The Mortgage and More Blog

Archive for the ‘Announcements’ Category

PositiveRealEstateProfessionals.com now offers Video Blogs in conjunction with an account on our real estate network. The Video Blogs, just like the Photo Blogs and other additional blogs, can be purchased for a one time fee of $100. One of the greatest benefits of having this additional blog is that the page with all the blogs would be indexed and followed by the search engines, unlike tags or categories. In addition, you will be able to set the keywords for the Video Blog as well as each and every individual post that occupies space on the Video Blog. Any of these three blogs can be purchased from the main page of PREP.

So, what is a Video Blog, you ask. Video Blogging is also referred to as vlogging. Vlogging uses videos to create your articles as opposed to text. This creates a sense of internet television. Entries include videos or a link to the videos, supporting text, images, and other metadata. The best vlogging is done when the author provides a transcript for the article. These particular articles are drown with search engine juice. While it takes a little bit of work, the transcript can be keyword intensive.

In closing, if you are looking to increase your SEO without having to add a bunch of extra steps to do it, look into adding a Video blog or any of the other blog products that we offer to your PREP site. The additional potential for search engine juice is yours for the taking.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

PositiveRealEstateProfessionals.com Now Offers Video Blogs is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

Title: Weim And Cheese
Location: St. George\’s Greek Orthodox Church, Knoxville, TN
Link out: Click here
Description: An Evening of Fun To Benefit Wolf Creek Weimaraner Rescue, Inc.

Special Musical Guest: Randy Webb and “Blues No More”

Silent and Live Auctions with Auctioneer Travis Royston

Wine, Beer, Beverages, and Heavy Hors d\’oeuvres

Ticket Info:
Advanced $30
At The Door $35
Order Online At http://weimcheese2010.eventbrite.com/?ref=elink
Start Time: 17:00
Date: 2010-03-13
End Time: 21:00

Weim And Cheese is a post from: Spoiled Pet Cafe

©2010 Spoiled Pet Cafe. All Rights Reserved.

PREP now offers broken link checker to it’s members. We decided to add this tool after running a number of reports on our online real estate network. For those of you that are unaware of what damage broken links can have to your SEO and your site, let me explain it this way. When a link is broken and someone clicks on it, they are directed away from your page. Sometimes you will get a “500″ error, but most of them come back as a “404″ error and state nothing was found. Not only are these errors encountered by human searchers, they are also encountered by search engine bots. In the end, neither are happy when they encounter this.

As part of full disclosure, when we ran ours on PREP, we found 144 broken links out of 1751 for just over 8%. For me, that is just too high of a ratio and damages our SEO. Once we figured that portion out for our site, we thought that the members would have similar issues. So, with that coming to light, we decide that this was a “must have” tool to offer to our members. It is free to use and can be located on your dashboard under tools. The first time that you run it, it might seem to be stuck, but let it do it’s thing. It will clear out.

Now, what causes broken links, you ask. Well, that is a simple answer. Links can be deleted over time. A website can expire over time or go corrupt. Even worse, a site can be moved from one domain to another. While there are other fixes out to preserve these links, you have to ask yourself if it is worth the effort to track down the new URL. Once the program runs, you will have the choice to edit the URL, exclude it, or unlink it. In most cases, the only real choice is to unlink it.

So, what all does this tool do? For that information, I thought that I would just turn to Wordpress Plugins Directory for that answer:

Features

• Monitors links in your posts, pages, the blogroll, and custom fields (optional).

• Detects links that don’t work and missing images.

• Notifies you on the Dashboard if any are found.

• Also detects redirected links.

• Makes broken links display differently in posts (optional).

• Link checking intervals can be configured.

• New/modified posts are checked ASAP.

• You view broken links, redirects, and a complete list of links used on your site, in the Tools -> Broken Links tab.

• Searching and filtering links by URL, anchor text and so on is also possible.

• Each link can be edited or unlinked directly via the plugin’s page, without manually editing each post.

Basic Usage

Once installed, the plugin will begin parsing your posts, bookmarks (AKA blogroll), etc and looking for links. Depending on the size of your site this can take a few minutes or even several hours. When parsing is complete the plugin will start checking each link to see if it works. Again, how long this takes depends on how big your site is and how many links there are. You can monitor the progress and set various link checking options in Settings -> Link Checker.

Note : Currently the plugin only runs when you have at least one tab of the Dashboard open. Cron support will likely be added in a later version.

The broken links, if any are found, will show up in a new tab of WP admin panel – Tools -> Broken Links. A notification will also appear in the “Broken Link Checker” widget on the Dashboard. To save display space, you can keep the widget closed and configure it to expand automatically when problematic links are detected.

The “Broken Links” tab will by default display broken links that have been detected so far. However, you can use the subnavigation links on that page to view redirects or see a listing of all links – working or not – instead.

There are several actions associated with each link listed -

• “Details” shows more info about the link. You can also toggle link details by clicking on the “link text” cell.

• “Edit URL” lets you change the URL of that link. If the link is present in more than one place (e.g. both in a post and in the blogroll) then all instances of that URL will be changed.

• “Unlink” removes the link but leaves the link text intact.

• “Exclude” adds the link’s URL to the exclusion list. Excluded URLs won’t be checked again.

• “Discard” lets you manually mark the link as valid. This is useful if you know it was detected as broken only due to a temporary glitch or similar. The link will still be checked normally later.

In closing, this tool is set out to benefit our members. Unfortunately, we do not have the time to run these for you. We also do not have the time to review your broken links to give you direction. Ultimately, this is something that you are going to have to make the call on. There is really no right or wrong answers.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

PREP Now Offers Broken Link Checker is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

Many of you that have followed me over the last two years might remember that when I first broke into blogging, I was a manager for a mortgage company. I originally started blogging on ActiveRain as The Mortgage & More Guy and soon converted my blog name to The Mortgage & More Blog. It did not take me long to know that I needed to grow my presence and that is when I gave birth to The Mortgage & More Blog. Just so you know a time line, the site was born in April of 2008.

I originally turned to Blogger, which was a free platform through Google. I went there thinking that because it was tied to Google, I would be able to garner more Google Juice. Boy, was I dead wrong. It did not take me long to realize that this was the wrong platform. I soon started looking for a platform that I could expand on.

This is when I found Wordpress. Many people do not realize that Wordpress comes in two flavors; Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org . If you want to get techinical, there is also MU.Wordpress.org , in which Positive Real Estate Professionals is actually built on. I won’t get into that as it is a bird of a different color. The big difference between the .com and the .org is that .com host your site for you and there are many restrictions. The .org does not host the site for you and there are few limitations. In my estimation, .org and the MU platform might be the best content management system on the market today in terms of what it can do for you.

Now, let’s get back on track. I originally went with the .com version. However, it did not take me long to know that it was not the right version and I soon mover to the .org version. Since that point and time, I have been able to increase my web presence with little effort. The tools that this platform offers is extremely powerful. With that said, the people that still follow me know that I left the mortgage industry last year to follow a dream. Since that time, I have tried to keep this site going, but it has been difficult. I have since automated the site to pull my articles from PREP.

With the time running near for the site to renew, I have decided to sale it off. With that said, if you are interested in purchasing the site and all the content on the site, then we need to talk. The site is established and still has a following. It is generating about 200 hits a day at this point. If you want to discuss this, you can call our office @ 865-951-0522 or email me.

Today was a good day for PREP admins and hopefully for the general public who have their own website or blogsite built on a platform. This is because we launched SEO Info Now. This site is independent of the Positive Real Estate Professionals network.

Why did we build this site?

The reason for this site is rather simple. Since many of our PREP members find our SEO posts helpful, and the tutorials on the Test Account helpful as well we wanted to launch a site that combines both.

Will all the articles from PREP be on this new site?

While we are using a syndication from PREP’s main blog and the Test Account, these are going to be the only two sources of information for this site. Also, we have set up the syndication to hold posts in draft for the simple reason that if they are mainly concerned with PREP and not SEO or SEO enhancements or Wordpress tutorials we can simply leave them in draft.

What is the benefit to PREP overall (why should I care)?

This new site will provide backlinks and deeplinks to PREP. This will strengthen and enhance even further our positioning as a network with the search engines.

If you have a chance check out the new site and if you know someone whose site is built on a Wordpress platform that might appreciate the articles, send them on over too!

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

PREP Launches SEO Info Now is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

PREP adds tool to speed up owner verification of sites today. Instead of having to get codes from Webmaster Tools, SiteExplorer, Webmaster Center and Siteowners and having to locate the section where you have to insert these codes, we have made it much easier. So, you are asking me how this might actually help you. Well, let me explain it all from the start and lets go over each and every one of the four search engine tools that are listed in this article. Also keep in mind that our real estate network is progressive when it comes to technology. Our goal is to bring our members and our readers the best in technology that we can.

First off, let’s take a look at Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! SiteExplorer, Bing Webmaster Center and Alexa Siteowners and how each of them can help us. For Google, their Webmaster Tools are designed to provide you with Google’s view of your site as well as help you diagnosis any issues or problems. However, it goes deeper than that by allowing you to provide a link to your sitemap so that Google bots can crawl the site more efficiently. You can also research internal and external links to your site as well as search for keywords that are driving people to your site. With Yahoo! SiteExplorer , you are able to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search. You can also view the most popular pages from any site, dive into a comprehensive site map, and find pages that link to that site or any other pages. With Bing Webmaster Center, you can use the Webmaster Tools to troubleshoot the crawling and indexing of your site, submit sitemaps and view statistics about your sites. Alexa Siteowners is really no different except that it allows for you to add detailed information about the ownership of the site.

The biggest question that I get asked when it comes to these four is “Why use all four if they provide almost the same info?”. The answer to that is simple. While they provide much of the same information, they provide it from their perspective. Hence, why you want to use all four. If you walked into your doctor’s office and he told you that you were dying from some serious untreatable disease, you would more than likely ask for a second opinion. With each of these tools, that is basically what you are getting; a second opinion. With that said, remember this fact: each of these webmaster tools provides information that is unique to them.

Lastly, the addition of the tool is simple to setup. For members of PREP, all you need to do is log into your dashboard. Then go to Settings on the left side and look for “Fast Verification”. Once there, click on the link. When it opens, there will be four large blanks. Below all four will be 4 different links to each of the respective sites. Click on each and look for the code that it is requesting in the examples below each blank. As always, if you have issues, please call one of admins. Unfortunately, this is not something that we can do for you. With that said, it is definitely something that I highly recommend that each person uses. In the long run, it can help you show up higher in SEO and SERP.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

PREP adds tool to speed up owner verification of sites is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

All The Details For Saturday’s Mardi Growl! is a post from: Spoiled Pet Cafe

©2010 Spoiled Pet Cafe. All Rights Reserved.

Many of the Google Apps users received an email yesterday explaining that Google Apps will be phasing out support for many outdated browsers. For most Internet users that are already using Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above to access the Internet, this really has no implication for or to you and you can keep surfing and using Google Apps like you normally do. However, to those that have yet to upgrade their browsers from the dark ages for what ever the reason may be, this does affect you.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser.  Google Apps will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change. On March 1, 2010, they plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor.  After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, Google Apps will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

People that purchase new computers have no issues with this phase out. However, for those individuals and companies that are still in ancient times using Internet Explorer 6.0, it is time to emerge out of the dark ages. Personally, I recommend that you keep your browsers up-to-date by setting automatic updates to always install. In doing this, it will keep you on top of the game.

If you have questions in relation to this process or general questions that our staff can help you with, please feel free to contact us at 865-951-0522 or email Rich or Danny.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

Google Apps phasing out old browsers is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals

Title: Spoiled Pet Cafe At The Knoxville Expo Center
Location: 5441 Clinton Highway Knoxville, TN 37912
Link out: Click here
Description: Come join Spoiled Pet Cafe at the enormous Knoxville Expo Center this weekend. In addition to our full selection of gourmet pet treats, we will have pet toys and accessories as well as many types of holiday gift baskets as well.
Start Date: 2009-12-18
End Date: 2009-12-20

Spoiled Pet Cafe At The Knoxville Expo Center is a post from: Spoiled Pet Cafe

©2010 Spoiled Pet Cafe. All Rights Reserved.

Title: Market Square Farmers Market Holiday Show
Location: Market Square in Knoxville, TN
Link out: Click here
Description: Spoiled Pet Cafe is excited to be a part of this final Farmers\’ Market for this year and is looking forward to seeing all our customers and fellow vendors in the Spring.
Start Time: 09:00
Date: 2009-12-19
End Time: 20:00

Market Square Farmers Market Holiday Show is a post from: Spoiled Pet Cafe

©2010 Spoiled Pet Cafe. All Rights Reserved.