Mission Impossible

There are hundreds of local MLS Boards nationally. Each Board owns and maintains their own data and therefore all have different data fields and formats. So it would be necessary for a developer to develop not 1 but hundreds of plugins. Additionally, most MLS Boards constantly change their fields. So each of these plugins would have to be maintained to ensure service interruptions would not occur and the proper data was delivered to the end users. This would be a maintenance nightmare not unlike those experienced by Open Realty users.

An excellent technical article about why this will never happen was authored by Ron Goodman on his Denver Real Estate Blog. Ron goes into depth about the issues involved in data migration and how attempts to build a magic plugin thus far have been nothing short of lacking.

Compliance and Policing Nightmare

In addition to the maintenance headaches, Local Boards and the National Association of REALTORS® would find it difficult if not impossible to police a WordPress Realty plugin for compliance. In addition to redistribution issues many local boards have, each have their own compliance rules and regulations. The Boards may require submissions of search templates for compliance reviews prior to displaying publicly. A prime example of this Metrolist in Denver. Violation of compliance rules and regulations for display of data can lead to fines as much as $1,000 per occurrence. Since the site owner can change template layouts on the fly so to speak, this could lead to costly compliance issues.

Many Local Boards have implemented security protocols to protect “their” data. Any so called WordPress Real Estate plugin that would import data for redistribution on a Broker/Agent site would need to store the data on servers used by the Broker or Agent’s website. Not all dedicated servers would meet the stringent security requirements of many Local Boards.

With these compliance and policing issues it is only reasonable to expect that NAR and the local boards to enact policies prohibiting such plugins in the not so distant future resulting in the loss of any time and money spent chasing this myth.

Misunderstood Plugin Functionality

There are a couple of WordPress plugins out there for real estate that are completely misunderstood when it comes to functionality. There is NO WP plugin that will import the MLS data directly into your real estate website. The process for the listings data to get into your website is as follows:

1. Receive the MLS Data from the Local Board that owns it with its permission.
2. Map the raw data to the fields within the WordPress plugins parameters.
3. Follow all rules and regulations imposed by the Local Board and NAR when it comes to display and/or redistribution of MLS data.

I recently ran across a competitor that claims to have a WordPress Real Estate Plugin in beta. This competitor makes no mention of the fact that in order to use the plugin you must first be an IDX/RETS client of theirs. Is this deceptive advertising or an oversight? That is for you to decide.

Joomla and Drupal

Before I get slammed with anymore emails about a magic real estate plugin to import MLS data into a Joomla or Drupal website let me state that they do not exists for the same technical reasons as WordPress.

Summary

In addition to all the reasons above you should rethink any attempt to locate or use a WordPress Real Estate plugin. Those REALTORS® that have pursued the magic WP Real Estate Plugin Myth have wasted a great deal of time and money in addition to most likely breaking a few compliance rules along the way.

For the REALTORS® that have managed to use one of these plugins with some success after paying the vendor’s data mapping fees, constant maintenance fees, extra server storage and extra bandwidth fail to understand they end up with only part of a system and the search functionality is the simplest part of any IDX/RETS solution for MLS. The heart of any RETS/IDX solution is the CRM for lead management and is powered by the capabilities of the system to effectively capture and manage leads.

With all the years of training and experience dealing with FSBO vs. REALTOR® services you would think this article would NOT be necessary and that I was just “Preaching to the Choir” about “do-it-your-self” professional services however, the calls and emails for the WordPress Real Estate plugin just keep coming in.

From time to time we do check out the Real Estate Webmasters forum just to see if the former Canadian porn webmaster turned Real Estate sales evangelist is slamming UltimateIDX or PREN.

Today I forgot to turn my Fire Fox DoFollow link checker off before I went to the Real Estate Webmasters forum and low an behold I noticed a Member with over 500 posts had “nofollow” tags on all of his signature links. I remember hearing something about REW Members with less than 300 posts would have the “nofollow” tag on their signatures but had no idea that was implemented or substantially raised until today.

It now appears that the figure to achieve before REW Members get any credit for posting is over 650. Please don’t take my word on this. Check it out for yourself. Now that seems like one hellofalot of work on Morgan’s website BEFORE you get any link love.

My question is what will REW raise it to the next time 1,000 posts, 1,500 posts or??? And do New REW Members know about this?

The Rest of the Story

OK I admit my curiosity kicked in and I really needed to know “the rest of the strory”, so I started checking further. Right off the bat you can see that REW places a “nofollow” tag on any text links within a post and it is obvious that Google has substantially devalued REW Blogs and any inbound links from these blogs.

So then I wanted to know what kind of link juice the Real Estate Webmasters forum generated for the “Uber Real Estate Webmaster” Members (aka “Kool Aide Drinkers”). I targeted a Members website that primarily only had REW inbounds. This REW Member joined back in 2005 and had in excess of 1,100 posts and a multitude of blog posts. The Member’s website displays a dismal PR1 for all the hard work and effort.

Conclusion

Now if the same REW Member had posted over 1,100 blog comments on 1,100 different websites, posted to his/her own Blog the same amount as he/she posted to the REW Blog the Member’s PR would be significantly higher. This is a no brainer folks!

Now you can call me bias all you want (and yes I am). But do the research yourself. Please don’t take my word for it. Regardless or whether you are a new REW Member or a Kool-Aide drinking “Uber Real Estate Webmaster” the Real Estate Webmasters forum is nothing but a huge waste of your time.

What was most shocking is that Morgan Carey even applies the “nofollow” tag to REW Clients!

Admittedly, Morgan Carey is one of the BEST self promoters I have ever come across, however his loyalty is strictly to himself and enjoys the fruit of his Members labor to glorify and promote who? Not you!

It seems as though all new Clients for the UltimateIDX™ all want to know short cuts for ranking well in the three major search engines. The simple truth is there are no short cuts. It takes many months of hard work and dedication to rank well in Google, Yahoo and MSN.

With Search Engine Optimization practices over the past decade I have seen many fads come and go however the only real constant has been good and fresh content. Without fresh content readership inevitably drops and so do rankings in the SERPs.

Over the years I have watched how many website owners will go through a lot of work and effort to manipulate the Search Engines when it would have taken less effort to keep their content current. For this there really is no excuse. Even if a website owner can not write or does not have the time to write there are many copyrighters available that do an excellent job for a reasonable price. There are also a lot of copywriters that will even maintain your blogs and keep them current.

Inbound Links

Inbound links are also very important when it comes to Search Engine Rankings. But all IBLs are not created equally. Incoming links from .edu and .gov sites are cherished but rare. It is much easier to get links from sites that are considered authoritative or “Trusted”. How can you get these links you ask? Maintain good fresh content on your website. If others consider your content to be authoritative, relative, informative or though provoking they will link to your website. This is also known as “Link Baiting”.

Link Baiting

Link Baiting is exactly what it implies. You write though provocative or controversial articles (Blog posts) that will cause other Bloggers or website owners to link to you. An extreme example would be: “Blue Widgets” vs. “Blue Widgets May Cause Cancer”. Of course the latter of the articles is much more likely to be quoted with a backlink. However, be sure to keep your articles or Blog posts accurate and well documented if you want to remain credible in the Blogosphere.

Smaller Search Engines

If you continue to generate good content the first rewards for your efforts will come from listings on smaller Search Engines like PeekYou and if you are lucky enough your site may appear in EDU Search Engines Like Bates.

Again it all depends on the quality of your content.

Summary

While there are many aspects involved in your Search Engine rankings, they all revolve around Content. Content is and will remain “King” and the key to your rankings in the SERPS.

What is Open Realty?

Open Realty is a freely available open source application for managing real estate listings among other features.  Open Realty, developed by Transparent Technologies, is likely one of the premier web applications used for turnkey real estate websites in part due to its abundant out of box features and ease of implementation. Open Realty has been used in a wide range of web sites including; automotive, pets, classifieds, boat sales, flower shops, furniture stores, used cars, and even a Actors guild. This due in part because of the very purpose Open Realty was built which is to provide a gallery of sorts for properties and the like. Open Realty is currently the only truly open source free for use application of its type with a license that permits it to be used in a commercial venture.

Open Realty Add-On Environment

Open Realty as with many open source applications does not make a bold attempt to be the jack of all trades or the end solution for all situations by loading it with exhaustive features. Because of this, the developers of open source applications may deliberately leave some features out in order to better address them in a modular or plug-in type environment. As with Open Realty, most application developers would end up building counter productive results in terms of design and efficiency if they included every possible feature one would conceivably seek. Therefore the technique or feature that these application developers use to extend their software like Joomla, WordPress, Drupal or Open Realty is through its modular system.

Plug-ins, add-ons, modules, components, etc.. are ways for applications to have an ever expanding set of features without the need for maintaining endless revisions to the core structure of an application. Once a solid foundation is laid out, expanding or adding modular features becomes the optimal method for customizing an application to work in unique ways. Open Realty does this quite effectively with its addon system. An addon basically extends the features core to Open Realty and may be miniature applications in and of themselves. Our new plugin is an addon that extends Open Realty by providing some unique menu management features without the need to modify the core structure of the application.

As with all Open Realty addons, installation is done by simply uploading the files to the openrealty/addon/ folder and navigating to the admin panel with your browser to complete the installation. Once installed menu management becomes a breeze and includes endless possibilities for the types of menus you can add to your site. Some of the features included are briefly outlined as follows;

• XHTML CSS Compliant
• Support for Suckerfish Cascading Drop Down Menus
• All built on list items or nested list items
• Search Engine Navigable
• Device compliant (iphones and so on)
• XHTML Strict Compliant “New Window” support
• Javascript, OnClick and special REL features
• Ability to Randomize Menu Items
• Drag and Drop sortable ordering
• Support for OpenCube Menus
• Easy to customize.
• Dont forget its 100% FREE!