Archive for the ‘PREP’ Category

When I logged into Facebook this morning, I was greeted with the picture to the left. I am sure that many of you have already seen this. I am also sure that many started out the same way I did; looking for the path to add the “like” button to your site. With that said, I decide to write a post for all to read and learn. After spending nearly an hour trying to find this, I thought that I would save you all the headaches of tracking down how to install this little tool to your site.

Before I go into deep detail, I thought I would share what this button can and will do for you. If you look to the right, you will see this button in action on our real estate network. As you can see at this point, not many have used it. Over time, the number will grow and people will be able to share our network with their facebook friends a lot easier. All one needs to do is to click the “Like” button once, and it adds them. Below is an excerpt from the facebook page explaining this a little better:

The Like button enables users to make connections to your pages and share content back to their friends on Facebook with one click. Since the content is hosted by Facebook, the button can display personalized content whether or not the user has logged into your site. For logged-in Facebook users, the button is personalized to highlight friends who have also liked the page.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s take a look at how we add this neat little tool to our own sites. If you look to the immediate left, you will see the picture of the Like Button Generator. As you can see, I have filled out the fields that I need in order to create this button for our main page. Now, in theory, I could do this for each and every page that I wanted to on PREP, but at some point, you run into overkill. This is one of the reason why we use “sociable” on PREP. It already has Facebook’s share function in it.

Once all the pertinent information is entered, all you need to do is click on get code. Once that is done, it will generate 2 codes; one is an iFrame code and the second is a JavaScript code. Personally PREP stays away from the JavaScript coding as it can lead to some security issues, especially for a multi user platform such as ours. Once this is done, all you need to do is add this into a “Text” widget in your sidebar of your site. If you do not have access to do that, then contact your webmaster and they can instruct you more on this subject.In some cases this can require coding added to the theme itself or some adjustments to certain parameters that can only be done by an admin or webmaster. In our case, each and ever member has the ability to add this on their own site and place it any where on their sidebars without having to contact us. With that said, if you run into issues, please feel free to call us and we can walk you through the process.

OK, now that we have the why and how to out of the way, let’s get down to the where. I thought long and hard of how I could help each and everyone of you get this tool on your site the easiest way. With that said, I decide that I would just iFrame their page into this post. Hence, you will be able to generate your own code right from this article and there will not be a need to bounce around. I hope that you find this both helpful and useful.

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.

How To Add Facebook Like Button To Your Site is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2012 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

.Retweet this post

In our faced paced world technology changes very quickly. The face of business and many business models undergo constant change. In the past a professional only had to know how to navigate the world of their profession with little real need to understand other arenas. The internet, its reach, accessibility, and wealth of information have changed the very landscape of business today.

A professional, in any field, must wear many different hats. It is not expected that one be an expert in many different fields but that a professional be proficient in the fields essential to perform their tasks with proper and vigorous effort. To help Positive Real Estate Professionals members and non-members gain a working knowledge of the SEO basics necessary to represent their interests and their clients’ interests on the ever change World Wide Web, PREP admins have decided to offer a SEO for Beginners webinar. For more information and to register for this webinar click HERE or cut and past this link into your browser http://positiverealestateprofessionals.com/products-page/webinars-classes/seo-for-beginners/

SEO for Beginners is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2011 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.

.

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.

.

Today we ran a few reports to check the performance of this real estate network. We use visitor and visitor activity as a gauge of how well Positive Real Estate Professionals is doing. So here are the latest numbers.

161,000 Visitors Per Month – This is to the main PREP site.

67.49% Of The Visitors Are New – This means that growth in terms of visitors is trending in a very positive direction.

41.75% Of The New Visitors Come From Search Engines – This means that peoples’ search terms are matching the meta tags used on the site for increased organic search engine results.

428,000 Page Views (including the main PREP page) – This represents a tremendous amount of traffic to member sites.

2.66 Pages Viewed By Site Visitors – This means that many of the visitors are exploring pages beyond the main site.

4 minutes 20 seconds Average Time Spent On The Site – This means that visitors are taking the time to read and not simply coming and going quickly.

Even if you don’t fully understand these numbers, just know that they are quite good. They represent very positive trends for both the network and the individual member sites. As the network continues to grow in popularity we expect these numbers to continue to trend in a very positive direction.

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 By The Numbers is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

.Retweet this post

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.

.Retweet this post

Just the other day, I did a post entitled PREP’s Premium Services now on display. The post was designed to shed light on the all of the premium services that we offer. That post has actually drawn some interest. With that said, some of that interest has been for me to explain the FREE services that we offer. So, I am going to do that very thing in this post. So, lets get started here.

Admin support – 8 AM to midnight EST 7 days a week

When we decided to start this online real estate network, one of the things that we want to make sure of is that we provided the best customer service that we could. Having members from the east coast to the west coast means that we need to be available for the early birds as well as the night owls.

Personal walk through of the entire dashboard and social networking aspect of the network.

One of the things that always irritated me about things you join is the fact that once you join, there is usually no one around to help you find your way. While there are forums in most of these places, it still means that you leave a message and someone will get around to you in due time. We believe that your time spent on our network needs to be as productive as possible. For us to take 45 minutes to give you a walk through is a small investment in our members.

Customized Theme

Branding is huge when it comes to the internet. Being able to have a theme built just for you might be one of the biggest features of this site.

Full Width Page Template

With the Realtors®, this might actually be a huge feature as the IDX solutions as well as flyers such as VFlyers and Postlets typically require the entire page from side to side to look right.

Interactive Events Calendar

The Events Calendar is a neat feature that allows for you to list out events that are going on in your area. However, the features do not end there. Your readers will also have the ability to submit events to you and you will have the choice to add them to your calendar or not. Also, any event can also be automatically created in an article that will post on your blog.

Mortgage Calculator

Most people that visit real estate related sites want to be able to calculate what a home will cost them per month. This mortgage calculator will provide them with that info.

Unlimited Sidebar Widgets

Most networks limit the amount of widgets that can be on your sidebar due to bandwidth issues. We at PREP do not have that issue. With that said, there is such a thing as over doing it. Also, Widgets have to be added by an admin.

XML Sitemap as well as regular sitemap

PREP offers 2 sitemaps. The first, XML Sitemap is automatically generated in the backend and is hidden. This sitemap is made just for the Goolge bots.The second sitemap that we offer is searchable by the Yahoo and Bing bots. This one is also very human friendly.

Global Translator

Our readers are not limited to the US nor are they limited to speaking just English. With that said, we have a global translator available for all members sites. With the click of a button, an article can be changed to one of 30+ languages.

Ping.fm integration

For all the “Status” people out there, you will now be able to update your status on your PREP blog.

Property Watch form

Can’t really say it any better than that. This form allows for a potential buyer to have a search criteria built just for them and once a home comes on the market, will allow for a email to be sent directly to them.

Compatibility with IPhones and PDA.

In today’s fast moving world, people are using IPhones and PDAs all day long. The great thing with PREP is our sites can be view on over 30 different cell phone web browsers and look just like it would if they were on a computer. The great thing is, if you need to update your page, you have the ability to log in to do that as well.

Simple video integrations

Most users hat to have to embed videos. With a PREP account, you do not have to. All you need is the web address or video id, depending on the video service that is hosting the video, and you are one click away from adding a video to your blog.

Syndication of any blog that you currently have

With PREP, if you are currently writing a blog on another site, we have the ability to syndicate those articles to your PREP blog so that you do not have more work to do. On top of that, Google does not look at this as duplicate content because the original feed is given credit.

Social Media Promotion of a majority of your written business related articles

Rich and I spend a good portion of our day promoting the articles of our members through different social medias that we have membership in. The biggest push is Twitter where we have well over 2000 followers and FaceBook, where we have more than 2500 fans on our FB Business page.

SEO coaching, recommendations, and implementation

We offer SEO and have a tool that helps add SEO to your site as well as to each and every article that you write. We also provide advice if asked.

Tutorials on using the network

Rich has taken on writing the tutorials for the use of our online real estate network.

Simple IDX implementation (IDX Search, Quick Search and Feature Listings can be iFramed in your network site)

If you have your own IDX Search, we will integrate it with your PREP site by using iFrames. For Quick Searches to work with our network, they have to be iFrame compatible or they will not work at this time. (we are working on a .php implementation that can change that)

Custom Forms for lead capture

Ultimately you are looking to gain business as a real estate industry professionals. If there are no contact forms on your site, then how can you gain that business. We have several forms that are already created that can be integrated into your site.

Facebook Business Page setups

We will help you set up your FB Business Page if you request.We provide a simple walk through of how to construct one, however, we will not actually build it.

Social Media Marketing Strategy

We will help you put together a SMMS at your request.

NetworkedBlogs Integration

This is the easiest way to integrate your post from PREP with Facebook. It can be set up to go to your profile page, your business page, or both. People will also be able to follow your blog from FB as well.

Twitter Integration

PREP has a built in integration with Twitter that allows for you to view your twitter dashboard from your PREP dashboard. On top of that, ALL post that you write on PREP can be piped into Twitter automatically. Also, you will have the ability to have a RETWEET button on each post and/or page.

Built in readership

PREP has a built in readership already. The big difference of starting an outside blog or joining a community like PREP is the established readership. With more than 100,000 hits to the main page of PREP alone, we are poised to break new records before the end of 2009.

Access to the PREP Q&A Forum

Recently we created a forum where anyone can go and ask a questions in relation to real estate, mortgages, appraisals, home inspections, staging, or anything that concerns the real estate industry. Once the question is approved by an admin, it will then be answered by some of the real estate professionals that are members of PREP.

PREP’s FREE Services Explained is a post from: Test Account

©2010 Test Account. All Rights Reserved.

.