Work smarter during the NORMAL times....

I've heard for the last 5 years that the real estate and mortgage
bubble is going to burst any time. As we all know the market has slowed but by no means has it burst, the growth rates have leveled off to what is probably normal and sustainable. The idea of everything going upside down is far-fetched, although still possible but just not something we're seeing and from all indications isn't something that will ever happen.

Every business has a cyclical life-cycle; a period of progressive
highs, to an extreme point and then declining lows to a leveling point and then the roller-coaster heads upward again. This isn't something to fear, speculate or be prepared for; the market fluctuations are expectations that every business and every sector should plan on.

It's not about preparing for the best/worst, it's about preparing for
the norm.

Many businesses live and die on the high and low end of the ebb & flow of commerce but that doesn't mean you have to be one of them. Just try and keep your business as simple as possible and sock away some cash for those days when the market turns or does what you don't expect because you can expect that to happen. Don't live too high or too low on the hog, just manage your business as if you never have enough and as if there will never be a new client. It's pretty basic logic. Plan for the worst but expect the best is what I've always heard but the truth is you just plan for change above or below and figure out where your middle ground is and then build up your bank
account to stay stable right in that middle ground.

Yea, I know...pretty basic stuff but I think a lot of people have lost the sight of it in the housing/mortgage boom. It's all about
stability if you want to survive because then the ups and downs of business have little or no effect on your forward progress.

Don't panic and start planning because you need to hang in there and focus on stability, the bubble hasn't burst, it's just normalized.

Heaven forbid we have to live in normality for once.

You may have to work smarter these days and that’s exactly why we have this BLOG. To introduce you to technologies to be used as tools that will help you work smarter all of the time but especially during the normal times. 

Until next time,

Damien Zamora
dzamora@myagentphone.com
www.myagentphone.com

MyAgentPHONE.com SEO Advise

I've spent the last 6 months reading just about everything I can on search engine optimization, web marketing and online advertising and I've come to some pretty simple conclusions...

One: The future of search engine optimization is content, content, content, NOT titles, meta keywords or meta descriptions. Links will always be a big factor but the more I read, the more it makes sense...real content is how a site should be ranked. Google's already doing it, trying to perfect it and all of the other engines are trying to catch up. The engine that figures out how to get people what they're specifically looking for about 60-80% of the time will be the hands-down winner. If you want to succeed, you better start building content, lots of it and start partnering (or paying) with sites that have massive amounts of relevant content, and will also link to you. Almost every Real Estate professional I know has a web site these days. The Real Estate blogs and Broker/Agent sites need to promote each others relevant content.

Two: You have to spend money to make money. The Internet has made a LOT of people a lot of money with little or no advertising budget. In today's Mortgage and Real Estate markets everybody and their brother are trying to get to the top of the search engines so it's almost impossible to get any type of organic ground. Unless you have been online forever, have thousands of sites linking to you and oh by the way...have an encyclopedia worth of content...you're NOT going to make the top 5-10 in the search engines. Yea, it does happen but not very much. If you really want to succeed, set aside a budget and work on optimization in the mean time. You don't need a lot...start off with $300-$500/mo. and just see how it goes, change your keywords every month and see what works best for you. Don't change keywords too often, you need good data to see if the words are successful or not and anything under 30 days may not be enough to really tell. Once you are making a profit or getting the marketing benefit you expected from the paid AdWords (or the like) then start upping the ante. The whole time, keep working diligently at building content and optimizing your site for the engines...that's what will give you longevity once you are in the top 10.

Three: Until the Internet (mainly search engines) are completely commercialized, and let's pray that never happens, your success on the search engines will be gauged by your diligence at optimizing and advertising to keep up with everyone else. You can't just throw money at it and hope it sticks, or max out keywords and hope they work...it's a continual process that keeps changing and you have to learn it, study it and constantly look at the data to determine what works, what doesn't and how to make money at it.

I don't have all of the keys to success and by no means claim to be an expert on this stuff. But over the last 6 months I've read hundreds, if not thousands, of pages and articles on SEA,SEO and internet marketing overall and they're all saying the same things...dig in and start working on content if you want to succeed. A great source for feeds or newsletters SEO is Clickz. I'm digging in to help my company, myAgentPHONE be successful and the fact that you're reading this means it's working...you're reading my content :)

As always, I invite your comments and views. Email me any realizations you may tap into on this subject.. I will say, for something that sounds like it should be real difficult, it's actually pretty fun and entertaining.

Till next time..
Damien Zamora
CEO.President
myAgentPHONE
dzamora@myagentphone.com