From RisMedia.com . . . this is a must read.

Google continues to dominate search engine market share and establish itself as one of today’s most recognizable brands, because of one simple word – relevance.

This term in its most simplistic form is what defines every aspect of Google’s evolution and is the largest determinant in their future success. But how Google measures relevance is not so simple. It is a highly sophisticated and ever-changing model based on complex algorithms named after cute and cuddly things like Penguins and Pandas (two very recent and important updates).

Don’t let the names fool you. Not understanding the impact of Penguin and Panda can seriously limit your ability to be seen as relevant, and can eliminate your ability to generate leads online.

Everyone tries to manipulate and master the algorithm maze, but in the end, very few make it to the first page of Google for any given search term. The algorithms that Google uses to determine relevancy are frequently refined as they are committed to intelligently tuning the search engine to consistently provide the best possible search results and eliminate weak and spammy web pages from the index.

The latest Google algorithm changes have primarily focused on off-site factors like the quality of backlinks pointing to your site. Gone are the days that poor quality backlinks from non-authority sites will support ranking positions that generate traffic.

Let’s take a closer look at some ranking factors in Google’s algorithms that can cause your rankings to tumble, and some improvements that can be made to conquer these challenges to help ensure your Website remains relevant in 2012 and beyond.

1. Make your website an authoritative source for information - Many agents believe that if you build a website, consumers will come. Maybe, if you put your website address physically in their hands in the form of a business card…. Simply publishing a website and then walking away doesn’t work and puts you at a strong disadvantage when compared to your web-savvy competitors. And it certainly doesn’t take advantage of the power of the Internet for marketing. If you must tell consumers your web address, you have already failed.

Developing an authoritative source for localized market information takes a lot of work. It doesn’t happen by buying magical SEO beans that some telemarketer or over-hyping website sells you.

Adding an exhaustive list of local vendors or republishing someone else’s blog posts isn’t going to do it either. However, having a review section for local industry and non real estate-related vendors is a fantastic way to generate unique and user-friendly content for your site.

If you would like to include content that is written by industry leaders, or share “what’s happening” information from a popular local blog, then write a synopsis of that specific article. Whether it is about the local market, a provocative political piece or a post about a new restaurant opening, writing your own rendition of the article is another smart way to generate unique and attention-worthy content. Be sure to cite the original article as many authors that publish on the web are appreciative of the gesture and may even link back to your article from their blog, potentially generating additional traffic to your site.

A word of caution with using the new curation tools out there that simply copy snippets other people’s blogs to your site: don’t do it! Use curation of content to give you ideas for blogging and as a way to be informed about the social conversation taking place about specific topics, but realize that Google doesn’t value copied content on your site.

The other not-so-obvious way to build up the number of pages that feature housing information is to make sure your site features an indexable MLS IDX. For those of you out there that are not familiar with this technology, indexable MLS IDX means that the listings that are searchable on your site are able to be measured and weighed by Google as your listings, and not that of your local MLS.

2. Who’s informing the source? AKA – Who loves you baby? Google is progressively looking at the social graph. How engaged are your Internet marketing efforts within the social sphere? Are you sharing content and more importantly, is anyone sharing, liking and retweeting your content across the web? This is one of the hardest obstacles industry marketers face because the chance of going “viral” in this business is almost nil. This is not your fault or the fault of your assistant or marketing team. Trying to go viral by force is an obnoxious notion that rarely works. The best you can do is to create share-worthy content, whether it is articles, photos or videos. Even a witty meme could get you some very desirable social shares on any number of social sites that Google deems as relevant.

Keeping up social appearances is tremendously important as the word on the street is that Google will begin to devalue strategies that are easily manipulated such as link building via blog networks. If you don’t register a blip on the social graph but have 5,000 links pointed to your site using very strategic anchor text (the words in links that go to your site) Google’s algorithms are going to notice the disparity in weight. How much value this old method of link building will be devalued has yet to be seen. Diversity is the safest way to invest in your Internet marketing future. Don’t depend on any one source to provide all of your ranking cues to Google. If you do buy real estate SEO , be sure to use a company that keeps up with Google.

3. Regency – staying minty fresh - This can easily loop back into including synopses of interesting and geographically relevant articles or general industry-related articles on your web pages. The origin of Google’s algorithm known as the “Freshness” update comes from a relatively old Google patent that scores documents based upon how fresh the content is.

It would be a mistake to make a blanket statement that all pages must be refreshed frequently or Google will score them lower than others, but there is a certain half-life to your web pages. The rate of decay increases over time. Making small changes to your content will not likely have any impact so if you’re going to update your content, do so significantly. Adding a blog to your site will increase the number of pages over time which is a positive thing as this is seen as updated content. Updating on-page content can have a powerful impact on your visitors as well – are you still using a photograph and bio from 1995?

Google’s algorithms will continue to change, so as a website owner, you always need to be aware of what Google is evaluating you for. If your Website’s Google rankings have fallen or are not improving, evaluate your site utilizing the points listed above. Easy, cheap and fast “ranking solutions” may sound good in the short term, but it’s always a better choice to position your site with a successful long-term marketing strategy that will generate a steady flow of organic traffic and leads, and that’s exactly what top performing agents are doing.

Mark Toppenberg is the President of Dynamic Page Solutions.

From RISMedia, written by Jared James.  I think you’ll really enjoy this one. . .

I am writing this as I am on a train on my way to Washington, D.C. for the National Association of Realtors® annual Midyear Conference & Expo. I am fortunate enough to be speaking at a few events while I am in town but I can remember a time when I came to events like Midyear before anyone ever wanted to hire me or even knew my name. There were some people around me that would question me about why I would go to a place where I didn’t know many people. They wanted to know, “What is the point?”

I believe this line of questioning comes from short-term mindset. In the short term, I could see where they were coming from because it didn’t appear that I would gain anything except for some good times and tax deductions, but I didn’t see it that way. I have always been able to look farther down the road for what I wanted out of my business and life and have been willing to do things that would get me closer to where I wanted to be, even if it didn’t look like it made immediate sense to others. I had a plan.

Before I left for this trip, I decided to look at my past years’ events and see how many of them that I was hired for were a direct result of relationships with people that I had been proactive in creating. When I say I was proactive in creating them I don’t mean that I singled out specific people to become friendly with. What I mean is that the relationships were formed in places and at events that I was proactive about going to, even if at the time, I wasn’t going to receive immediate gratification in the form of payment. I don’t think that you will be surprised to know that over 60% of my speaking events last year were from these types of relationships, with the rest of them coming from word of mouth from past events and other similar occasions.

Now this 60% number has gone down from the prior year where almost 90% of my events came from my willingness to be proactive. It is only natural that more and more of my business comes from referrals and word of mouth as I do more and more events but I had to start somewhere and I knew that sitting around in my office simply telling people I was a “speaker” was not a marketing plan. No more than waiting for someone to ask what you do for a living is a viable plan either.

So the real question is how does this apply to you? I have noticed after working with thousands of salespeople that we have this innate trait to pursue those potential leads that look like they will give us the most immediate gratification and put off those that look like they may not be able to bring us any immediate benefit. In fact, it is not just a matter of me noticing it, the facts back me up.

According to a recent study by a popular sales website followupsuccess.com only 48% of sales people ever even follow up with a potential lead. 25% follow up a second time and stop and only 12% make more than three contacts. This is shocking because 2% of sales are made on the first contact, 3% of sales are made on the second contact, 5% of sales are made on the third contact, 10% of sales are made on the fourth contact and are you ready for this? – 80% of sales are made on the fifth to 12th contact. That means that too many sales people are putting in over 90% of their effort for a less than 5% return.

How did this happen? We are taught as sales people to ask qualifying questions. The point of these questions is to make sure that the person we are working with is qualified and, let’s face it, is not wasting our time! Sometimes what happens though is that we fall into this trap where we ask qualifying questions, not just to see if someone is qualified, but also subconsciously because if they are not ready to buy or sell in the next 60 days we are going to move onto someone who is. Then we engage in this continual rat race trying to find closings from month to month to pay our bills when many of the leads we were in contact with six months ago, who may not have been ready when we first met them, are now ready to move forward but unfortunately they are using a different agent now because we couldn’t see the bigger picture at the time.

The sad thing is that we are living in a world of technology where we have databases and other tools that allow us to use systems in a way that were never available to us in the past. I am not going to write about systems here because that is not the point of this article, but we can literally stay in touch with these past leads and keep the lines of communication open until they are ready to make a decision, with almost no time investment. So the issue is not our lack of resources. The issue is our mindset that we have grown up with and the culture that has been engrained into our way of thinking. Our short-term mentality that knows that sales has and always will be about relationships, but thinks it will take too much time to see a tangible result to be worth investing any time or energy.

I will tell you this though. If you ever want to drive yourself a little crazy write down how many people you have met that went on to buy or sell with a different agent six or 12 months after your first contact with them, and then put a dollar figure on it. For some of you it is in the tens of thousands of dollars. For some of you it is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Either way, it is too much!

So if you ask me why I went to Midyear those years when I knew no one, I will tell you it is because I believed in the power of long-term business, but even long-term business has to start somewhere. If you are going to take away anything from reading this I would hope that you would be more conscious of the people that you come in contact with that you would normally blow off or forget about because, regardless of when they finally close, the process started somewhere and if you came across their path at any time you should also be the one to shake their hand at the end of the process. Because in the end, delayed gratification still ends in gratification.

Jared James is the CEO and Founder of Jared James Enterprises, an internationally sought-after speaker and trainer. James built one of the fastest-growing real estate teams in the country, was inducted into the International Hall of Fame for one of the world’s largest real estate companies and wrote a best-selling book—all before the age of 28. As an acclaimed speaker, James keynotes events for major real estate organizations and conducts regular webinars and training for nationally known organizations like NAR, CRS, Yahoo Real Estate, Trulia and Zillow Academy and blogs regularly for RISMedia.

From the Orlando Business Journal by Megan Anderson, Web Producer

Florida once again had the highest mortgage delinquency rate nationwide with 13.87 percent delinquency at the end of the first quarter 2012.

Florida once again had the highest mortgage delinquency rate nationwide with 13.87 percent delinquency at the end of the first quarter 2012, according to a new report by Trans Union.

Next in line was Nevada, ending the first quarter at 11.16 percent, followed by New Jersey (8.31 percent) and Maryland (7.11 percent).

The state previously ranked No. 1 for highest delinquency rates in Q4 2011, ending at 14.27 percent.

However, the Sunshine State ranked third among the top three year-over-year declines with the mortgage debt per borrower dropping 2.56 percent from $185,038 in Q1 2011 to $180,294 in Q1 2012.

Locally, Metro Orlando had fewer delinquent homeowners in March than the year prior, but still reported 10,899 foreclosure completions in the 12 months ended in March, according to a report by CoreLogic. About 17.7 percent of Orlando-area homeowners with a mortgage were more than 90 days delinquent on their mortgage payments.

On a national level, TransUnion found the mortgage delinquency rate declined to 5.78 percent, down from 6.01 percent in Q4 2011, which ends two quarters of increases that began in Q3 2011.

“To see that quarter over quarter, and year over year, more homeowners were able to make their mortgage payments is certainly welcome news,” said Tim Martin, group vice president of U.S. Housing in TransUnion’s financial services business unit. “Before this, we saw two quarters of delinquency increases and while we are still about three-times above the pre-recession norm, this should mark the start of consistent improvement each quarter.”

From RISMedia.com.  PS – The Lovely and Talented Fern C. Burr wishes you a Wonderful Weekend. . .

Just having a website isn’t enough to set yourself apart in today’s highly competitive real estate market. If you’re looking to take your website to the next level, the following guidelines will help you increase the effectiveness of your website and give prospects a reason to keep coming back.

Provide Valuable Content
Now more than ever, consumers are looking for unique information. Not only do they want to know about the towns and communities within the local market, they also want to know what makes you the best REALTOR® to work with. This usually revolves around your insight into the home-buying/-selling process, how customer-focused you are, what types of services you offer and how easy you are to get along with.

Valuable content goes further than just conveying your personality, however. By taking the time to provide solid, up-to-date information on your website, you can also showcase information about the market(s) you serve. Your site shouldn’t be about why you are No. 1 in your marketplace. Instead, you should use your website to provide helpful advice and tips, such as information about what specific neighborhoods are like and how they have changed over the last 10 years. In addition, tips to resolve issues that may arise between buyers and sellers can also come in handy.

Build Rapport
If you take listings, your job is to assist the seller in obtaining the highest price possible for their property. In order to do this, not only do you need to advertise your listings on your website, you also want to drive potential buyers to your site.

From a buyer’s point of view, getting them interested and motivated to take the next step comes from educating them about the area in addition to letting your personality shine through. Requiring them to fill out a form that promises they will only do business with you isn’t going to cut it in today’s market.

Design Your Site with Visitors in Mind
The first step toward designing an effective website is to place yourself in your visitors’ shoes and decide what type of website would most effectively meet their needs. While some companies sell generic, template sites that use frames or are difficult to navigate, others include ads for various vendors, which may actually drive traffic away from your site. If a website company offers to design your site for free—as long as you pay a hosting fee—there’s a good chance they’re making money from the site somehow, and displaying other people’s ads on your site is one way they go about doing this. Sites that have numerous pop-ups tend to annoy visitors as well.

Before you even start building your website, it’s crucial that you ask yourself who is most likely to visit. Once you have defined your target audience, the following questions will help you cater to their specific needs: What type of information will they be looking for? What do they do in their spare time? What are their goals and aspirations? Where do they see themselves in 5-10 years?

While you’ll probably have a number of different people visiting your site for different reasons, be sure your site can answer their questions and address their problems as quickly and easily as possible—in their language, tone and style.

Tricia Andreassen is the CEO/founder of Pro Step Marketing. She is a leading industry Web-strategy expert, a nationally recognized speaker with Broker Agent Speakers Bureau and one of RISMedia’s Real Estate magazine’s monthly columnists.

For more information, please visit www.ProStepMarketing.com .

From RISMedia and National Association of Realtors.

Pending home sales increased in March and are well above a year ago, another signal the housing market is recovering, according to the National Association of REALTORS®.

The Pending Home Sales Index, a forward-looking indicator based on contract signings, rose 4.1 percent to 101.4 in March from an upwardly revised 97.4 in February and is 12.8 percent above March 2011 when it was 89.9. The data reflects contracts but not closings.

The index is now at the highest level since April 2010 when it reached 111.3.

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said 2012 is expected to be a year of recovery for housing. “First quarter sales closings were the highest first quarter sales in five years. The latest contract signing activity suggests the second quarter will be equally good,” he says.

“The housing market has clearly turned the corner. Rising sales are bringing down inventory and creating much more balanced conditions around the county, which means home prices will be rising in more areas as the year progresses,” Yun says.

The PHSI in the Northeast slipped 0.8 percent to 78.2 in March but is 21.1 percent above March 2011. In the Midwest the index declined 0.9 percent to 93.3 but is 16.9 percent higher than a year ago. Pending home sales in the South rose 5.9 percent to an index of 114.1 in March and are 10.6 percent above March 2011. In the West the index increased 8.7 percent in March to 108.0 and is 9.0 percent above a year ago.

The National Association of REALTORS®, “The Voice for Real Estate,” is America’s largest trade association, representing 1 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.

*The Pending Home Sales Index is a leading indicator for the housing sector, based on pending sales of existing homes. A sale is listed as pending when the contract has been signed but the transaction has not closed, though the sale usually is finalized within one or two months of signing.

The index is based on a large national sample, typically representing about 20 percent of transactions for existing-home sales. In developing the model for the index, it was demonstrated that the level of monthly sales-contract activity parallels the level of closed existing-home sales in the following two months.

An index of 100 is equal to the average level of contract activity during 2001, which was the first year to be examined as well as the first of five consecutive record years for existing-home sales; it coincides with a level that is historically healthy.

NOTE: Existing-home sales for April will be reported May 22, the next Pending Home Sales Index will be released May 30 and first quarter metro area home prices will be released May 9; release times are 10:00 a.m. EDT.

For more information, visit www.realtor.org

Low-ball offers don’t work anymore – from Florida Association of Realtors

WASHINGTON – April 23, 2012 – When the number of home sellers grossly outpaces the number of buyers, no offer can be ignored, even if it’s 25 percent or more off the asking price. But in today’s rebounding market, those low-ball offers don’t often work. Many times, the potential buyer finds that they don’t get a counter-offer. And, in many cases, another more realistic buyer gets the home.

A low-ball offer – generally 25 or more off the asking price – allows buyers to see if they can land a great deal, even if they’re willing to pay more. In a survey last year conducted by the National Association of Realtors® (NAR), one in 10 respondents cited low-ball offers as a concern. According to real estate columnist Kenneth Harney, a NAR survey conducted in March and not yet released found that almost no one complained about low offers.

When the number of listings outpaced the number of buyers, many potential homeowners submitted a shockingly low offer on the theory that they had nothing to lose. If the seller balked, most would still counter with something below their asking price. Today, however, offers close to the asking price – or even beating it – will probably come in fairly quickly from someone else if a home is priced correctly in the first place.

Even buyers who still want to low-ball an offer on a home many times switch tactics after they lose a property or two to a more aggressive buyer.

Florida Realtor Marnie Matarese works with J Wood Realty in Sarasota. She told Harney that fewer buyers want to low-ball an offer in her area, but they still come in – mainly from out-of-state or out-of-the-country people who have read about the state’s foreclosures and short sales. That news, however, is old – it has not kept up with reality in many areas.

Matarese says some people still insist on making a low-ball offer, but that she doesn’t mind. “You can’t blame a buyer for trying to get a good deal,” she says.

In some cases, a seller isn’t offended by a low-ball offer, but their counter-offer shaves only a little bit off their original asking price. An Olympia, Wash., real estate agent had a $150,000 offer for a $250,000 listing, according to Harney. But after the dust settled and the seller shook off his irritation, he and the buyer agreed to $230,000.

Harney closed his column with this advice: “Rolling low-balls at sellers may have been an effective approach between 2008 and early 2011. But in 2012’s environment – at least in rebounding markets – it could be counterproductive if you truly want to buy.”

Source: Ken Harney. Distributed by Washington Post Writers Group.

© 2012 Florida Realtors®