Category Archives: Help / How-To

How To Improve Your FICO Score

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The U.S. housing market recovery is underway. New home sales are at a multi-year high, housing starts are at pre-recession levels, and home builders plan for a strong 2013.

Since late-2011, falling mortgage rates have boosted buyer purchasing power. Now, today, in many U.S. markets, the number of active home buyers outnumbers the number of active home sellers. It’s among the reasons why home supplies remain scarce and why home prices are rising.

Roughly 20 percent of today’s home buyers purchase homes with cash. For everyone else, the ability to gain mortgage approval depends on income, assets, and, most importantly, credit scores. Your credit score is a predictor of your future payment performance and lenders pay close attention.

If you plan to buy a home in Collegeville or anywhere else in the next 12 months, spend some time with this The Today Show interview. It’s five minutes of practical credit scoring advice, including separation of credit score myth from credit score fact.

Among the credit scoring tips shared :

  • How to get your credit checked without harming your credit score
  • The value of using automatic payments with credit cards
  • How to use “old” credit cards to boost your credit score

You’ll also learn about utility companies and why you should never be late with payment.

As compared to August 2011, last month’s average, mortgage-financing home buyer’s FICO score improved 9 points to 750. The average “denied” mortgage applicant’s FICO score was 704. Clearly, standards are high. However, credit scoring is a system and, with time, you can improve your rating.

Watch the interview and find ways to make your credit score better. With better credit comes better mortgage rates.

Real Estate SEO isn’t magic, but thankfully it’s not rocket science either… – Part 2

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Real Estate SEO isn’t magic, but thankfully it’s not rocket science either, its a simple business plan with a simple purpose.


  • Step 1: How To Develop a Solid SEO Strategy

dilbert2    Thankfully, human sacrifice is not yet a requirement to improve your search engine ranking. Although, if Google ever changes its criteria it is best to think about who is on the bottom of the totem pole. Refreshingly, SEO strategy starts with a very easy and basic concept, keywords.

    You begin with a little brainstorming. If you work alone, you may want to enlist the aid of a friend or friends. They don’t have to be Realtors, just people who have had experience buying a home and are internet savvy. Your “Brainstorming Meeting” has one purpose: Gather ideas to create content and research keywords.

    To get started you will need the following tools: A. your brain and that of your team or friends that you enlist; B. Google Keyword Tool (which implies that you need a computer/s); C. Blogging ideas for 3 months.

    Regarding Tool C. Blogging Ideas, it is important to remember that this can be almost anything. It could be questions that people commonly ask you when they are looking for a home, questions that sellers commonly ask, new developments in Real Estate policy in your area, etc. Just think about content that is relevant to your community of buyers and sellers.

    The Meeting Outline (about 1 hour maybe more):

  1. Idea Gathering (20 minutes) – You may order the material however you wish. One suggestion may be to order the ideas according to relevance to your community. Since you are building a 3 month plan, and you want to produce at least 1 good post each week (you could post more often if you can schedule the time, however, it is best to make your initial goals realistic and reachable. You can track results easier and gauge your success in visible increments that will help you stay positive) you will need about 12 good ideas. If you have more, great! Keep them coming, because this is just a plan to get you started, you will need those ideas later.
  2. Google Keyword ToolKeyword Research (20 minutes) – Next to each idea write keywords that belong to that topic. Write as many as you can think of. Once you have finished construct a search string for each idea that your team agrees is realistic (ex.: Home For Sale in Community X). Now comes the part where you collect some data to help you in your execution of these ideas. For this part you will use Google Keyword Tool. There are other tools that you could use, but this one is free and its results are easier to explain. [Click on the picture to see a screenshot with brief explanation]
  3. Compilation and Planning (20 minutes) – Use the data that you gather from Google to construct a blog title for each idea on your list that uses rich keywords, but also reads like an attractive sentence. An example is the title for this article. It has the keywords I want, Real Estate SEO, and it also sounds interesting (at least… I hope it does). Once you have finished, reward each of your friends with a gift card to Starbucks (no greater gift on the planet), and then assign on your calendar a blog title to each week for the next 3 months. Now you are ready to start writing!! Yahoo! (shameful keyword pun – am I trying to hard?)
  • Step 2: Best SEO Practices

    There are many people who have written a great deal about Best SEO Practices, but in my opinion the one person who has nailed down the basic ideas best is Stephen Graham. He is a professional blog trainer and writer and he has written a simple, easy to follow list of things you need to consider each time you blog. The article is called: 4 Steps to Follow for Easy SEO and I highly recommend that you read it before you begin writing. You will notice a very basic principle that guides the logic of what he has written, it is one of the greatest principles by which we can live: Keep It Simple Stupid. I am not calling “you” stupid (it’s more something we need to say to ourselves, but take it easy, I don’t want to you to damage your self esteem), but it is a phrase that we all need to remember when writing. When your content is simple, the search engines will love it and so will your readers. It’s a win-win formula.

  • Step 3: Staying Current & Competitive

    Invest Time In Ongoing Education and TrainingThe easiest part is behind you, now comes the hard part… be consistent. 20th century British author Aldous Huxley once wrote: “Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.” He comments on a harsh, but very true reality, that it is difficult for any of us to be consistent. That said, what you are striving for is clearly not perfection (unless the idea of an early grave is attractive to you, in which case there is a very different article I recommend reading…). Just do your best to stay organized and execute the strategy that you have now created. No, it won’t be easy. It may require the help of someone else to remind you. Be it by means of your smart phone, your spouse or a co-worker set up daily and weekly reminders to stay on track with your schedule. Do research online and locally before you write to make sure that the information that you are presenting is still up-to-date.

    One way to stay current and competitive is to invest your time in ongoing education and training. The more knowledge you possess of your industry and it needs, the natural byproduct you will produce is relevant and intelligent content that is usable and valuable to your readers. If you are interested in what programs might be useful, please feel free to contact me. I could give you a list, but honestly then you would know everything I know. How embarrassing that would be… to have all of the knowledge I possess summed up in just 2 blog articles! No thanks, I will save something for future conversation. May you have success with all your SEO endeavors!

    If you have any questions or comments my preferred contact information is listed below.

Michael Hillanbrand
Joe Gonzalez Team

Marketing & Technology
office – 210-888-9210
mike.techexpert@gmail.com

Real Estate SEO isn’t magic, but thankfully it’s not rocket science either… – Part 1

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Real Estate SEO isn’t magic, but thankfully it’s not rocket science either,nevertheless, it does involve hard work.
SEO isn't magic There has been so much talk about Search Engine Optimization(SEO), especially amongst bloggers and business professionals. So much so, that the term SEO is now a household name. Sadly, like many things that grow in popularity quickly, misinformation spreads with it. In fact, most people probably forget that it is an acronym. They talk about it as if it is an object or something that you can buy at a store.

Some people have and continue to exploit such ignorance by selling it online as a product or an application.They portray the illusion that, like the “magic beans” from Jack and the Beanstalk, your listing will climb to the top of the search engines overnight! Naturally, they charge an exorbitant fee for this form of SEO which generally consists of using paid advertising and over-aggressive measures that reap immediate results, but often see only short term gains. Sometimes these methods yield results, driving traffic to your blog and getting you higher on the search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. However, they could also result in your site being penalized (see Dilbert comic strip for example).Using Fake Links To Boost Your Sight Is Bad For Business

Even the better services, people who actually do the real work of analyzing and augmenting your blog to conform to current standards, still come with a price tag, and it is still temporary. That’s right! Temporary. Why?

Google, Yahoo and Bing are constantly changing their algorithms to improve the end-user experience. The criteria that is considered can be very different depending on the search term itself or even the location from which the search is initiated.


For example:
The criteria considered to render search results for the search string “Condo for Sale” when initiated from McDowell County, West Virginia will be very different from the results for the same search term in Miami, Florida. In West Virgina this very general term may render very usable results to a consumer, whereas in Miami, where the market is more competitive and Condos are more abundant, more specific terms may be necessary for the consumer to find what they are looking for. At times, the search habits of that particular consumer can even affect the results that they see on the screen as opposed to what someone in the same geographic area sees.


Why is this important to know? Because the search engines are designed to help the consumer, not the seller. Google and the other major search engines are thinking about ease-of-use for the average person searching for products, information, etc. It is our responsibility to ensure that our blog, websites and listings are also search-friendly. In other words, that means that you also need to think like your consumer. Is this beginning to sound pretty much like basic marketing principles? That’s because it is.


Your Knowledge – Your SEO
Remember what the "O" stands for The same basic marketing principles that have been needed to sell products for centuries are still necessary today. There are still no real short cuts. You may be thinking, “I thought this was about SEO, not marketing.” Well, effective SEO has everything to do with marketing.

The key to appreciating this is in understanding that the “O” in SEO stands for “Optimization”. Optimization is defined as an act, process or methodology of making something as fully perfect, funtional, or effective as possible. In this context, optimization is applied to make your content more funtional with the search engines. However, in order to do that you have to know what the consumer is looking for, what they are likely to type into the search bar.

Do you really think that some SEO application or hired SEO expert knows your consumers needs better than you do? I sincerely hope that the answer to that question is “No.” YOU are the one who knows best! The knowledge needed to make your content accesible and popular on the search engines is already in your hands! You simply need to develop a strategy appropiate to the task, and remain vigilant in following through with executing that strategy.


Only a very small part of this is process is “techy”, so don’t let it intimidate you. You can do it, and in Part 2 of this article I will explain how.


Michael Hillanbrand
Joe Gonzalez Team
Marketing & Technology
office – 210-888-9210
mike.techexpert@gmail.com

Part 2 of this article will include: A. How to develop a Solid SEO Strategy  B. Best SEO Pratices and C. Staying Current & Competitive
Go to Part 2 Now