Yeah right.  Sure, this may help to some degree, however if you read these articles from their blog, it seems they are “Improving” or “doing a better job” at crawling flash web sites.  I personally would still never invest in a complete flash site…..Content is still king!  In fact, that is one aspect of this new algo they rolled out, to index flash “textual” content.

Take a look at these articles:

Google Learns to crawl flash

Improved flash indexing

By the way, if you notice the title of these articles, “Learns” and “improved” that should tell you not to drop everything and go build a flash site.  Personally I feel they are sending a wrong message.

With the real estate landscape extremely difficult, it is increasingly difficult for agents, brokers, and internet marketers to throw efforts into a sinking ship, but remember, real estate always rebounds.  That is why I am active as ever trying to create resources to keep my clients happy, and build my real estate niche.

WIth that, I found ActiveRain.  This is an incredible resource for real estate agents, marketers, brokers, mortgage gurus, you name it, to post your story, resume, portfolio, even set up your own real estate blog!

Take a look at my portfolio & Blog:

My ActiveRain Real Estate Portfolio-Wilmington, NC
My ActiveRain Real Estate Blog-Wilmington, NC

Today I came across an interesting and savvy website that allows you to create free templates, and real estate flyers. Yeah I know, free web flyers are not new, for example I use Vflyer all the time; however POSTLETS is geared towards the real estate market, which is my focus for now. If you are dabbling in real estate, you have to give these a try! Not only do they create web 2.0 type web flyers, but once you have completed the 5 steps, you can choose your own color scheme, and then it will put your flyer in queue to be uploaded (syndicated) to the top real estate aggregators such as Zillow, Oodle, Trulia and more. Oh, did I tell you this is free??

Take a look at two ads I created:

http://www.postlets.com/res/873937
http://www.postlets.com/res/874244

I just got a text message from a colleague, he told me Amazon.com is down. Sure enough, at the time of this posting, Amazon at 2:00 p.m. east coast time is DOWN!!! Take a look if Amazon.com still down.

I am sure there will be much buzz as to why, so stay tuned to Red Vw Bus to find out why. Do you realize how huge this is??? Amazon’s website is down!!! Wow, just wow. You realize the loss of income??

Also, what about S3?  The repercussions of this outage could be huge.  For those of you who are not familiar with Amazon’s service, (S3) here is a good definition from Wikipedia.

Absolutely. With the nation struggling in real estate sales, please real estate people, please do not roll over and abandon marketing efforts. With online searching increasing 25-26% every year, now is the time to look to the internet more than ever before.

Well then, what opportunities are there to bulk up your web presence? Below I list several websites, and measurable products you really need to consider to keep a step ahead of your competitors. Take special note of the first one, blogs! I read an interesting article that talks about the wisdom of starting a real estate blog. In this article, it refers to a CNN article that gave stats that show leads and sales increased as a result of real estate blogs.

Ok, so lets get with the tips, and sites to advertise on. (Keep in mind this is a partial list, I will add to this as time goes by)

• Blogs
• Google, Yahoo, MSN pay per click campaigns
• Google Base
• Bargain
• oodle
• trulia
• edgeio
• Livedeal
• HomePages
• Homesandland
• Realty.com

I wanted to bring special attention to Realty.com. Recently they advertised that you could submit your agent information, and receive a great backlink from them. If any agents are reading this, you need to get over there and get a link! If you have a website or blog, backlinks are critical for site to gain credibility with the search engines.

For example, I recently submitted a client of mine there, and the great thing is they let you choose anchor text. (keywords hyper-linked) Take a look at the free ad I made advertising waterfront communities in Wilmington, North Carolina

This is crucial for optimizing your real estate marketing campaigns, so do it! If you need help with any of these suggestions, please leave a comment, I would be happy to help!

What a fantastic client we have. Mason Landing Yacht Club is one heck of a community, and the amenities they offer will be plenty. Our goal will be to drive potential buyers to the site, and encourage them to invest in an exclusive waterfront community in Wilmington, NC. This will be a fun project, and I am sure along the way I will post findings, and cool techniques to get them traffic!

Take a look at their location, and website. The site was designed by Wilmington’s best web design company, Akira Media.

View Larger Map

I just happened to do some random searches today only to find that when you do a search for a part number, of specific search on a product, they are showing an image next to the three results that appear on the first page of SERP’s. Obviously this is a further step towards Google’s Universal search, or “Blended Search” as some call it. I think this will certainly create more clickthroughs on Google products. Remember tests have shown that an image is more likely to get a click. Take a sneak peek below:  (Picture coming soon, it dissipeared on me???)

Her name is Tamar Weinberg, and she is quite the schwag collector. I have never met Tamar, but have to admit it would be great to meet her because she has such an eclectic resume! I stumbled upon one her stories she wrote for SearchEngineLand on Schwag of a SMX conference I attended. I also sent her a prized possession I picked up there, a rare Google pen..this thing was “phat”, so she could add this to her constant desire of collecting Schwag.

There is more to Tamar however, you see she is also a freelance writer and internet marketing consultant, a professional blogger, social media marketer, and much more.  Tamar’s primary blog is called Techipedia where she showcases her enthusiasm. We gotta love people like this. She thinks vertically and outside the box, has the pulse on whats new with SEM & SMM, much more than I. Tamar is also available for web strategy, blogging, and social media consultations. If you would like to touch base with her about the consulting services and availability, feel free to email Tamar at tamar (at) techipedia (dot) com.

Hail the Schwag queen…

Here are some of her sites as well as sites she writes for, pretty heavy resume…

• Schwag Addict, a weblog showcasing freebies from a variety of conferences, including reviews on gadgets and product offerings.
• Techipedia, Tamar’s primary blog focused on social media and internet marketing.
• Searchengineland, Nuff said, Danny Sullivan’s brainchild success
• Lifehacker, a blog with an emphasis on technology, productivity, and free software that helps you get things done.
• Mashable, one of the world’s premier weblogs on social networking news.
• Search Engine Roundtable, the world’s leading blog on search marketing forum discussion.
• Pixelopera, a photographic journey into New York City and beyond.
• Photocritique, a blog about photography and photography tips.
• Ramblings of a System Administrator, a weblog about tips and tricks related to system administration, particularly on Linux.

“Email, text messaging, cell phones and iPods along with PC’s are causing a global epidemic of shyness,” reports Australia’s Sunday Telegraph.  According to psychologist and Harvard Business School researcher Robin Abrahams, who is conducting a case study on the Worldwide Epidemic Of Shyness, she reports shyness in social situations now affects about 50% of the population, which represents a significant rise over past levels. 

“Technology is enabling us to opt out of difficult situations and causing people to become more insular,” says Abrahams. “What we have is an increasingly complex social environment, combined with less practice at dealing with it because of technology.  People . . . email or text one another rather than talk. ”

Interesting.  What do you think about this subject? [Please text or leave a comment.]