In 2010 I pledged to dive more into the socail media aspect of online marketing.  After spending some time with both Twitter and Facebook I decided that Facebook would be a good tool for me to focus my time on.

WIthin that time I have learned a lot of the ins and outs of Facebook.  Although it does seem to have a small effect on SEO, I have not seen a large effect.  It does offer the easiest way to interact with your customer base, but I do not think that it should take place of a web site.

Here is what I do not understand:
Within the last week I have seen 6 different large companies spend probably millions of dollars on commercials and within their commerial they are promoting their facebook page throughout the ad rather than their website itself. 

I was interested in getting feedback on why they are doing this.  These companies put millions of dollars into marketing so they must know why it is so important to advertise your facebook page.

Kolea is the premier vacation rental complex at Waikoloa Beach Resort on the Big Island of Hawaii.  These two and three bedroom beachfront villas are well appointment and offer great access to all the amenities the Waikoloa Beach Resort has to offer. 

Although higher end properties have shown to not get affected as much by the economic struggles as other, Kolea has still had some hard times.  This summer showed promise for the future.  July 2010 was a slightly better year than July 2009, but August 2010 was far better than August 2009.  We saw average occupancy, nightly rate, and average booking time all increase.

For the past year I have been struggling to get into the whole social media scene.  I am gotten into blogging on both my own blog and ActiveRain and have had some success with that.  I have also tried Facebook and Twitter.  Facebook does seem to be a system that is user friendly and will last.  Twitter seems to just be a short term fad.  I really do not see why you would use it over facebook.

Currently I have a facebook business page, and am looking to implement it into my site.  I would like to use a badge that I could put down in my footer, but have not found any that would look good down there.  Any recommendations?  Any recommendations on other ideas on how to implement it?

Although most blog posts are more informatative I wanted to write this one strictly for interaction purposes.

I have steadily been growing my vacation rental business on the Kohala Coast of the Big Island of the past eight years.  Although the economy is struggling we have enjoyed one of our better years here in 2010.  This August was the best month we have ever had outside of the busy winter seasons.  I talked to a few hotels as well as some other rental companies and they have also enjoyed some success.

How has things been this month for you as far as real estate goes?  Have leads picked up? Sales?

Google is constantly chnging its algorithm in attempt to give users the best search results possible.  Occasionally google will feel as though it has made a change that will impact search greatly and an announcement comes with the change.

Just recently a google engineer announced, "For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, like [exhibitions at amnh], we'll now show more results from the relevant site," says Google software engineer Samarth Keshava. "Prior to today's change, only two results from www.amnh.org would have appeared for this query. Now, we determine that the user is likely interested in the Museum of Natural History's website, so seven results from the amnh.org domain appear. Since the user is looking for exhibitions at the museum, it's far more likely that they’ll find what they're looking for, faster. The last few results for this query are from other sites, preserving some diversity in the results."

Typically although you have a specific search like exhibitions at amnh you will have a few other sites thrown into the mix such as a result from wikipedia, local paper, etc.  As you can see from the results shown below google recognized amnh.org as the authority site and not only gave them an authority listing, but also gave them dominance in the search pertaining to their field.

Has anyone else seen anything similar in search phrases they go after?

Many people feel that Facebook has the best shot of any company out there to compete with Google on a search level, but it is still highly unlikely.  One thing Facebook will offer is a new search that google can not.

When Facebook fully implements search into their site you more than likely will get search results based on what the people within your network like, are interested in, or recommend.  Friends and familiies recommendations of products is probably the top thing that drives consumers to use one company over another.  Currently facebook has you networked to all your friends and family.  Each person within your network follows or likes businesses and also can choose businesses they are interested in.  Given this, Facebook has everything it needs to put together a good search.

One major upside I see them gaining from implementing the search is that a lot of these categories such as interests are based on a facebook page.  This would force everyone that is going to rank in facebooks searches to have a business page, which would drive facebooks traffic up and members up even higher.  Right now Facebook has just implemented Bings search into their searches so you do not have to be on facebook to come up in their searches, but it does help because they show their facebook businesses first.

One major problem I see is that there are so many people out there that have huge networks that consist of a lot of people they barely know or do not know at all.  When you search would you really care about the input from those people?  If not, how is that weeded out?

What do you think about the future of Facebook search?

For some time now I have heard people mentioned that the Bing search results were being used by yahoo, but I never saw the changed.  Yesterday I saw the change for the first time for searches my business is related to.

Have you seen the change?

What do you think about bings search results?

Overall I think bing gives pretty good results that may even be better than googles if they could correct these few problems:
1)  They give way too much weight to exact domain matches.
2)  They seem to give a lot of weight to site age, which google does also.  This is not always bad because it does make sense to give more weight to sites that have been in that business for a longer time, but at the same time it is hard to funnell out the sites that have older content, etc., which is also part of #3.
3)  They do not seem to funnell out old sites.  One of my main keywords is Kolea and you can see the results below.  The first result they show is the original developer of Kolea.  They have not had anything kolea related on that site for about 6 months and it just goes to their general site.  The second result is a site I now own that has been redirected to my site for a while.  All the results below that are good results.

** Sorry it looks a little cluttered.  I should have turned of SEOQuake.

Twitter has been big for some while now.  I am in the property management field of real estate and have not really been able to figure out how to implement twitter into my business as a successful tool.  It just does not seem that people want to hear about vacation rentals every day, but only around when they are looking to come to Hawaii.  In the real estate field have you had any success with promoting your business with twiiter?  If so, what are some tactics that you have used to be successful?

On the other front, if you keep up with internet news google and twitter are getting thrown around in the same sentence a lot lately.  Anyone that is big into real estate probably has a good web site that they optimize.  Given that google keeps mentioning using twitter in the future, you have to wonder how you can use twitter to help optimize your site for when that day comes.  Has anyone been working with twiitter in this fashion?  I believe that if google does start to use twitter that it will look at it like a site and if you have links to your site in every tweet then it will be considered spam.  So to be a good account in googles mind you would need possibly 10% of your tweets to have a url mention.  Any thoughts?

I have been a member of ActiveRain for a few years and have really enjoyed the community.  As the years have passed, more and more people have gotten obsessed with the point system, which if I am not mistaken has no benefit to you for anything. 

As first it was probably implemented as a way to "reward" people for interacting and posting more often.  Now it seems that people just post blog posts consisting of minimal content to get the points and you will always find in the comments of all posts, "Good info, will keep watching." or something of that nature.

I was just curious if anyone else has noticed this and if anyone has any good input.

I just recently noticed one of my posts on the activerain state page, which you can view at http://activerain.com/states/HI.  I was curious how it got on there.  If it is selected, comes from a feed, etc.  Let me know your thoughts.
Thanks!

Not long ago you could go out and purchase a couple of solid links and see yourself move up the list for terms you are going after and find yourself on page one in no time.  Now it seems as though the web is more competitive and google gives less value to links as a whole. 

That leaves you in the delima of spending money for something that may give benefit or not.  What do you do?

Kolea 9J is the most recent addition to our vacation rental program.  We have had a lot of success with our other two bedroom ocean view vacation rental at Kolea, Kolea 14M, and hope to have the same success with 9J.

Just steps away from this two bedroom penthouse is the Kolea Beach Club with direct beach access to A'Bay, the only sandy beach at Waikoloa Beach Resort.  The interior of this villa is very comfortable furnished.  The master bedroom features a king size bed and the guest bedroom has two two beds.  Find woodwork, LCD televisions, stainless steel appliances, and granite counters throughout.

Call Waikoloa Vacation Rentals today at (808) 987-4519 for more information on this luxury villa at Kolea at Waikoloa Beach Resort.

Guest blogging has become a very popular way to build your web presence.  It is something that has been proven to be beneficial to both parties.

The owner of the blog site gets added content, which has become a very powerful tool in search engine rankings.  They also get exposure to guest bloggers, which helps with branding as well as any statistics related to analytics.

The guest blogger gets similar benefits.  First, most blogs allow guest bloggers to add a link, which is valuable.  The guest blogger also gets added exposure to subscribers of the blog.

Do you guest blog?  If so, have you had much success?

We just added four villas at Kolea to our vacation rental program this July.  We are really excited about the selection because they are each very unique and offer different locations within Kolea.

Kolea 9J is a two bedroom villa that was just recently purchased.  9J offers a nice corridor ocean view and offers closer proximity to the Kolea Beach Club and ocean than most two bedroom villas at Kolea.

Kolea 4F and Kolea 4D are both three bedroom villas and new to the rental program and still have a very new feel to them.  The location of these two villas within Kolea is a very private setting and overlooks one of the few vacant lots remaining at Kolea.  Kolea 4F is located on the third floor and offers a spectacular panoramic ocean view and offers a great setting for sunsets and whale watching in the winter.  Kolea 4D is located on the ground floor and has a nice spacious lawn area in front of the villa.  Due to there being a vacant lot in front of building 4, Kolea 4D still has a nice ocean view.

Kolea 7D just recently switched over from another management company and also is one of the few three bedroom ground floor villas at Kolea that still offers a nice ocean view.  The Kolea Beach Club is just a minute away from the lanai of Kolea 7D giving it a very desirable location.

We are looking forward to managing these properties and feel that they will be as successfull as many other properties within our program.  We are sure that guests will love them!

Just recently we acquired Kolea 4F, which is one of the most desireable villas at Kolea at Waikoloa Beach Resort.  It is situated at the end of the "front row" of Kolea just behind a vacant lot giving it one of the most private settings at Kolea.  It is also one of the few front row villas that primarily overlooks the deep waters of the Pacific Ocean versus A'Bay.  Overlooking these waters allows for some great whale watching in the winter months.

This 2,200 square foot villa has beautiful ocean views from the majority of the villa including the main living area, the master bedroom, and the master bathroom.  The villa has been thoroughly furnished to give vacationers ultimate comfort.  The most breathtaking features of the large Kolea villas are the spacious lanais.  The lanai at Kolea 4F has a wet bar with a stainless steel grill.  You will also find a couch, two lounge chairs 

I have heard of some people in the real estate business having great success with using craigslist and driving traffic to their site.  I was curious if you have had the same success and if you have to forward me a link to an ad layout that has been successfull.  There seems to be several different ways to do it.

1) To just have a basic ad with some text and some photos and then to have your url by your contact info.
(or)
2) To use a pdf ad and have the entire pdf ad linkable to your site.

I run a vacation rental business so it will be a little different for me, but I am just trying to get the best idea on how to increase your CTR on craigslist.

After a strong first quarter of 2010, April was the first month in 2010 that showed decreasing revenues as apposed to 2009.  There was a 4% decrease in reservations and a 6% decrease in revenue.  Although the report was not great from some states, it was good for Hawaii and Texas.  Hawaii vacation rentals had 65% more revenue and Texas had 135% more revenue with a similar increase in number of reservations.  Texas was expected to have a better month, but was not expected to do as well as it did.  Hawaii was a surprise due to the continuing problems with the economy and it being one of the most expensive places to vacation in the US.

Let me know if you have any questions regarding the trends or any further information on any state in specific.

Last week I wrote a post on Three Tips to a Great SEO Campaign.  I did not get much feedback, but hopefully some of you found it useful.  This week I wanted to touch on googles page rank. 

For pretty much the past year it has become more known that googles page rank is really useless when it comes to their ranking.  There are many times that you can find searches that have sites with 0 or 1 PR ranking higher than sites with 3-4 PR with similar content.  Given that, do not question how your site ranks taking into consideration PR.

HERE IS HOW YOU CAN USE PR.  Although it is not the best tool, directory submission is a good tool for your site to help build some links.  As many people know, google is discounting links within directories.  One thing that is for sure is that when google penalizes a site they lose their PR.  So if you find directories with PR they should still be good directories to submit to. 

Here is an example
HotvsNot.com is a nice directory with a PR 6.  If you dig deeper to the vacation rental page you will find that it has a PR 3.  I would say this is a good page to advertise your business.  On the other hand, the real estate page is the same number of clicks away from the home page and has a PR 0.  I would say that for some reason google has discounted the value of this page thus discounting the value of any link on the page.

I hope that is helpful information and I intentionally gave you a site that may not be good for real estate to leave you the fun of going out and trying to find the directories that would still be good to list your real estate business under.  There are plenty so have fun!

Having a very successful SEO campaign can require a lot of time and energy, but in the end it really boils down to three main things; getting invloved in the community, getting your information out there via article submission and page building, and having a good site.  Here is some more insight to each of these items.

Getting Involved In the Community

This is one of the simplest and least costly ways to gain links to your site.  You can get involved with other blogs and comment on them to gain links.  Also many people let you "guest post" on their blog and allow you to include a link within your post.  This is a much more valuable link.  You can also get invloved in forums.  Almost all forums allow you to have a link in your signature.  These are not too valuable, but they are still links.  These three methods also build awareness around the internet community about your business and you can get some very valuable links from that.

Article Submission & Page Building

Article submission and page building are some of the more time consuming methods to building your SEO campaign.  You can submit articles about your topic to sites such as ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com.  They allow you to post links within your articles as long as it is relevant and not too spammy.  These articles get indexed very fast and offen rank well for long tailed keywords.  Here is an example I did on Kolea real estate.  EzineArticles typically gets indexed a little higher, but they have more guidelines you have to follow than GoArticles.
One of the newer methods I have found is building pages on different sites.  There are several sites that allow you to do this.  Just recently I built a page, or as they call it a lense, on squiddo.com. 

Having a Good Site

Having a good site is the biggest key to a successfull SEO campaign.  Building links to a site that is poorly optimized and not attractive is almost useless.  Having a very "usable" site with great information can gain you more links than anything else.  You also want to have a large amount of content on your site about your area and update it regularly.  If you really watch the search engines, they are starting to keep more "fresh" sites towards the top.  This can easily be done by a blog on your site.  You do not have to keep the information specifically related to your topic.  For example if you are selling real estate in Hawaii you can write information about the schools, the nearby beaches, the tourism to Hawaii, etc.

I hope these three tips will be as helpful to you as they were to me.  Although it does not sound like much, if you really dive into it you can spend years with these items.

There had been a property that one of my clients and I had been follwoing for a while.  It just came back on the market as a REO so he wanted to put in an offer.  When I contacted the listing agent she said that the first 7 days the bank would not be looking at any offers due to this being a "marketing period".  The next seven days only people planning to live there or non profit organizations could make offers. 

I understood the reasoning behind the marketing period, but since the property is in a vacation rental complex I did not understand the next seven days.  Any thoughts?

Over the course of the last few years I have tried out many of the aspects of the social web.  I have seen several statistics around the web as to how much business you can get from social media being in the real estate profession.  All of the figures were minimal.  If you dive into the social web it can encompass a lot of your time.  What I find hard to understand is why so many people put so much time into it.  It seems like there are many other things you could be doing that would be more valuable.

Many people work with several social bookmarking sites as well as several social networks such as twitter and facebook.  I would venture a guess that anyone that is involved in these it takes up more of their time than any other specific aspect of their business life. 

The tough part is that all the social media sites are so different in their operation that you can not run them all at the same time.  For example, most people post an article to their site, then they may republish something similar on their activerain blog, then they will submit it to social bookmarking sites such as digg, then write about their article on facebook and link to the article, and lastly write something very breif on twitter with a link to the article.

To me that is out of control.  Why not just go back to the only way of posting to your blog and letting people know either by them following your blog or by an email newsletter?  Is anyone else having adequate success with getting new business from the social web that would make sense of spending this much time?

I seldomnly dive into anything policital because it just is not worth it, but I just recently had some thoughts about the new helthcare bill and wanted to get your input.

In 2008 I had a housekeeper working for me.  Within the course of the first 9 months she called in sick over forty times with stomach problems.  Each time she had a doctors note.  Shortly after that she filed for temporary disability insurance claiming that the work she was given reagrivated her carpel tunnel syndrome.  She had a doctor which approved this notiton and for the next two years she collected TDI and had to go to the doctor weekly for followups along with occassional MRIs. 

The case was fought by HEMIC, Hawaiis employer representative, during the first year of TDI and won.  The attorney of the housekeeper then presented it to the Hawaii Department of Labor, which overturned the case and granted her TDI for the remaining time. 

At the end of 2009 she was no longer able to collect and a doctor approved her to go back to work.  She then went back to the doctor she had been seeing weekly and he did not approve her and said that she has permanent damage to her arm, which she can then sue for. 

My reason for writing this is not due to frustration of our premiums going sky high, but more so as to how is this even possible.  I know the new healthcare bill is so long that only the person that typed it can say they know what is in it, but to my understanding a portion of the bill is to deal with people not overusing medicine and testing.  When I look back at this case even if she did have carpel tunnel was it neccessary to have a weekly doctors appointment and further testing?  Doesn't a situation such as this give the doctor reason to say she is sick so that he/she can have a weekly patient to collect from for not doing much work? 

I was just intersted in anyones thoughts on this and if the medical bill has anything in there to deal with situations such as this.

Having great photos has played a large role in us being successful at renting vacation rentals.  I wanted to try to do some videos of the properties to give people interested a better ideas of them.  Here are some questions I had.

1)  I have some great photos that have been enchanced, etc to make them really nice.  I am afraid that the videos will actually make the places not look as nice in comparison to the photos.  You can view an example of Mauna Lani Terrace A204. Any thoughts?

2)  I have a really nice video camera and you can see an exterior property tour I did of a property out here at the bottom of my Halii Kai information page.  The problem I have in that when you are inside a property there are some problems with lighing as you go from the inside to the outside and you really need to do that since a lot of my properties main feature is the view.

3)  Is there any recommended editing software where you can enchance colors, etc?  I am sure it is a lot harder with videos if so.

Anyway, i would appreciate any recommendations and would like to see some videos if anyone has had any success.

In this tough economy everyone is looking for a competitive advantage.  Just cecently the Marriott started a "Checked Bags Rebate Program".  This program allows any guests that stays with them to get their money back on checked bags with the airlines.  I thought this was a great incentive to stay with them that would seemingly have a lot of value with guests.  At the same time it would save them money due to the cost more than likely being less than a free night or something of that nature.

What do you think about this?  What would be a good incentive for you to stay at one location over another?

I just started a vacation rental advertising group on ActiveRain.  I have spent a few years in forums around the internet and there is a lot to be discussed on this topic.

I know there are a couple of other property management groups on ActiveRain, but there are very few "real" discussions that happen there.  They are mostly just listings, etc.  I would really like it to get going and be beneficial to everyone.  If you have any interest in it please join and write a post and lets get it going.  It does not have to be specific to advertising vacation rentals.

http://activerain.com/groups/vacationrentaladvertising