The Mortgage and More Blog

Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

***There have been changes to the widget discussed in this tutorial since the original publication (August 13th, 2009) of this tutorial. I have updated the tutorial to reflect these changes. Yellow font indicates where changes have been made. I have used the strike thru to indicate procedures that no longer apply. Also note that the first two images have changed to reflect the changes to the widget.***

One of the most powerful developments on the internet for both business and personal connections is the emergence and widespread use of social media outlets. I would surmise that most internet users and even many people who do not use the internet have heard of at least one social media network; even if they do not realize it. MySpace? Twitter? Facebook? One of these three will generally ring a bell with most people as they are mentioned often on television, the radio, and in print media. In addition to these three social medias there are others, lots of others.

As a PREP member you have access to a pre-loaded widget from your Dashboard that can easily allow visitors to your site to connect with you via numerous social medias. This tutorial is going to give you step by step instructions (with illustrations) on how to:

1. access this widget
2. enter your social media usernames
3. place this widget on your sidebar

To begin with you will need to be logged into your Dashboard. From your dashboard, here is the path to access the widget:

Dashboard > Settings > Social Media Page (SMP)

As you can see from the graphic to the left, the Widget named ‘Social Media Page’ is where you need to begin. Locate the ‘Setting’ tab on the left hand side of your dashboard. When you hover over the settings tab a grey arrow will appear next to the tab name; click this arrow. When you have clicked this grey arrow a dropdown with numerous options will appear. In this list of dropdowns you will need to locate ‘Social Media Page.’ This is the widget we will be working with. In the image to the left I have placed a red box around the widget with a red arrow pointing to it. Click on ‘Social Media Page’ to begin working with this widget. Follow the directions on the image to the left.

When you click on ‘Add profile to list‘ the image to below  will appear on your dashboard:

From this point you fill in your Username/User ID for each of the social medias that you belong to and that you would like to utilize to easily connect with visitors to your site. Be sure that once you have filled in this information that you click ‘Update Profiles & Options’ at the bottom of the page to save the information you have entered. WARNING: If you do not click update the info you entered will not be saved and you will have to re-enter it. Now you are ready to place the widget on your sidebar.

To place the completed Widget on your sidebar, here is the path:

Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets > Add

On left hand side of your dashboard, locate the ‘Appearance’ tab. Just like you did with the ‘Settings’ tab above, hover over Appearance and a grey arrow will appear. Click this grey arrow to open up a dropdown. In this dropdown, locate ‘Widgets’ and click on it. I have placed a blue oval around widgets in the image to the right.

When you click on widgets, a new screen will open on your dashboard. From this screen, you can now add the completed ‘Social Media Page’ widget to your sidebar. Simply click ‘Add’ to place it in drag the widget to the sidebar you have selected. Once you have added it to your selected sidebar be sure to click ‘Save Changes’ or it will not be added.

That’s it! Now if you open your PREP site you will see the widget added to your sidebar with the various social media icons present and linked to your accounts. Just another way to connect with those potential clients.

Integrating Your Social Media Accounts ***UPDATE*** is a post from: Test Account

©2010 Test Account. All Rights Reserved.

It has been some time since I have had time to write an article. Unfortunately, today is not one of those times. However, I felt that it was time to shed some light on some SEO (search engine optimization) stumbling blocks. Our real estate network webmasters believe that SEO should be gained through organic means. With that said, many webmasters do not agree and decide to take their clients down the road of black hat tactics as opposed to white hat tactics. Others choose to skirt the issue and use grey hat tactics (gray hat tactics). So let’s take a look at what black hat and grey hat tactics are as well as some of the stumbling blocks to SEO.

Before we dive into this, let’s discuss something very important to all of you site owners. Whether you know it or not, your webmaster’s tactics ultimately effect your site. If the webmaster chooses to use these tactics to get your site to the top of the rankings, things could be good for some time. Mark my words however, eventually your site will get caught. When that day comes, you will lose all that you have worked so hard for. You can say goodbye to your PageRank (PR), your site being indexed, and most importantly, all the hard work that you thought that you were putting in to get your site indexed organically to begin with.  As you will notice in the picture to the left, Positive Real Estate Professionals has 3,100 pages index in their 16 months of existence. With that said, many of our real estate professionals are also indexed right along with us. There is really no rhyme or reason to our members’ placement in this index list however. So, without further adieu, let’s get to the meat of this post.

Black hat tactics can be easily spotted by the trained eye most of the time. With that said, many search engines can also spot these tactics and will soon kill off these sites. Being banned from Google indexing your site might as well be equivalent to cutting off your nose to spite your face. However, just like black magic, black hat and grey hat tactics are evolving daily, if not hourly. One of the easiest is redirection. A week or so ago, I was reading an article on As I was getting completely immersed in this article I came across a “Read More” link. While I was salivating to read more of this great article, I clicked the link. To my surprise, and disappointment, it took me to a splash page where they wanted me to buy a product that was in no way related to the article that got my attention. That, my friends, is black hat tactics. Redirections should be just what they are intended for. When a link that you worked hard to create is dead or rebuilt with a new URL, that is the time to use redirection. When you are building a page and the page that it is going to refer to is not able to be placed in the navigation, that is when you use redirection. In the cases where redirection is used correctly, this is white hat tactics.

Another instance of a black hat trick is where a web master takes any page on a site and list many keywords using the same text color as their background. To the eye, the keywords are not visible. However, the search engines do see them. To the trained webmaster’s eye, you only need to see the extra spacing there. In some cases, this is hard to do. However, you can also right click on a page in FireFox and chose “View Selection Source”. In Internet Explorer, you would choose “Selection Source”. When you do this, you can actually locate keywords that are used employing this black hat tactic.

Now, for the sake of not making this article longer than it needs to be, let’s talk about one that I frankly consider grey hat. This would be hiding links. Now, this is one of the more difficult things to follow. However, not completely impossible. Methods that are used to do this is hiding the link in “Alt Text” or PHP coding (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor is a widely used, general-purpose scripting language that was originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. courtesy of Wikipedia). Many times I have been reviewing PHP code and come across these hidden links. I will either remove them or just remove the PHP program completely.

In closing, none of these tactics are necessary. You and your webmaster need to sit down and discuss whether or not they are employing these tactics on your behalf. Ultimately, it is your site that they are playing with.

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.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Stumbling Blocks is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

If you , you are not alone. In fact Twitter is probably the fastest growing social media that has ever hit the World Wide Web.  The term social media still holds some of the negative stereotypes associated with that term. But thanks to Twitter much of that negative image is beginning to diminish; think about the flow of information during the recent populist uprisings in Iran earlier this year that came via Twitter Here are some statistics from Business Insider that were released almost a month ago at Twitter’s developers conference.

• Twitter has 105,779,710 Registered Users – Just how many people do you think see that billboard, park bench, or phone book add that you PAY top dollar for?
• Twitter is adding 300,00 Registered Users A Day – Approximately the entire population of Albany, New York (Source: U.S. Census Bureau)
• Twitter gets 180,000,000 Unique Visitors – Some perspective, Brazil, the 5th most populated country in the world, has an estimated population of 192,000,000 (Source: Brazilian Official Population Clock)
• Apps are important because 75% of traffic is outside Twitter.com – PREP recently added TweetMeme alongside TwitMe to the available integrations to further the ease of use of Twitter by members
• Twitter receives 3,000,000,000 (BILLION) requests a day (Roughly the number of Tweets read per day) – This is roughly the same number Google receives per day (Source: Search Engine Land, Feb. 23, 2010)

WOW! These numbers may seem incomprehensible because they are so large; the upside to that…because they are so large, there is room for everyone at the ‘Twitter Table’. It would be very short sighted to view Twitter as people only talking about ‘…just washed the car’ or some other type of status update. Twitter is now a megaphone to what is going on in your community or around the world! Though Facebook still commands the spotlight in the social media arena, Twitter is the rising star that will continue to draw that spotlight to itself.

Again I ask: You Tweet, Who Knew?!? So dust off that Twitter account you created months ago and get to Tweeting. It is time for you and your business to shine.

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.

YOU Tweet, Who Knew?!? is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

In addition to this Real Estate Network’s recent migration from Host Monster to Host Gator the admins of PREP have continued to search for tools to help enhance the performance, visitor and member usability, and overall satisfaction with the network as a whole. Just as 8 tracks gave way to cassettes, and cassettes gave way to cd’s, and cd’s gave are in the midst of giving way to iPods and USBs, so must plugins that were once quite popular and useful give way to the next generation. While you were selling houses, inspecting roofs, or pursuing the numerous other ventures that occupy our days, Zipli-Retweet went the way of the cd.

Zipli-Retweet was a very useful plugin for WordPress websites and networks. It allowed a visitor to your blog and/or website to use the enormously popular system to share with their friends on Twitter a particularly good, funny, scandalous, or whatever criteria tickled the reader’s fancy post you had written with the click of a button, the zipli-retweet button to be precise. Why you might ask would such a seemingly useful tool be replaced? To answer that we must look at some of the relevant information regarding the plugin. From a high of 112 downloads of the plugin to its current average of <1 a day, the popularity of it has been steadily decreasing. There is also a related stat in the form of its update frequency; it was last updated on 2009-11-12.With that said, many plugin designers recognize the limitations of there creation and abandon them in favor of an entirely new plugin. Please note that I am not attempting to disparage the plugin designer, many of these designers have regular day jobs and create these plugins for free.

Now if you will allow me, let me introduce TweetMeme. This Retweet button  is being touted as the latest and greatest available. It can be seen on sites as diverse as , , and So you may be wondering why would the admins of this network go with this plugin? It receives average 4 out of 5 user rating. It was last updated on 2010-2-24. It has also been downloaded 225,000+ times including 506 times today.

It has been activated sitewide but still must be setup by each member. From your dashboard, locate the TweetMeme header near the bottom of the left column (Refer to the image to the right). If you hover over it you will get a gray dropdown arrow that you should click on to reveal two options; ‘settings’ and ‘analytics’. Click on settings to setup this button. So how does this affect you as a PREP member? This button should definitely bring more traffic to your website and more traffic definitely means the potential exists for increased business. We would highly recommend that all PREP members utilize this excellent and FREE tool.

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.

And Now … Tweet Meme is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

Keyword stuffing is the practice of creating ‘blog posts’ or ‘pages’ and literally stuffing it full with as many keywords as possible. A common tactic is to place excessive keywords in the meta SEO of a post or page, behind the images or videos, or repeating them ad nauseum in the body of a post. Stuffing can occur by using either keywords that directly relate or do not relate to the material. Though many individuals and webmasters still practice keyword stuffing, its effectiveness has been reduced because most search engines have dramatically lessened the overall weight given to keywords.

Whether done intentionally or unintentionally, keyword stuffing is considered a ‘black hat’ tactic. In the past keywords were the main things that informed a search engine what a site, page, and/or post was all about. With the changing in algorithms through the years this is no longer the case. In fact many modern search engine algorithms have functions that are designed to discover keyword stuffing as a practice by a website. Penalties for keyword detection are varied, but the most severe I have been informed of is a website being dropped to the bottom of all Google SERPs for six months.

In addition to the possible penalties that may be imposed by the search engines, keyword stuffing can easily be detected by your site’s visitors. If you use your website for business, I would venture to say that it would look less than professional to have the same words or phrases repeated on one of your pages. Keyword stuffing can also make a page virtually unreadable or seem like nonsense to a site visitor. Unintelligible pages, hidden text, and other deceptive practices also cannot say a lot positive about any profession where ethics is important.

In a nutshell, search engines no longer weigh keywords as they once did. Keyword stuffing is less than professional. There are more effective and ethical ways to achieve great SEO and SERPs.

Keyword Stuffing, Just Say No! is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

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.

Nobody wants to be prevented from reaching their desired URL. Nobody wants to be prevented from blogging or updating their webpages to help attract more business. While nobody wants these issues, they do occasionally happen. One of the most common errors that can cause a lot of frustration is the 502 Bad Gateway Error. The image to the right (which is clickable to get a bigger view) is an example of what a 502 Bad Gateway Error response might look like.

So what is a 502 Bad Gateway Error and why do they happen? This type of error message is a web protocol status message. It indicates that there is a communications error between an upstream server and the server that is acting as the gateway or proxy to fulfill the client (i.e. web surfer) request to access a particular URL. Basically when you type in the URL you want to access, there is a communication error that prevents access. While there is a common misconception that this communications error means that an upstream server is down, this is not indicated by this type of error. What it does mean is that upstream server and the server acting as the gateway or proxy do not agree on the data exchange protocol. That is why this is a protocol status error and not an error with an individual computer. The appearance of this message generally means that the upstream server and the gateway or proxy server have been programmed incorrectly or incompletely.

Even though this is not an individual computer issue About.com does recommend a few things to try to resolve this issue:

1. Retry the web page by clicking the refresh/reload button or trying the URL from the address bar again. Even though the 502 Bad Gateway error is reporting a networking error outside of your control, the error may only be temporary. Trying the page again will often be successful.
2. Come back later. Since the 502 Bad Gateway error message is an issue with the web site’s network, everyone visiting this site is probably experiencing the same problem as you. Chances are an issue like that has already been brought to the attention of an administrator at the web site and someone is working to resolve it.
3. If you can’t wait any longer for the problem to be resolved or if you’d like to help out, you may want to attempt to contact the webmaster or another website contact yourself and advise them of the 502 Bad Gateway error you are receiving.

This type of error message is quite frustrating for a user who really has little means to correct it. A permanent fix for this issue ultimately depends on the complete and correct programming of the upstream server and the proxy or gateway server by the webmaster.

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.

ERROR! 502 Bad Gateway is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

Marketing properties with a listings blog just became easy. Imagine walking into a listings presentation appointment armed with the ability to have your client’s property reach the top of the search engines quickly. The great thing is, there are no black hat tricks used to accomplish this. Another great thing is, you do not have to log out of one site and into another to post to this additional blog. Everything is done on the same platform and is almost seamless.

One of the things with Postlets and VFlyers is that they require more room that what is typically on a page. To make sure that we have enough room for this to set up properly, we just remove the sidebars all together. Therefore, the property is front and center and is getting all of the attention that it requires. Also, once a property is listed in PREP, it does not take long for it to climb to the top of the search engines.

Now, before many of you ask why “categories” or “tags” cannot accomplish this, let me explain this; neither of these are indexed by the search engines. If they were, the bots would crash any network once they started to crawl them. So, having the additional blog gains the ability to have ALL the listings found in a search in one spot. It also allows for ALL the listings to be ‘index, follow’ and this is huge as it will increase your SEO.

As with any additional blog add on, there is a one time charge of $100. Once that fee is paid, it will take a couple of hours to be setup. If you have questions, please call us at 865-951-0522 or email me.

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.

Marketing Properties With A Listings Blog is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

Add a Photoblog to your PositiveRealEstateProfessionals.com site today and start reaping the benefits. What are the benefits you ask? Well, let’s see where I should begin. First, you can garner SEO juice from Google Images. Second, you will have ANOTHER blog indexed and followed by the search engines on your site. Third, you only have ONE login to update all the blogs. And let me dispel one myth here and now, if you think that you can do the same with TAGS or CATEGORIES, think again. Neither of these are indexed in a blog network platform like ours. When you are dealing with an online real estate network like PREP, you will find they do not allow for Tags or Categories to be indexed as it would crash the network.

Okay, now that we have gone over the benefits in a nutshell, let’s talk about photoblogs and what benefit they have for a real estate professional’s site. First off, for a Realtor®, having a photoblog would allow you to show off your community. If you are like me, you love taking your camera EVERYWHERE that you go. Adding a picture a day gives the consumers the ability to see what the surroundings have to offer. Adding an ALT Title to the picture gives Google and the other search engines the ability to place them in the searches that they should be in. For a home stager, you can add before and after pictures that can demonstrate your work. For home inspectors, you can add pictures of issues that you come across on a daily basis. It does not stop with these three professions either, but for the sake of boring you, we will leave it there.

Here are a couple of articles for further reading on the importance of proper formatting of pictures and the impact that additional blogs can have on your site:

Say It With Pictures – Photoblogs

Increase your SEO with multiple blogs on one site

At this point, PREP is the ONLY online real estate network that is offering this feature. Unfortunately we have to charge for this feature. However, the one time fee is only $100. It takes us a couple of hours to get it installed on your site, but then you are up and running.If you have questions or would like to order this, email me or call the office at 865-951-0522.

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.

Add A Photoblog To Your PositiveRealEstateProfessionals.com Site is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

Keeping up with the momentum of bringing new and powerful tools to our online real estate network, I am pleased to announce that we have brought in two new tools pertaining to copyright. In today’s age of syndication, duplicate content, and scraping, the staff here at Positive Real Estate Professionals thought that we needed to bring in some tools that will benefit and protect our members. With that said, we put our focus on COPYRIGHT.

The first tool is a copyright for the entire site. It is designed to automatically update as the years change. While it can have a custom “Rights Reserved Message”, once set this feature will never need to be followed again. As for the second tool, it pertains to each and every post that our members write as well as page content. This tool is designed to place a link into your RSS or Atom feed that will direct back to the original article. With this particular tool, you get the year, blog name, and All Rights Reserved right in the RSS or Atom feed. The blog name provides a link back to your site.

In closing, while these two tools might not seem like much, they are huge. The intent is to protect the original author from people stealing content in order to increase their blog or website’s rankings in search engines. Like always, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

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.

Copyright Done Right is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.