Be careful when picking a real estate domain name (Sarasota Association of Realtors)
October 20, 2008
http://gulfshoreslife.wordpress.com/2008/10/17/the-sar-pokie-hey-thats-what-its-all-about/
The SAR Pokie - hey that’s what its all about! Sarasota MLS | Sarasota Association of REALTORS Board
Sing the SAR Pokie along with your fellow REALTORS! Thank you Sarasota MLS and Sarasota Association of REALTORS Board!
http://www.oak-lawn-il.com/sarasota-mls-attacks-one-of-its-own/
“Normally, I try to stay local on this blog but every once in a while something comes up that I feel is important enough to write about of a non-local nature. This post is about the Sarasota MLS, or SAR, that has fought one of its dues paying members to force him to get rid of a long-held domain name for his #1 Sarasota real estate website, originally named thesarasotamls.com.
Although SAR MLS isn’t the only area that has tried strong-arm tactics on the term “MLS” (multiple listing service), I haven’t heard of such a case as this one.”
http://www.inman.com/news/2008/10/16/mls-name-dispute-lands-in-court
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=5025
http://www.soldbyjennifer.com/what-does-mls-mean/
http://www.previewvegascondos.com/real-estate-news/dont-cross-the-sar
http://www.ericonsearch.com/sarasota-association-of-realtors-they-need-my-online-reputation-management-help/
http://www.ryanwardrealestate.com/WordPress/sarasota-association-of-realtors-sar-slaps-one-of-its-own/
Right now we are all in danger of losing what we own. Actually, it would be like that was realtor.com setting the standards.
Realtor.com has been making news regarding what is and what isn’t allowed when it comes to using real estate related domains,
business names as well as user names on forums. Now we have SAR MLS doing the same thing. This will continue.
The safest thing you can do in life is never to pick any word that has been branded before.
What happened with Marc is that his work can no longer continue on that domain, which is like building an office and
being told that you cannot use it.
Anyways, this is Luxury Sarasota Real Estate .
Great looking website!
Marc uses Andre the Giant as his avi on forums. Glad to see he looks far better 
Contact him here …
Never make a decision in anger
October 14, 2008
I see a lot of people making their decisions based on anger. What I am talking about is voters with their minds made up. I am not making comparisons, but thruout history, some of the worst empires have risen out of the ashes of regimes the citizens were extremely upset with.
Let me throw out a couple of examples here:
Red October. Russians were tired of the Czar. The hatred opened the door for the other extreme causing 72 years of disaster. Before 1933 Germany was in bad shape and Germans voted someone into office who was most outspoken against them.
I see a lot of danger here when people are ignoring one side’s warning signs.
I am not comparing Obama to Hitler or Bush to the Czar, but I am saying that before you vote for someone, you need to calm down and look at the reality of what both candidates stand for.
You can vote in what you consider your own best interest. You can vote for a tax cut promised to you, but will that really get the country back in shape, or is it going to give Americans a little more spending money for a year to be followed by even worse financial problems or stagnating back to where things are now?
We also need to look at both side’s history and get an idea of who we may have up there. I do not consider all personal matters unimportant. I think that right now is a great time for people to calm down. Drop the namecalling, stop the hatred and open up your mind. Look above your own situation for a minute and decide on who you trust to leave the country in better shape in 4 years.
Hope you are not offended with a political post, but I see a lot of people closing their eyes and refusing to look closer at issues which determine what the next 4 years may turn into.
The problem I have is not with who some people want to choose, but why. The lack of reason for it. The desire to pay back those they are angry with. The fact that Americans are willing to overlook so many questions which have not been answered.
We don’t want 4 more years of what we have seen, but we don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater either and need to decide rationally who we would trust to lead us into a new beginning.
Free links according to Matt Cutts
October 14, 2008
In this post you can see how you would find links from other websites hitting a 404.
My question would be why we don’t just have all of the non assigned urls automatically go to the homepage. What better way is there than have every questionable link go to the homepage providing it has a good navigation system for the visitor to find what they came there for?
I can already think of so many links I get which don’t go to specific page, but my question is if I should really spend all that time to email every webmaster to change it rather than just setting it up so that firetown.com/whatever goes to http://www.firetown.com directly?
This is something to benefit whom? Google? The website owner? The visitor?
I think that when I look at the visitor, it is best for him/her to get to the homepage and then find his way to get information related to what he/she is looking for.
Just my 2 cents.
10 things I hate about people
October 14, 2008
1. People who point at their wrist while asking for the time…. I
know where my watch is pal, where is yours? Do I point at my butt when
I ask where the toilet is?
2 People who are willing to search the entire room for the T.V. remote
because they refuse to walk to the T.V. and change the channel
manually.
3 When people say ‘Oh you just want to have your cake and eat it too’.
What good is cake if you can’t eat it?
4 When people say ‘it’s always the last place you look’. Of course it
is. Why would you keep looking after you’ve found it? Do people do
this? Who and where are they?
5 When people say while watching a film ‘did you see that?’. No Loser,
I paid $12 to come to the cinema and stare at the floor.
6 People who ask ‘Can I ask you a question?’….. Didn’t really give
me a choice there, did ya sunshine?
7. When something is ‘new and improved!’ Which is it? If it’s new,
then there has never been anything before it. If it’s an improvement,
then there must have been something before it, couldn’t be new.
8 When people say ‘life is short’. Life is the longest thing anyone
ever does!! What can you do that’s longer?
9 When you are waiting for the bus and someone asks ‘Has the bus come
yet?’. If the bus came would I be standing here, moron?
10 When people say ‘I slept like a baby’. Well if you slept like a
baby does that mean you were waking up every couple of hours like
babies do?
A riddle
October 13, 2008
Being on the email list of my kid and her friends is a lot more enlightening at time than being on the email list of search engine marketers.
This is something to show you how simple life can be.
There is one riddle.
What is greater than God, More evil than the devil, The
> poor have it, The rich need it, And if you eat it,
> you’ll die??
Get it?
No?
Let me tell you this:
> When asked this riddle, 80% of kindergarten kids got the
> answer, compared to 17% of? Stanford ? University ?seniors.?
At the end of the email it went
Send this to 10 people and then press shift and you will
> get the answer.?
>
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> ?
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> ?
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> P.S.. You won’t believe this, but this really does give
> you the answer!!!! Really, it does most things do not, but
> this one REALLY does!And this is NOT a lie. I swear!
So do you have the answer now?
Say “No!” to SEO!
October 10, 2008
I have seen yet another website where the vibe and the feel of it was completely destroyed by over optimization.
I think that when you look at a website and create it, you need to have the same mindset as if you produced a TV commercial.
Something like the Gap commercials.
You need quality, true inspiration, energy and art.
Something that sells, and when your main focus is Google rankings, you are likely to lose a lot of that.
Search engine optimization is something I know a lot about, but also something I am trying to avoid.
I personally do not believe in making changes to a site which has the right feel to it.
The internet is full of boring websites dominating the search engine results pages and mainly because their true essence has been sold out in order to rank high in Google.
If you want to keep your website just like it is, then focus on building links.
You can buy links or you can use a strategy that gets you exposure.
The best links you can have are ones from blogs with related subject matter. You should always have a few pages with a lot of text. I am using the word text since the overused term content dillutes the meaning of it.
People do not like to read too much, and having too much text too soon will sidetrack people from hiring you, so use a blog or some backpages for that and build links into that.
When you build a site, your only focus needs to be to convert traffic into business.
If you want to rank, then use other sites to do that.
Whether or not Google likes it, do not let a search engine dictate how to build YOUR sites.
You will win in the long run. Try PPC, buy banner spots on sites that rank.
If your site performs right, you will be a lot more successful using your instinct than building a site for Google instead of those that are coming to your site!
~ Mike Dammann
http://www.firetown.com
Google your name
October 6, 2008
One of the things that has helped me a lot when deciding which domain names and sites to use to drive traffic to my sites, was to Google my own name.
Now remember: If you have a domain name you REALLY like, your focus should be to build traffic there, brand it. But you can use other sources to help get traffic and get the ball rolling.
I get about 70k results for my name. First result is my domain name with my name in it, no surprise there.
Then there is my old blogspot blog. Then my facebook profile and also my Google knol.
You really should not spend too much time on those other networks. Unless of course you like it.
I am hooked on Facebook, and it does help at the same time, but I don’t go there with the intention to drive traffic to my sites, even though it is always in the back of my mind.
Linked in and Squidoo are always up there. And a couple of forums are ranking my profile and then of course there are some individual pages added from my sites and blogs.
Overall I would recommend googling your own name once in a while to get an idea which of your sites have a lot of power. Then you should add a little bit of content here and there. See if you get more traffic from that. But never forget that branding is what will keep you going when the algos change.
Make sure your main site is functional and providing something people like and have your banner appear on all your online resources.
Where do the best in the SEO business host their sites?
September 30, 2008
We’re getting ready to set up our new dedicated server and probably offering a hosting service to a few clients, so I got curious as to where the biggest in the SEO business are hosting.
Here we go:
SEOBook.com
Name Server: NS1.SEOBOOK.COM (his own server) MattCutts.com Pair.com Danny Sullivan Name Server: NS1.TIGERTECH.NET Name Server: NS2.TIGERTECH.BIZ Name Server: NS3.TIGERTECH.ORG
Barry Schwartz Name Server: NS.RACKSPACE.COM Name Server: NS2.RACKSPACE.COM SEOMoz Name Server:DNS1.NAME-SERVICES.COM Name Server:DNS2.NAME-SERVICES.COM Name Server:DNS3.NAME-SERVICES.COM Name Server:DNS4.NAME-SERVICES.COM (Namecheap's hosting service?) Name Server:DNS5.NAME-SERVICES.COM Darren Rowse ns1.b5media.com ns2.b5media.com (his own) Bill Hartzer: Name Server: NS1.MABANK.NET Name Server: NS2.MABANK.NET Jill Whalen:Name Server: NS1.HIGHRANKINGS.COM Name Server: NS2.HIGHRANKINGS.COM Name Server: NS3.HIGHRANKINGS.COM (her own as well) Guy Kawasaki Name Server: NS33.DOMAINCONTROL.COM Joel Comm udns1.ultradns.net Shoemoney: Name Server: NS1.SHOEMONEYMEDIA.COM Seth Godin: Name Server: NS.SOLIDSPACE.COM Donna Fontenot: Name Server: NS1.MEDIATEMPLE.NET Doug Heil Name Server: NS1.IHELPYOU.COM Onreact: Name Server: NS.NAMESPACE4YOU.COM Where are you hosting and how satisfied are you with the service you receive? Now how about some high profile sites: Twitter NS1.MYDYNDNS.ORG NS2.MYDYNDNS.ORG NS3.MYDYNDNS.ORG Digg.com: UDNS1.ULTRADNS.NET UDNS2.ULTRADNS.NET And some general high profile sites: CNN.com TWDNS-01.NS.AOL.COM TWDNS-02.NS.AOL.COM TWDNS-03.NS.AOL.COM Fox News: usw1.akam.net usw3.akam.net ns1-157.akam.net asia3.akam.net usc4.akam.net ns1-253.akam.net usc2.akam.net TWDNS-04.NS.AOL.COM
End Pedophelia tourism in 3rd World Countries
September 20, 2008
I know, this has nothing to do with SEO, but it’s an important subject as this is becoming even more of a problem in Central American and Asian countries.
So please, join my Facebook group called
End Pedophelia tourism in 3rd World Countries
and help raise awareness.
Silence will make it worse!
Sergey Brin from Google is blogging
September 19, 2008
About time. His blog is http://too.blogspot.com/.
