The Mortgage and More Blog

Archive for the ‘Blogging’ 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.

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.

With all of the hoopla over the release of Google’s Buzz  in the past couple of weeks I got to thinking about similar services that already existed. First lets look at what Google Buzz actually does. If you missed Danny Thornton’s recent post on Buzz, you may want to check it out Positive Real Estate Professionals adds Google Buzz; especially the video.

Buzz is basically a social bookmarking site. Once you have created a Buzz account http://www.google.com/buzz you can then begin building your friends’ list. An easy way to start building this is by utilizing your current gmail contacts. This type of bookmarking is a way to create a ‘Buzz’ about your articles and by extension your website and business. You actually setup an integration with various services you use, like , , etc. which will bookmark your posts from these sites to your Buzz account. These bookmarks are then shared with your friends.

I setup a Buzz account within the first couple of days of the service going live. While I appreciate this bookmarking service and what it can do as far as generating more exposure, I have had an account with for quite some time. Like Buzz, FriendFeed is also a social bookmarking site. FriendFeed has similar features in that you build your friends’ list and then share with those friends your posts from both your own sites and posts from sites that you like. There is not supposed to be any SEO advantage to using Buzz over FriendFeed simply because Buzz is a Google product.

Both of these systems are rather easy to setup. Simply visit their respective websites (link to FriendFeed https://friendfeed.com/account/create?next=http%3A%2F%2Ffriendfeed.com%2F and Buzz http://www.google.com/buzz) and follow the instructions to setup your own account.

FriendFeed And Buzz is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

Do you have a account? Do you use it? How do you use it? In this post I want to examine the benefits that YouTube (and other video service hosting sites) can bring to your business.

Most smart business people already recognize the reach of the internet in getting their business out there. From stand alone websites like Strategic Funding Concepts to sites like RE/MAX Lakeside: Lake Arrowhead Real Estate which take advantage of the SEO juice that a network creates, a huge part of any overall business plan should incorporate a dynamic website. Dynamic websites have new material added on a regular basis.

Adding new material can be easily accomplished through adding new static pages, blog posts, images, or videos. While traditional blog posts are one of the easiest ways to add new content, both photo and video posts are growing in popularity. Here is a great post on the benefits of photoblogging Say It With Pictures – Photoblogs. You can either incorporate photoblogs and videoblogs (vlogs) into your existing blog or you can create an entirely separate blog just for these mediums. Here is a post on the benefits of multiple blogs Increase your SEO with multiple blogs on one site.

If you have a YouTube account (or an account with one of the other video service hosting sites) then using videos on your site is a snap. From walkthrus of your property listings to potential issues home inspectors encounter everyday to a walking tour of a local attraction, it has never been easier to incorporate these videos into your site. All you do is upload your video to whichever service you have an account with. This then places it in your account so that when others view it, they know it comes from you. You can then use your video’s URL to place it in your blog as a post. That is all you do! You have now added to your video library and to your website; this is a win/win on both counts.

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.

YouTube And Your Business 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.

Positive Real Estate Professionals adds Google Buzz to it’s list of tools. What does this mean for our members and readers? Well, for the members, it is just one more social outlet that their articles can be shared on. As well, it will create another link on the world wide web, so ultimately, it will provide more Google Juice. For our readers, it will provide an easy and quick way to add things to their Google reader or share them with their friends in their Gmail account. This might be one of the easiest share tools that I have seen in some time. Below is a short video that will help to explain Google Buzz.

It is the desire of PREP and their admins to stay on top of the social media world. The only way for us to do that is to keep up with the social media marketing tools that these social media networks are putting out there. Ultimately, our job is to provide not only our members, but our readers as well with avenues to share articles on our site with their family, friends, and followers. In other words, their sphere of influence (SOI). We will continue to march forward to bring the best of social media marketing to our members and readers alike.

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.

Positive Real Estate Professionals adds Google Buzz is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

Did you know that you could increase your SEO with multiple blogs on one site? If your answer is “No”, then you are not alone. Many bloggers do not even think that is possible. Now, for the skeptics that think “Oh, not another blog that I have to maintain” it is not like that. Actually, it is very much the opposite.

For a loan officer that has multiple blogs, they can blog about FHA Loans, Conventional loans, or USDA loans all on the same account but have the post directed to 3 different blogs. For a Realtor, you could choose to blog about short sales and foreclosures on one blog, property listings on another, and pictures on another. For home inspectors, you could write about inspections on one blog while another was centered around mold and/or radon. I could sit here and go on and on with this, but I think that you get the picture. For those of you that don’t go to Lake Arrowhead ~ Above it All and check hers out. You will notice that she has a blog under blog, one under photos, and if you look on the left hand side, you will see a picture titled Short Sales and Foreclosures. On Monday, we will be launching her 4th one that will be a Market Report blog.

So, why would I want multiple blogs one might ask. Well, first off, it is all about the refined SEO that one can get. Secondly, it is the ability to tap into additional SEO outlets that most people ignore and just don’t even think about, such as Google Images. Ultimately, the benefits are vast and can make a huge difference in your site.

Now I am sure you are wondering what the catch is. Well, frankly, there is no catch in it for us. While we do charge a fee of $100 to create these additional blogs on your site, there is not recurring charges. In the case of PREP, if you were to add an additional blog, it would cost you a fee of $100 ONCE, and then you would never pay again for that service. The annual membership of $150 would be the only recurring charges. R & D Art is the same. If we build a site for you, you can have as many blogs as you want and they can be as specific as you want.

In closing, take advantage of getting additional SEO juice that these additional blogs can provide you. Whether you have a PREP account, or an R & D Art account, get with your webmaster and see if they can assist you with adding an additional blog to your site. If they can’t, then please consider joining PREP and see what we can do for your business.

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.

Increase your SEO with multiple blogs on one site is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals