RealCove Blog

While our public facing websites work for IE6, our website builder does not, and frankly that was by design.  As we began to build our system we noticed that certain functions didn’t perform well with IE6 and a meeting of the minds resulted in IE6 being the minority of our users (at the time about 10%).  Because we were offering a site building service, we felt we could recommend to users to upgrade to IE7+, or use Firefox, Safari, Chrome or Opera.

IE6 had become so antiquated that it would have been major reworking to make our backend work with it, and it could have presented security problems as well.  Now with it looking like major site hacks were made possible because of IE6 (Google was one victim), Google is finally taking the lead and beginning to pull support of IE6 for Google Docs, and other services like Gmail, Calendar, and frankly we hope they also do it with search.  You can read more about it here.

This sort of move is great, and forces this browser to finally go away.  It should have gone away 5 years ago.

As I jokingly put it with a friend of mine who was still clinging to IE6, “It appears [your problem] is IE6 related.  Since IE6 is a security vulnerability for us and our clients, we no longer support it, it also represents much less than 10% of our traffic now (and why it is that high we aren’t certain, except sometimes people like to hang onto old friends).  I note that IE6 was first released in 2000, since that time we’ve had a dot-com bubble burst, suffered through two recessions, two wars, and had 3 different presidents.  Windows itself has had 6 new operating systems and broadband access at home has gone from rare to almost universal.  With that in mind, I strongly encourage you to upgrade your broswer to at least IE7 if not IE8 and ideally Firefox.  Your computer will be more secure, and I promise, you’ll be very happy you did.”

If you are hanging on to IE6, there are now many compelling reasons to move on up to a better browser experience.  We recommend Firefox for its speed, standards support and security.  It is what we use.  You can download it here. If you love Internet Explorer, or need it for your business, you can download IE8 here.

We like to talk about our search engine optimization capabilities at RealCove, and with good reason, most all of our sites perform very well with Google, Bing and Yahoo!.  Our platform has extremely clean code for a content management system because we built it with SEO in mind.  Does that mean your site is going to outperform all comers?  Not necessarily, it just means that you have the right tools in your hands to do well.  Because of this, we felt it would be useful to clarify a bit in how our sites and search engines work together.

A common question we get a day or two after someone launches a site is, “Why isn’t my site on Google yet?”  (and sometimes it is a bit more pushy than that).  The answer: It takes time for them to index and include your site in search engines, it can be the same day, it can be three weeks, and unfortunately we don’t have ultimate control over that.  Search engines send out periodic spiders and bots to find new sites and to categorize them, and even when you submit a site to them, their disclaimers are pretty much “we’ll get to it when we get to it.”   Because of this, we really can’t control when they’ll start including your site in organic search results.  Typically it is within no longer than 3 weeks, but like we tell people, “If we could control that, we’d drive much nicer cars.”

The same question comes when someone updates information on their site, or includes a new blog entry, etc.  Once your site has been found by search engines, they’ll check back and see if there have been any changes made to its content.  After a few checks, they’ll start coming back at regular intervals, depending on how much they think you’ll update your content.  If it is daily, they’ll check back daily, if it is weekly, the same, and so forth.  If you update your site once a quarter, it may take some time before search engines realize what you have done.  For example, if they are checking your site for updates once a month, and you update the day after a search engine checks, you may expect it to be a full month before they realize your changes.

The real key to getting your RealCove site to perform well in search engines is to write the best, most relevant and keyword rich content you possibly can, as often as you can.  If you have great content on your site, and you update it regularly, search engines will view this as a positive for your site, and you can expect to start getting promoted.

If you need to be at the top quickly, we suggest you start a pay-per-click campaign, which helps to guarantee your placement, depending on what you bid per click.  Others may just want to work the organic listing route, but as someone once said, “There is no such thing as free search engine placement.”  It either takes money or time.

We have some new SEO tools coming with the builder here shortly that will help you even further, and we have SEO experts on hand to get you rolling, but we like to make sure that people understand that there aren’t instant results in SEO, and it is an investment and process.  We work scientifically to get you the best results, and analyze your progress and content, but require that the site owner become a partner is helping in its SEO success.

For more information, feel free to contact us for an initial consultation.

There are two ways to add a PDF to your site, depending on your needs.  If you are just adding a single PDF, and maybe just want it available at the bottom of your page, you can use the “Add A PDF” app.  Do this by clicking on the app and then go to Options > Edit Settings.  From here you can upload the PDF by selecting Choose File and then browsing for your PDF on your desktop.  Once you’ve found the file and clicked Okay, then click ‘Upload File’.

Once the file has been uploaded, you’ll get a confirmation where you can then hit save.

The other way to add a PDF is to do it in context of your Text and Image Editor.  We recommend that you type the text of the title you’d like for your PDF.  Select the text and then click the link button in the editor (it looks like a world with a chainlink).  A window will appear titled ‘Link’, click on the browse server button.  This will open another window titled ‘Folders’.  Click on the Document folder, and if you’ve uploaded a PDF previously, select it from there.  If you haven’t, click Upload near the top of the window, choose your file from your computer and then click ‘Upload Selected File.’  Once it has been uploaded, double click on the file you’ve just uploaded, and it will apear in the ‘Link’ window.  Click okay, and you’ve successfully linked to your PDF on your site.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a complex field and there is a lot that goes into it.  The RealCove system was actually first built with SEO in mind, so we do as much as we can to facilitate your success online, but we are just a tool to help you get there, and much of your success depends on you.  Here is the content of an email I sent recently to someone who made an inquiry about it, and I thought it might be useful for others to help them understand.  He had made an inquiry about a solicitation he had received for SEO services that was guaranteeing high placement on search engines:

Throughout the year we get many inquiries about official looking notices and letters that look like bills regarding someone’s domain name (see image below).  Often they tell you your domain is going to expire if you don’t renew immediately, and usually have extremely high charges for domain names (often over $60/year… RealCove charges $12.95/year and even the more expensive Network Solutions is around $25).

These are complete scams, and please do not fall prey to them.  If you have registered your domain through us, we will send you notification directly from RealCove with options to renew.  If you’ve registered your domain through Go Daddy or others, those notifications will come from them.  (We’ve highlighted below the little note they include to tell you it is a solicitation versus a bill or invoice.)

If you do pay these people, you are giving them authorization to transfer your domain over to them.  Fortunately in all cases we are aware of, we’ve been able to stop people from falling victim, but it is likely that once your domain is in their hands, they’ll make it as difficult as possible to get it back.

If you do get a notice you aren’t sure of, feel free to contact us and ask at support [at] realcove [dot] com and we’ll be happy to help clarify.

If you are interested in having your site show up in search engines, make sure that you create an appropriate title, description and keywords for the pages you create.  First these help search engines properly categorize your pages, and you can help direct them in what the page is all about.  Secondly, the titles and descriptions typically show up in search results, so you’ll want to use something that will draw a visitor in.

In the administrative backend, you can add the title, description and keyword for your site as a whole.  This will be used for your entire site, unless you specify it on the individual pages.  We recommend doing this for each page on your site for best search engine performance, and you can do it quickly at the bottom of each page.

As you know, your navigation represents pages on your site.  If you want to organize your navigation into categories, with sub-navigation, it is easy to do.  Here are some things to know.

1. If you don’t add content to a navigation item you’ve created, it won’t turn into a link and acts as a good category header.  You can see examples of this here.  You’ll note that the navigation has three organizational categories, Silver Strike Lodge,  About Silver Strike Lodge and Other Information.  Because this user didn’t add any content to that navigation, it is just text not a link.

2. You can add sub navigation elements, by going to a navigation item you’ve added, and choose ‘menu’ > ‘add subnavigation’.  A new sub navigation item will be added under that category.

3. You can move navigation items up and down relative to each other, but only within a category.  We recommend you work out your navigation organization first, and then build out your site by creating the navigation first.  This will help you formulate and organize your ideas and save you time in the long run.

Of course, you can always rename navigation items after, delete or reorganize, so don’t stress it.

What are the benefits of microsites beyond the standard one page listing sheet, or single page found on realtor.com and elsewhere?  The answer is, you can include much much more information as is relevant to your property.  The truth is, there really isn’t a property that isn’t worth doing a microsite for, because it gives you the opportunity to build tell the story of the property.

If someone called you on the phone about one of your listings and asked you about it, what would you tell them?  Would you talk about the neighborhood, the potential of the home, the location, the school system, proximity to popular attractions, finishes, amenities, market value, HOAs, and CC&Rs?  How about where the market is today and where it is going, how has the economy affected the area, or what about other comparable properties?  The list goes on, but for an agent it is easy to just talk about why they should consider one of your listings, but sometimes hard to formulate into a site.

A microsite can help you share your listing in a way that print pieces (such as ads, brochures and postcards) and current web resources (like realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow and your local MLS) fail to do.  The reason a person hires you as a Realtor is to rely on your expertise, and a microsite lets you do that.

Here is a site that exemplifies a great way to utilize a microsite.  What makes this site great is it has a lot of useful information, and most of all tells the whole story of this property.  An agent can send this to clients with the full confidence that it answers the questions right up to, “When can I see this property in person.”

Let’s break it down:

1. HOME PAGE - The home page acts like a printed brochure. This is summary information that is going to capture a person and keep them moving on.  Note the big picture of the property, and a narrative of the property with other complimentary photos.
2. SECTION 1 - ABOUT THE PROPERTY: In the navigation on the left, at the top we have Featured Property Details, an Aerial Map to show where the property is and a link to the professional virtual tour.  This gives the user all the basic information, along with a great tour to help them want to know more.
3. SECTION 2 - ABOUT THE AREA AND AMENITIES - This time the user can learn about the location, club memberships, the area at large, amenities, CC&R’s and even look at floorplans.  The user can also see the relative value of comparable units and other information important to a purchase consideration.
4. SECTION 3 - CONTACT INFORMATION - Ultimately the goal is that they contact your.  An agent bio with contact, more information about the company and of course a link back to your main site in case they aren’t interested in this property but want to look for more.

Other nice components of this site is the many calls to action. A call to action is an invitation to the user to contact you or request more information, etc.  We recommend that you have one of these, related to the page content, on each page.  You don’t want to make it difficult at all for someone to figure out how to get hold of you.

This site is a dummy site, now, because the property sold within two weeks of listing - yes, even in this market.  The client was thrilled that his agent would go to the work to make a site dedicated to his listings, and the buyers were excited to have all the information at their finger tips.  This agent also was able to send out this site to many qualified buyers, and other agents to get in front of them quickly.

The value of a well-built microsite is well beyond the $9/mo or $90/year charge, and certainly more valuable than a newspaper ad or brochure.  You have to be a real estate agent and have a RealCove site to have access to microsites.  To build one, log into your site here using your email and password, and click on ‘Create Microsite’ near the top left of the administrative backend.

Also, if you aren’t interested in building your own site, a Certified RealCove Specialist can assist you for $20 a microsite, just contact us at support [at] realcove [dot] com.

Most sites include blogs which give you a good opportunity to provide new content to your site and interact with your users.  There are a lot of practical applications for a blog (such as this support blog).  Realtors may want to use a blog to update clients about important news in the areas they cover and to showcase their expertise.  Other industries may want to use it for like purposes or to offer insight into their industry.

There are a lot of powerful and easy to use blogging tools readily available that can handle comments, syndication to other sites and provide tools including trackbacks and plugins.  Among these tools we recommend Blogger (ran by google) Typepad and Wordpress.  All have essential the same functionality, with Blogger being the easiest for beginning users and Wordpress having the flexibility an advanced user might want to consider.

Once you’ve set up your blog there, make sure to turn on the RSS feed (it is typically on by default) and you can incorporate your blog into your RealCove site.  Here is how you do it.

1. Add your RSS feed directly to RealCove.

This is the most direct way of doing it, however we recommend using the second Feedburner option below, that has a few additional, but beneficial steps.

Once you’ve set up your blog, look for a link that says RSS and copy the URL, it is often accompanied by an icon that looks like this:

With the copied RSS URL, go to the page in the RealCove Website Builder you’d like to include in your blog, and click the ‘Add an RSS Feed’ app at the top of the page.  Then in that app, choose options > edit settings and paste the URL in the space for the RSS feed.  You can select how many posts you want to show up on a page and click Save.  Your new blog posts should appear instantly in the page. (Note: Make sure you are using the RSS feed and not the Atom Feed).

2. Feedburner Option

Feedburner (also ran by google) is nice because it scrubs out bad characters and other things that may make your blog less than presentable.  It helps syndicate your blog, and it also is a nice tool to track your blog statistics.  Best of all, you don’t have to figure out what is going on with your site feed, it does it for you.

To use Feedburner, go to feedburner.com and paste in the URL of your blog (it will find the RSS feed for you).  Once it has found that, follow the remaining steps and it will give you a feedburner URL for your blog.  Copy that URL and paste it into the Add an RSS Feed app (see further instructions on this in step one).

Check out our page for our support blog on our site to see how this works.

Often you will want to link to another site, or to another page within your site from within your content.  This is easy to do and a great way to help people get more information and move around your site.  Here is how you do it:

In the Text and Image Editor app you have a number of editing buttons to help you layout your content.  One of them is a button with a chainlink and a world, this is the button you use to create a link.

Highlight the text or image you want to turn into a link and click on the link button.  A window will be popped where you can enter the URL of where you want to link.

If you want to link to a page within your site, you don’t need to include the whole URL (this is called an absolute link) rather you should do a relative link, which is everything after the http://www.yourdomain.com.  So if I wanted to link to http://www.realcove.com/support-blog which is within my own site, I’d just enter /support-blog and it will work just fine and help your search engine optimization.

Click okay, your selected text you just turned into a link will be a nice blue and underlined.  Hit save and you’ve created a link in your site.