New project maximizes real estate appraisal company’s marketing
This past year TW Resource Group has grown to provide pretty cool services to some awesome companies around Washington. This time is for a Seattle real estate appraisal firm Lamb Hanson Lamb Appraisal Associates, Inc. This is the largest single project done and the strategies use take advantage of the many solid WordPress plugins to achieve excellent results.
A little about LambHansonLamb.com
Strategy and hierarchy were the two most important items of this site and would dictate how the rest of the framework would be laid out. LHL provides services across Washington state but those terms would be to difficult to target due to scale so and leads generated for broad terms would yield little. So it was decided to geotarget Seattle since it is the largest metropolitan area.
The homepage and navigation where built to maximize presence within the Seattle market; some examples are the residential appraisals, commercial appraisals, agricultural appraisals and litigation appraisals pages. Notice the title tags and page title match and this allows for greater keyword density while not overloading and spamming the main text. Clear and concise titles make a page more indexable and favorable with search engines.
Pairing these two items take more than just a standard site using the WordPress platform. Plugins are essential and can only be used by a site hosting its own site not like the free versions that a person can get by signing up at WordPress. Here is a quick list of the plugins:
– Contact Form ][
– SEO Title Tag
– Automatic Update
– Worpress Stats
They are probably the best, easiest and efficient plugins for a WordPress blog. My thought is never crap up a site with junk that is found on every other website on the web. Let your competitors annoy consumers with advertisements and framework that is junk.
Another strategy built into their site is the static homepage with the – blog posting being placed directly on the /blog/ url. Many Worpress blogs fall short will this one because they are not set correctly under the Options panel. Making this work takes the website from being a blog to the next level, blogsite. Incorporating the traditional static homepage of a Web 1.0 site and adding the Web 2.0 blog feature.
The site is going to be a dynamite in the search engines due the framework construction and the staff utilizing the blog feature. Publishing original content, like what is done here, will grown the site into a Seattle real estate appraisal monster.
Upgrading to WordPress 2.5
The other day I tried to upgrade from WordPress 2.1.1, I know…the platform was quite old, to version 2.5. It was all going good until I followed some instruction on a forum which I did not completely understand. After going through the steps, which called for deleting some files, I tried the new install and got a nasty error message on the homepage.
Not what I expected and really got my anxiety level up. The thought of loosing a years worth of content almost made me puke. But fortunately luck was on my side once again. I logged into my BlueHost account and went back into the Fantastico auto installer and low and be hold there was an upgrade to 2.3.3. Crossing fingers I clicked the upgrade link and viola! It all worked, whew…much better. Everything seemed to be in perfect working order so onto try the 2.5 upgrade again but this time using a much different approach, a plugin.
Download: http://techie-buzz.com/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade-plugin.html
This plugin automatically backup and upgrades WordPress with flawless ease. So if you are like me and are not the most experienced on server side upgrades then this plugin is for you. Upgrades are sometimes painful and lesson learning experiences and thanlfully there are solutions to get us through them.
Do not let updates hold you back from improving your blog
Through a website’s lifecycle there will be many updates, changes, themes and links that may change or affect the way the website ultimately functions. These probably seem more common now-a-days since the majority of people using blog platforms increases. From experience themes are the easiest item to install. Just download a theme and install it using a ftp site and then select it from the Presentation tab at the top of the Dashboard.
But unfortunately not all up dates are that easy. For instance, when we customized the urls on this site it affected how the navigation worked as well as links to internal blog postings. Those affects are actually still being felt around here as it takes time to locate and correct all the links.
A blogsite needs to function and be optimized from the very beginning and not be delayed by problems like: blogs on the homepage, dysfunctional contact form, no customized title tags and/or sub par navigation. Here is a quote from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines regarding the use of text versus images.
Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images.
Many updates are unavoidable and are necessary for the long-term success of a website. Browsing the blogosphere for a few minutes will produce a lot of website that are in desperate need of updates.
What a great lead into our next round of blog postings: how to customize a WordPress blog.
Our blog turns 1 years old
Without even noticing, TW Resource Group’s blog turns 1 year old! “Happy birthday to us”….”Happy birthday to us”…okay I will not subject anyone to my singing.
Hooray…we have managed to survive, grow and continue to keep on keeping on. I would like to thank everyone who has made this a special experience, contributed time and effort, provided us with all the blog postings to read.
The 1 Year Recap
– PR2 on Blog page & PR1 on Home page
– 7 Different WordPress Themes
– Fixed Many Broken Pages & Links
– Adding & Deleting Widgets
– Writing Blog Posts
– 1 New Client
– 2 Projects Completed
Not to bad for a two man team that do this work in their spare time. TWResourceGroup.com has become a place where Chris and I can share our experiences as well as knowledge to help small companies improve their bottom lines. Chris and I look forward to another successful year and publishing more juicy content.
Build traffic and have fun at the same time with blog contests
One of the most effective ways to build traffic to a website is through the use of contests. Why is that? Well, contests engage people, draw upon communities and spread like a viral infection does through a college campus (okay maybe not the best analogy).
One contest that has the real estate community smashing away at their keyboards is the Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World contest. Developers, SEO experts, do-it-yourself real estate webmasters, critics and so on are all participating to see who will own the top spot on Google for this term come May 1, 2008. The contest has drawn in a lot of attention from around the real estate industry and there are many top dogs competing, even when they say they are not.
Why do contests like this work or get so noticed?
They Engage People: People naturally thrive on competition; it is just in our nature. It brings out the best, and sometimes the worst, in people and test abilities where normally they would involve themselves.
Drawing Upon Communities: Usually contests happen in already established communities and those communities all come together to participate. Website owners gain traffic from communities members visiting as well as sharing the contest with friends & family who are usually not part of the community.
Viral Potential: We all know the story viral videos, like the Brittany Spears cry fest of last year, and how far they can spread. Viral strategies are nothing new to web and large companies have been working diligently trying to get things to spread through social media outlets.
Contests also have a dark side; they can bring out the worst in people. Nah, really? I am afraid so. Look at the Nancy Kerrigan attack of 1994. The extremes people will go to is not to far fetched.
What to watch out for.
When starting out in a contest like the Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World look at see who is entering. Are they friends you currently know, are they new people, what is there demeanor on their website, do they use hard language or take many aggressive positions, do you mind have your naming affiliated, no matter the out come, with the contest?
But most importantly; it is to have fun while participating in them and not to take them to seriously otherwise what is the point. Well have fun and try and enter a contest to see if you can get some free traffic out of it.