Real Estate Website Link Bait Solution

Posted on August 25, 2009
Filed Under General | 1 Comment

Realtors Can Approach Link Bait Differently

In my line of work I’ve been exceptionally lucky in that I have almost no real competition. I am a freelancers freelancer so to speak where designers and other web professionals outsource work to me predominantly in the area of converting PSD Files to a fully validating XHTML / CSS layout. A full 90% of all my clients are web masters, designers, hosting companies and those in the mass media (news, entertainment, journals, blogs etc). I have the luxury of taking a designers desired end result, and turning it into a WordPress, Joomla or OpenRealty functional template with none of the necessary preliminary fundamentals required for most freelance related work.

There is a downside to this which is that I end up with NO links back and no design credits even if I originate the design. A hosting company for instance may hire me to build them an inventory of 10, 15, 20 or so free templates, but I can’t expect to retain the footer link-back or design credits as one could plainly see. Link bait is still none the less very important and the method I use involves the development and publishing of FREE OpenRealty and WordPress tools that extend the applications in hopes people will write about them and link back to my site. Writing about this very subject in a forum, I expanded it a bit by suggesting that maybe the way Realtors could benefit from something similar is to have their own inventory of free themes and such published.

After writing that forum post, I’ve seen the idea seat itself in the minds of those entertaining the idea progressively more and more over the past three months. Realtors have contracted the development of link bait themes where they can publish these themes to WordPress, give them away on their blogs and even provide an avenue for discussion about them right on their real estate websites. Give away 500 copies of a theme with your link at the bottom is certainly attractive for those seeking some quick come up in the search engines but it doesn’t stop there. I’ve been contracted to build Joomla and WordPress plugins by more Realtors than any other type of client. Not just Realtors bent on using the plugins for their own use but those that want to publish the products to WordPress as FREE GNU / GPL products in hopes of link-back. I can’t reveal which themes or plugins naturally but the results are starting to demonstrate their effectiveness.

It’s an Alternative to Worthless Reciprocal Linking

Links Back! You simply need them. Period! Every SEO worth his salt will tell you that you really do need a way to have links pointing to your site, preferably one way links from good sources relevant to your objective. Although Google, Yahoo and MSN to a degree have pretty much put real estate sites under the microscope after such rampant link farms and reciprocal link schemes there is still hope for Realtors seeking honest, valued, ethically correct and beneficial link backs without taking part in yet another foolish scheme to trick the Search Engines.

Think about this scenario for a moment. Either of us can intelligently see that there must be something a bit unusual about a Realtor linking to another Realtor. If not a single event then maybe Realtors linking back to dozens or even hundreds of Realtors. Most would gather its little more than a bunch of reciprocal links in the midst of some scheme and they would likely be correct. Link schemes fail 100% of the time once the search engines developers catch on and adjust the algorithm. Penalties are the likely end result.

What can a Realtor do to reap the same or similar positive results from massive links back without getting put on the chopping block? My answer is to publish plugins, addons, widgets, and themes, lots and lots of themes. As I stated above I have had several dozen requests for this after making a post on a real estate forum regarding the subject and it stands to reason why this hit such a positive note. There is a clear benefit to the approach that isn’t likely to be construed as unethical or cheating by any means. So by doing so, the link back stands the greatest chance of being beneficial when compared to other methods being employed. But not just any link backs will do, you have to be intelligent how you approach this. Although I’m not really in a position to reveal how a few of my clients are doing this I can however suggest a few ideas for you to consider.

If a Realtor were out seeking links back from other Realtors then designing a theme that can be used by Realtors would seem to be the natural avenue. But experience and time have demonstrated that this is not always the most productive or effective way of getting the types of links that the search engines consider "legitimate" for lack of a better term. It would be my suggestion that a Realtor seeking to reach the ideal types of link back that the themes they give away be fitting of the ideal target audience. Community portals, news blogs, mortgage sites and the like would seem to be the ideal approach. Giving away a theme that results in downloads exceeding 500, a thousand or several thousand doesn’t require a great deal of effort for anyone to understand the power in that link back math. But what are the costs compared to the value in doing so. Here is a small menu of my costs associated to doing this that you may compare to your other efforts and the cost to benefit ratio associated with your existing methods. I will say this, having your own theme which you can distribute as link bait is most often at or about $450 on average. Images, custom code, and other features naturally increase this especially if you plan on including royalty free images or icons. In each of those listed below you retain copyright, license and footer link back to your real estate site.

  • Converting a Photoshop PSD file to a fully functional WordPress template (providing its compliant width) starts at $300.
  • Converting or cloning from a static HTML to a fully CSS XHTML valid WordPress template starts at $150 – $180
  • Creating a custom template for WordPress based on your design artwork or sketch starts at $350
  • Creating a custom template for WordPress based on a link list of example sites you submit, starts at $350 and usually never exceeds $600.
  • Converting your existing theme, template or site to a WordPress powered site starts at $380 and content is usually pretty affordable at or about $2 per page but can go up quickly with complex content.
  • Designing from scratch and then building for WordPress to include coding for an options panel usually starts $500 with an average being $650. This is the ideal although an options panel can be added to any of these theme scenarios.
  • Custom Design, conversion and then porting to include an options panel – Email for Quote.

How much time, effort and money are you willing to spend trying to get 50, 100, 500 or more links back to your site. If you feel that you could get hundreds of links back for under $500 in terms of effort and dollars spent then the idea of publishing a free theme will be a moot and pointless avenue to pursue. If however you can see that an entry level theme starts at barely $250, the cost to benefit ratio is exceptionally reasonable. Please feel free to contact me via the Contact form.

Hobo Spider Bites

Posted on August 25, 2009
Filed Under General | 6 Comments

Hobo SpiderHere is the mug shot of my blog post subject today. Its called the Hobo Spider aka the aggressive house spider and for good reason. My recent encounter with this infectious parasite makes me wish it was on the endangered species list. The bite a full 50% of the time is not toxic, go figure the odds were not in my favor since both times they bit me, both were venomous.

How ugly can these bites really be? Well let me give you just a brief idea and you decide for yourself. I had originally written this post as a quickie, no great detail and no effort to highlight anything in particular. Two days after this original post I was told that if the infection and swelling in my foot did not recede in a few days that they would amputate my toe where one of the bites were. I had originally thought that the bite, although painful, was actually in check and not advancing at all. Therein lies the deception with these types of spiders. You think its just a little red mark that itches, some mild infection and swelling and it reduces and you think its nothing. Then the destruction of all the flesh around the bite starts to take place and you end up with a hole that gets bigger and bigger until it gets to be alarming. This is no misquito bite or mild bee sting, this is much worse.

The Hobo Spider is rather infamous for this kind of destruction. Even the feared Recluse spider has nothing on this devil in terms of reputation. There are even sites dedicated to it beginning with the HoboSpider.org and many CDC related sites at universities where they study the effects and health issues surrounding the bite.

I’ve done a fair bit of research about this arachnid and discovered that the bite is as deadly as the Brown Recluse, more random, more frequent, and most often between the month of August until the first freeze. In my house I managed to kill one every single night for the past two weeks. As I’ve read, they hunt at night and have poor vision adding to their aggressive behavior and chance encounters with sleeping victims. They say that they are attracted to sound and movement. So, I decided to locate one and test the idea that sound attracts them, so a few feet from the spider made a little noise with a spoon to see if it would come running. No such luck, it actually scared it away. Apparently its stealth they prefer.

One interesting fact I found was that even though only 50% of their bites are venomous, they still account for a full 75% of all hospital visits for stings, bites and injuries caused by bugs during the same seasonal time period. It has also been suggested that spraying for them may not be good because the hobo spider unlike others is rather resilient and durable and can survive many things that kill other spiders and insects. By spraying you tend to exterminate its primary enemy and natural predator the giant house spider.

Anyway, enough of the post revision to correct a few things and detail about the effects of this guys bite, time to get caught up from 4 days of not working. Remember, my nemesis is your nemesis and every chance you have to kill one, do it, you are doing the world a favor.

Updated WordPress Plug-ins

Posted on August 20, 2009
Filed Under General | Leave a Comment

Quick note on the updates to the WordPress plugins today are listed below. I’ll be adding these to my download section later as well. It could take a few for them to show up on WordPress however. Form Creator is published by UltimateIDX and the documentation can be found on their site. Form Creator should be considered BETA release. It has bugs for sure, just need people to test and direct us on what features they want. PayPal support and multi form will be in the final release as well as the ability to export the saved contact form data to a csv file.

WP Random Elements

Posted on August 18, 2009
Filed Under General | 2 Comments

I wrapped up the final code and style features to another free WordPress plug-in we are calling WP Random Elements. I built this plug-in after having faced many dozens of changes at the request of a blog owner where we literally spent 5 or 6 hours endlessly modifying and changing hard coded methods to randomize certain content items on the project site. Knowing that it would never end I finally decided to put the hard code method to rest and just build a plug-in that would allow the blogger to add, change and essentially customize the random elements presented on his site.

WP Random Elements is ideal for sites where you wish to randomize things like quotes, testimonial snippets, paste in advertisements, random images, link items and maybe even things related to shopping cart items as was the case in this particular project. Having built several WordPress ZenCart cross integrated solutions in the past year, its not too uncommon for a person to want to display items or products randomly in their blogs. This plug-in makes that possible, among other things.

Once WordPress approves the new plug-in for inclusion I’ll draft the quick install guide and add it to my download section. Please feel free however to ask for it in advance should you so desire. As with all my WordPress or OpenRealty contributions, its 100% GNU / GPL free for both commercial and non commercial use. Feedback naturally is GREATLY appreciated.

NEW CMS Like Widget

Posted on August 18, 2009
Filed Under General | 1 Comment

For the longest time I’ve wanted to create a widget that would allow the blogger the ability to assign widget elements anywhere on their site and then specify what pages that widget would show up on. Popular CMS solutions like Joomla have this feature and its been a personal goal of mine to see it as a feature I could use in client sites so they could have a more CMS like feature to their blogs. Spending the day with my coder we decided its time to get this off the project list and published as our 23rd free plug-in / add-on to date. Released as fully GNU / GPL, this new widget achieves a few very important basic features that can make a widgetized theme stand out from the rest.

I’ll start the introduction with a question; Wouldn’t it be nice to create a widget that the end user could add content, php, menu’s, ads, images, and other elements that could be assigned on a page by page basis? With my new free WordPress widget you can assign the widget to pages, posts, categories, tags, or has tag easily. Similar in characteristic to the upgrade to the WP Menu Creator, you can now assign custom elements to multiple widget locations and specify where that widget will show up.

Once approved by WordPress, please download the widget and provide feedback on additional features you wish to see included in our next release. If however you are a little impatient and want this widget right now, please send me an email or visit the contact page to request a copy. I’ll add it to my download page in the morning after I wrap up a project I’m on.


TEMP CODE: GDHXCDX17249629