Write About Property Blog on SEO, Copywriting, Social Media Marketing & Property

SEO Tips: When is a Link not a Link?

When a Link Became a Link (the back-story):

About 4-5 years ago, SEO started to become a mainstream term in the business community. Certainly any business that relied upon the internet for a large proportion of its sales started to investigate what SEO was and how they could harness it to improve their turnover.

Those that could afford it hired a professional to work their magic (or what seemed like magic to mesmerised customers, damn it was easier back then), but those that couldn't afford it started signing up to SEO newsletters and forums and trying to do it themselves.

The core thing that everyone learned was the links were important. Many companies started distributing press releases round various sites in order to grow their back-link numbers, and link-exchanges became very popular. It then became apparent that one way links were better, and subsequently people began three way linking (I'll link to your page on that site from this page on my site, and you link to my page from that page on your site).

All those tactics worked well for a time. They were especially beneficial for building PageRank™, and positions would be gained for low competition terms fairly quickly, while highly competitive terms took ages.

When a Link Became Not a Link

This led to some businesses outsourcing their link-building to Asian companies (we've all had the emails). People became so obsessed with volume of links, and failed to see that the quality of those links was far more important than the quantity, and would continue to become more important as time progressed.

But the worst thing about these link-building campaigns outsourced was/is not that they did not/don't work in the desired way. The worst thing is that they can end up having a massively negative effect on the site's positions and PageRank™, and when that happens the negative effect lasts for a very long time after the link-building stops.

Before I explain why (and to save myself from a tirade of retribution) I better say that I have never and will never outsource my link-building, nor will I ever look into those offering the services in any detail. So for all I know there could be some very good Asian link-builders, who build the kind of targeted and high quality links that they claim to build.

That said: the ones I have seen have given those who hire them thousands of links. Good right? Wrong! Thousands of links from things like Asian dating sites and sites and directories which have nothing to do with the subject matter of the site.

Why a Link is Not a Link, When it is Not a Link

The reason why these links end up doing lasting damage is because of a thing called trust rank; the trustworthiness of your site being determined by the search engines, using an algorithm which judges how spammy your site is, based on how many spam sites link to you and how many you link to (all of them of course being judged on their spam levels by the same measure). That is a very simple explanation of trust rank, there is a much better one here.

Trust rank has become more important to your overall site rank as time has progressed. And it is for that reason that methods like submitting articles have gotten less effective. Especially using sites which do not have an editorial procedure, because these have been used by spammers, which means they link to spam, which means a link from those sites then becomes damaging.

So, in short the answer to the question of when is a link not a link is: when that link comes from a site that has a low trust rank, and subsequently brings your trust rank down, adversely affecting the overall ranking of your website.

Posted:2010-03-06 20:35:26 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

The Quandary of Starting an Overseas Property Portal

Well, firstly to get this out of the way; many people would say starting a new overseas property portal now is madness, with such fierce competition in the market and Google looking set to make an eventual appearance in the sector.

However, I am not one of them! If people looking to start a business were scared off because of competition no one would ever start a business, or very rarely, and as long as the Unique Selling Point is strong and the marketing good there is no reason why a portal started now couldn't go on to do well.

That said, the new property portal would very quickly face the same quandary that nearly all those before it have faced from an SEO perspective: agents and sellers are the target market (aka paying customers) whilst, if no buyers visit the site then no one will advertise with you for long, so who do you target with your SEO, agents and sellers or buyers?

The answer is... buyers. It is a fact that by now, with most people are looking online when buying and selling property, most of those people are savvy enough to know that they want their property advertised in the place where the most people looking to buy will see it. Knowing this they will advertise their property -- where possible -- on the websites that have the best positions for the terms that they imagine (or know) buyers will be using. So, by getting good positions for those terms the new portal will be killing both birds with one SEO stone.

Now, just how to get those positions is another article, and to be quite frank foolish for me to say, but none the less, the answer to the quandary presented here is: target the buyers, and the sellers will surely follow.

Posted:2010-02-17 10:19:07 | - By Alan de Sargent | 0 Comments

Why Every Business Needs an Online Presence

Something funny happened the other night and it completely changed my thoughts on the need for an online presence in business; it made me believe that absolutely all businesses need, not only a presence online, but an online presence. People are starting their search for knowledge on more and more things online, so to not be there to find is an opportunity missed.

In the past, I was the first person to say that not all businesses need a website. That a small tradesman who goes self-employed in his local area should not spend heavily on a website, when his target market would be flicking through the yellow pages and hiring the competition.

That is before my partners searched online to see if the local bakery had a website with cake prices, as a precursor to paying them a visit. Obviously this is not the first birthday cake that she or I have sourced, nor is it the first from that very bakery, but I know it is the first time either of us had looked for them online.

Don't ask me what is causing it, but we are making online the first port-of-call for more and more things as time progresses.

Anyway, what is causing it is irrelevant, the important thing is that it is happening; people are using the internet for things they would have previously done face to face in the shop. Therefore, if you do not have an online presence then you are missing out on trade.

In our case, we knew the name of the bakery as we use it for all cakes etc, but imagine we had just moved into the area. When you search bakery Stranraer in Google you get nothing but Google map listings and faceless directory listings, none of which show the family-run personality or customer service that the bakery in question is known for. Now, being top of the results might not bring a lot of business, but the level of business would be growing every month.

The reason why I said a website is not enough, you need a presence is because, even more popular than searching to find a tradesman, baker or gardener, is searching to find out about companies that you might hire or do business with. In this case it matters not only what you are saying, but what others are saying about you.

Now, in most cases, on a local basis these searches bring no relevant results and the person is forced to use other methods for their research. However, with the growing use of social media and blogging this will not always be the case.

With that in mind now is the time to start building your online presence. You don't need to splash out on a costly website, you could start with a blogger or Wordpress hosted blog to fuel a social media foray, and a listing in Google Local Business Center.

However, with the latter it is a good idea to have a professional domain of your own, but even the most moderately tech savvy person should be able to install a Wordpress engine, or most hosting companies will set it all up for you, a domain is about £10 depending on what you go for, and decent hosting about a fiver a month. Then just look up how to use a static homepage and it is perfect as a website Content management system with a powerful blog to boot.

Alternatively my web design company does Wordpress powered sites, on custom designs and with a full tutorial for £250.

Posted:2010-02-02 23:46:44 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Creating the Ultimate Wordpress Urls for SEO

In the last few weeks I have seen several tutorials claiming to show how to create an SEO url structure in self-hosted Wordpress powered blogs and websites, only to find that all they did was go into Wordpress settings and select one of the click and go options (fig 1). Luckily I already knew how to create my own truly custom url structure, and now I am going to share that with you.

Step 1: Getting to the Right Admin Area:

Go to your admin panel, which for anyone who doesn't know where this is, is reached by adding wp-admin onto the end of your url. Once there settings is on the bottom of the left hand navigation, and from the menu that extends out below settings on-click, you want to select permalinks.

Step 2: Creating an SEO Permalink Structure

Now as you can see in fig 1 above, you are presented with 4 original (click and go) options:

Default: The default option is for the parameter or query string url structure, i.e. mysite.com/?p=post-id
Day And Name: This gives you the date right down to the day in Year Month Day format (2010/01/25) then /post-name, post-name being the title of the post in question.
Month and Name: This gives you the same as Day and Name, but the date only goes to the month, like 2010/01, then the post-name
Numeric: This gives you /archives and then the post id.

Now, the middle 2 of those are actually okay for SEO. Then finally we have Custom, and an input box, I am going to tell you what to put in that Box to give you the perfect url structure for your site's SEO.

Before version 2 of Wordpress, you had to start with a number or risk losing the ability to access your admin panel. So to get around this my personal choice was to use the date, which is achieved like this: /%day%/%monthnum%/%year%/ that gives you the day in numeric form / the month as a number / the year as a number, which is UK format, for US format simply switch the first two around, and/or start with %year%. Of course if you don't want to use the date you can simply start with /%post_id%/. This is why I have the date in my urls.

As I said you don't need a number anymore, it is totally optional, but my personal choice is still to have the date in the url.

The next (or the first if you so choose) part of the ultimate SEO url for Wordpress is adding the category you have selected for the post. This is because your categories will all or nearly all be keywords or phrases that you will be targeting. This will be true naturally in most cases, but can be done deliberately and scientifically. To add category to your permalink structure, you add /%category%/ to the input box. Note: if you select multiple categories, only 1 can be including in the url, and this will be the lowest numbered category of those chosen.

Then finally, you include the title of the post. Again, this is because your post titles will usually contain keywords and phrases that are part of your niche. To add post title you add: /%postname%/ to the input box.

So, you'll finish up with this: /%day%/%monthnum%/%year%/%category%/%postname%/ Feel free to copy and paste if you like the url structure I use.

Posted:2010-01-25 20:59:01 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

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What's All the Fuss About Feeds - 3 Reasons We Should All Feed the Reader

I simply cannot believe the amount of news websites out there that do not have an RSS feed, or that have one but do not make a big deal about promoting it -- don't even bother having the rss icon showing in the address bar.

When I browse for news, if I find an article that is really useful to me the first thing I do is look at the address bar for the RSS icon so that I can subscribe to the feed.

This is because I use Google reader, and the more sites I have subscribed into their relevant categories the better it is for me. Now, when I want to write about a particular subject I simply type that subject into reader's search bar, select the relevant category (SEO, Social Media, InternationalProperty) from the drop-down menu and hit search -- very rarely does it let me down, but when it does I go searching and subscribing to even more content.

Since I started doing this I have come across dozens of sites with no RSS icon in the address bar. Sometimes I look and find a link to the RSS feed somewhere on the page, no harm done. But other times I don't find any links to any feeds, which leaves me to assume the site doesn't have a feed, and therefore it will likely miss out on potentially loads of repeat visits from me.

I want to try and rectify this situation. So, first, in case the address bar icon is missing because site owners or developers don't know how to put it there, I will explain that. Then I will list three reasons why every site that publishes new content on a regular basis should have some kind of feed of their content.

Here is the snippet of code you need to add to the head section of your web pages to link the RSS feed from the address bar:

If you don't have a feed to link to, because you create each article page manually in html, then you really need to invest in some sort of content management system, most of which create the feed automatically, and link to it in the address bar. Wordpress is my personal fave, it is easy to install and is packed with useful features and plugins. I will be writing a post in the next couple of days on how to incorporate a Wordpress CMS into an existing site on my web development company's blog, subscribe here so you don't miss it.

Now, here are five reasons why you should have a feed

1: Get Repeat Visitors More Easily and More Regularly

RSS and Atom Feeds are really taking off. At this time I would estimate that (outside of tech related sites which will be much higher) about 20% of people who like your content will subscribe to it in a reader or by email. They will then be updated when you post and clickthrough if it is of interest to them.

It is a good idea to burn your feed through Feedburner, because then when people click to visit your feed they are presented with all the different subscribe options, including subscribe by email (has to be enabled). Feedburner also gives you handy snipets of code to allow 1 click subscribe by email etc. But the best thing about Feedburner is that it tells you how many subscribers you have, what they subscribed in (by email or which reader) and how your content is republished.

2: Widen Your Audience

RSS stands for really simple syndication, because it allows people to republish your content on their own sites very easily, either in full or as a headline with a brief summary. There are dozens of programs out there that allow people to grab feeds and display static or animated headlines in their sidebars and footers. Thus, everyone who reads their content has a good chance of starting to read yours aswell.

On top of that there are dozens of new Blog search engines that crawl feeds instead of sites, therefore you are missing out on getting even more traffic and widening your audience even further. The main blog site Technorati recently started paying far more attention to your feed content than your site proper.

3: Ease of Sharing

Ever heard of Twitterfeed? It allows you to feed your feed straight into Twitter and Facebook and there are dozens of similar free apps out there. But more than that, it allows other people to stream your content straight into their Twitter and Facebook streams. I know dozens of Twitter accounts which have feeds from several sites unrelated to them running through their streams using Twitterfeed et al. This also fits in with widening your audience.

I'm sure there are many more that you can all leave in the comments.

Posted:2010-01-10 14:26:08 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

SEO 3.0: Produce Great Content and the Rest Will Follow

SEO has changed in the last couple of years: It isn't about who has the best grasp of keyword trickery, keyword density and keyword placement anymore. It isn't about who has the biggest budget for "link-building". Now it is about writing quality content and building a following of link builders by becoming a valued part of the online community.

The use of social media screams out at us as the best way to build a following, but it is also a good idea to comment on related blogs and forums, and try to help owners of sites that you want to become your friend. It is also a good idea to have an RSS feed burned through Google-owned feedburner.

Then, when you write a great piece of content (or hire someone like me to write it for you), your followers see it, love it and link to it. Over time Google sees that your site is a quality site, with content that people like and want to link to and this will increase your ranking in Google's search results. Google can also see that your site is producing quality informative content on your niche because your feed subscribers are growing.

I can say all this, because though everyone can become a valued member of the social media community, not everyone can write quality content; only a professional writer can do that. I'm not saying that everyone who can write quality content is a professional writer (though most are with the rise of the internet and freelancing); there are some people out there who have neglected their talent.

Of course another factor is time. Many business owners just do not have the time to write the kind of quality content that is necessary, because their business dictates that be in other fields, so again I am safe. Our prices starting from £15 per piece help as well of course.

There are many websites out there still using the old methods of SEO and still obtaining top positions. In fact there is something safe about it, whereas the new methods are still being figured out. But most people can see the value for money you get from having the online community do your link-building for you, and having the production of quality content as the only thing your company must do to get on top and stay there.

Again, most companies are at least trying to get some content going, and start using social media. The spending on social media marketing, things like training and hiring people to grow a business's profile online is set to increase massively in the coming years. Don't get left behind.

Posted:2009-12-02 10:11:44 | - By Alan de Sargent | 8 Comments

Modern media: Move with the Times or Wither and Die

Modern media companies must embrace the social world of the internet to increase their readerships, revenues and chances of survival, writes Liam Bailey.

I have had an epiphany, in today's world media companies, including newspapers and television channels, need to either move with the times and embrace the social world of the internet or watch their revenues wither and die.

At the time of having this ephipany I was watching Living TV; an advert for their new online only television channel. The new channel is absolutely packed with the stuff a large proportion of 16 - 40 year old women are interested in. Celebrity news and gossip with cosmetic and fashion tips, etc etc. It is to be broadcast online at www.livingtv.co.uk, but can be viewed via YouTube or a Facebook app.

You can gauge from this that this is Living's target audience, and/or a large portion of their viewership. What a way to target them. It is no coincidence but incredibly smart marketing, that this target audience is also known to be incredibly active in the world of social media and sharing online content. One must only wonder when the channel will be shown on Bebo (another social networking favourite of the younger part of that audience).

That channel is one of the best ideas I have come across, but only when it is combined with the excellent, vibrant tv adverts that accompany the launch. Perhaps if they continue to embrace the social world of the internet as they are now they will be able to do away with TV advertising of Liv -- or maybe they already have; I haven't seen it advertised anywhere else but on Living. It will be interesting to see if the campaigning for Liv is continued.

But, I digress. The example above is of a media channel using social networking around quality content in a really excellent and inspuiring way, but for the most part online media companies are not using Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites to anywhere near their full potential.

Too many of the large media outlets are still just using Twitter as a content aggregator; feeding their content in through API. This maybe working in some way for the likes of the Telegraph and the Guardian, but most people don't want masses of articles coming through at once.

Those people (the ones that don't want masses of content in their stream at once) are still getting to read the articles that they want, because they come in through friends who have read and shared the articles, and are engaging in conversations about them. It would be far more valuable to the outlets if they were the ones at the centre of that conversation, the traffic would be at least doubled and far more valuable.

Well I've had my say. Why not have yours by leaving a comment below.

Posted:2009-11-13 22:35:51 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Five SEO Mistakes to Avoid on your Website

Below I have listed five things that are often done while developing or working on a website that prove to be a major set-back to SEO efforts. You would think that these would be mostly be done by website owners who don't know better, but in my experience these are usually done by so called professionals taking advantage of people who don't know better.

1: Adding the File Extension When Linking Back

It is a common misconception that if you want to link to the homepage using relative linking, that you must use the file name i.e ../index.php. I have seen this done dozens of times by so called professional web developers and SEOs who should know better. It causes the search engines to index both: http://www.mysite.com and http;//www.mysite.com/index.php.

If I want to link to the homepage of this site from /seo-services/seo-scotland.php all I need to use is <a href="../">homepage</a>. I have also seen it done (though less often) to link to directories, people using ../booking/index.htm when ../booking/ would have done. Note: ../ simply moves out of the directory and one level up the document tree.

2: Not Using Keywords/Phrases in the Page Title

Arguably -- no argument about it as far as I'm concerned -- the page title is the single most important element for SEO on the entire page. It makes me really angry when I see so called experts not using any keywords or phrases in the page title.

3: Not using Meta Descriptions or poorly written ones

I used to advocate the use of the meta keywords tag as well but now Google has officially admitted that it doesn't use the keyword tag. None the less, the meta description is still one of the first things that the search engines look at. What's more, despite the fact that the search engines now display the most relevant text from anywhere on the page as the summary in the results, if you do things properly you can make sure your meta description is the summary in the search results of the key phrases and words you are targeting. This gives you a chance to get in with a call to action.

Needless to say I hate it when I see websites built by so called professionals that have no meta descriptions, poorly written descriptions, or the same description for every page. I worked on one site where the developer had put a single meta description in a php file and used a includes to insert it into every page of the site. This was done so that the website owners could easily change the meta.

4: Not using heading tags

Using heading tags h1 through h6 to identify the headings on the page, and to further let the search engines know what the content on the page is about -- on top of the page title and meta description -- is of massive benefit to your position in the search engine results.

While it is better to use all h tags h1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, using as many as you can is better than using none at all, and if all else fails if you can at least use h1 and h2, these will make a difference to your SEO results on their own. I have seen far too many sites using no h tags at all, again websites that were developed by so called professionals.

Note: I mean on web pages, which are written with the aim of getting good positions in the search engines for a particular key phrase, not articles. On those pages you should break it into sub-headings using keyphrase variants, all of which will be in a different h tag.

5: Using WYSIWIG (What you See is what You Get) editors and/or Tables

WYSIWIG allows you to design and develop a webpage using an MS-Paint style interface, drawing elements and dragging them around the page. The editor then turns this into html for uploading to the site. However, these editors create bulky and untidy code, with loads of inline styles, which can lead to one of the main keywords your site is indexed for being span style="font-size:2" and similar things.

Tables can have the same result and both increase the load time of a web page considerably which will slowdown the speed at which new pages on your site are indexed.

The professionals are guilty of using tables. Whereas WYSIWIGs are often used by novices; website owners who can't afford or don't want to shell out for a professional web design and development. While WYSIWIG's do allow people who don't know (X)html and css to put a website online, they do future SEO efforts no favours at all.

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Posted:2009-10-02 09:51:44 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

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Facebook Mentions Won't Kill Twitter

I read a post last week, after Facebook announced the new mentions feature that intimated the new feature from Facebook would be severely detrimental to Twitter's growing user-base. In fact the post went so far as to say that if Facebook could develop a way to let people import their Twitter followers it would signal the end of Tweeting. I don't mean the 5 ways post that is buzzing on Twitter, I can't find the one I do mean, if anyone else read it please Tweet me so I can add the link (@WriteAProperty).

I do not believe this; Facebook will never beat Twitter, you know why? In a word: Simplicity. In another: uniqueness.

Twitter's unique selling point -- an essential part of business marketing -- the thing that sets it apart from its competitors is its simplicity. It's this simple: you answer the question what are you doing in 140 characters.

If people like your answers they follow you, which means that your answers -- your tweets -- are fed onto their homepage -- their twitter-stream --, and you follow those who you like which may or may not be those that follow you.

Following people, when reciprocated allows you to message each other privately, but this is also restricted to 140 characters. Public messages, aka mentions are simply your username preceded by the @ symbol and are sent through the Twitter-stream for all to see.

You have a short bio and a picture, and that is it. No apps, no detailed biography or profile to fill in, no photo albums, no fan-pages, no long messages, no windbag shares, just simple contrite answers back and forth.

Speaking of fan pages, Facebook knows it will never beat Twitter, that's why it tries so hard to be like it.

Fan pages were Facebook's first attempt at being like Twitter. You can have as many Twitter accounts as you want, but on Facebook it is against the rules to have more than one. Fan pages allow FB users to have multiple personas, 1 for every of their companies, ventures or passions, and people can become fans (follow) the personas.

Then came Facebook mentions. One of the best things about Twitter has always been the ease at which you can fire public messages back and forth across the Twitter stream, simply by putting the AT (@) symbol before the username. You also do this when you like a post and (retweet) re post it from your account. These mentions can easily be checked on Twitter because of the uncluttered and simple interface.

The Facebook mentions are going to be cool too, with the link-ups of who's meeting who and where showing on news feeds, and the ability to mention groups and events. But it still loses out to Twitter's simplicity as far as I'm concerned.

Another benefit Twitter has over Facebook is its search capabilities. Because of the massive user-base Twitter now has you can find practically anything within seconds. For instance I want to write about overseas property, if I type overseas property into the search everything Twitter users around the world have written about overseas property will come through my Twitter stream, giving me plenty of inspiration.

Then there is the way Twitter has embraced app developers, leading to a range of super convenient applications for Twitter users, including those to monitor your brand reputation.

I know Facebook has apps, but it is the external sites running off the Twitter API that make it interesting, like Twitter League, Tweetmeme, Twittercounter and Hootsuite. Argh, my mind went blank, please comment below or Tweet me with some apps that you like so I can add them here.

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Posted:2009-09-30 10:25:12 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

SEO Copywriting: Synonyms Recognised by Google, others may follow

Last year I started wondering about the use of synonyms in SEO, it seemed that Google had started treating, for example, overseas property and property abroad as one and the same.

This has been built upon and now I can say with 100% certainty that, yes indeed Google is treating those and all other synonyms as one and the same.

If you look at the SERPs positions of Write About Property, we have the best position for SEO copywriter, despite the fact that our SEO copywriting and link-building efforts have focussed on SEO copywriting services -- proof positive that Google now has a complete and comprehensive understanding of synonyms. I know that isn't strictly a synonym, but I am sure it is the same algorithm that is causing the anomaly.

What the example above has taught me, is to use all synonyms in a page of SEO content, to break up the keyword density and make your content more natural. And also evenly spread your anchor texts between all synonyms for the best SEO results.

Posted:2009-09-12 18:55:29 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

SEO Copywriting Services Central to Good SEO Campaign

SEO copywriting is the single most important part of a good SEO campaign. Firstly a good SEO copywriter is needed to write the metas and the optimised content for the pages of the website itself, and then also to write the articles and press releases for the site and to be posted to other site's to build back-links.

You might think that you don't need an SEO copywriter to write the articles and press releases, that is true, but it certainly helps.

If the articles are written within SEO they are more likely to be seen and thus further linked to and possibly republished with a link to your site.

Too many people think that SEO, and SEO copywriting is just stuffing keywords into a piece of text, that makes sense to no one but robots.

That is not true, a good SEO copywriter (like me) will write a page of natural text, that users enjoy reading and find informative, but that will also gain good positions in the search results for the targeted keywords, ready for the link-building to push us onto the first page.

Posted:2009-07-04 12:17:51 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Sell Your House, Estate Agents £4000, Private £29 you do the Math

In the current market many people are keeping their houses off the market because of the massive price reduction they would need to accept to sell it. At the same time, estate agents have become less flexible about the fees they charge, and are now charging the ceiling 2.5% fee on almost all instructions.

If you would like to sell your house, but know that the average £4000 estate agents fee is far too much against the reduced price your house will fetch anyway, then private property sales is definitely the way for you to go.

You can sell your house privately with a company like Zungalow.com, a rising star in the world of private property sales for as little as £29 per year. This immediately gives you £4000 to play with when pricing your property.

If you want to sell your house privately the most common method is to do so online with a company like Zungalow, but there is a lot of work involved: you must make your own for sale sign, and handle all the viewings and negotiations over the sale price yourself, but offset against the massive saving this is well worth the work.

Those people who successfully sell their own house privately say that the negotiations process goes a lot more smoothly when both parties are communicating directly without having to go through middle-men who often have their own agenda.

What's more selling your own house online puts you in the driving seat, and who wants to sell your house for the best price more than you do?

I mean it needn't stop at a showcase of your house for sale on Zungalow, £79 will have a photo of your house embossed on the side of your transit van. Not everyone has a transit van or the inclination to advertise their property on the side of it, but be creative and be energetic, when you decide to sell your house, decide to give it your all and beat the market.

Posted:2009-06-16 12:18:11 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Overseas Property: Where Would I Invest - The Wrap-Up

The overseas property where would I invest series covered the reasons that I would make property investments in 6 countries and I could have gone on. In reality -- as I have said in other posts -- property in any and all of the emerging markets is worthy of examination by overseas property investors.

This is because emerging market property is comparatively cheap for the type of asset it is, and the emerging nature of the economy means property price growth is almost guaranteed over the mid-long term.

I say emerging markets because they are my personal favourites, because of the low prices of the property, and because they have the potential for short-term gains, but also promise the biggest growth over the long term.

Yes, short-term growth is possible in some established markets; prime property prices in London were seeing exceptional annual growth during the last boom, and there were reports of people selling for 15% more than they bought for a few months down the line.

I still favour emerging markets because the growth is based on the rising internal wealth of the countries' residents, and the rising value of their currency. This is a stronger footing than the UK price rises, which were based on agents exploiting demand and over-inflating prices for maximum profit -- leaving them open to correction.

Emerging markets and the property therein should be chosen based on economic growth past and forecast.

Last year I was recommending the emerging eastern European economy of Albania, Latin American economies of Brazil, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, and the Asian economies of India, the Philippines, Cambodia, and Thailand. For me, all of those have and had the potential to show strong and sustained economic growth for the next 5-10 years. With the exception of Brazil, Cambodia and Thailand, those countries are all to see growth this year, and only Thailand is to contract by more than 1%.

Not that this year is important in the grand scale of things, all the countries above, like most if not all the countries labelled as emerging market have the potential to see impressive if not exceptional economic growth over the next 5-10-20 years.

Therefore if you choose an area with rising demand for housing from the local population, either for occupation or buy-to-let investment down-the-line, any emerging market is a great place to make a mid-long term property investment -- just do your research on an individual region and individual property basis.

Posted:2009-06-09 09:04:53 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

The Magic Formula for Writing SEO Web Content to be on Page 1

What a traffic grabbing headline. So many website owners think that there is some magic formula for writing web content that get's a web page onto the first page of search engine results -- heck some SEO's even think that they have found it and write articles about it: Use your main keyword on the first line of every paragraph, and your secondary keyword on the middle line and so on and so forth.

The truth is: there is no magic formula when it comes to writing SEO web content that will get you onto the first page of search results, if you give it some proper thought it is impossible; there is only 10 spaces on the front page and 10million sites trying to get them. So if every one of those 10million sites used the magic formula there would still only be 10 of them on the first page.

Here's how I write a page of web content:

I set out to write a page of information on the subject that encapsulates the keywords I am targeting.

I forget about the search engines to a certain extent and just write naturally.

I break the content up into bite-size chunks, with a heading detailing what the coming paragraphs are about. The headings go inside header tags (<h1></h1>), which are important for SEO.

I have written web content for thousands of web pages, a lot of new pages and a lot of re-writes for pages that have been online for quite some time. Their owners (my clients) having become miffed because no matter how many back-links and internal links they put to the pages they haven't got onto the first page. I write a page of content to the guidelines above, and bob's your uncle first page here we come.

But the same goes for new pages. If you write the web content to the guidelines above, and then set about building internal links to the page, and maybe write a few guest articles on the subject for strong sites for external links and your positions in the search engines will steadily increase.

When a website first goes live Google gives it what is called the honeymoon period, where the site gets better results than it deserves. After a short while if it hasn't gotten a great deal of links or traffic it is relegated to the position it deserves. So the secret is to launch with web content written as I have laid out above, and then build links as quickly as you can, so that when you get relegated you stay in the top 30.

As I wrote on my SEO blog yesterday, I tried an experiment when I launched Write About Property: I though the title, H1-through 5 tags and plenty of links would get me good positions in the search engines. It turns out that a substantial amount of text on a page is good for your search positions, at least until your site is an authority site.

Posted:2009-05-31 15:09:52 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Overseas Property Where Would I Invest Part 6: Brazilian Property

Brazil is among the top 5 largest food exporters in the world, with the world's second largest cattle stocks, and is also the second largest exporter of meat. Add that to its massive services sector, hospitality sector, construction sector, tourism and health tourism sectors and it is easy to see why Brazil is expected to grow into the world's fifth largest economy in the next 5 years.

Brazil is group with India, China and Russia as part of what they call the BRIC countries and what is widely heard as meaning the world's four largest and fastest growing emerging markets.

Property in Brazil can still be bought relatively cheaply making it an excellent investment opportunity. As Brazil grows into one of the world's largest economies, property will grow in value until prices are similar to what they are in the world's largest economies.

For example I could buy a 1 bedroom apartment in Rio de Janeiro for about £80,000 today. The same flat in London would cost me about £150,000. That is almost 100% growth in the next 5 years, annual growth of just under 20%.

Add to that the 6-8% rental yields Rio de Janeiro and Brazil properties make and it all adds up to a very lucrative and solid investment -- one that I would certainly make.

Posted:2009-05-26 20:59:52 | - By Michael Sutton | 0 Comments

UK House Prices: The Difference Between Asking Prices and Sale Prices

I just read an article on Property Wire about the asking price rise recorded by Rightmove in May. The author writes:

"The monthly data from property website Rightmove indicates that record low interest rates are enticing more into buying but job security and continued tight lending conditions are hampering any recovery."

How does rising asking prices show that more people are buying? And this is in an article headlining that residential property prices rise in England and Wales, asking prices and sale prices are two very different things, especially in a market downturn.

I cannot wait until the Land Registry releases the figures from its house price index in April, so we can find out what prices were really doing last month.

Posted:2009-05-23 13:41:13 | - By Michal Sutton | 0 Comments

SEO Key-Phrases - Try Key-Questions to get Started

SEO efforts almost always concentrate on key-phrases, for example: overseas property investment. This is as it should be, but for new sites that need time to build links before they can hope to be on the front page, it is a good idea to concentrate on key questions.

The internet has grown massively in the last few years, and -- as the number of middle aged online marketing gurus on Twitter shows -- there are currently more older people using it, who aren't necessarily all that web savvy.

When they search, they tend to ask questions like: when is the Chinese New Year? Even I do it. Sometimes, no matter how many key-phrases I type about the subject I am researching, the sites that come up are wrong; they do not contain the information I need. So, I then type the question on my mind straight into the search box. You would be surprised how many times it will bring up the information I need.

So, for new sites out there thinking: How can I compete with these monster machines on the first page, who have thousands to spend on SEO and more links than money. Try optimising for key-questions, it's gotta be worth a shot.

To use the example I used above: overseas property investment, throw in: is overseas property a good investment.

It might not get you the same amount of traffic as being on top for the key-phrases, but certainly more than you will get if you simply languish on page 20 of the key-phrases search.

Posted:2009-05-20 11:04:02 | - By Michael Sutton | 0 Comments

SEO: Be Generous With Your Back-Links

Back-links make the web go round, but too many webmasters are stingy with their links.

Some websites use the sale of link adverts as a form of revenue generation, and thus do not link for free. Others only want to link to authority sites because it is better for SEO. But if no body ever linked to a page that wasn't authoritative, no page would ever be authoritative and the world of SEO and virtually the entire web would grind to a halt.

I am the equivalent to a sixties child when it comes to links. If I mention a site where I saw a statistic I link to it, authority or not, and the same goes if I write my opinion on something from another site, I link to it, authority or not.

My reasoning for this is: the webpage, or article was authoritative enough to be of use to me, so it is only fair I should link to it; returning the favour if you like.

I can't help thinking that if all small but growing websites like mine gave links more freely more of us could break-through into the big few authority sites on the net.

I just finished my SEO Ebook, it is ready to be sent, fill in your email address below to get your copy free.

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Posted:2009-05-07 23:43:19 | - By Liam Bailey | 2 Comments

SEO and Website Design Without Metas: Not on My Account

I had always thought that a web page having at least 2 META tags in the HEAD section: namely description and keywords, was such a fundamental of SEO, so basic, so longstanding and so necessary that surely everyone involved with SEO or website building would know about them. In my opinion they should not only know about them, they should know how essential they are to good SEO results, and also know how to use them properly.

I am now realising that this is not the case, and that even some so called professionals are not making proper use of meta data.

For any writers, bloggers or people new to website use who don't know what meta data is, I am not getting at you. This is purely aimed at those charging money when they obviously don't know what they are doing

To my knowledge there isn't one website in a good position in Google without a meta description and meta keyword tags -- I challenge anyone to find one.

I will be giving a full explanation of what meta tags are, what they do and how to use them in my new Ebook due out next week. Request your free copy of SEO Basics From Head to Toe: The Building Blocks of SEO.

A few months ago, a friend told me all about their new website, created and built by a professional web designer. But it turned out that, 'professional' in this case was only in the fact that they were charging good money; making a living from web design services.

For a start the layout was done with tables and I'm pretty sure it came from a free template because of the class names, but that is another issue; one that I could easily have let go.

What I couldn't let go, was the fact that there were no meta keywords and no meta descriptions on any of the pages. What was worse was when I explained to my friend how necessary they were, the designer then set up a PHP include -- the full metas; tags and data stored in one file that is referenced by all the pages -- so that my friend could easily edit the metas.

The designer failed to see the problem in the fact that this would make all pages have identical meta descriptions and identical keywords -- other than the fact that this would flag errors in Google Webmaster Tools, it was a complete waste of time having them, unless every page covered the same subject.

At that point I gave up. This didn't change my mind about everyone knowing about meta tags for SEO. And then today, I was looking at another site that I know was designed and built by a professional website design and creation company.

Not only did it not have description and keyword metas, but the title tag did not contain any of the site's targeted keywords -- I couldn't believe it. At that point I was compelled to write this article.

Anyone who wants to know more about what meta tags are, and how they are a vital part of SEO should enter their email address below to receive a free copy of my new SEO basics ebook next week.

Register to receive SEO Basics From Head to Toe: The Building Blocks of SEO (pdf) free by email:

Posted:2009-04-27 21:05:46 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

The Best SEO is UEO - User Experience Optimisation

I have read as many SEO articles as the next guy, but I don't bother with them anymore. In my opinion they are pointless. Apart from the basics, like good Meta descriptions, using H tags wisely and having your keywords in your text content in order of importance, (all of which I will be covering in an SEO basics E-book) it is all pie-in-the sky.

I remember reading one tutorial that explained about keyword skull-duggery, something like using your main keyword(s) in the first sentence of every paragraph except the last paragraph where it went on the last sentence. Your second most important keyword had to go in the second sentence of your every second paragraph, and the instructions continued for the third most important keyword and so on.

I didn't do it, but I know many people who did. I didn't do it, because that webmaster had written the article when the method worked for him, but by the time me or you would have gotten round to implementing it the search engines would have noticed it and/or the algorithms would have changed. And secondly, when you concentrate that much on keyword placement, you have very little concentration or even room to make the content read and flow well for the user.

People either don't realise or constantly forget: the search engines DO NOT want the content with the cleverest use of keyword placement at the top, they want the most relevant and/or informative source on what the user is looking for. So all attempts at gaming yourself into the top-spot will eventually fail in the end.

When I write, I am conscious of what my targeted keywords are at all times, but not where I am going to put them or where I am putting them. So, though I may say UK property, when I have already said UK and simply property would suffice, I do not overdo it by any means. I don't go daft seeking out external back-links either, i.e. I do not distribute my articles.

I simply give the search engines what they want: quality original and informative content. I spend my time building traffic rather than back-links, because in my experience high-traffic volume + quality content = natural back-links.

Sure, I could submit my articles to 20 sites that allow the use of links, which would give my site at least 20 external links. However these links would be immediately recognised as unnatural by the search engines. The alternative: I post links to the article within my social media cliques, keeping the original content benefit for my site. Then if even one webmaster links to the article naturally it will count for as much as the 20 unnatural links put together, and the rest of that time is saved for writing more quality content and continue the cycle.

But it is not all about the links: the fact that my site is producing a lot of quality original content that cannot be read anywhere else, and that it is getting naturally linked to on a regular basis is also of massive benefit to my ranking in the search engines.

Write About Property only went live at the beginning of January, and on the next Google update -- at the end of March -- it received Page Rank (&trade) of 3 on he homepage. This is the quickest I have ever gotten a rank on a website, let alone a rank of 3. This is the proof in the pudding that my double whammy of completely original quality content with keyword anchored internal links, plus natural back-links, is giving the search engines what they want. And that they are giving me what I want in return.

Posted:2009-04-26 16:10:56 | - By Liam Bailey | 1 Comments

Search Engine Optimisation: Content is King

I have previously written posts on what was most important, external links or original content, in those posts it was kind of a toss-up. Not anymore!

I am now sure that regular original content is more important to your Page Rank™ and position in the Search Engine Results Pages, than external links are.

For a start, this site Write About Property has recently been given a PR3 for the homepage. The site was only launched at the end of January and has very few external back-links. In fact it has far fewer backlinks than my previous site Poetry-Occasions, which struggled to get to PR2. The difference between Poetry-Occasions and this site is the volume of new original content added; Write About Property has a lot more.

There is also a correlation between what other pages got PR3 and the volume of new original content. My UK property articles, overseas property articles, and main property articles sections all got PR3, most of the new content goes on those pages. My blog, which was started later and gets fewer articles, and my press releases section, which gets less content both failed to get a rank.

Though Write About Property has comparatively very few external back-links, the links it does have are all natural. This is also likely part of the reason why my rank has increased so quickly.

What I have also found, is that internal links, in high enough volume are also very good for SEO. Several of my pages which have absolutely no external links, but keyword anchored internal links in abundance, also got a PR boost and are doing well in the SERPS.

This two prong strategy is easy to implement; because the more new content you post to your site, the more external links you can build. More new content also means your site getting crawled more frequently, which can't be bad.

I am not saying that external links don't count for anything. In fact they are extremely important in SEO, but natural external links must count for at least thrice what unnatural links do.

Therefore, instead of spending our time trying to build back-links, we should spend our time (or money) making sure our site has loads of quality original content added to it every day. By doing this we are building internal back-links, and if the quality of the content is high, also building external back-links. And we are all the time increasing traffic, increasing Page Rank™ and increasing our positions in the SERPs.

I mentioned spending money above, if you do not have the time to write high quality articles, or if you can afford to pay a professional writer you should do so. If you like the articles on Write About Property you can get a quote from us for your content needs, by visiting the order web content page.

Posted:2009-04-20 21:25:08 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Twitter has the Power to Change the World

Twitter has the power to change how the world works in relation to the transmission of news and events that affect our lives.

Take the story over Amazon's removal of books concerning gays and lesbians. This was put onto Twitter and a hacker claimed responsibility. It was a lie, the hacker was not responsible, but in a matter of minutes and hours, as many people believed it to be true, as if it had been written in a major newspaper.

Okay the Amazon story didn't affect all of our lives, it didn't affect my life. But it was a big deal to millions of people, and there is a correlation between the volume of people affected by or who cared about the story, and the people who spread stories on Twitter.

Though each post in Twitter is only 140 characters long (160 if you cheat by turning JS off), Twitter is still the most powerful form of social media I have ever seen. I think it is because the popular stories are passed around so quickly.

On other social media sites where content is voted for, it can take hours or even days for a link to go popular. Then on the front page it will be visited more and the story will grow and be seen by more people. But this can happen on Twitter in a matter of minutes to an hour tops.

I think it is because of Twitter allowing people to develops its array of apps, as Twitter has grown so rapidly, creating a cool app or spin off site is a source of acclaim, and the number of apps and cool sites has grown just as quickly.

Desktop apps like Tweetdeck (my preference), which allow you to keep Twitter constantly running, and to segregate the people you follow into groups, so you can be alerted when your favourite groups Tweet.

This means that stories are seen the minute they are posted, and if they are liked they are immediately spread from one person to another, as they spread they are picked up by aggregators of popular content and spread further.

This is why popular stories spread and become so popular on Twitter, and why it is the most powerful form of social media. I say Twitter can change the world, because it has so much power already, when it only has a small amount of the users that giant Facebook has.

At the speed it is growing that won't be true for long, so Twitter can only become more powerful, possibly powerful enough to change the way news travels around the world in a profound and lasting way.

Posted:2009-04-16 19:39:36 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

UK Govt Considers Freezing NMW - Unjustifiable

Last night I wrote an article asking where these huge sums of money come from, like the additional $500million pledged to fund IMF assistance of emerging market economies affected by the credit crunch. Then today I read about the speculation that the government intends to freeze the minimum wage, to help businesses deal with the downturn.

Where is the justice in that? Billions of Pounds are thrown around bailing out banks that were to blame for their own predicament, only to suggest offsetting that cost by punishing low income earners, who are -- 9 times out of 10 -- suffering just as badly or worse from the banks mistakes. I tell you one thing, Labour will seal the deal on their own fate if they go ahead with it; it becomes even more likely that they won't win the next General Election, recovery or no recovery.

Energy and food costs continue to rise, so the Minimum wage must keep rising to keep ordinary families afloat. It is up to businesses to find ways to pay the raised Minimum Wage: by directors and board members taking pay cuts.

The Trade Unions, who once held a lot of clout with the Labour government, have advised the government against the move. It will be interesting to see whether or not the working man's Prime Minister Gordon Brown will listen.

Posted:2009-04-14 08:03:36 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

IMF Urged to Honour G20 Pledges: Where does the Money come From?

The IMF is coming under pressure to act more quickly in securing the additional $500 billion pledge at the recent G20 summit to help emerging market economies that have been battered by the global downturn.

The IMF has responded by saying that government legislatures, including the US Congress have not been forthcoming with authorisation for the money to be withdrawn.

It seems to me that it is possible that G20 leaders returning home have experienced what some people have experienced waking up the morning after a boozy night thinking, what have I done? Of course the G20 leaders were influenced by the rush of international cooperation as oppose to the intoxication of alcohol, but it seems it may have had similar effects on their senses and financial inhibitions.

Another thing occurs to me, despite the fact that we are in a global downturn, and this, after several years of the US and UK fighting costly wars, the two governments are still able to throw huge sums of money about, for bank bailouts, and stimulus plans. Where does all the money come from?

The digital age has led to money becoming such a fictional entity that, for governments and banks at least, exists only on computer monitors. Who keeps a track of all this imaginary money? Isn't it possible that zeros can be added and/or taken away at the push of a button and no one would know?

Posted:2009-04-13 21:38:04 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Twitter Followers: Motivation not Quantity

It is a common trend on Twitter, to think that the more followers a person has the better a Tweeter they are, and we all strive to growth the numbers of followers that we have so that we too may be viewed as good Tweeters.

Not me. I would rather have 200 followers who were actually interested in what I had to say, and at least trying to keep track of my updates that 1million followers who had followed me for the sake of it, or in the hope that I would follow them back -- with no intention of even trying to keep track of my tweets.

The main reason for this is that: the 200 conscientious followers, will tend to have a large amount of conscientious followers of their own, or at least a large percentage of their followers will be paying attention. With this kind of following, if a post from your own blog or site gets even a couple of RTs (ReTweets) it can provide a substantial boost to your traffic.

So, the next time you follow someone to get a follow back, look at their Twitter stream for replies, conversations and RTs.

Posted:2009-04-13 07:53:31 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Twitter for Website Designers: Test Cross-Browser Compatibility

As Safari and Chrome continue to rise in popularity and gain larger shares of the browser market, it becomes more popular for website designers to test their designs and layouts on these two browsers as well as the big two: Firefox and Internet Explorer.

But IE is not just one browser: some people are still on IE5, even more stick to IE6, IE7 is growing and now IE8 is out. To have all these browsers, or software to emulate them, begins to swallow up more and more hard-disk space every month.

I design my own websites, and I know the quandary. However, I have not downloaded Chrome, because I assumed, like Netscape (and Safari I think) it operated on the same engine as Firefox, and so if my site looked OK in Firefox it would look Okay in Chrome.

Wrong!! I just realised that one of my elements was slightly out of place in the Google cache of my site, while I have noticed this before it suddenly occurred to me that the Google cache may have been taken with its Chrome browser, or certainly with its rendering engine in play.

But rather than download Chrome, I thought I would ask on Twitter if any of my friends (followers to me are friends that I haven't met) were using the Chrome browser, and could check if my site looked OK.

Several people responded within minutes of my Tweet. Most to inform me that the element that is out of place on the Google cache is out of place in the Chrome browser. I will now need to fix that, and one of the people who responded to me has agreed to assist me in this effort. So I do not need to download the Chrome browser.

I love Twitter, and I love it even more each time I come up with a new use for it that is beneficial to me. You know I always share so it may benefit everyone.

Posted:2009-04-09 12:36:54 | - By Liam Bailey | 1 Comments

Twitter and Business: How to Get the Most from Social Media

I just read an article in the DC Women's Business Examiner, promoting a social media seminar where small businesses could learn how to maximise the potential of social media.

The hook for attending the seminar was the need to decide what your business would get out of Twitter.

Are you twittering for customers, brand recognition, or merely just twittering your precious hours away

I say to that, if you are Twittering for any of those things then you are unlikely to get very much out of it.

In fact if you can't use the social media platform, because you enjoy debating, and can make time to read some of the articles posted by other people that catch your attention, then you should just give it a miss altogether. People will spot you if you use it solely to promote your agenda, and bring nothing to the community.

There are too many business users on Twitter as it is, in my opinion. I don't mean people who like myself; are on Twitter to build their online presence and promote their company, but doing so by diving into everything that social media is, and really injecting something into the community. The people for whom promotion of their business is an indirect benefit of their beavering away happily in the world of social media

I mean the business users who ignore you when you message them, who continually send out their message with Tweet after Tweet, and do not even look at any responses. They follow hundreds of people to get followed back and think the volume of their followers is a measure of their success.

It isn't. These people will end up being ignored back, and their business will benefit marginally if at all from its presence in social media.

For me, doing it the right way has brought a lot of additional traffic to my site, feed subscribers, loyal followers, a couple of customers and even a few good friends. What would you rather get from it?

Posted:2009-04-08 12:43:13 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Regular Quality Articles Single Most Important Aspect of SEO

A regular supply of high quality articles is essential for any site that wants to be found in the search engines. In fact, provided you have a quality website, with no dodgy practices being employed, regular quality articles is all you need to get top positions in search engines if you have time to wait and let it happen naturally.

The key words in that sentence are regular and quality.

For a start Google will recognise the fact that your site is producing regular original content. And when people start linking to your articles, or republishing them with links to source, you will be credited with natural back-links which count at least double what an unnatural link does.

External Links are Good not Bad

When it comes to showing the search engines that your content is high quality, external links to informative sites are almost as important as links coming in. These can be links to an article backing up what your article says, or a Wikipedia article that explains about something you mention without going into details, even a link to the source article of what your article is based on.

The fact is, webmasters should not be afraid to put external links in their articles, as long as the links go to sites relevant to and informative about the article subject matter.

Getting Noticed and Getting Links

As I said above, regular quality articles will get you good positions in the search engines, but it will take time. In order for you to get back-links, from people citing and republishing your articles, you need to get noticed.

Good ways of getting people to recognise your quality content, in other words to get traffic to your site, are to join social media sites like Twitter and Mixx, and also Technorati and similar sites are excellent.

Social Media

You have to spend a lot of time on the social media sites like Twitter and Mixx, commenting on other people's submissions, and interacting with other users, and making friends, or the content you post will simply be ignored. Submitting links to articles on sites other than your own is also a good idea.

Technorati

When it comes to Technorati, posting regularly alone will put you sufficiently up the stream to get noticed. I have found that interacting, i.e. commenting on other posts has no added benefit on Technorati.

It is also worth mentioning that Technorati can have trouble keeping up to date with content on sites hosted independently (i.e. not using Wordpress or Joomla engines). It is worth keeping an eye on when your site was last pinged and making sure your most regular posts are being indexed. As you will see my most regular content currently isn't getting indexed. I have logged a support ticket with Technorati over this.

Getting Involved in the Subject

Another good way of getting your articles noticed, is to comment on articles on sites that have a high traffic volume, and preferably a loyal following, and linking to your articles that are relevant to theirs.

I don't just mean jumping straight in with: You should check out this article on the subject [Link]. These comments are viewed as spam and generally ignored.

But I have found that if you leave an insightful comment and really give a detailed comment on your opinion regards the article and the subject you can become involved in a debate that leads to you gaining respect among visitors to the site.

Once you have this respect you can link to an article you have written that better explains your position.

If this is too time consuming (give up now), or if your chosen site has a lot of traffic but no visibly loyal following, you can leave a long comment and simply link at the bottom. While this method works, it is less effective than the former.

A good example of a site with a high volume of traffic and a loyal following is the Guardian's debate site Comment is Free, I have found that both methods can bring traffic from Comment is Free, but the former brings in a lot more.

Posted:2009-04-06 19:09:26 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

The Greatest Business Use of Twitter: Brainstorming Hashtags

It occurred to me the other day when I became involved in a debate on the Social media masters degree, that we were missing out on potentially one of the greatest ways to use Twitter for business.

The debate I was involved in was being marked by everyone putting #masocialmedia in their tweets that were part of the debate. This is how trending topics are marked. It allows people to search for the hashtagged line in order to keep track of a popular topic or in this case debate. This is especially useful on Twitter apps like Tweetdeck, which allow you to open a window based on a search, and have it update to your chosen schedule, i.e. every 5 minutes. This is an excellent way to keep track of a trending topic or debate.

But it could also allow businesses to brainstorm with its customers and the wider public. Imagine it: a business like O2 that gets a lot of traffic to its website(s), runs a prominent article about a new product it plans to launch soon, and invites people to suggest a name for the product, and/or a catchy slogan, suggesting that they submit their ideas in Twitter using the #O2AprilBuzz hashtag.

The company would then have people monitoring the ideas and taking anything with potential, or putting everything into a draw, or using whatever is submitted by the most people -- whatever they choose. This would also generate publicity for the company from sites like WhatTheTrend etc. The first company to do it will also be able to put out a press release on their new use of social media, which will likely generate more coverage in the press. Perfect all round!

If you like this story please vote for it on Mixx

Posted:2009-04-04 16:06:18 | - By Liam Bailey | 1 Comments

Twitter and Business: No Point Having Followers if you never Move

This is going to be a fairly short post, but I just had to put pen to paper. Since I joined Twitter I have been followed many times by people with one update, often following hundreds or even thousands of people, a fraction have followed back.

When this is a spammer or someone promoting an event or something that is understandable, but in the last couple of days I have been followed by businesses with one update; a business card tweet, well more of a slogan. Their contact details are in their bio and on the backgrounds

So I ask the question, what is the point of having followers if you don't go anywhere; can anyone really follow you if you never move; isn't that just standing about in a crowd?

In one of my earlier articles on Twitter I gave an example of SBuckinghams, a small tie manufacturer. They don't have a great deal to write about in the tie business so they write about other topics of interest, and post links from other sites.

I followed them back because their Tweets seems okay, but if they don't keep a regular supply of Tweets passing through my vision I will soon forget all about them, and the same goes for the one Tweet wonders: no matter how clever the slogan it will never be seen by the same follower twice unless you post updates that keep people hooked.

It is okay to say you have nothing to say, but I can give you another example: I follow a builder, he just Tweets about the day to day running of his business, but in such a funny and articulate way that he is one of my favourites.

The people who I am constantly reading tweets from and conversing with are the people I remember, the people I will contact if I need some work doing.

Posted:2009-04-02 08:29:25 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Twitter and Business: Personality And Interaction the Key

Other articles in this series:

The reasons a business joins Twitter vary from business to business. But whether they want simply to drive traffic to their website, get free product reviews, or simply have an audience to bounce ideas around with and get ideas from, they need to build a big and receptive audience.

By receptive I mean followers that actually read your Tweets and click your links. This is something that many will never get, let me explain why:

The Wrong Way: Reciprocity is Great, but...

Reciprocity is a big thing in Twitter, with the belief being: with the ability to filter Tweets so the people you want to read don't get buried, why not follow everyone who follows you -- provided their not spammers, surely it's just common decency.

Reciprocity has become so common that many businesses are and have relied on it to build their following. What they fail to see is that: they are seeking out people to follow, not because they are interested in what they are tweeting, plan to keep up to date with their Tweets, or even read them most of the time, but purely in the hope it will be reciprocated.

This is an excellent way of building a receptive audience, if when the person comes to your profile they are wowed by your tweets, and follow you because they want to hear what you have to say. But often this is not the case; the Tweets are business like and there is no personality for people to warm to. They mostly follow back in the way it was intended; purely to reciprocate -- it's the Twitter way.

How to Make Reciprocity Work AND Keep it Business Like:

Some business tweeters will be thinking: but I need to keep my Tweets professional, I am representing the brand that I worked hard to build up, long before Twitter was even a concept. You guys can still build a receptive audience, though it may take longer, here's how:Interaction, Interaction, Interaction:

So you follow a few dozen new Tweeters everyday and keep your Tweets business like so they follow just to reciprocate. Your tweets are buried at the bottom of their pile with all the rest of the people they follow to reciprocate only, as before.

The difference is, you read their tweets and when you see something that interests you or that you have an opinion on message them with "@username - I agree" and tell them why. If you do this often enough and your opinions are knowledgeable and/or informative they will start paying attention to your tweets, if only to reciprocate your interaction -- it's the Twitter way. This is why it pays to follow people who's Tweets interest you. Also because they probably have something in common with you and may like your Tweets in the first place.

I said this way will likely take longer because, you will only be able to monitor and reply to one maybe two Tweeters at a time.

The Best Way: Give Yourself a Twitter Personality

: Just because you are on Twitter for business reasons, doesn't mean you need to be just another business on Twitter. Be yourself under the company branding. Just like schmoosing at a company function; you don't just talk about work.

Sure you still Tweet about work and post links to your site, but you also Tweet funny things that happen in your daily life: talk about TV shows, Tweet anecdotes, anything that differentiates you from the crowd and makes people want to see what you are going to Tweet next.

When you do this followers will come to you. To speed up building a receptive audience you can still go looking for them, but follow people who's Tweets you find interesting, that way you will have plenty to talk about.

Before you know it you'll have a large receptive audience to do any of the things mentioned above, or whatever you deem beneficial to your business.

Posted:2009-03-31 19:26:18 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Twitter The Best Social Media Platform for Internet Marketing

Twitter is the best social media platform for business use to be put online so far; it is the only I have seen so far that can be of benefit to every single type and size of business.

Twitter's usefulness to writers like me and writing businesses like mine is obvious. We tweet our articles and our following is a testament to our writing abilities. This is also building back-links, traffic, brand image and online presence.

But I was just followed by SBuckinghams, a manufacturer and retailer of ties and bow ties. I checked their site and their address is a P.O. Box so they are possibly a small work from home business, maybe even emerging from sales through Ebay.

They don't necessarily write, and therefore have many self-benefiting links to post, but they attracted my attention. What they do Tweet is interesting and pithy, and I followed them back. Me seeing their Tweets daily now will keep them at the forefront of my mind, where they will be the next time I buy a tie --probably for my partner's dad's wedding, when he remarries in August.

The reason that Twitter is head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to business use for internet marketing, is because of how easy it is to build your audience, which the whole platform is based upon, and because of its pure simplicity.

To build your audience, you can search for things that interest you to find people who are on your wavelength. You can then go to their profile and if all their recent tweets are on your wavelength --- or not but you like them anyway -- you just click the prominent Follow button under their image.

If you're feeling dangerous you can also go to twitter.com/public_timeline -- either by typing it or clicking everyone in the sidebar -- to bring up the most recent 20 tweets from everyone on Twitter and choose who to follow from there.

However you find people to follow, the onus then switches to them to follow you back. Some say that reciprocity should be exercised, i.e. you should follow everyone who follows you, but I don't believe that. When someone follows me I view their profile, and if I like their Tweets I follow them, if not I don't.

It's as simple as that: follow people who like the things you do, they will then view your profile, see what you've got in common and follow you back. Of course contingent on you having twitterred some captivating Tweets recently.

Sure, other social networks and even Google are putting following features into their apps, but none of them have the simplicity of Twitter. On Twitter, you can use all the main features from one place using a single interface; the Tweet box, there is no such thing as having to navigate.

You can do all of the following without having to leave the comfort of your homepage:

Tweet: - type your tweet into the main input box at the top of the screen
Message your friends publicly: Type @ and then their username, followed by your message into the main input box
Message your friends privately: Type D and then their username, followed by your message
View any of your friend's profiles by typing WHOIS and then their username
Bring up all the most recent tweets from any of your friends: Type GET username
Prompt your friends to tweet by typing NUDGE and then their username

And that is all from the homepage, where you land straight after logging in. You only need to look for the navigation if you want to change any of the settings or edit your profile, most of the things you only do once, or very rarely. 99% of the time spent on Twitter is spent enjoying the beauty of simplicity.

No doubt another social media platform will pop up in the future that will be as good or better for business use than Twitter, but for now Twitter is the king of social media in internet marketing.

Posted:2009-03-29 15:59:38 | - By Liam Bailey | 1 Comments

BA Suspends Unprofitable London to Bangladesh Route

British Airways has ended direct flights from London to the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, because, the airline said, the 34-year old route was no longer profitable. According to the airline's statement, flights, previously running 3 times per week have been suspended because they have not made "a profitable contribution to [the] business for some time."

British woman Usha Mistry, who lives in Dhaka and was among the 233 passengers on the last London-bound flight, told AFP she would miss the direct route.

"I travel home every couple of months to see my children. Now I'll have to change over in the Middle East," she said.

The International Air Transport Association said global passenger volumes were 10.1 lower in February this year than February last year.

Bangladesh property has never seen much interest from international investors because it is consistently named as having the biggest problems with corruption in the world by Transparency Internationals Corruption Perceptions Index.

Those brave enough to give it a try in the country benefit from a massive demand for affordable housing; Bangladesh has among the world's highest population density. Removal of the only direct flight from London is bad news for those people, and for the Bangladeshi economy as a whole.

Posted:2009-03-28 09:54:56 | - By Susan Irons | 0 Comments

Dubai Property Prices to Keep Falling - Whether Banks Lend or Not

A Middle East mortgage broker has said that UAE property prices, especially in Dubai will decline a lot further unless banks restart lending.

"If financing and liquidity comes in, that will soften the price correction and property prices won't continue to drop like a stone," said Damian Hitchen, the managing director of Gulf Lenders Network, a master broker that connects most of the country's 28 mortgage lenders with independent brokers."

This applied particularly to Dubai, where prices have declined the most, Mr Hitchen said:

"The banks' overall portfolio exposure is getting worse every day... and the banks are going to have a real problem. By not lending, they are increasing the number of defaults and worsening their situation."

I agree that prices will fall further in Dubai if banks don't restart lending, but I fail to see how lending will stop the decline ether. But firstly I must pick a hole in the logic of Mr Hitchen's statements:

He says: "By not lending, they [the banks] are increasing the number of defaults and worsening their situation."

So, what is he suggesting, the banks should issue loans to people to be used to repay loans? Maybe he means lending to people so they can buy properties from people who are unable to pay their existing mortgages and loans, but with the situation that caused them to fall into defaulting territory unchanged, you can't blame the banks for being cautious.

So he must mean lending so construction companies and developers can stay in business, so less people lose their jobs and therefore default on their loans. But with the Dubai property market in the state it's in, who's to say the properties will sell, thus the banks would be continuing to give out loans that the companies may never be able to pay back.

The Dubai property market is in a very bad way. The price drops and credit freeze caused many developments to be cancelled and postponed. Now, who wants to buy a property with views of prestigious building sites?

With properties not selling and developments not being finished people who own property there are in a massive rush to sell. The market is plagued with over-supply of properties that no one wants to buy, so lack of finance is far from being Dubai's main problem.

The other thing I can't help wondering is: now that people have seen how quickly the prestige can come tumbling down in a place built solely for foreigners and solely for the wow factor, will they ever be so quick to invest in Dubai?

Posted:2009-03-27 08:23:32 | - By Liam Bailey | 1 Comments

SEO: Slow and Steady the Only Way to Go

When it comes to SEO there is no substitute for time; no matter how many links you get and how well you place your keywords, a site that has slightly less links and good SEO, but has been around for years will 9 times out of ten be far better placed in the search engines.

What's more a site that builds links slowly over a longer period of time (naturally), will be better ranked by the search engines than a site that builds more links more quickly.

Yet, there are still people out there searching for, and offering to give a quick SEO fix. Add your site to 3000 blogs emails etc. I know that businesses can't always afford to wait and do it slowly, so they launch an SEO campaign:

Sure, a couple of months frantic link building will increase your page rank, which combined with a bit of jiggery pokery with H tags and keywords, will more than likely move you up the search results. But if you don't keep adding new content and building back-links, cards will start falling on top of yours and you will slowly fall back down through the ranks.

The truth is, if you can get to the top quickly you are doing well, staying there is going to be harder for you than if you had slowly worked your way up.

If you can afford to work up the rankings slowly, i.e. getting sufficient traffic from PPC, then don't rush. You're site will be better off for it in the long run.

Either way, the moral is the same: keep adding regular content to your site, and if you're in a hurry to get up the rankings distribute that content for back-links, if you can wait keep your content original and build up a following through social media sites. Links will come naturally if your content is good.

The main word is KEEP, the best SEO campaign isn't a campaign because it never ends. I apologise for the rambling, it's late... And, this is my blog.

Posted:2009-03-25 23:20:18 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Twitter and Business: You Get Out what You Put In

I am fairly new to the Twitter craze but I have quickly fallen in love with it. I have also quickly learned that you only get out of it what you put in.

Using social media as a marketing tool has evolved; the shrewd businesses have now learned that you must become a valuable member of the community if it is to be any real benefit to your business. Some businesses however still become part of the community grudgingly.

I would have thought that would be me to be honest; I have not been a big fan of social media in the past. But I found out Twitter was good for business and on I went.

I started out trying to make myself look like a valuable member of the community; look like I was using the platform in the way it should be instead of shamelessly pushing my own business, which is really what I wanted to do. When I was doing this it was more important to have more followers than people I followed.

But during this acting like I loved Twitter, I really fell in love with it. A few days ago I went on a search for more people to follow. I began Retweeting, @messaging people who I hadn't previously spoken to strike up the conversation, and realised I hadn't posted a link from my own site in ages. Now I have my postings on my own site on Twitterfeed, so I don't forget to tweet them, and to leave my tweeting hand free for all the rest of it. My following has been growing at about 3-10 per day.

I have even made some new business contacts and may even end up getting some work out of it for Write About Property -- can't be bad. The moral of the story is, you only get out of Twitter what you put in.

Posted:2009-03-24 18:08:13 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Surprising Property Investment Survey Results

The survey on readers of Write About Property articles and blog has been closed and the results are in. 56% of people who took the survey are not planning to invest in property this year, but the other 47% of people who took the survey are planning to invest in property this year.

Write About Property director Liam Bailey said of the results:

"Some 200+ people took the survey, which is only a fraction of the people who read write about property articles in the month the survey ran, but enough to believe it is a fair cross section of our readers' opinion.

"Some were kind enough to fill in the additional comments field, some even with details of where they would be investing. Among the countries mentioned Turkey and the UK were most popular, incredibly UAE was also up there."

The result of the first survey by the new PR & SEO firm have been quite surprising, the next survey will begin April first and will ask more in-depth questions to try and ascertain people's investing intentions for 2009 and 2010.

View property in Turkey

Posted:2009-03-23 22:51:46 | - By Alan Siddel | 0 Comments

UK Property Prices to Drop Another 55% - I Doubt It

I really don't see UK property prices dropping by another 55%. The Numis report that said they potentially would based the claim on the housing depression of the early 90's but the global nature of this crisis makes it very different from that one.

Don't get me wrong, UK property prices will fall further, but I don't think they will fall by a further 40-55% as Numis do, I think 20-30% is a more realistic forecast.

I know I don't have the resources that Numis do, but it has taken UK property prices 10 months to fall the 21% they have so far, it is a safe bet that the correction will speed up as we near the bottom, but I believe this acceleration will be rapid, following a prolonged descent at the same rate we have seen thus far.

Therefore there will potentially be a further 15-20% plus drop in prices over the next 10 months, and then a 10%-15% drop in the next 2-4 months as the market hits bottom.

The Numis report apparently predicted a wave of panic selling when buy-to-let investors start selling up before more price drops. I doubt this will happen. Recent reports by Knight Frank have said that rents are falling slower than prices which means yields are increasing, and rental demand will likely increase as repossession rates increase as predicted.

If panic selling does occur and that causes such great price drops as Numis forecast, the irony will likely emerge that it was negative reports like theirs -- and dare I say mine -- that caused it.

At any rate and in another possible ironical twist: such a wave of panic selling would greatly increase supply of realistically priced property, which is currently lacking, and could cause the market to bottom at that level. Thus prices would have dropped nowhere near the levels forecast by Numis and myself.

It is okay to take reports like the one from Numis into consideration, but they shouldn't by any means be taken as gospel. Historians looking back at this would likely classify it as a secondary source, because of Numis' vested interest in other investment vehicles, and the reports' benefiting their efforts to steer investors away from property and buy to let, which they derogatorily call the poor man's hedge fund.

When all is said and done: we'll just have to wait and see won't we.

Posted:2009-03-21 22:34:44 | - By Liam Bailey | 1 Comments

Article Spinning and SEO: No Substitute for Original Content

I am involved in SEO to make a living, I don't know if everyone else who is finds the same; but I have found myself becoming so immersed in SEO that I have forgotten not everyone else is so involved.

I just saw a job on one of the outsourcing websites for someone to spin articles using article spinning software, and realised that, just because I know Google has cottoned onto these techniques, and that software can very rarely beat Google's duplicate content algorithms, apparently not everyone shares this knowledge.

In fact in my experience it is not only software that cannot beat Google's duplicate content algorithms, duplicate content cannot beat them. In the world of SEO there is absolutely no substitute for producing original content.

Sure, you can write articles based on other articles, but the key word in that sentence is write; read the article, understand it then close it and write an article on the subject in your own words.

I know SEO doesn't just mean Google, but because Google has by far the largest share of the search market, if it is ignoring your content because it is duplicated, then it doesn't matter whether you are fooling the other search engines or not. The answer is if you're trying to fool them, your approach is wrong from the outset. Like I said, there is no substitute for quality original content.

Posted:2009-03-21 17:55:35 | - By Liam Bailey | 1 Comments

Overseas Property: Where Would I Invest Part 4 - India

Many of you will wonder why I'm recommending India given the recent terrorist attacks. But when it comes to rising demand for affordable housing, and demand outstripping supply, very few places can compete with India.

The Indian economy continues to grow, falling from the dizzy heights of last year to an expected and very respectable 4.4% this year; its services sector remains extremely vibrant with strong growth in areas like graphic design as the world outsources to India's small but talented companies to keep costs low.

As the economy continues to grow, and the millions of Indian university graduates continue to take jobs and start businesses, India's middle class continues to grow and with it the demand for affordable housing. Demand which has been largely ignored in the past as developers focussed on luxury developments aimed at international investors, prestige and the wealthy.

Now, the developers still standing are brushing themselves off with the knowledge that: international investors are great while they last but not to be relied on. They are seeing the opportunity that lies in the greatly undersupplied demand for affordable housing. An opportunity for developers is an opportunity for investors.

Affordable to India's middle class is even more affordable to us, and I would certainly put money into affordable housing in India's growing centres of commerce and industry -- possibly in the areas around the Special Economic Zones, but just as likely in a city centre, many of the new entrepreneurs are working from basements in Mumbai etc.

Posted:2009-03-19 09:51:03 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Overseas Property: Where Would I Invest Part 3 - The Philippines

The Philippines' economy has been growing by more than 5% since the current President took office in 2001. Its growth accelerated between 2005, and late 2008, mainly fuelled by growing worker remittances, and massive growth in the services sector as outsourcing fuelled similar growth throughout Asian emerging markets. Growing tourism, primarily regional tourism was also partly responsible for the Philippines' rapid growth.

The Philippines was worst affected by the last Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s and as such when the Philippines began to become appealing as a location for overseas property investment, Philippines property prices were comparatively lower than in other emerging markets. Because property price growth has been severely stunted by the current global economic situation, bargain Filipino properties can still be found.

Meanwhile the Philippines economy is nowhere close to recession. Like some other places in Asia (Singapore and Taiwan not included), economic growth is expected to continue at a slower rate. The latest Philippines government forecast put 4.4% as a figure for growth this year, but as it slowed from 7%+ in 2007, to 4.6% last year, a more realistic figure for this year is 2.2 - 3%.

None the less any emerging market that can keep growing this year, when economies far bigger have fallen into recession like dominoes, are well placed to see growth pick up far quicker when the wider global economy begins to recover. EC forecasts expect European recovery to begin next year.

Well placed because when the world recovers, the Philippines services sector will be largely intact, and the country won't have to start from scratch as some others will. Worker remittances will increase at the same time. EC forecasts expect economic recovery to begin in the EU in 2010.

When the Philippines economy begins to grow again, employment, which has fallen quite sharply recently will begin to rise once again, and more Filipinos will be looking to buy and rent property, and at the same time it will probably become appealing to large numbers of foreign investors. And that is why I would invest now: get a bargain when demand is low, and cash in when demand increases.

View Write About Property's property in the Philippines

View all overseas property

Posted:2009-03-18 09:30:25 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Developer Cuts Prices to Sell Off Turkey Property

Overseas property agents GEM Estates have cut the prices of their Turkey property development by 30% in an effort to sell of the last few remaining units.

The Turquoise Development in Bodrum, which is described as a five star resort was recently completed, and with hand over due next month GEM Estates are keen to sell the remaining six units as quickly as possible.

Bodrum is one of Turkey's fastest emerging regions, with major airline Easyjet recently launching direct flights into the coastal territory from London. The development in question is close to the airport.

A GEM Estates spokesperson said:

"Turquoise offers good quality, excellent design and an unparalleled after-sales service including rental management complete with maid service and 24-hour reception."

The apartments left now start at £49,693, from their original price of £66,000.

Write About Property recently started advertising property, and currently have more properties in Turkey than any other country. View property in Turkey

Posted:2009-03-16 21:57:28 | - By Emma Louise Bailey | 0 Comments

Ask Yourself About the UK Property Market Recovery

I just read an article on the UK property market, by Guardian Money editor Patrick Collinson, his closing statement was one of the most poignant I have read about the UK property downturn; he writes:

"No one in their right mind would sink their life savings into a property if he or she felt it was about to drop 20% in value. And it's the huge number of people thinking like that which will ensure prices drop a lot further from here."

It is a very valid point, and on the face of it, seems so incredulously and obviously true that you just feel it should be made gospel, but is it?

The volume of people who believe the UK property market has got a long way to fall yet is certainly great, all you need to do is take a look on the threads of houspricecrash.co.uk to know that.

But an equally great, if not greater number of people also believe, in fact know, that a recovery is inevitable, that UK property prices will once again grow rapidly, if not this year then next year or the year after but it will happen.

So the fact that prices are going to fall further before growing to a higher level is not going to stop many people, except investors from buying is it?

With that to ponder I say, with prices having fallen as far as they have already: is it possible that the UK property market recovery is not as dependent on the market hitting bottom as it is on banks being able to lend normally again and an end to the wider recession, and thus less fear of job losses?

Posted:2009-03-15 22:03:53 | - By Liam Bailey | 2 Comments

Overseas Property Agents Missing Out On UK Property Opportunity

Last year, UK based overseas property agents were selling Bali property like it was the house along the road; selling Canadian property to rich women from Thailand (past experience), Ukraine property to rich Russians and Eastern Europeans and all for investment returns.

But now, as the weakness of Sterling combines with UK price drops to make UK property an equally good if not better option for many investors around the world, the same agents are failing to capitalise on the sale of UK property.

OK, many of them have the word overseas in their name, but that wouldn't have stopped them from selling a property in Cambodia to a Cambodian, so why should it stop someone in the UK selling UK property to someone living elsewhere; to them UK property is overseas?

Though some have started listing UK properties, none of the ones I have seen are putting the same level of effort into selling UK property as they did and still are putting into selling overseas property.

Of course overseas property is still selling, and as expected sales have picked up at the start of this year, though to nowhere near the heights being seen at this time last year. But I can't help thinking that they are missing out on potentially greater sales by not putting their weight behind selling UK property.

I believe this is the case, because these agents have underestimated the length of the credit crunch: UK property has been becoming better as an investment steadily for the last few months, and now as it is being listed in the top ten most popular destinations by several influential sources, agent's that haven't previously sold it are thinking, there's no point bothering now, overseas property is picking up.

OK, as I said sales have picked up at the beginning of the year, as always tends to happen after Christmas, and the abysmal performance of other investments including the 1% being earned from bank savings will probably cause continued growth in sales.

But UK property is expected to continue falling in price until at least late 2009, and UK property grew faster than anywhere else during the last boom, so it will likely continue to increase in popularity as it gets cheaper. That gives agents new to selling UK property at least 6-9 months to get into the action. I don't think they should risk missing out, do you?

Posted:2009-03-12 23:26:15 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Spain and France Property Beaten only by UK Property of Course

According to an article on the Overseas Property World blog, France property and Spain property are still the two most searched for in terms of European property.

I have since confirmed the findings, and indeed, as the posts says: Cyprus property has taken a massive plummet in popularity according to the number of Google searches for the term, and the same goes for Bulgaria property.

In fact upon doing my own research into search terms for overseas property in different countries via Google, you don't really need to do too many comparisons, because only a few countries in Europe have enough search volume to even collate.

The biggest surprise for me is the drastic drop in the number of searches for Italy property, which is also now searched for too few times to compare to France and Spain, as is Montenegro property. The fact that Turkey property is still in there is a testament to its growth in popularity

Like I said, outside of France and Spain very few countries are seeing enough Google searches to bother recording, for the most popular phrase, namely: country property.

That said, the phrase UK property is now being searched for about 3 times more than Spain property in Google, possibly due to the number of overseas investors looking at property in the UK.

It makes sense there would be more Europeans searching for UK property than vice versa because of the current exchange rates, perhaps the roles will re-reverse later this year if the Euro drops as expected.

Posted:2009-03-11 22:06:50 | - By Allan Siddel | 0 Comments

I Underestimated Albania Property

Because Google Trends shows up very few searches for Albania property I underestimated its popularity. However, recent articles on Albania property I have published on this site have attracted far more traffic than even articles on Spain property.

Though some of the searches that are bringing traffic are simply for Albania, not only Albania property, this still shows that many people are interested in investing in Albania property, especially because 90% of the searches are coming from google.co.uk.

I have recently started advertising property on this site on the basis of a portal, I currently have dozens of properties due to be added shortly, none of which are in Albania. If anyone out there reading this has properties in Albania, I am currently offering a month's free trial of property advertising, after which the charge is £10 per lead -- I will even add the properties.

I have Montenegro properties waiting to be added, Turkey properties and property in Panama, just need some in Albania to complete the property investment destinations set.

Posted:2009-03-11 15:01:00 | - By Liam Bailey | 2 Comments

Overseas Property: Where Would I Invest Part 2 - Turkey

Turkey property is currently attracting a lot of media attention, and rightly so. Sales in the country haven't dropped nearly as much as most countries because of the credit crunch, prices are generally holding firm -- according to some agents rising in places and on luxury properties -- and tourism is expected to hit over 30million this year. That mind sound unbelievable but Turkey received 23million visitors last year.

Tourists are of course attracted by the low cost of living in the country, which translates to cheap holidays with more fun for less spending money. But it also translates to property in Turkey being priced lower than in most developed countries in Europe. You can currently get a 1 bedroom off-plan apartment in Altinkum for £48,400, and a resale 1 bedroom apartment in Altinkum for £44,000 if you know where to look.

The massive amount of tourists Turkey receives is generating millions of Euros in revenue, which is then redirected back into developing the tourism sector, and the tourist infrastructure, and even spending on marketing to increase the number of tourists yet further.

The rising tourism levels also lead to increased employment and internal wealth within the country. This translates to more Turkish people buying their own homes thus giving today's investors an exit strategy for tomorrow.

That is of course before we even mention Turkey's EU accession which is on the distant horizon having been hindered by opposition from France, Germany and Austria. Turkey's eventual EU accession will further boost the economy and internal wealth from things like worker remittances, and the returning workers will provide another exit strategy.

All in all I would certainly make a long-term investment in Turkey, for holiday home investors it is even better.

View our properties in Turkey

Posted:2009-03-10 09:21:30 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Overseas Property: Where Would I Invest - Part 1 Albania

Albania, like all countries with EU entry on the horizon has great prospects for property investment. But Albania has had one of the most effective fiscal systems of government of all the Balkan states; enjoying solid economic growth for the last decade, and making a series of excellent fiscal and economic reforms during that time.

This meant that -- unlike some Balkan states -- for Albania, the chance of becoming a member of the EU was only a boost to its economic potential.

Albania's economic and fiscal reforms successfully brought a quarter of the poorest in the population out of poverty between 2002 and 2007, which then led to the World Bank upping Albania to a middle income country in 2007. This meant Albania became eligible to apply for loans from the World Bank and other sources for infrastructure development as oppose to relying on grants.

Albania secured several major loans in 2008, including a 66.2 million Euro loan from Japan, to build a sewage treatment plant, and overhaul and modernise its canal systems, a 25million Euro loan from Austria to help Albania meet its EU commitment. The Duress port authority also secured a 25million Euro loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to renovate the quays and build a new terminal at the port, Albania's largest. Loans were also secured to improve the main road to Kosovo.

The credit crunch has slowed everything down, but Albania is still on track to become a full member of the EU in 2014, and the economy is still in good shape, better than most of the "developed countries" in fact.

Property is still relatively cheap compared to other European nations with the same economic stability and prospects, yet Albania's long term property investment potential is better than most countries where property is priced much higher.

Therefore if I were in the market to invest in overseas property Albania would certainly be on my shortlist.

Posted:2009-03-09 11:21:02 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

UK Property Market to Be Unaffected by Bank of England Measures

The Bank of England has cut the base interest rate to the all time low of 0.05%, and began what it calls quantitative easing aimed at injecting £75million into the UK banking sector, but these measures will have little or no positive effect on the UK property market.

The low interest rate will benefit the people who are on a base rate tracker mortgage. But for the people currently trying to buy homes, the continual rate cuts may be worsening the situation by making the banks charge higher rates to new lenders to offset their losses -- that is of course for the very few people who can raise the capital to pay the 15-20% deposit asked for by most banks these days.

Yolande Barnes of Savills, however, has commented on how the interest rate cut will make UK fuel demand from equity rich investors, seeing the rates offered by long term bonds fall and property become a more profitable. "Equity-rich investor buyers can benefit both from falling prices and the opportunity to gear up at advantageous rates. If this opportunity is seized it could, arguably, bring the first stage in a top-down market recovery into view," said Barnes.

I however share my namesake Liam Bailey, of Knight Frank's view, that the quantitative easing is likely to be seen as no more than a buzzword, if having little more effect, and that the government's efforts to force the nationalised banks to increase mortgage lending

Posted:2009-03-06 22:35:21 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

UK Property Prices Down 2.6% - Halifax, January Rise a Blip

Patrick Collins, the Guardian money editor was right on the money when he said the January price rise reported by the Halifax was just a blip and should not be viewed with too much optimism. I pointed out the possibility that he might be being a little overly pessimistic, because of other indicators that were positive at the time. I have since said that the UK market will bottom in late 2009, and prices will grow 5-7% in 2010.

The UK's biggest lender has now reported a 2.3% fall in UK house prices for February, all but proving the January rise was an anomaly, a blip in the downward trend that had then continued for ten months previous to that.

The Halifax index now puts the average price of a UK house at: £160,327, a year on year drop or 17.7% since February last year.

Nationwide only put in a 1.8% drop for February, but their year-on-year figures tally up; Nationwide put the year on year drop at 17.6%.

The average UK house price is now just 4.4 times the average UK wage, but unless the banks start making finance more readily available very few people will be able to take advantage of this, according to Halifax's housing economist, Martin Ellis.

Ellis said that there were "tentative signs" that demand for homes had started to stabilise after months of falls, with some buyers tempted back into the market as a result of falling prices, adding that: "the house prices-to-earnings ratio had fallen to its lowest level for six years with properties now costing an average of 4.4 times salary, down from a peak of 5.8 in July 2007," but, he said: "until mortgage lenders begin to offer funding, many would-be buyers will be unable to take advantage of lower prices."

Posted:2009-03-05 12:57:53 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Press Releases Versus Articles, Which is Best for SEO?

I have been asked in the past, what form of content is best to add to my site on a daily basis as part of my SEO campaign, press releases or articles.

The answer is: articles.

In terms of SEO regarding keyword prominence, placement and density there is little or no difference in how they can be used to benefit SEO, but in terms of how you should use them: press releases should not be used as daily added content to keep your site fresh, your crawl rate up and increase your number of indexed pages.

For those purposes you should use articles and only issue press releases when you have something newsworthy to release. When using press releases to the aims above, people tend to concentrate too much on keyword placements and take away from the news that is being released, or like me concentrate on writing a good press release and lose the benefit of it as an element of SEO.

Not to mention that daily press releases make you become the boy who cried wolf; in that, because you can't possibly have something newsworthy to say every day, unless you are a global corporation, then your un-newsworthy press releases eventually start to get ignored by serious journalists. Small online publications will always use your releases, but daily releases detract from your chances of being covered in the national press.

By using articles for your daily content addition needs, you can concentrate solely on keeping your keywords to the letter of the latest SEO best practices, while being able to write a press release capable of generating press coverage when you have worthy news.

Some people say daily press releases are better because online publications in your field will almost always use your release as content for their site, often giving you a natural link in the process. But if you write good articles, you will get the same if not more amount of natural links from people republishing your work.

Articles can be distributed in the same way as a press release for link-building purposes, using a different set of websites. So there is really no difference between a press release and an article, apart from the fact that articles are better as a regular source of website content, whereas press releases should be saved to tell the world about big events in your company's running.

Order articles for your website

Posted:2009-03-04 18:06:04 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Axing the Agent may Lead to a Destabilised Property Industry

The current lack of buyers in the market, and trouble selling house has heralded the rise of FSBO, Property For Sale By Owner-s going it alone, advertising on property portals, and specialist FSBO websites, or even the top of cupcakes, and sacking the agent. This is currently predominantly done for second homes overseas. I think there is a great market for this at the moment, as they give far greater exposure to the property and thus increase the chances of selling.

But recently it has gone a stage further, with the BBC running a series called Axe the Agent, about people selling without agent's in the UK, which may become more popular in the near future.

Agents have been the cornerstone of UK house sales for so long; one must wonder what shape the property market would take if the majority of homes were sold without agents, and especially if they were eventually fazed out altogether.

In this current credit-crunched time, when the housing market has plummeted, it is widely held that the bottom will only come; recovery only begin when the gap between what buyers feel they should be paying for a property (how little they can get it for), and what a seller is willing or becomes forced to drop to. This is true for FSBO sales just the same as it is for agent managed sales.

That said, without agents, would the situation where the gap becomes so pronounced ever arise, which would also mean the great price growths we saw during the recent boom, and all the booms that went before it may also be unlikely.

In the market boom, sellers were in control. There were plenty of buyers, and if one investor or family wouldn't meet the seller's expectations, they would simply be turned away in expectation that another would be along shortly. Thus prices would continue to rise as far as this trend continued.

The gap between buyers expectations and sellers realisations exists now because the market crashed, and the clamps were put on credit as the whiff of bad debt drifted ominously across the Atlantic and burned our banks and investor's fingers as though it carried acid in its wake.

Once the market became a lot harder to sell in; when they were a lot fewer buyers in the market and prices started to fall, that is when -- it became a buyer's market -- buyers gained an equal if not larger portion of control over what they would pay for their next house, and then, when everyone wanted to get a bargain, that is when the gap started to form. In short the shoe is on the other foot.

So the situation above arose when the primary pricing participle was an estate agent, let's take a look at where we might be without them.

Without an estate agent's market experience and qualifications, would sellers have the confidence to put their prices up? Not even so much the confidence, but there are a breed of honest people out there who probably would think putting their price up when the property hadn't changed or been improved was dishonest, or if they did they would do so guiltily, and probably by a lot less than an estate agent would. In this case the next family that came along would probably get the house for the price before it was put up, if not maybe even a little less depending on their circumstance, cute kids etc.

And then isn't it possible that the other breed of people would be putting their prices up by far more than the market is ready or calls for, especially in catchment areas for good schools etc. It is a widely held thought that prices being pushed up too quickly in speculation of a continued stream of avid buyers, led to the UK property market crashing so quickly and so severely. Thus if this became the case, wouldn't we always be prepping for an even greater crash than the last?

As things stand now, we have had our booms and our busts, but on the whole house prices have continued on an upward trend over the long term, I am worried that without estate agents there may not be enough stability in the market for this to continue.

OK, agents may still be doing the valuations for people selling through axe the agent websites, probably under a new title, house pricing consultants or such, performing their role in the same way as surveyors do. But this will not stop the problems I have laid out above, unless their services are retained, in which case the agent hasn't really been axed, has it?

And then there is the people who may need to sell in a hurry and may not be able to even afford the independent consultation fees, what price would they put their property on the market at.

In closing: I think there is a definite market for FSBO websites in the current climate; often these websites offer greater exposure to the property and can lead to a quicker sale of properties, or even just a sale. And I don't see the problem in using them to offload off plan or new built properties overseas, certainly better than E-baying them for 3 grand. But if we want to have a stable and prosperous housing market in the UK over the long term, I don't think we should be too quick to herald the end of the estate agent profession.

Posted:2009-03-03 10:30:20 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Spomments (Spam Commenters): Get Your Own Back

I just had a great idea on how to, well not deal with comment spammers, but to get a certain sensation of self-satisfaction that they haven't completely gotten away with it: if possible add their email address to your most frequent newsletter list.

I don't mean deviously, I mean if there is a chance that they could use the products or services you provide. This is especially good if they leave a comment on a blog you run that is not affiliated with a company you own, because they won't even know the newsletter came from you.

I am talking about a particular kind of comment spammer, the ones who leave comments on behalf of companies, for the sole reason of including a link.

Now, I don't mind this per say, in fact I have done it myself, but only on posts that related to what I was linking to and I always made sure my comment contributed to the debate, and/or said something worth saying about its subject matter. And my comments were always at least two paragraphs long, the link was just an: might as well put one in while I'm here.

Here's an example of the Spommenting I am talking about: on an article about Italy they leave, "What about our properties in Brazil!" with a link to their website.

These are obviously comments aimed at nothing else than piggybacking of your traffic, and getting a back-link on targeted keyword anchors. These are at best a sever annoyance; why not get something out of it by expanding your audience?

Posted:2009-03-02 16:01:22 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Panama Property: No News is Good News?

I have decided to make the Write About Property blog a true purist blog, that is to say a daily log of mine and the companies activities, as well as thoughts, and opinions that spring to mind and are worthy of sharing with the world, again, in our opinion.

This morning, it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't heard anything about Panama property lately. The free-trade agreement with the US obviously still hasn't been ratified, and I wonder is it a case of "no news is good news" for Panama property?

I searched for news for a while this morning and found no recent news about the Panama property market whatsoever. If anyone has found any interesting stories, please post them as comments, or to my new Facebook group.

Even the forums I use have very little discussions on Panama. It used to be a hot topic, but now the only posters are property agents. However they receive little or no argument to their promotional posting, which likely signifies that there is no bad news coming from Panama's property market either.

Without news sources it is hard to tell what is happening. Is the Panama boom rolling on, but the major publications fear of saying anything positive to avoid ridicule, or have things quietened down in the country.

The lack of negative forum replies suggests it is, but then again, who would report falling prices, certainly not the agents??? Then again, building work is continuing on Trump towers, and there have been no major reports of developers going into liquidation or postponing developments.

All in all I believe the Panama property market is still strong, fed by a strong and healthy economy, and by prospects for the future, fuelled by the great canal expansion. But like I said; anyone who has personal experiences of buying and selling in Panama, or who has found a recent and interesting news story please post it here as a comment.

Posted:2009-02-27 14:16:58 | - By Liam Bailey | 2 Comments

Blogging for SEO: Wordpress all the Way

At one time or another I have had free blogs on all the major free blogging platforms, but nowI'm Wordpress all the way. Here are some of the reasons why Wordpress is my favourite blogging platform for SEO:

Fastest indexing by Google
Best themes
Best system for displaying comments
Excellent recording of visitor stats

Google indexes Wordpress blogs far quicker than even Blogspot blogs, which is Google's own blogging platform. On top of that I have found Wordpress has the widest range of free designs, and that these designs are better than most.

Also, Wordpress has excellent statistics feature. This saves you having to implement Google Analytics code, because the feature measures traffic sources, the searches people found your blog in, top-posts and much more.

That however brings me to one major downside of Wordpress for me: if you did want to run Google Analytics on your Wordpress blog you need to pay. Wordpress charges you for credits so you can edit the CSS and template code, which is necessary to add Analytics code so you can use it. This also prevents you from being able to use Google webmaster tools, unless of course you are willing to pay.

The tools above are useful if your blog is to help your website's SEO. But of course, if the blog is being run to improve the SEO of a business website, it is most often being run on the businesses' domain. That can only be done if you pay, and so the tools above can then be made use of by buying additional credits.

Blogspot allows you to edit the code of your blog for free, so you can use Google Analytics or Webmaster tools if you wish. Blogspot can also be hosted on your domain for free.

Wordpress is the better platform however for SEO blogging, and so the charges are likely to be money well spent.

Posted:2009-02-24 21:31:57 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

SEO: Content is King, or Is It Back-Links?

Some SEO experts say external links; or rather building a great number of them is the single most important element of an SEO campaign. They would have webmasters spending as much time as possible involved in actively seeking and building back-links by: offering 3 way link exchanges, and distributing press releases, articles and other online content with links back to their website.

There is no doubt that increasing the number of external links to your website increases your Page Rank™, but unless your website content is optimised with proper keyword prominence, keyword density, and keyword relevance, all those links will do little or nothing for your position in the search-engine result pages (SERPS).

But that still isn't the most important thing: if your site is poorly designed it is no good bringing in more new visitors if they leave straight away because your site is repulsive.

Write About Property can do nothing more than recommend good companies when it comes to website design, but when it comes to search engine optimised content for web-pages, or articles and press releases for distribution, Write About Property are on hand to help.

We can get the content on your pages optimised, and then carry out a major link-building campaign, the cumulative effect of both these actions will be your website taking a massive jump up the search results for your chosen keywords.

We have a wide variety of monthly packages, for which we have calculated the monthly number of back-links we can build for your website -- contact Write About Property

Posted:2009-02-23 20:31:00 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Dubai Expats, Unable to Pay Debts, Flee to Avoid Punishment

I came across a story today that is indicative of what caused the credit-crunch. 3000 cars have been abandoned at Dubai's airport, as newly unemployed expats flee the country to avoid the severe punishments they would face for defaulting on loans under Dubai's Sharia law system.

Indicative of the credit-crunch because many of the cars were flashy SUV's, saloons and even a "few Mercs" that the "skips" (skips is what the Dubai authorities are calling them) could never have afforded back home.

But swept up in the Dubai boom craze they recklessly splashed out, and now the boom is over they are being forced to face the consequences, or flee to avoid them as the case may be. This is a microcosm of the cause of the credit-crunch, reckless borrowing and lending leading to an inevitably high default rate.

The Times ran the story from a Dubai reporter on Feb 5, but I have only just come across it on Overseas Property Mall.

The title of the story in the Times made me chuckle, "Driven Down by Debt, Dubai Expats Give New meaning to the Term Long Stay Car Park.

I have to say pretty much the story as a whole made me chuckle a little, especially the bit about some of the cars being left with apology notes on windscreens, and others with maxed out credit-cards in the glove compartment. I know it's not funny for Dubai banks, or for those doing the fleeing.

But if I'm honest I almost laughed out loud and I don't know why, probably because amidst the Dubai boom when everyone was shouting invest in Dubai, I predicted a crash in the Dubai property market. I don't know what will happen to the cars, but I forecast a massive upturn in used car sales in Dubai.

Today Jones Lang La Salle research predicted a Dubai recovery in 2011

Posted:2009-02-22 20:46:55 | - By Liam Bailey | 0 Comments

Online Content and SEO: Two Different Roads you can go

It is pretty much common knowledge that producing original and informative content for a website is a key component of getting a good ranking in the search engines. But online content can be used in two very different SEO campaigns, both will achieve similar results, but the timeframe and eventual quality of the results will differ greatly. The two routes and their results:

Online Content Distribution

The first path is to distribute your press releases, articles or other content to other sources with a link, this will build back-links to your website and thus increase search ranking. It may also then be republished by yet more sources thus gaining yet more back-links.

This is probably the most widely practiced method of building back-links and increasing search ranks. It is certainly one of the most rapid ways to build back-links, and it certainly does increase search engine positions over a comparatively short-time to method 2 below:

Sole Publication and Natural Links

This is where you publish the original content that you write, or have written on your website and your website alone. This means your website will initially be recognised by the search-engines as a source of completely original content. In this option there is no active link seeking at all.

This is a less popular option because the real SEO benefit only comes if your articles are so good, and so informative that other webmasters link to them without being asked to. But these links are then completely natural one-way links, which are held in the highest regard by the search engines.

If your articles are good enough and your articles become frequently linked to, this method will eventually lead to your site becoming an authority site on the subject of your articles, these sites take precedence above others in search results.

The downside of this method is that it can take months to build up the sufficient traffic for your articles to start getting linked to, and then many more months to gather sufficient natural links to boost your rank in the search engines. This is often too long for businesses to wait for results from their website.

Combine the Two for Best Results

Taken into consideration the upsides and downsides, anyone who has just launched a website, or had a website for a while with little traffic, and has done no content distribution, should combine both methods:

They should first distribute their content as widely as possible, to build back-links and increase their ranking a little so that they start getting traffic. And then start to concentrate on producing quality content, which is published solely on their site, and cease all seeking of unnatural links.

Posted:2009-02-21 14:50:44 | - By Write About Property | 0 Comments

Property Swapping and FSBO Property World Gone Mad

The credit-crunch taking an axe to property prices and making property almost impossible to sell unless it's been foreclosed, has heralded the rise of "UK property swapping", and other things that may have never been considered but for the credit crunch.

Just this week two property swapping websites have made announcements, one in America and one in the UK, both with the same thing in mind: taking the estate agent out of the equation and allowing two people or families to make the move they either need or want to without having to sell their house.

This new idea allows people to either do a straight swap with another likeminded mover, or agree the cash difference 'at their discretion' (mylittlehouseexchange).

It is unclear whether the people undertaking in this kind of property exchange are involving solicitors, having valuations or surveys done, or obtaining Home Information Packs, in the case of straight swaps it is doubtful that they will be -- well may be having a survey done for common sense. It is also unlikely that every property swap will involve a solicitor.

The world has gone mad because of the credit-crunch: people are selling properties on Ebay, a house in Bulgaria, start the bidding at £600, no reserve, and another is sitting at £3000,00 -- crazy.

The credit crunch has also led to a massive increase in properties for sale by owner, thus compounding the misery for estate agents.

Posted:2009-02-20 10:35:56 | - By Jake Kyle | 0 Comments

SEO Services: The Only Growing Industry?

SEO might be the only industry that is growing right now. The Credit Crunch seems to be causing an upturn in the SEO services industry. causing many business to struggle, and the ones that are still standing have been forced to look at new ways at expanding their business.

Business that previously weren't online have launched websites, and quickly learned they must search engine optimise their site if they don't want their new website to languish in the sidelines and never get noticed.

The businesses that were already online are concentrating on attracting more visitors, as the visitor/lead and visitor/sale ratios drop.

For me adding regular content to a website is the best possible thing you can do for SEO purposes. This is usually in the form of articles, press releases or both. Either way it must be well written content, that is either captivating and interesting or factually informative, preferably all three. The better the content the more likely other webmasters will link to it. Now these are natural links, which in SEO terms, are gold-dust.

Thus the more well written content you can add to your site, the more natural links you will build. And if you don't have the time or the inclination to write your own content, let the professional writers at Write About Property do it for you.

Our prices start from as little as £15 per piece of writing. Our content is written to the highest standards of SEO, employing the current best practices for keyword prominence and keyword density.

You can order press releases

Posted:2009-02-18 23:08:15 | - By Allan Siddel | 0 Comments

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