Google Analytics – This great tool allows you to analyze the traffic on your website. The way the program works is it tells you were the website visits come from and what they are looking at when they visit your site. This is great for customizing your marketing towards what your readers want.

Google Trends- With Google Trends you are able to see a daily list of the hottest trends. You are also able to search avarious websites and see what scope of your market is interested in.

Google Sitemaps- This is in the event that you want your information on the web quickly. The way this program works is it will quickly post your new pages on the Google index quickly.

Google Docs- This is a great tool to have if you are constantly on the go. A Google doc allows you to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations while giving the convenience of sharing and collaborating them in real time. You can also access them from any place since these documents will be web based.

Google Alerts-Here is how it works. You set up a query list of relevant topics that you’d like updates on. Any time something is mentioned with those particular guidelines you get an email notification regarding those topics. This is great for keeping up with competitors, your products and even to do market research.

Google Buzz- Yet another social media tool, Google Buzz works directly from your Gmail account. It is intended to start conversations about your interests. Best of all you don’t have to go out and scout new “friends” since it works through your email. You can also link it up to your twitter and access it via your smart phone (i.e. Iphone and Android).

Google Translate- As a realtor you know that business can come from anywhere and you should not limit your potential gain because of a small language problem. Google Translate allows you to set up your website or blog in 51 different languages. The only thing you need to do is install the program it will automatically show a translation toolbar if the visitor happens to speak a different language than you.

With the variety of services that Google has to offer it is difficult to showcase them all here. Among some others that may prove useful are Google Earth, Google Adwords, Google place and maps, just to name a few. If you find yourself working out of a complete virtual office more and more everyday these handy tools are sure to make your business more efficient and enjoyable.

In the video below Seth Godin & Tom Peters talk about the value of blogging. Never before has it been so easy to reach the masses and get your message out. Are you sitting on the sidelines or contributing to your profession, community and the greater good?

Learn About the History of Google

What does this have to do with real estate?  The consumer turns to search engines like Google to look for everything, including real estate .  Understanding how Google works is the first step to improving your internet marketing. 

As the video mentioned, what made the Google experience different from other search engines was the concept that ideas and information on the internet are related and that relationship in the internet world is demonstrated by links.  The relevance of any website can be judged or ranked by how it links or relates to other sites.  Here are a few new geeky terms for today’s vocabulary lesson (all from Wikipedia) :

Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks is an indicator of the popularity or importance of that website or page (though other measures, such as PageRank, are likely to be more important). Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage may be of significant personal or cultural  interest: they indicate who is attracted to that page.

Search Engine Optimization  is the process of editing and organizing the content on a webpage or across a website to increase its potential relevance to specific keywords on specific search engines and importantly ensuring that external links to the site are correctly titled and in abundance. This is done with the aim of achieving a higher organic search  listing and thus increasing the volume of targeted traffic from search engines.

Page Rank is a link analysis  algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web ,with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set.

Now that you have added Backlinks, SEO and Page Rank to your geek talk , let’s look at a tool that will show how your website might be doing.

 Meet Website Grader  Go to the website and enter any website you want – yours if you dare – and get your site scored.  There may be things on the report that you don’t understand but with your new found geek skills, you will get the  idea.  As an example, you can find the report for ewm.com here.

 Put your new skills to use.  Google yourself – see what comes up.  How many entries are there for your name that are you and not that other person with your same name?

Grade your website – how did you do? 

Picasa 3 & Picasa Web

Together Picasa and Picasa Web Albums make it easy to organize, edit & share your photos online.

 Download Picasa 3 to your computer (http://picasa.google.com) It will arrange your photos on your computer in files all by itself ! Go to Picasa Web ( http://picasaweb.google.com/ and use your gmail login name after the forward slash.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You will be amazed at the ease in which you can create your own “Virtual Tours” . You can upload them to utube and/or sync to web where you can send them out to your customers. You can also copy the link it gives you and put into MLXchange.

No excuses ! all your listings should have photos and tours! Believe me you will stand out in the crowd and so will your properties.