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Before I even get into this article, let me state this fact; this article is not meant to offend anyone based on religious views, instead, it is meant to point out the obvious: Replacing Home Inspections with a Spiritual Cleansing is not smart.

Last night I was able to lay back and watch some of the programs that I had TIVOed. One of the programs that I like to check in on is My First Place. The show held my attention like they usually do (I watch them until I fall asleep). However, last night’s viewing through me for a loop. After the you gentleman decided what house he wanted to buy, he decided to go with a Spiritual Cleansing of the property instead of the normal home inspection.

Now, I try to remain as open minded as the next person, but there are places where I have to draw the line. While I might not want to live with the ghost of Elvis Presley, I most certainly do not want to buy a home that has a decaying roof on it. While it might be fun to have Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana running through the halls, having termites in those same halls would not be the ideal situation, but I digress.

In closing, having your home cleansed of bad spirits or ghosts is a great thing. With that said, buying a property without first having a qualified home inspector such as William Troutman, David Lelak, James Brantley, or David Boyd is just asking for trouble.

Replacing Home Inspections With Spiritual Cleansing is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

Over the last year to 2 years, I have been talking to REALTORS® from all over the USA and abroad. It seems that no matter who I talk to the one bit of universal feedback I hear is that agents want to be able to list their properties as cheap as possible, and without competitor ads.

Well, being the web developers that we are, we decided to see what we could do about that. So, we developed a site that will allow it’s members to list their properties advertisement free. Now that does not mean the site is completely free of advertisers. It just means that the listings themselves are free of advertisements. We are offering memberships to the site for $25 a year and you can list all the properties that you have contracted. We are not allowing agencies to list all of their REALTORS® listings at this point in time.

Listings can have up to 11 pictures.

You can have a contact form embedded in your listing as well.

So, what makes this site different from others. Simple, the only listings that are searchable on this site are our members’ listings. Also, it is free for the public to search and they do not have to sign up for anything.

With that said, if you are interested in joining prior to launch, email me. I will send you an invoice for the $25.

Lastly, we will be allowing guest post on the site as well. This way, you can drive readers back to your personal website as well.

If you have questions please contact me directly.

SellBuyRentOnline.com Set to Launch on 7-26-2010 is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

Over the last year to 2 years, I have been talking to REALTORS® from all over the USA and abroad. It seems that no matter who I talk to the one bit of universal feedback I hear is that agents want to be able to list their properties as cheap as possible, and without competitor ads.

Well, being the web developers that we are, we decided to see what we could do about that. So, we developed a site that will allow it’s members to list their properties advertisement free. Now that does not mean the site is completely free of advertisers. It just means that the listings themselves are free of advertisements. We are offering memberships to the site for $25 a year and you can list all the properties that you have contracted. We are not allowing agencies to list all of their REALTORS® listings at this point in time.

Listings can have up to 11 pictures.

You can have a contact form embedded in your listing as well.

So, what makes this site different from others. Simple, the only listings that are searchable on this site are our members’ listings. Also, it is free for the public to search and they do not have to sign up for anything.

With that said, if you are interested in joining prior to launch, email me. I will send you an invoice for the $25.

Lastly, we will be allowing guest post on the site as well. This way, you can drive readers back to your personal website as well.

If you have questions please contact me directly.

SellBuyRentOnline.com Set to Launch on 7-26-2010 is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

It has been some time since I have had time to write an article. Unfortunately, today is not one of those times. However, I felt that it was time to shed some light on some SEO (search engine optimization) stumbling blocks. Our real estate network webmasters believe that SEO should be gained through organic means. With that said, many webmasters do not agree and decide to take their clients down the road of black hat tactics as opposed to white hat tactics. Others choose to skirt the issue and use grey hat tactics (gray hat tactics). So let’s take a look at what black hat and grey hat tactics are as well as some of the stumbling blocks to SEO.

Before we dive into this, let’s discuss something very important to all of you site owners. Whether you know it or not, your webmaster’s tactics ultimately effect your site. If the webmaster chooses to use these tactics to get your site to the top of the rankings, things could be good for some time. Mark my words however, eventually your site will get caught. When that day comes, you will lose all that you have worked so hard for. You can say goodbye to your PageRank (PR), your site being indexed, and most importantly, all the hard work that you thought that you were putting in to get your site indexed organically to begin with.  As you will notice in the picture to the left, Positive Real Estate Professionals has 3,100 pages index in their 16 months of existence. With that said, many of our real estate professionals are also indexed right along with us. There is really no rhyme or reason to our members’ placement in this index list however. So, without further adieu, let’s get to the meat of this post.

Black hat tactics can be easily spotted by the trained eye most of the time. With that said, many search engines can also spot these tactics and will soon kill off these sites. Being banned from Google indexing your site might as well be equivalent to cutting off your nose to spite your face. However, just like black magic, black hat and grey hat tactics are evolving daily, if not hourly. One of the easiest is redirection. A week or so ago, I was reading an article on As I was getting completely immersed in this article I came across a “Read More” link. While I was salivating to read more of this great article, I clicked the link. To my surprise, and disappointment, it took me to a splash page where they wanted me to buy a product that was in no way related to the article that got my attention. That, my friends, is black hat tactics. Redirections should be just what they are intended for. When a link that you worked hard to create is dead or rebuilt with a new URL, that is the time to use redirection. When you are building a page and the page that it is going to refer to is not able to be placed in the navigation, that is when you use redirection. In the cases where redirection is used correctly, this is white hat tactics.

Another instance of a black hat trick is where a web master takes any page on a site and list many keywords using the same text color as their background. To the eye, the keywords are not visible. However, the search engines do see them. To the trained webmaster’s eye, you only need to see the extra spacing there. In some cases, this is hard to do. However, you can also right click on a page in FireFox and chose “View Selection Source”. In Internet Explorer, you would choose “Selection Source”. When you do this, you can actually locate keywords that are used employing this black hat tactic.

Now, for the sake of not making this article longer than it needs to be, let’s talk about one that I frankly consider grey hat. This would be hiding links. Now, this is one of the more difficult things to follow. However, not completely impossible. Methods that are used to do this is hiding the link in “Alt Text” or PHP coding (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor is a widely used, general-purpose scripting language that was originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. courtesy of Wikipedia). Many times I have been reviewing PHP code and come across these hidden links. I will either remove them or just remove the PHP program completely.

In closing, none of these tactics are necessary. You and your webmaster need to sit down and discuss whether or not they are employing these tactics on your behalf. Ultimately, it is your site that they are playing with.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Stumbling Blocks is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

One of our greatest features is the fact that we are constantly evolving. When we come across a great tool, we test it out to see if it fits our real estate network and would be a benefit. What is even better than that is when one of our members sends us a message on a tool they have come across that will be a huge benefit to our site. That actually occurred this morning and I would like to thank Ramona Strojevs of Burlington HomeForYou, your connection to Burlington ON real estate.

Ramona had came across a great application this morning and then pasted a link to that on my own wall on FaceBook. She had found Tynt. I immediately went to work checking out this new potential tool for PREP. My first instinct was that I really did not want to have a new tool that we would have to go through each and every account to get it added to our members’ sites. My first path was to go to WordPress.org and see if there was a plugin for easy integration. Fortunately, Tynt had been integrated into a plugin called easy tynt.

Once I got it loaded into PREP, I went to work testing it out. What I found was just extraordinary to say the least. In today’s world where people take content from your site without thinking much about it, this tool will alert you to that very fact. If you look to the left, you will see a screenshot from the plugin that I took this morning. If you can’t make it out, just click on the picture and it will open to original size in another window. Being able to track the content from my site that has been copied and applied elsewhere on the world wide web is a huge benefit. Also being able to tag that content with a license is an even bigger benefit.

With that said, the benefits do not stop there. Another great feature is the SEO benefits that you can actually track using this new tool. Each and every time that someone copies content from your site, you will get a link back to the original content. The more that this happens, the stronger your content becomes. However, it does not just have a positive effect on your content. It also creates more links to your site. That in itself makes the plugin well worth the time to set it up.

So, let’s talk about setting it up on your PREP account. You can ONLY use this if you have an account that is MAPPED. No sub domains or sub directories can be used. Once you are logged onto your dashboard, follow these instructions:

1. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu under ‘Post’ in WordPress.

2. Click on the Easy Tynt settings link in your WordPress settings to configure Easy Tynt. Easy Tynt will not work until this is completed.

3. Visit http://www.tynt.com and log in or register a new account.

4. Chose the options you are interested in. I suggest looking at the Attribution Link. We are using the ‘Attribution No Derivatives’ License.

5. Once everything is setup to your satisfaction, copy the provided “YOUR SCRIPT” code into the Easy Tynt settings in your WordPress dashboard. Hit “Update Options” and you are done!

Now that you have done that, all you need to do is login daily to check your stats. Everything else is done for you. Once again, I would like to thank Ramona for sharing this awesome tool with me this morning.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

PositiveRealEstateProfessionals.com Adds Tynt To It’s Tools is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

When it comes to landing pages for your site, there are quite a few options. The three main ones that I have encountered are Static, Blog, and Flash. Personally, I hate Flash pages as a landing page, but for the purpose of this article, I am going to keep my personal feelings to myself. With that said, over the last year that our online real estate network has been in existence, we have moved from the Blog Page being front and center to a static page. When we create a new account for our members, a static landing page is standard in our membership fee of $150 per year. So, to get back on track, lets take a look at the three types of landing pages mentioned in this article. A huge advantage to having this type of page is you can actually build a sitemap of your site in a format that is user friendly. When I say “sitemap” I am not referring to a standard sitemap, but instead, an article that links people to the things that they want to find on your site. Also, you can focus on keywords for your site easier.

Static Pages

Typically, a static page is one that remains the same (see image to the right). While you can change the content fairly easily, it usually remains the same. One advantage of this is that the page is cached in the world wide web and typically opens quickly. Static pages can be created easily and saved in databases as html files. The common use for static pages for blog sites is to give the appearance of a CMS (content management system) feel or type of site. This is what is commonly referred to as a website.

Blog Pages

A blog page is common in sites that are built using WordPress, Blogger, Vox, and others (see image to the right). Blog pages are pages which generates a list of your most recent posts or articles and places them on one page. While all of these platforms have a different layouts and functions, the blog pages are typically set to function in the same manner. Posts are kept in a chronological order that you can click on and go to the individual article. The big disadvantage of having this page front and center is that if you are away for some time and do not post, it is apparent to everyone immediately.

Flash Intro Pages

Flash into pages load animated content first while loading the main content in the background. The main problem with this type of page is that NOT everyone has a Flash Player on their computers. Even though that might sound prehistoric, it is a fact. In the end, if they can’t load it, they can’t see it. While Flash pages can be pretty and can also take the site to another level, if no one can see it, then it is as dumb as having a Picasso and leaving it in the closet. For this very reason I think it is bad to have this as your landing page. Another disadvantage to having flash is when people are using dial up (yes, it still exists) then it takes forever for that page to load. Regardless how people are connecting to the internet, they all want a FAST experience. Flash does not offer that.

In closing, the type of landing page that you chose is basically up to you. Your web site developer should be able to expand on this subject more, but I hope that I have provided enough for you to make an informed decision.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

Landing Page – Static versus Blog versus Flash is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

It is with great pleasure and pride that I am happy to announce that our online real estate network, PositiveRealEstateProfessionals.com, has come to an agreement with Jeremiah Mumbower. We are officially making him our newest Facebook Guru. We are excited in this newest edition to our staff and want to publicly welcome Jeremiah aboard. It has been a long time coming.

If you are wondering what added value that Jeremiah brings to our team, then check out his business page on Facebook. To give you an idea of Jeremiah’s background, he is a clip from his bio:

“My story I was laid off from Intel in Oct. 2009. I found the social media network facebook was in awe! I use to have my own business in the cleaning industry did my own marketing and media design found that I really enjoyed working on computers and software. I had a love for the social media in the past but, I saw that facebook had business pages. I had a feeling that this was something unique and some thing of the future. I told myself at this point I was going to learn facebook period. I have learned the business pages and the options and capabilities by studying this technology social network 3 months worth. I acquired my knowledge of software/computer components and networking computers over the last ten years. I have a love and natural knack for technology. Well here I am now making Facebook business pages for people.”

We are excited in what Jeremiah can do for our members. While his services are a premium, he has agreed to discount them for our members. To have your Facebook business page constructed professionally, Jeremiah will offer our members a price of $150. This is a $50 discount from his regular charge. While we will still offer the basic Facebook Business Page help, if you are wanting more done, then please contact Jeremiah.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK.

Jeremiah Mumbower Teams Up With PREP As Facebook GURU is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

It is with great pleasure and pride that I am happy to announce that our online real estate network, PositiveRealEstateProfessionals.com, has come to an agreement with Jen Monastero. We are officially making her our newest Community Recruiter. We are excited in this newest edition to our staff and want to publicly welcome Jen aboard. It has been a long time coming.

So, what does a community recruiter actually do you ask? Well, that is quite simply to answer. Jen’s main focus is to help us continue to recruit members to our online real estate network. For those of you that do not know Jen, she has spent several years in the mortgage industry. Most recently, she has jumped on a start up called Know your Pro. I first met Jen about 2 years ago when our paths crossed on ActiveRain. At that point and time, I knew that she would be someone that I could definitely work with and respect. Today that thought has become reality.

While Jen is still focused on Know Your Pro, her sole responsibility with us is to help us grow. In turn, PREP will also be promoting Know Your Pro as we believe that they are onto something over there. If you are not a member of their site, I would highly recommend becoming one. Enough said on that matter.

Please join me in welcoming our newest admin, Jen Monastero.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

Jen Monastero Joins PREPS Team as a Community Recruiter is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

When I logged into Facebook this morning, I was greeted with the picture to the left. I am sure that many of you have already seen this. I am also sure that many started out the same way I did; looking for the path to add the “like” button to your site. With that said, I decide to write a post for all to read and learn. After spending nearly an hour trying to find this, I thought that I would save you all the headaches of tracking down how to install this little tool to your site.

Before I go into deep detail, I thought I would share what this button can and will do for you. If you look to the right, you will see this button in action on our real estate network. As you can see at this point, not many have used it. Over time, the number will grow and people will be able to share our network with their facebook friends a lot easier. All one needs to do is to click the “Like” button once, and it adds them. Below is an excerpt from the facebook page explaining this a little better:

The Like button enables users to make connections to your pages and share content back to their friends on Facebook with one click. Since the content is hosted by Facebook, the button can display personalized content whether or not the user has logged into your site. For logged-in Facebook users, the button is personalized to highlight friends who have also liked the page.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s take a look at how we add this neat little tool to our own sites. If you look to the immediate left, you will see the picture of the Like Button Generator. As you can see, I have filled out the fields that I need in order to create this button for our main page. Now, in theory, I could do this for each and every page that I wanted to on PREP, but at some point, you run into overkill. This is one of the reason why we use “sociable” on PREP. It already has Facebook’s share function in it.

Once all the pertinent information is entered, all you need to do is click on get code. Once that is done, it will generate 2 codes; one is an iFrame code and the second is a JavaScript code. Personally PREP stays away from the JavaScript coding as it can lead to some security issues, especially for a multi user platform such as ours. Once this is done, all you need to do is add this into a “Text” widget in your sidebar of your site. If you do not have access to do that, then contact your webmaster and they can instruct you more on this subject.In some cases this can require coding added to the theme itself or some adjustments to certain parameters that can only be done by an admin or webmaster. In our case, each and ever member has the ability to add this on their own site and place it any where on their sidebars without having to contact us. With that said, if you run into issues, please feel free to call us and we can walk you through the process.

OK, now that we have the why and how to out of the way, let’s get down to the where. I thought long and hard of how I could help each and everyone of you get this tool on your site the easiest way. With that said, I decide that I would just iFrame their page into this post. Hence, you will be able to generate your own code right from this article and there will not be a need to bounce around. I hope that you find this both helpful and useful.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

How To Add Facebook Like Button To Your Site is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

As always, we here at Positive Real Estate Professionals try to stay on top of the latest tools and integrations for our real estate network. Today is no different as we are prepared to offer The Events Calendar to each and every one of our members for FREE. We have tested this events calendar to see how it would integrate with our online real estate network, and frankly I am pleased to announce that it has passed each and every test that I have thrown at it.

Below is the description straight from the plugins page on wordpress:

The Events Calendar plugin enables you to rapidly create and manage events using the post editor. Features include Google Maps integration as well as default templates such as a calendar grid and event list for streamlined one click installation.

Looking to track attendees, sell tickets and more? Go download the Eventbrite for The Events Calendar plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/eventbrite-for-the-events-calendar/). Eventbrite is a free service that provides the full power of a conference ticketing system. This plugin upgrades The Events Calendar with all the basic Eventbrite controls without ever leaving the wordpress post editor. Don’t have an Eventbrite account? No problem, use the following link to set one up: http://www.eventbrite.com/r/simpleevents.

The Events Calendar

• Manage event details right from your post editor
• Upcoming Events Widget
• Provides full template out of the box (month and list view)
• Extensive template tags for customization
• MU Compatible
• Google Maps Integration
• Posts are automatically moved to the top of the loop on the day of the event
• Calendar Month view with tooltips
• Includes support for venue, cost, address, start and end time, google maps link
• Optional Ticketing With Eventbrite Integration – http://www.eventbrite.com/ – though the Eventbrite for The Events Calendar plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/eventbrite-for-the-events-calendar/).
• Support for international addresses, time and languages: ** Swedish ** French ** Italian

Upcoming Features

• Option to disable re-posting of event
• Ical Feed
• Improved international features (calendar start day)
• Option to exclude events from main loop
• More bug hunting and support (huff puff)
• Improved error checking and reporting
• Calendar view widget
• Reoccuring events
• Sync with facebook events
• Saved venues
• Global event maps
• Dynamic categories (rather than requiring the use of event)
• Event subcategories

Now, here is how you can access this neat tool. First, contact our office if you are interested in using this tool as we have to turn it on individually. Then, login to your dashboard and scroll down to the “Settings” and look for “The Events Calendar”. Once there, simply click on it and set your options. When that is done, contact our office for your Events Calendar page to be set up on your navigation bar. We will structure it and then setup the redirection that is required to make the page appear correctly. Once it is done, we will test it to be sure that it works properly.

With that said, here are a few things that I see that will be a HUGE benefit. For any REALTOR® that uses this calendar and lists their open houses, the post will display a Google Map automatically to the listing. This feature is available for everyone that uses this new calendar. Another GREAT benefit to this calendar is it is managed right from your posting screen. This means that all you need to do is go to write a new post just like you normally do, add a prelude, and then simply input the day, time, location, and any other info that is important to this event. The tool will do the rest for you.

If you want to see one being used on our network, simply click here.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

Positive Real Estate Professionals adds The Events Calendar is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.