This is what it would be like if no one was looking at your website. It is not enough to have a nice looking website, you've got to get people to actually visit your new home on the web.

But how?

Here are a few ideas:

1. If you have an email list let your exisiting customers know that you have a website. Give them an incentive for visiting the site. Like some special content or some special discount that can only be found on the site. Many local businesses fail to keep up to date email lists. That email list could be a huge shot in the arm for your business.

2. Get top rankings on the search engines for your keyword. This is called search engine optimization (seo) SEO is a great way to drive quality traffic to your website. It does take some time to get recognized for the keyword phrase that you want to target but you can. Once you learn how to get top rankings you will find quality traffic flowing to your site. I will be teaching and seo class in Wichita in July. Check out our website for more tips and training about search engine optimization.

3. Pay for traffic to your website. This is the best way to get traffic to a brand new website. Setup an ad with Google adwords, choose the keywords that you want to target and then send those customers to your website. FYI - credit card is required and there is a bit of a learning curve with adwords, but once you get past the learning curve you will find it a quality way to send traffic to your website.

Those three ideas should get you started. Again it is not enough to have a website you must be thinking about how you will get people, the right people to visit your website.

If you have questions or ideas, drop a comment below.

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I teach business owners and marketing teams how to market their businesses online.

I teach about Google Adwords

I teach about Search Engine Optimization

I teach about blogging, social media, twitter, facebook and online video.

I've been trying to boil exactly what it is that I do. More than teaching, I think of the purpose of my job as helping other people succeed. Teaching is important, but I make it my aim to allow people to take the knowledge that they have gained in my class and put it into action.

It is important for me to keep this thought in front of me because I do more than talk about Google Adwords or Twitter. My aim in each class, with each consultation appointment is to deliver the best information possible and to ensure the success of my students.

What do you do? How do you boil your job down to the simplest and smallest measurable unit.

All the best - to your Success

Rodney.

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Feel free to introduce yourself in comments section or drop me a line via one of the social media websites listed here.

Below is a brief description of the Vancouver Condo Building, Electric Avenue located in the Vancouver neighbourhood of Yaletown. Please contact me if you have questions or inquiries about this condominium building in Downtown Vancouver. Number of Levels: 24 Number of Suites: 456 Number of Studios: 69 Number of 1 Bedrooms: 299 Number of 2 Bedrooms: 75 Number of Townhouses: 0 Number of Penthouses: 13 Two Level Penthouse Suites Year Built: 2005 Developer: Wall Financial / Bosa View Electric Avenue Condos for Sale Strata Documents: Available Upon Request Strata Plan: Community Website: Electric Avenue Property Management: Crosby Property Management Suite 600, 777 Hornby St., Vancouver Web: http://www.crosbypm.com/ Ph: (604) 683-8900 Fax: (604) 689-4829 Resident Manager: Ken McPherson Office in the Smithe St., Lobby Ph: (604) 801-5559 no rental inquiries Fax: (604) 801-5259

In our last SEO Workshop we had 4 students. Everyone got a complete site review and had plenty of time to answer their questions. By keeping the class small we were able to talk about what was important to our students. For example -- we did a complete 30 minute session on Adwords which was not part of the Workshop material. 

If you are thinking about working on your SEO skills then consider taking the workshop. Our next workshop is December 11 & 12 or you can take just the Advanced Workshop on Nov 26 & 27.

Please don't just take my word for it...check out what some of our workshop attendees said about our first workshop. 

http://youtube.com/wwwreachd 

I've found some new motivation today to blog more regularly and I wanted to take 2 minutes and write about it.

I read an article on Yahoo! Canada News about the worlds oldest blogger and I figured if Granny can blog regularly so can I.

Here is a quote from the article by Raquel Castillo
"Today it's my birthday and my grandson, who is very stingy, gave me a blog."

So reads the first entry by one of the world's oldest Webloggers, Maria Amelia Lopez, who, at the age of 95, has surprised herself by a sudden conversion from Web-illiterate to cybercelebrity.

"At first I thought a blog was just a type of paper notebook," said Lopez, a great grandmother.

Lopez is 95 and is getting huge response to her blog. The president of her country even came by her blog and congratulated her on all the attention and web traffic she is getting.

Here is the entire article if you are interested:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/071105/odds/odd_cybergranny_dc

2 Simple reasons that you should be blogging:

1. Great way to get useful content to the visitors of your website.
2. Search Engines love content and blogs are the best way to deliver fresh up to date content to the search engines.

Hope you can take some inspiration from Granny and get blogging.
All the Best
Rodney Bartlett

Last night, October 1st, the Reach'd Team did a presentation at the Vancouver Real Estate Tech Meet-up There was a very interested and attentive crowd that took in the presentation entitled, "Googl'd Yourself Lately?" Real Estate agents came from all over the lower mainland to hear the presentation and ask questions.

Everyone is asking how can I get found in Google? No small question.
Those in attendance last night were given three questions to consider if they want their websites to be found in the search engines.
Those questions were...

1. Found for what? Do you have a keyword or phrase that you are targeting
2. The content question: Do you have relevant information for your visitors?
3. Found vs. Reach'd: Is it enough to get found or are you reaching your visitors?

Are you sorry that you missed it? Don't worry your can still get more info about the evening. The team can get the notes of the presentation out to you right away. Just visit the Reach'd Contact page and request a copy of the notes from the Vancouver Real Estate Tech Meet-up

The Reach'd team will also be at the Vancouver Young Professionals meet-up next week October 11th. Our team will be discussing the same topic. So if you missed the presentation the first time, plan to attend the Professional's Meetup 

Some of the questions asked at the Meet Up included?

What is google base?
Where on my page do I need to incorporate Keywords?
What tools do I use to do Keyword research?

If you are looking for answers to some of these questions as well let me help you out. Please visit the contact page on my site and drop me an email. 

The upcoming Reach'd Search Engine Workshops would be a great place to get your answers to these and many more questions. 

It is called Creative Commons. http://www.creativecommons.org 

There are 2 ways that you might consider creative commons

1. Search creative commons for information that you can adapt or use on your blog. Both a Google and Yahoo! index creative commons content and allow you to search for content. You can search for creative commons content here http://search.creativecommons.org/ Do a search perhaps you will find an article that you can publish on your website. Some creative commons content is not available for commercial use, and some cannot be adapted, but you may find an article that you can use verbatim on your website provided you give the writer credit.

2. Add a creative commons license to your blog or website. By doing this you will ensure that your licensed article will be included in the  creative commons search. Also if you write an article that someone else would like to use, you can require the user to give you credit for the article and link back to your website. Who knows you might be able to use creative commons to build some links to your websit organically.

If you are looking for content to add to your website, it might be worth your time to at least check out creative commons. Maybe you can use the content their to spark your creativity. 

Last week I had a few friends that attended the Techcrunch40 conference and they came across a new discussion tool called Tangler.

If you want to join us for the discussion on Sept 26th then you will need to follow this URL. http://www.tangler.com/group/real-estate-seo

Tangler allows for real time discussion as well as posting questions whenever. Those involved in the discussion can post images as well as imbed video and other media. The room I created will allow for different topics within the room and the ability to send private messages to users.

Sign up for your free account and Tangler and stay connected and informed with the Real Estate SEO Chat.

Here is a link to tangler's website http://www.tangler.com

See you in the dicussion room!

Sept 26th 10:00am PST  http://www.tangler.com/group/real-estate-seo

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You might be wondering...

What is feedburner?

I think it would be best to let feedburner answer that question for us

FeedBurner is the leading provider of media distribution and audience engagement services for blogs and RSS feeds. Our Web-based tools help bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers promote, deliver and profit from their content on the Web. (http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/about) 

Basically you blog because you have something to say. And feeburner helps you get your message heard. Feedburner is growing faster than the media hungry, Myspace and faster than digg.

Why should I burn my feed?

I would like to offer you three reason why I use feedburner.

1. You can add feedburner's subscription box to your blog and they will deliver you post to your subscribers via email. By doing this visitors won't need to subscribe to your RSS feed they can just subscribe to your blog via email. Not everyone likes RSS some people like to use their email and Feedburner helps you with that.
   
2. Analyzing your feed. Feedburner will tell you who is reading your feed, who is subscribing and what they are finding of interest based on the visitors behaviour. It is sort of like analytics for your blog feed.
   
3. Pingshot -- the most important reason I'm using feedburner is that each time I update my blog they are letting the aggregators (search engines and other people that keep track of content on the web) know that I've just updated my blog. So when I complete this blog post, Feedburner is going to notify, 11 different feed reading services.
   

What are you waiting for? Feel the burn. Add feedburner to your site today!

More info on adding feed burner to an Ubertor site

More info about Rodneybartlett.com Site Setup

Visit Feedburner's website 

The chat was attended by an agent in N. California. The real estate agent (who will remain nameless because I forgot to ask for his permission) is quite an experienced agent with years of success but internet marketing is a new tool to him. Currently the Agent has two websites. He has his agent site the Prudential Real Estate. The agent has also just signed up for an Ubertor site. One of the main questions that we looked at was whether he needed a personal site or if just have a site tied in with Prudential is enough.

Here was the picture that I painted for the client...

His site with Prudential is more like a few pages within a stack of books. When the search engine goes to look for his site with Prudential, the search engines sees his pages as only a tiny fraction of the huge prudential site. Lets say the Prudential site is equivilant to 20 books, his prudential site would represent only a page or two in one of those books

By having his own personal site, the agent could build a site that would represent a complete book. If the personal site were focused on a specific niche market or specific keyword, the search engines would see the site as offering something useful to search and the site could be brought to the top of the pile rather than being a few pages buried away somewhere.

If you are serious about being found in search engines then you need to have your own site and possibly several sites focused at different markets. Your free agent site is not enough if you want to be found in search engines.

Contact Rodney Bartlett if you'd like more help with Site optimization

Plan to attend next Online Real Estate SEO chat hosted by Rodney Bartlett

Transcript of Real Estate SEO Chat Transcript Sept 12

Just a brief bit about Mike... from his website http://www.mikemoran.com/aboutmike/

Mike is an expert in search marketing, search technology, publishing, Web personalization, and Web metrics, who regularly makes speaking appearances. Mike's previous apperances include Search Engine Strategies, AD:TECH, Consumer Reports WebWatch, OMMA East, and the Enterprise Search Summit. Mike also writes the Biznology newsletter and blog is the co-author of the best-selling Search Engine Marketing, Inc., and writes the search marketing column for Revenue Magazine.

Mike is no slouch when it comes to the topic of personalization of search. We spent about an hour with Mike. He shared some of his thoughts about personalization and then we took about 20 minutes to ask questions regarding personalization of Search.

Before I move on, let me see if I can describe what personalization of search is. Basically the search engines (Google in particular) are cataloging all of your search behavior. This is why they have asked us to create a Google account, and they want us to use Gmail, and Google bookmark, and Google Docs and Spreads. They are learning about you and what is important to you. The more that Google knows about you and your web history then they can do a better job at providing users with the most relevant search results. Google is building a relationship with it's user so that they can complete our sentences for us.

One analogy that I offer is like a marriage relationship. Sometimes I say something but it is not really what I meant to say. Because my wife knows me and understands my likes, dislikes, and personality -- She hears what I meant to say. By personalizing search, I would say Google and other search engines are trying to get at the intent of their users so that they can provide the most relevant search results.

Is this scaring you yet? Do you feel like your privacy is being violated?

Actually I think it is quite an exciting thing. Personalization of search means that when I search for "Restuarants in Belligham, WA" the search engines might know based on my previous search history what other restuarant websites. Based on that information they could speculate on which type of cuisine I enjoy the most. The end result is that my search results for "Restuarants in Belligham, WA" could be more relevant to my tastes.

Pretty cool, eh?

What impact does Personalization of Search have on Search Engine Optimization?

This is the question we were all dying to ask Mike in the chat. His answer was simple...write content for the Human reader. With personalization of search becoming more prevelant it will be critical for sites to have content that is relevant and useful for their target audience. According to Mike there is no way to get around this or to play the personalization game and circumvent the system. Search engines are hungry for meaningful relevant content that they can feed to their users. All of the other SEO principles still apply, keywords, title tags, etc. but in the world of personlized search, Content is king.

Thanks to the search engine academy for hosting the chat and thanks to Mike Moran for sharing his expertise in the Personalization of search.

Here are some other articles that you might find helpful as you seek to craft SEO friendly content for your website:

25 Ways of adding Quality Content to your Web site by Robin Nobles

Focus on Your Target Audience! by Robin Nobles

I just setup my profile on Linked In. I can remember from my elementary school days that no one likes to be lefted out. I'm learning that if you want to be "included" on the internet, you better be linked in. So, I am now "Linked In"

If you don't know what Linked In is I will provide you with a Summary according to the Linked In website and then I will give you my basic one sentence thought about what Linked in is.

From the Linked In Website About Linked In page...

"LinkedIn is an online network of more than 13 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries.

When you join, you create a profile that summarizes your professional accomplishments. Your profile helps you find and be found by former colleagues, clients, and partners. You can add more connections by inviting trusted contacts to join LinkedIn and connect to you."

My one sentence description of Linked In

It is facebook for professionals or your resume online

Okay so I am new to Linked In so forgive my short one sentence overview, but just my cursory browsing of the system brought me to the above conclusion.

Here are some of the things that I like about linked it..

1. The Ability to add your work history. A great way to see how far someone's expertise lies. For me, I am new to the SEO field, but have extensive experience working with people in church and other fields so while someone might doubt "Rodney Bartlett's SEO Expertise" you can at least find comfort in the fact that I do have excellent people skills
2. Linked In let me know which of my co-workers were a part of the network. Don't really know why I liked this, but I thought it was cool!
3. A place for Recommendations and Testimonials. If I find someone to fix my car, I can recommend them here. Or perhaps more relevant for my industry...If I find a hard working quality Real Estate Agent that will help me buy a home in Vancouver, then I could recommend them on my Linked In page.
4. Email Signature: i haven't used it yet, but it looks like a very practical and handy tool. Is there anyone in my world that does not use email? I don't think so! Have an email signature generated for me could be a handy thing...I'm going to have to investigate further to see if this email signature will work for me. 

Those are some of my cursory thoughts about Linked In...

It is free and takes about 5 minutes to setup so, if you are new to an industry or field it is a useful tool for getting your name or at least letting your friends and collegues know about a job change or promotion!

Check Out Rodney Bartlett's Linked In Profile

Check Out Rodney Bartlett's Facebook Profile

Check Out Rodney Bartlett's You Tube Profile

or better yet...Chat with Rodney Bartlett online

Well I'm continuing my quest to get this site all setup. After getting the sitemap going, I added the Google Analytic tracking code to my site.

With you Ubertor site, Analytics is complementary enhancement. You just need to activate it by click on the stats button at the bottom the dashboard. 

Once you enble the analytics it is just a matter a minutes befor you enable it for your site and then you are tracking visitors to see what they are checking out on your site.

Google just recently launched a new version of Analytics so I'm looking forward to putting this new tool to use so that I can discover what your habits are when you search through my site.

Happy browsing...don't forget I'll be watching :) 

In case you missed the cool Live Help button on the homepage, I will give you another glimpse.

	Live Chat by LivePerson

Looks pretty cool, eh? I can't take any credit for the button. Colin, one of our CSR's at Ubertor made the button for me, and one of the guys from the Dev team uploaded to the proper place on the internet. I guess all I'm left with is answering the SEO chats that come in from people clicking on the button. I'm sure that will keep me busy.

I've added the Live Help Button here as a way for all of our Elite clients to contact me. Elite client or not, it you have an SEO question, just send the question my way via Live Chat and I will search for an answer. 

See Ya Online 

P.S. If I can I want to give some props to Colin. He does some great work with the images we send his way and his is quite handy with the CSS as well. I think his company website is a work in progress but if you need some help with Web Design he is definitely a guy to keep in mind. http://tordia.com/ If you need Colin's help with you site you can reach him at colin(at)tordia.com