That’s right you heard it here first of April 2007 Google releases Free Google TiSP Broadband. What an amazing application of modern commodel communication.
What a fanastic idea. I signed up for my kit just now. I can hardly wait to get rid of this old cable modem wireless router technology. I’m going all the way with the Royal Flush Service.
Again here is the link to get started and sign up for your free kit: Google TiSP Free Broadband And don’t forget to read the FAQ
I was testing the CMA plugin from Realivent last week. I put a page up on the Tucson Real Estate in The News with the CMA plugin on it. The page was supposed to have an introductory paragraph about the CMA, but when I published the page it wasn’t there.
I didn’t have time to look at the code and fix the issue, so I simply set the page back to draft so it wouldn’t show up on the blog. I figured I’d get around to fixing the plugin this past week. I didn’t.
I like Realivent plugins, but I have one complaint. I wish they would make their code W3C compliant. From what I’ve found and fixed on my site it isn’t hard, just old style coding like:
$message = '<B>Request for a CMA</b>';
$message .= '<BR><strong>Full Name: </strong> ' . $name;
$message .= '<BR><strong>Email: </strong> ' . $email;
$message .= '<BR><strong>Daytime Phone: </strong> ' . $phone_day;
$message .= '<BR><strong>Evening Phone: </strong> ' . $phone_night;
Here is the point. I was on the blog and did a search for CMA to find out where it was mentioned and up popped the CMA Page, that is currently in “Draft” mode.
It appears if you once publish, even if you have set it back to draft, it can be searched and viewed on your blog.
Follow the Logic Brick Road
I’ve never been the kind of person to use a knife for a screwdriver, well maybe a couple of times. But that’s not the point.
While the ladies of the house might go to the mall to “Shop” they wonder why I don’t want to come along. You know, walking from store to store watching them try on an assortment of clothes.
Why I’ve even got a seat in American Eagle Outfitters with my name on it. I watched my first ever music video in American Eagle. I saw some guy injecting a carrot with his DNA and the Carrot began to look and sing like him. That was my last music video as well.
Then when the day is done, they haven’t bought a single thing. Or if they do, I can almost be 90% certain they will take it back before the week is over. For some reason they look different at home than they do in the store. Go figure.
Ok, I digress, I would love to take the girls for an afternoon at Ace Hardware and Home Depot. I’ve had them there on a couple of occasions to pick up things for the house and they get the same look on their faces I get when we are at the mall. Can you imagine a whole afternoon going from the tool section, to the screw isle, then the plumbing pipe area, you can make a lot of cool stuff out of PVC pipe and fittings.
Yes, I know, what has this got to do with the Printer. I’m almost there.
Scan To Email
Last year our office got a new copy machine, I don’t mean our home office I mean the one we visit once a week to water the plant on our desk. The copier had a new function. We could scan a contract, enter our email address and a PDF of the contract would be sent to our email. Agents fell in love with this feature almost immediately.
However, you have to use a pencil eraser to enter the email address since the onscreen keyboard is so small only ladies with pointed fingernails can enter an email address. We “Big Fingered Guys”(BFG’s) have to use the eraser.
Several times over the past year I’ve made the trip down to the office, scanned the document, entered my email address, drove back to the house, and found it wasn’t here. So I get to go back to the office and do it again.
Everytime I have made that trip I’d say to myself, I’m going to be able to do this at home very soon.
We have an all in one HP machine someone threw away because it quit printing. I dug it out of the garbage, found drivers for it on line, and have used it for our scanner. It works fine for one or two page documents.
Like:
- Estimates
- BINSR’s
- Addendum’s
- Counter Offers
But for Contracts or The Seller Property Disclosure Statement, it is down to the office.
I found a printer driver called PrimoPFD, it lets me save scanned documents as PDF’s by selecting PrimoPDF as the printer. (It’s free) you’re beginning to see a theme here aren’t you.
I Hate Ink Jets
Yeah, now you know something personal.
I hate them because:
- They clog up
- They leak
- They are messy
- They run on the page when wet
(yes we do get some rain in Tucson) - They run out at the worst time
- They require a lot of maintenance
clean the head, clean the head, clean the head
I’ve had all kinds, my favorite is the Epson 880 sitting in the other room, but even that one I hate. I’ve had Canon, HP, Brother, Oki, pretty much you name it at some time I’ve had one of their ink jets.
I’m a laser kind of guy. I have three of them,
- 2 Oki C5200 Color Lasers
- 1 Brother HL-2040 for pure black and white.
The Hunt for the Scanner
For months I’ve looked for a scanner that would auto document feed up to 35 pages and save as a PDF. All I found were flatbeds, with Document feeders you could buy as an accessory. All of them were way more than $100.
Last week Office Max ran in their Sunday add the Brother MFC-5460CN all in one wonder machine marked down from $140 to $99. I didn’t need a fax. I didn’t need another ink jet printer. I didn’t need an ink jet copier. I did need a scanner with a 35 page document feeder built in.
Some would think it is crazy to buy a four in one and only use the one, but I figure if it cost more to buy just a scanner, then DUH!!
I brought it home and you should have seen the look on the girls faces when I walked in with it. They looked at me, then at each other and the “What the heck is he up to” look appeared on their faces. They think I’m a gadget freak, or at least a printer, camera fetish kind of guy, sorry I digress again.
I took it out of the box very carefully, after all if this thing doesn’t do what I want it to do, back in the box it goes.
- I installed the drivers,
- the software package,
- plugged it in,
- plugged in the USB cable.
Up popped the command center and a reminder that all the ink cartridges were empty. I’m not installing those things, I don’t need ink for a scanner.
BTW, the stupid machine won’t even turn off if I don’t put ink in it. I hate machines that think they are smarter than I am. Ha! Stupid machine beep all you want when I hit the power switch, I can still pull the plug. It is sitting on the floor right now scrolling the message, “No Cartridge… Open the cover…Install ink Cartridge…”
The command center pops up and I see Scan and Custom Scan configurations along with other stuff I don’t need, at least I don’t need them right now.
I set it up as you can see with two b/w and two color scan settings.
Check out this configure panel.
I set the file type to PDF
Destination Folder
Save As Window ON so I can name the document and change the folder if I want.
Set the resolution
Scan Type to True Gray
I put 10 random pages in the document feeder.
Clicked on “Average Scan BW”
And in less than one minute I had a PDF file named as I wanted it in my folder of choice.
I DIDN’T HAVE TO DRIVE TO THE OFFICE.
You can scan images of course if you want to. You can even scan to email. It names the document and saves it as an attachment on a new email message. But for me all I need is to feed in those Contracts and SPDS and get a beautiful PDF file in my folder of choice.
For those documents that are faxed from inferior machines, I hate bad fax copy, especially the ones with a line down the page. I can set the scanner to 300 X 300 or even 1200 X 1200 to get a better copy of the bad fax.
I’m in love with this thing. OK, maybe I am a hardware freak. I’ll probably go ahead and feed the baby her ink cartridges before I put her to bed for the night.
I wonder if it will quit blinking if I only put one cartridge in. . . hum. . .
I like having three column layouts for single property sites. I’ll go into the why in the theme’s post.
I also like to have a couple of text boxes so the first thing you will want to do after activating this plugin is to add at least an additional text box and save. You do this at the bottom of the setup screen
The layout of the sidebars is as follows.
- Text1
This is where I put the brokerage and contact information - Text2
You can see above is the Summary Description of the property - Links
This is where the categories and links to them show up- Documents
- Information
- Websites
- Pages (I change this title to Detailed Information)
- Recent Posts (I change the title to Additional Information)
This requires editing the sidebar widget file finding the word Recent Posts and changing it to read “Additional Information”
function widget_recent_entries($args) {
extract($args);
$title = __('Additional Information', 'widgets');
$r = new WP_Query('showposts=10');
if ($r->have_posts()) :
?>
This isn’t as hard as it may sound, you can copy all the text to notepad search for “Recent Posts” replace it with “Additional Information” copy all the text back to the plugin editor and save.
Or you can do it the way I do. Look at the code line for line till you find Recent Posts and replace it.
However, I only did this once. After that I saved this altered copy of the widget plugin for the single property listing blogs.
If you want to see how this works here is our example blog from the beginning.
Macenroe Single Property Site
There are a lot of, I’ll call them “sub-widgets” you can add to a blog if you have the sidebar widget installed on a blog. I keep it to the ones mentioned above.
The Sidebars are to:
- make navigation of the site easy
- provide quick summary details of the property
- allow visitors to grasp a lot of information in a couple of quick glances
The Sidebar isn’t to steal the show. Keep it simple.
“Remember that every agent’s livelihood and ultimate goal is to have as many signs in the ground and as much advertising as possible. The signs and advertising bring more listing leads and buyer leads, which puts more money in the agent’s pocket.” Taken from Real/diablog – tomorrows real estate trends the post titled: ”Agents “Buying Listings” – How Much Does It Truly Hurt The Consumer And Real Estate Industry?”
A single property site is of no value if it can’t be found.
Post and Pages play an important part in creating and getting our site found in the search engines. I’ll outline the difference of each and the importance of each in this post.
I’ll cover the sidebar widget, links to documents, tags, odds and ends, pick a theme. But this is the post that tells you how to bring Single Property Sites to Life so the search engines bring buyers to your site.
Pages
Front Page is where I put the static information. It is an introduction to the site. The property street address is the page title (DO NOT include the City, State, Zip). This page is set as static in Wordpress. How
- Options
- Reading
- Select the Page or Post to be on Top
Property Video Page I put the video on a page because I haven’t found a single video format that will validate. By putting this on a page you isolate it from the rest of the site.
When you hold a traditional open house you set out your open house signs at the major intersections which will provide you with the most traffic.
When holding a 24/7 open house you want to do the same thing.
Posts are Open House signs on the web.
What are the major intersections near the property.
- Is there a national park
- a historical market
- a national attraction
- an event held near this home
- are there activities for a family
- major shopping centers
Identify these locations then set out your signs at each one.
How do you do this?
- Write the first post about the property Title address with City St Zip.
- Write a separate post about each one on the listing blog site.
- Put a map post showing where the home is located along with the location of each.
- Each post should contain the event or location in the title.
- After each post is published send out pings.
It won’t take long for your signs placed at each of these major intersections to begin to show up.
Someone searches for the local mall and up pops one of your signs. They search for the location of the golf tournament they want to attend and find one of your signs. They start thinking, it would be nice to have a home near there.
The Secret Sauce
Ok everyone, here is what you have been reading all these post for.
Here is what sets apart a Single Property Site that get found by the search engines and the ones that are created to impress the sellers.
ITS THE POSTS
I have created more than a dozen single property sites. But about three of those sites sold before I got the site posts created. They had pages, the blogs were active and pinged. But they were completely invisible on the search engines.
I never see any of the sites in the search engines, even if they are live for two or three weeks without posts. But as soon as I add posts the site suddenly is found everywhere.
Think of it this way, if you hold an open house but don’t put out any signs, do you think people will know it is open?
The house is open.
I have searched, and struggled and spent many hours working with various plugins for Wordpress to display maps and links the way I want them. I’ve finally found the solution that fits for what I want in a mapping for my sites, it is YourGMap.
I don’t know about you but I hate reading post or articles where I get a litany of “I tried this one, then this, and you can do it this way, but here is what I actually do and have decided on using.”
So I’m not going to list or go into all the map plugins I’ve installed, configured and found wanting.
I am focusing in on YourGMap and how to get a great map page up on your single property site quickly.
Getting Started
- Go to YourGMap and create an account.
- Click on “Create a New Map”
- Give the Map a name. I use the street for the name
- Click “Create”
- Click “Create New Location”
- Give the Location a Name ex. “Home”
- Fill in the Address
- I usually pick the Blue Home marker, It is up to you.
- Comments
Here you can place an Image, Text, or Link. I usually put an image in the comment bubble. I keep it small ex. 100 X 50. The syntax for including an of these is at the bottom of the comment area. For ex. The image format is !http://www.image-location!100!50!
- If you don’t want the address in the bubble. Uncheck “Prefill comment with location name and address”
- Click “Create”
Add Additional Locations on your map
You will notice that on most maps the pointer isn’t exactly located where the home is. You can easily move the pointer for each location. See the option “Pinpoint on Map” Right above where you select the type of marker. Click on that and then click where you want the pointer to be located. It is that easy to move the pointer.
If you do move the pointer you will have to manually fill in the address in the comment bubble if you want it displayed
Click on “Map Settings” Tab
- I prefer the “Hybrid” option but it is up to you.
- Set the center of the map. I use the Home location
- Set the Zoom level I prefer “Manual” zoom level “0″or “1″
You can see the small the number to closer the zoom. The zoom level will be determined by the number of locations you want showing on your map at default zoom.
Anytime you want to see the effect of your choices go over to “Preview and Publish” then back to the tab you are working on.
- Click Save Changes when you are done on this tab. You can always come back and edit, even after you publish.
Click on “Marker Settings” Tab
Pretty self explanatory. If you don’t like what you chose you can change it here, or on the individual locations.
Click on “Publish Settings” Tab
Attention: This is the most important tab to making your map work on your site.
Way to many people setting up a YourGMap don’t take the time to setup these settings and then wonder why the map doesn’t look right.
- Size of the Map
This is determined by the size of the space you have available. On this blog I have 600px in the post area, on my Tucson blog I have 400px in the post area. I set the width of the map to be at least 25px less than the available area. I usually set the height by keeping the aspect ratio the same. You can use any photo editor and select resize width and see what it says for the height and then use that figure.
- Embed the map on your site. This is my option of choice for displaying this map.
- Select a Page Layout. I prefer “Classic” It puts the location list under the map and doesn’t mess up my post area by making the map too wide.
- If you have more than one location. I would select “Include Location List below map” And set the list height based on the number of locations on the map.
- Click Save Changes.
Click on “Preview and Publish” Tab
When you have the map set the way you want it.
- Click on the “Publish Map” button.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and you will see the code to embed the map into your post or page on your blog.
- Copy the code and paste it using Code view in your editor.
Page or Post?
I prefer to put the map on a post. I do this because I set up the post as “Additional Information” on the sidebar and the “Area Map” shows up under that list of posts.
For an example of how this all works go to: Macenroe Area Map
You can see an example of a YourGMap in a blog post on the Tucson News site Tucson Loves Organic and Natural Foods
YourGMaps are:
- Easy to Create
- Easy to customize
- Easy to publish on your blog or website
- Adds visual geographic information about the property
I like the maps for showing potential buyers the proximity to
- shopping
- schools
- locations of interest
Maps are a real benefit to a single property site. YourGMaps makes adding them simpler than drawing a map on paper and scanning it in. : )
Plugins really make setting up a single property site much easier. One Plugin I use heavily is the Sidebar Widget plugin, when you chose a theme you want to make sure it is “Widget ready” or “widgetized” if not you will need to know how to go in and modify the theme code to include widgets. I’ll go into how to do that in another post one of these days.
For now it is better to select Themes that are widget ready.
Here is a list of plugins that I use for setting up property sites.
- Askimet (for spam)
- Sidebar Widget (creating custom sidebar/s)
- Tags in the Head (meta tags for your pages and posts
- Ultimate Tag Warrior (UTW) tags, tags, more tags,
- Windows Media Posting (embedding wmv files in posts)
- Or Coolplayer 9 (A more vercital media player)
Askimet
This is a plugin that is included with Wordpress updates starting with version 2.1 It is the main force for spam control on your site. After you install the plugin you will need to create an account at Wordpress.com They will email you an api key and you will copy this into the Askimet setup under plugins askimet configuration.
Sidebar Widget
This particular plugin is more than a simple plugin you activate setup and forget. This plugin is the basis of the Wordpress term “Widgetized” or “Widget Ready” It is a must I believe for any Wordpress blog.
There exist an entire subset of plugins written just for the sidebar widget plugin. I’m going to write an entire post on this plugin. Just note, you definitely want this one.
Tags in the Head
Tags in the head are tags that you set up under the options page for the meta tags for description and keywords for page or post generated HTML. You want to activate this plugin then go to the options tab and click on tags.
Ulitmate Tag Warrior
UTW is a another great plugin for adding tags to your pages and posts. Once installed you go to the Options tab and select tags. There are many options you can set for how and where you want your tags to appear. For Single Site Property Blogs I usually don’t use local tags, instead I prefer the Technoraticommalist at the bottom of the page or post.
It is your personal preference. Usually there isn’t enough internal navigation to merit internal tags being displayed, but to make your site easier to find on Technorati I like putting those tags into place so my site is searchable on Technorati.
When we cover the topic “Pages and Posts” I’ll explain the use of tags as open house signs on the net.
Windows Media Player Plugin or CoolPlayer
I like the use of video media on the sites. It makes a site pop and often gives potential buyers who are out of state or country the ability to see the property. We often have people phoning or emailing their family to go to the site and view the videos. It has closed more than one deal when dad in California could view the inside and out of a home his son or daughter wanted to buy.
I like each of the above plugins. The Windows Media Player requires someone to already have Windows Media Player V10 or higher already installed on their computer for the viewer to work. It only plays .wmv files
Coolplayer on the other hand plays almost any kind of video file you can find and it has a lot of options on how the player displays and functions on the blog.
I used to have other plugins for displaying maps and doing some other things, but I’ve found a great mapping solution using yourgmap.com which I’ll show how to implement in the Single Property Site – Maps post.
We are talking about setting up Single Property Sites, I have many other plugins I would use on a Real Estate blog in addition to these. Remember the old glade commercials with the theme song; “Plug it in, Plug it in” Well in the same vein, Wordpress plugins will keep your site from smelling stale and they will help give it a fresh clean look.
“Hi, I know we were coming to town this next weekend, but one of the homes you sent us is really interesting and we see it just came on the market. Could you go over and take some more photos. We want to see all the bedrooms and the inside of the kitchen cabinets if you don’t mind.”
Of we went with the camera to the other side of Tucson. We had the list of photos but I had an idea brewing in the back of my head since doing the Single Property Site Video Display post just a couple of days before.
I took photos of everything just as if we were going to list it ourselves. Barbara was wondering a little but she knows I love to shot photos and just lets me go since we don’t have to buy film or pay for processing anymore. I love digital photography.
When we got in the car headed back to the office so she could upload the photos that were requested I bounced this idea off her.
“Hey, instead of emailing them the photos they asked for, why don’t we put together a video of the whole place.”
“How long will it take?”
“I think I can have it ready in about 20 minutes”
“Okay, let’s try it”
- I downloaded the photos from the camera
- Re-sized them and edited some of them (brightness/contrast)
- Opened Photo Story 3
- Put the photos in order
- Use default transitions
- Create a music theme
- Save the raw story
- Export to wmv file
- Upload the video to the server
- Create a page at the Lab called Video Player
- Put the Coolplayer on the page to play the video
We emailed the clients with the link to the page and we waited.
It didn’t take long. They loved the video. They were able to call and have family and friends look at the video.
They called back.
- We want to make an offer
- Offer made
- Counter offer
- Counter offer accepted
- Inspection period begins
The single property site I’ve used in the Video Display post mentioned above.
A man calls and says his dad in California would like to see more pictures than are in the MLS or on Realtor.com. “Have your dad go to Google and search on “Macenroe Lane“ the property will come up and he can click on the video montage.”
- Offer made
- Counter offer
- Counter offer accepted
- Under Contract
All weekend we had agents and callers asking about our listings. It is very impressive when you say go to Google and search “Pontatoc Canyon” or “Windsong Canyon” or “Sandlewood Rd“. You will notice Tucson isn’t even mentioned, nor the address.
All 4 of these searches are #1 in Google as I write this post.
This is using technology to provide quality service to client, both buyers and sellers.
Do you think this makes getting listings easier?
There are two types of categories
- Categories for organizing your posts
- Categories for organizing your blogroll (links)
Wordpress 2.1 changed the way it handles categories behind the scenes and now allows you to create them on the fly. For our purposes they haven’t changed a great deal. For SEO purposes here are my suggestions for Category names.
Categories play an important part in SEO and are coupled to your permalink structure. I suggest you when you set up your site you use a custom permalink structure of
/%category%/%postname%/
You do this by going to the options tab and typing this in the custom box and save.
What are permalinks? Permalink structure determines how the URL will appear in the address bar on the browser. If you are reading this post from the post page you should see in the address bar: www.realestatebloglab.com/Single-Listings/Single-Property-Site—Categories
This puts the keywords I use in the category names along with the keywords I have in the post title. This permalink structure tied to your category names provides you a keyword rich URL for the search engines.
This is why it is important we chose our Category names for Posts wisely. The category names for our blogroll play a different part in the site structure which we will get to, but first let look at the category names for posts.
Categories for Posts
I suggest you create post categories tied to geographic places associated with the property address and location.
- City
- Tucson
- Tucson Living
- Subdivision
- Heritage Highlands
- Sam Hughes
- Area
- Dove Mountain
- Rancho Vistoso
- Community
- River Walk Luxury Townhomes
- Campus Walk Condos
This will help with placing the location of the property in the URL address bar as keywords. Searches on any of these locations give you a better chance of coming up in the search.
Example: If I had a property in Heritage Highlands subdivision which is located in the Dove Mountain Area of Tucson, I would for that property have the following Categories on that blog
- Tucson
- Tucson Living
- Dove Mountain
- Heritage Highlands
I might have a post on the activities available at the Gated Heritage Highlands Community under the category Heritage Highlands. Another post on The Fry’s shopping Center at Dove Mountain, category Dove Mountain etc. The URL for the last example using an address specific domain name www.123MyStreet.com/dove-mountain/frys-shopping-center/
Categories for the Blogroll (Links)
These category names help us divide up the navigation to supporting pages and documents we provide on the site. Here are some suggestions:
- Documents
- Here is where you can put disclosure documents. I scan these documents save them as PDF’s and upload them to a directory then link them under this category. ex. SPDS, Leadbased Paint Disclosure, etc.
- Information
- This is where I put links to property flyers, virtual tours and anything of interest that is tied to the property. You could do a weekly CMA and link to it here.
- Web sites
- Your web site address, blog address, other single property sites, etc.
- Area Attractions or Area Activities
- Here I place links to attractions and activities of interest located near the property. This might be malls or upscale shopping. It might be national parks or recreational facilities as examples.
Setting up your categories properly will help visitor navigation on the site. More importantly it will help them find the property in the first place in the search engines.
ReBlogWorld 2010
My Hosting Choice:
Custom WP Site Design
Follow On Twitter
Recent News
-
Featured News
-
Email & RSS Feed
Copyright
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.Yeah Right !
