Morgan Carey's Blog: All Categories

I just wanted to send a great big thanks to Joe Lane for buying the entire Real Estate Webmasters staff lunch last week. We had a great time, and I am sure Delicados really appreciated the order.

Thanks Joe! Here are some pics for ya:


A bunch of hungry web developers - wheres my wrap!


I might be good at figuring out search engine algorithms but damned if I can figure out which one of these is a chicken and shrimp medium minus and which is a southwest chicken - Anyone???












I will be posting a bunch more pictures for you soon Joe, thanks again from all the REW staff, that was a wicked cool gesture and it was really appreciated (And enjoyed) by all. Read Full Post

As many of you know (And those that don't really should) the term "Realtor®" is a registered membership mark belonging to all members of the National Association Of Realtors. As a membership mark, it is used to identify a member as belonging to the NAR and has very specific rules in terms of how it can be used on the web - (In domain names, email addresses etc)

What many of you don't know (And until I had a chat with the NAR's trademark administrator a few weeks ago neither did I) is that these same rules still apply when it comes to their use in forums, blogs (Weblogs) and any other situation identifying or being associated with a user.

Instead of explaining in my own words how this effects you, I am going to post (As she has given me permission… Read Full Post

I would imaging that got everyones attention - It's not true, but it could happen and unless some changes are made, it may very well become a reality.

This will be a very long post, but if you would like to see Active Rain stay in Google's good graces like I would, I think it's important that you read this.

Active Rain is a social networking / blogging community that has opened it's doors and very graciously allowed it's users (Realtors and other professionals servicing the real estate industry such as myself) to post unmoderated user contributed content. Now I do realize there is a flagging system in place and there are in fact moderators who respond to flagged posts and profiles that may violate the terms of service of Active Rain, but where are the…

Read Full Post

Ok, so not everyone is a search engine expert - I need to accept that, and I do, I really do. I also cannot expect people to know what is not acceptable when publishing an REW Blog unless I spell it out for them so here it goes -

Unacceptable REW Blog linking practice #1: Irrelevant outbound linking

I come across this one particular situation quite a bit and it just flat out bothers me. What I am referring to is the practice of hyper linking keywords within a blog post to your websites that are not relevant (Or so loosely associated) to the phrase being hyper linked and more importantly the context of the article - THIS IS NOT GOOD SEO and quite frankly it makes your blog post look spammy, and provides your readers with a very negative user experience.
Read Full Post

Posted: 2 years ago, Comments: 5, Average Rating: Views: 1999

REW Blogs are different than a lot of the other real estate blogging platforms in the sense that they are set up with many different elements, each one with it's own specific function constructed to help the user make the most of their blogs, and help them not only maintain a very high level of quality, but also make sure they are always in compliance with all search engines terms of usage.

We also make constant improvements to REW blogs to help the users get their blogs seen by those internet users who will be interested in their services. In order to help new users find all of the helpful blog posts and forum threads I am going to compile a list of the information and tutorials available which are right now scattered between the blogs and forums. The… Read Full Post

Ok, so I don't just do real estate - I actually have quite a lot of my own websites that I have owned for years and done affiliate marketing on. This provides me with a way to test search engine optimization techniques away from my client websites (None of my personally owned websites are hosted on (Or even hosted in the same state as) any of my REW clients so don't worry folks!

Anyways, I was looking at testing out the Clicksor "Publisher Webmaster Affiliate Program" - This is a program much like Google Adsense (A contextual ad service) which shows ads relevant to the content on the website. Their message states:
Clicksor offers webmasters the opportunity to earn more income by simply underlining a selection of clickable text (inline text links) or… Read Full Post

When setting up an REW Blog, it is important to understand the technology and features and more importantly how to use them. This tutorial is meant to help REW Blog users set up their blogs for maximum exposure, great click through and user friendliness.

Step one: Your right hand profile.

This is perhaps the most important portion of the REW Blog setup, as you are creating the area of your blog where people will see your face, and read a short bio about you. It also contains the links to your website, listings added to REW blogs, and your contact page.

There are basically 2 components to the right hand side the photo and the writeup.

Component 1: The photo - Your photo is the visual presentation of yourself to your readers. It should be… Read Full Post

I have done some crazy things in my days as a web developer to test theories, or prove points, but I think this one will probably take the cake.

I have decided to try to test online traffic generation vs traditional real estate marketing in order to prove to my Realtor and friend how effective the internet can be as a sales tool. We have what some might call a small wager going - a bet if you will:

I think I can sell a house (Without any prior real estate sales experience or training) using internet marketing tactics faster than he can sell a house using his traditional methods of advertising.

And in order to make this thing happen, I am putting up my house

The Wager:
I am going to attempt to sell my house faster than my Realtor

The Terms:

…

Read Full Post