News for agents

a la mode news & marketing tips — posted July 25, 2005

Quality more important than quantity when it comes to link exchanges

As you know, link popularity — the number of inbound links pointing to your XSite — is an important component to your ranking with search engines. The idea being that each time someone links to your website, that’s a vote for your site. Therefore, the more sites that link to your site, the better you’ll rank on the search engines, right?

Wrong.

The quest to increase your link popularity should not entail sending out mass e-mails asking to exchange links with anyone with a website. Nor should it ever involve exchanging links with link farms — sites created specifically to link to other sites with no content of their own. Link farms are not only considered spam by search engines, but they hinder people who are looking for good information.

Similarly, if your linking partner posts your URL a page with hundreds of unsorted or unrelated links, it won’t help you in the search engines because that website is not likely to send you much traffic.

When it comes to link exchanges, the best way to increase your ranks in the search engines is by linking with other quality, information-rich websites that don’t compete with you for business. But you must also consider the popularity of your linking partners as some linking partners could do you more harm than good with rankings.

One way find out whether a website will boost your search engine rankings is to check its Page Rank on Google. To do this, download the Google Toolbar (The bar that rests above the page portion of your web browser and allows you to do a Google search without visiting the Google website) with the advanced features. Then, type in your own web address and check your site ranking by scrolling your mouse over the PageRank icon on the toolbar. Google ranks a page from 0-10 — with a zero meaning a website has no links at all. Therefore, to improve your ranking, you should aim to link with a website that has a ranking equal or higher than yours. For more information on how Google Page Rank works, click here.

Remember, it takes time to build quality link exchanges — don’t expect your rank to improve overnight. As we’ve said before, there is no way of knowing just when a search engine spider will crawl your site. Good luck!

We're expanding management, improving services to better serve you

In addition to turning 20 this month we’re also undergoing a few changes here at a la mode. As a result of the rapid growth in the new and existing markets we serve, we’ve expanded our management team and offices. Plus, we're currently working on improving our infrastructure so we can better serve you, our customers.

Growing and evolving
This week, Founder and Former CEO, David Biggers announced the promotion of Scott Kinnaird as our new CEO. Kinnaird was most recently overseeing business development as the company’s Chief Strategy Officer. Now, while Kinnaird is running the company, Biggers will focus his efforts on the broader issues of new product, market, and strategic project development as he continues to serve as Chairman.

"When we hit the point of 250 employees and major positions in three huge markets, with no end in sight to the growth, it became clear that the roles I played as both CEO and Chairman needed to be split into tactical and strategic components," Biggers said. "With Scott in the CEO position, I can pick strategic projects and drive them from concept to maturity rapidly, without being constrained by the day-to-day managerial needs of a dynamic place like this. I get to use my entrepreneurial background as a founder to essentially operate internal startups within a superior resource pool. Simultaneously, it takes advantage of Scott’s skills in running an organization this size on a day in, day out basis."

Along with Kinnaird’s promotion, Sean Shiplet, our former EVP of Sales and Customer Support, will fill the newly created role of Chief Operating Officer. Multiple new EVP and VP positions were also created so we can evolve seamlessly into more distinct market divisions.

And while you may already be familiar with our new Orlando Training Facility, we've recently expanded our Salt Lake City development office and legal affairs office in Washington, D.C. Staffed by in-house counsel and lobbyists, the D.C. office addresses economic and policy issues of interest our customers, ranging from copyright protection of appraiser and agent data to "bubble-related" topics such as valuation processes and regulation.

Making improvements to better serve you
Of course, all of this expansion is exciting, but our focus still remains fixed on providing you superior products and customer satisfaction. We're putting more new high-speed servers into production for CertMail to better manage heavy traffic load and alleviate any problems we've had over the past few weeks. Our goal is to make your lives easier — not more complicated by system malfunctions. We intend to keep adding hardware as needed to stay ahead of the curve.

Briefly Speaking

Capture leads with your XSite's Industry Reports feature
Fifty-three percent of consumers use the Internet at some point in the home buying process, according to the National Association of REALTORS®. And they’re not just researching property listings either. Many research mortgages, neighborhoods, schools and the buying process itself.

Having engaging content on your XSite is important for getting traffic to your site, but converting traffic into leads is crucial to your business. We’ve created another way for you to use those pre-built content pages as a lead capture tool by enabling the Request Industry Info page. This feature allows you to make certain content pages available only by request from a site visitor.

Here’s how it works. First, activate the Request Industry Info feature by clicking on “Lead Capture Tools” in the My Office section of your XSite. Then, chose what content pages you want to make available as industry reports. Now, when visitors click on the Request Industry Info button on your XSite's home page, they’ll check the reports of interest and fill out their basic contact information. At that time, your XSite delivers the reports to them and the lead flows seamlessly into your Contact Manager for marketing follow up.

Not only does the Industry Reports feature helps you understand what matters most to your prospects, it reinforces your image as a true industry expert!

e-Newsletter Achieves

Not getting ranked on search engines? Here are five questions to ask yourself
7/14/05 e-Newsletter

New XSite tools can turn visitors into leads on their first visit
6/23/05 e-Newsletter

Sorting it all out: How e-mail spam filters work
6/8/05 e-Newsletter

Capturing quality leads with local search engine services
5/25/05 e-Newsletter

Contact us

Questions or comments on the newsletter? E -mail the editor at Amanda@alamode.com.

For sales inquiries, contact sales@alamode.com or call
1-800-ALAMODE.

If you have an idea, tip or feedback on any of a la mode's products, we'd love to hear from you! Please e-mail us at info@alamode.com.