiven and the formatting will return.
However, I don’t like the default permalinks structure, I’ve read the best is to use a custom setting of /%category%/%postname%/ which puts the post title in the address bar. This is supposed to provide better SEO for search engines to find your posts.
I think this is true and I’ll talk about it in another post.
For now, if you are using the Tiga Theme and you lost all the formatting, then don’t panic you can get it back, just set the permalinks back to default.
For this blog, I turned off the Tigarator, (sorry Arnold) and hand set the formatting. I wanted the custom permalinks structure. You might notice some subtle changes. to the format.
Wait a miniute I thought I already read this, but now it is different. Have you ever watched a movie over and found out they changed the ending on you since you last saw it. Well I’m changing this entire post.
If RSS Feeds are a mystery to you then welcome to the party. It seems there are certain badges of honor that are worn in the blogging community, like merit badges for scouts. You have to go through a certain amount of initiation and then you can join in the next level of fun.
For myself and probably many others, one of the badges to earn is RSS Feeds. While doing research for this post I learned more about them, but I’m not going to share it. That might be taken as cheating.
I first read about RSS feeds from the Tomato: What is RSS? What is Feedburner? I didn’t understand it, I still go back and read it from time to time. But I did learn about Feedburner.
The place I continue to learn the most from is RSS Pieces of course with that name, well duh! Start with the category RSS Marketing Read them and then read them again.
It isn’t the purpose of this post to explain RSS Feeds or Marketing.
You don’t have to understand something to realize:
- it has value
- you need it.
Here are the steps to implament getting RSS Feed going on your blog.
- Download and activate the Feedburner plug-in
- Go to the options menu and set up a Feedburner account
- Copy the code they provide for you in the option screen and save
Good so far, now we get to the chicklets.
I now understand that those small icons, are called chicklets, which when I was growing up was gum.
Now there is also a literary grouping of books called chicklit, but that’s not the same things. I know chicklets make it easy for your readers to subscribe to your blog by clicking on a chicklet and then adding your blog to that particular RSS reader.
Lets go get just one chicklet, that is really all we need to get the job done.
I like what Mary McKnights said on RSS Pieces about not cluttering up your blog with with too much eye candy. You don’t need a big long list of chicklets to choose from.
Here is why. Set up your Feedburner account with the “Smart Feed” option. When someone clicks on your RSS Feed clicklet 
they will get an option to select where they want the feed to go. You can try it using this chicklet or the one at the top of the left sidebar.
Setting up the Smart Feed
- log into your feedburner account.
- click on my feeds in the upper right hand corner.
- select the feed you want to work on.
- click on the Publicize tab and select Smart Feed and activate.
Next lets go get that chicklet.
- Click on the Publicize tab again.
- Select the Chicklet Chooser in the options down the left side.
- It default to the chicklet we want.
- Scoll down to the code window and copy the code.
You can see all the other chicklets that are there. We don’t need them. Since we set up smartfeed we only need this one chicklet to choose from.
If you are using the Sidebar widget, and I recommend you do if you are using WordPress, copy the code into a text box.
Here are the steps.
- Click on Presentation
- Select the Sidebar widget
- Drag a text box to the menu (if you don’t have one available add one at the bottom)
- Click on the edit box and set your title and paste the code into the text box.
- Remember if you are using MyBlogLog to re-paste the code into the MyBlogLog box
- Save the sidebar.
Whew, I know those of you that already have your RSS Badge of Honor will think this is pretty basic stuff, but for those that don’t, this will let those who visit your blog and want to set up an RSS Feed to their reader do just that with the click of a chick-let.
Oh Yeah, more chicklets
Maureen Francis tagged me for the latest round of contagion going around. This virus was started in another part of the blogosphere when it hit Mary McKnight at RSS Pieces it mutated quickly and began infecting the real estate blog continent.
Being very new in this community I thought I was safe from the virus. Not many people even knew I existed let alone well enough to infect me. WRONG
Five Things You Dont Know About Me
- I have been an ordained minster for 36 years. During that time I have served as a Youth Minister, Christian Education Director and Sr. Pastor. To Mary’s husband and future minister, funerals are easier than weddings, there are no funeral rehersal dinners, at a funeral all people are grateful for your kind words, at a wedding there is almost always someone that wants to “make it better”.
- I have taught and tutored classical Greek. When I started preaching, I would translate my own English text and speak using only my Greek New Testament; unless I was speaking from the Old Testament. BTW, I failed Greek the first time I took it.
- Like many others I have lived outside the US for a time doing short term missions work in Japan. Yes I still speak a little Japanese. It was learning Japanese that helped me grasp Greek.
- I have served as the Database Administrator of the largest real estate brokerage in Southern Arizona. When I started programming computers it was with boards and wires.
- I have never had a computer class. When I was preaching full time, I would read computer tech manuals for light reading, theology is much harder. I have read a lot of books.
That’s my list. Now in the same spirit of Ardell at Rain City Guide. I’ll not spread this contagion least it become a pandemic of biblical proportions.
I’m not a part of the Yankee Blog Swap but I agree with Ardell, let’s not muddy the waters with that beginning tomorrow. After all that is supposed to be the day “the real estate blogosphere will be turned on its head when 28 of the industry’s top bloggers swap blogs for a day”, not some Meme virus. Since I’m number 29, I’ll not be participating, that’s ok I’m still celebrating being selected as Time Magazine’s Person of the year for 2006.
UPDATE: This widget may be missing, But here is a post you might want your readers to be aware of
Control Key Plus Scroll Equals BIGGER TEXT
I’m not going to say how old my eyes are, lets just say the more light in a room the better they like it. Here in the lab I’m trying out a widget I found today which allows readers to switch font size on the fly making a blogs font size a better fit for older eyes.
Here is the Accessibility Widget if you want to take it for a spin.
This widget is easy to install and configure.
For those new to this follow these directions. For those that don’t need them skip ahead.
The file name is accessibility.phps. After placing the file in the plug-in directory remove the “s” to make it accessibility.php.
Activate the Plug-in and go to the Sidebar Widget configuration screen under Presentation.
Place the widget where you want it to appear on the sidebar.
Open the configuration and change the title if you want.
You can also set the degrees of magnification.
It does have one annoying attribute. You can change the title and text sizes of the widget, but if you make any changes to the sidebar widget and save it will reset the title and text sizes back to the defaults.
If you know what you are doing you can use the plug-in editor to change the default title and text sizes to what you want so you don’t ever have to configure the widget.
You can set the size of the text back to the original display by reloading the page. Translated, click on the title of the blog. Your readers will need to reset the size if they change pages, or posts which is also a bit inconvenient, but it is still better than squinting at the screen.
Try it yourself, the widget is in the right sidebar, select any of the A’s under “Set Text Size”
Here in Tucson we have people that either here or thinking about moving here that I’m sure will appreciate the ability to change the size of the text making it easier for them to read.
Your readers just might appreicate this little widget themselves.
Sellsius introduced me and many others in our community to MyBlogLog. I fell in love with this widget and I know many others have as well. It is a lot of fun to see who has been reading, or at least visiting your blog.MyBlogLog has really taken off with more people joining and joining communities with MyBlogLog. If you haven’t been there yet I would recommend it.
Here is the issue. If you add the widget to your sidebar and insert the code they provide for you, your pages will instantly have 20 errors show up when you check your pages for W3C validation. I check for W3C validation after every change I make to the blog. That is how I caught this one. I added the widget, got the 20 errors, removed the widget and the page would once again validate.
Since the code is in a widget it appears on every page and post of your blog. This means that none of your blog pages or posts will pass W3C validation.
I won’t go into W3C validation in this post, but there are many sources saying validating your code is one of the things which will help you in the search engines.
MyBlogLog Code Solution:
When you get the code and plug it into the sidebar widget you will need to replace the & signs in the code with & amp; without the space between the & amp; . Here is an example of code once it is fixed.
I copy the code into Dreamweaver and use the find and replace feature. Notepad will work just as well. Once the code is changed save it, you will need it in the future. Once the find and replace is complete you can copy it into the mybloglog widget and save.
This will now allow your pages and posts to validate.
PLEASE NOTE:
Any time you edit your sidebar widget and save, you will have to reset this code. I don’t know what causes it, but anytime you save the validating code is removed and just & are put back in recreating the 20 errors.
If you add a new widget and save, if you re-arrange the order of your widgets and save, if you do anything that you will need to save you have to past the code fix into the mybloglog widget before you save.
This is why you need to have a copy of the corrected code handy.
MyBlogLog is great, I’m seeing it on more and more blogs I visit daily. I’m glad there is a work around for this issue, for me I want all my pages on the blog and web site to validate. It is something that is easy to overlook.
Checking for W3C validation after you make any additions or changes to your blog or web site is a good habit to get into.
Another real estate blog, but this isn’t like any other real estate blog that I’ve found. It will have elements of many great blogs about real estate and real estate blogging. It is to fill a nitch in real estate blogging.
It is born out of the comments and council of real estate bloggers that helped me make the decision to create a blog on topic and keep our Tucson Real Estate In The News Blog focused and on message.
My thanks to:
Jim Cronin of The Real Estate Tomato
Tim O’Keefe of Real Estate Marketing Blog
Jonathan Dalton of Phoenix AZ Real Estate Blog
Jay Thompson The Real Phoenix Real Estate Guy
Athol Kay of The Real Estate Guide
Sellsius of Sellsius
REblogGirl Mary McKnight RSS Pieces
Each of these people through their comments and their own blogs helped me make the decision to start the Real Estate Blog Lab.
What is a blog lab. It is where we will test, experiment, and report. It is where experienced and novice real estate bloggers specifically can come to ask questions and get answers.
The main lab rat is our Tucson Real Estate In The News blog. The process of setting up that blog has been an interesting and at times frustrating journey. Some times it takes hours to get what looks like a simple plug-in to work.
There are lots of terms used in the blogging community that novices look at like a foreign language. Sometimes it isn’t just the novices that struggle with some of the technical and programmatic side of blogging.
Take Ardell’s comments on the post by Dustin about Blog Posts On A Map
Hey Robbie and Dustin,
I have two “techie thingie” observations. Yeah, I guess hell IS freezing over.
1) I love the sites that have a real words like banana or carrot as comment identifiers, instead of squigly letters and numbers waving at me.
Shoot…there was something I wanted to ask Robbie. Oh well, can’t keep those techie things in my head. I’ll have to jot it down on the wall so he sees it at the “Holiday Party”…date coming soon.
8. Dustin – December 11, 2006Ardell,
I’m not sure what you mean… Can you show me an example?
9. ARDELL – December 11, 2006Dustin,
I can tell you an example. Greg Swann added the “verification” thing and he has easy to read numbers, except there’s a white line drawn through the middle of them, which sometimes makes some of the numbers hard to define. Blogger (I think it’s blogger) has crazy mixed uppe rand lower case letters with numbers mixed in and all squiggly and scrip and hard to read.
Active Rain has Words! Real live words! like banana and carrot and celery. Easy to read. No lines drawn threw them. No squigleys. It’s the word you have to enter in the box before you can post a comment, so it knows you aren’t a spam comment robot.
10. Dustin – December 11, 2006Ahhh…
I was thinking you were talking about avatars! I was thinking of adding one of those to RCG, but the reality is that I don’t end up with much spam EXCEPT when Akismet goes down (It has only happened twice in this past year!).
11. ARDELL – December 11, 2006 OK, so “verification thingie” equals Avatar? and “Spam Comment Robot” equals??
If you do get one, get one that says bunny and puppy, OK?
Now that all makes perfect sense doesn’t it?
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.Yeah Right !
