I am not an SEO expert, but I can tell you what is a waste of time. Or I can let a great blog post from a fellow blogger tell you at this link.

PPC is my forte, but I'm getting a ton of questions about SEO (especially the recent Panda update).

As usual (and will likely stay usual) everyone is totally missing what Google’s Panda update was all about.

Here’s the deal: Panda was targeting entire sites, not just pages, that have a history of ranking pages that not user friendly, ugly, redundant, or all together useless. Did some good sties suffer? Yes. But mostly it was a great update from a search users standpoint.

For more on this you really need to head over to SEOmoz here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/beat-google-panda

Freedomsoft is near and I’m about to hand over to you a
virtual “treasure map” that will lead you step-by-step
to untold fortunes and possibly even fame (if you’re
into that kind of thing).  And it won’t cost you a
single dime.

The Map <- Click to Find It

Let me ask you a question …

Are you like me at all, and sometimes this world just
seems too big and confusing to deal with?  It can feel
overwhelming at times can’t it?  For me the absolute
worst thing is feeling lost.  Like I just don’t know
which way to go.  I’m not sure what it is I’m supposed
to be doing ay any given point and time.

You can probably relate to that I’m sure.  It’s pretty
much a universal phenomena from what I can tell. As
a mentor of mine once said, “the more personal a thing
seems, the more universal it probably is.”

Well, I can’t fix this problem for you in every aspect of
life, but what if I could help when it comes to the area
of financial freedom?  You’d be open to that I’m sure.

Imagine me handing you a road map right this second
that outlined exactly what to do and where to go in
regards to making huge amounts of money buying and
selling houses at the highest levels that currently exist
on earth.  Would you find that helpful at all?  Do you
want it?

I figured you would.  So here it is …

I’ll tell you what you don’t want to do as you build
your real estate empire.

- You don’t want to go at it alone.
- You don’t want to figure it out by yourself.
- You don’t want to reinvent the wheel.
- You don’t want to make unnecessary costly mistakes along the way.
- You don’t want to miss the opportunity I’m giving you right now.

Click Here To Discover The Magical Video Map

Two of the biggest real estate wholesalers in the
country have decided to give back to the universe that
has been so good to them by releasing the “map” to
their success for a select group of “seekers”.  Once the
“right” number of people download it, they will be
taking it back for good.  Never to be seen again.

You should get it now before it’s too late.

Namaste.

- Bruce

p.s.  whatever story you’ve been telling yourself about
the reasons for your lack of success are wrong.  The
secret lies deep within you.  This will help.

Click Here For Instant Access

We know more about Preston Ely’s Freedom Soft, and it looks good…

First off, Preston has released a “copy my business” report that shows how he his entire real estate business works from start finish. You can download it here. He goes into detail and “keeps it simple stupid” the whole way through.

And if you didn’t see my first review on Freedomsoft you can visit it after this post.

FREEDOM SOFT NEW FEATURES REVEALED:

Finds motivated sellers for you. I don’t know the magic behind this, but there should be a demo soon. From the super secret screent shot I saw I couldn’t tell how it was done, but bravo!

Freedom Soft Virtual Appraiser. Ya, I know, sounds crazy right? But they finally did it.

Drop dead easy lead sheets with scripts. Freedom Soft tells you exactly what to say on the phone. No more guesswork.

Offer calculator that helps you make the right offer (every rookie will need this).

Built-In Nationwide Hard Money Lender Database. How many problems does this solve??

Seems like Preston Ely, Freedom Soft, and most investors were made for each other.

FREEDOMSOFT NOW OPEN. CLICK HERE TO SEE WHAT”S INSIDE!

The air is thick with talk of revolutionary software for real estate investors being released by Preston Ely called Freedomsoft. Let dig deeper, see what brought us to this moment, and have a look around and what the software does.

“So who is it for?” Preston Ely and his VP Pete Skouras claim this if for average to experienced “Joes”. For beginners it seems to have the advantage of being streamlined and user friendly o get from marketing to deal. And for more experienced investors, the prospect of being replaced by software and still generating cash is a good idea.

The first thing that stands out to me is the entire system is web based. This means as long as you are by a computer with internet you can access the system. No installs, no updates, no CDs or DVDs to store, and best of all NO INSTRUCTION MANUAL.

Freedomsoft software also takes advantage of various APIs to communicate with other online services. Simply put, you can post your deals across the internet and social networks with one button right inside of Freedomsoft. No more endless posting to various sites, Freedomsoft can update them all for you, making marketing a cinch. It can also pull up maps and various stats for properties automatically.

According to rumor, the system will also be able to make offers for you and keep you in the loop on where deals are at so you always know whats gong on in your business from one dashboard.

If I know Preston Ely, which I do, he’s made sure to keep the interface simple and effective. He has been working on the interface and programming with Andy Proper, and that is saying a lot, so I expect the software to be elegant, smooth, and ultra user friendly.

But there is more to this story than tech and design. You see, this is a turning point for real estate investors, especially wholesalers.

In the past, and even now, although we have all the technology available to create software that truly eases the pains of running a real estate business, few have attempted…and after this launch, I doubt anyone else will try.

Freedomsoft will finally bring investors into the era of Web 2.0 and online productivity that has been missing. SUre, it’s been taught, but poorly for the better part of the last year.

So you decided to start an AdWords account, or maybe you have one that needs an overhaul, and you are committed to finding an expert to do it for you. Here’s what you need to know…

NEVER pay an ongoing premium. Although prices will vary depending on the experience of the firm or contractor you are going with and how big your project is, make sure you determine a time line for setup and getting the account viable, and then turn the contract into a low cost program that keep them in “maintain” mode.

Always ask how they build your keyword list SPECIFICALLY. You might be surprised how many so-called AdWords experts simply put your site through a machine that spits out a list of keywords based on what it “thinks” you should bid on. Many shady PPC “gurus” will simply go with this inaccurate keyword list and never expand beyond that. Make sure you giv e as much data as possible about your site, what you sell, your customer avatar, and who your competition is to your AdWords team so they can go beyond machine based keyword lists that are far more likely to convert.

“So HOW are you calculating conversion rate?” Google AdWords and Yahoo! all let you track conversions withing their PPC dashboards, but make sure you know your team is setting it up and exactly what their reports are based on. For instance, the AdWords dashboard will calculate the conversion rate by counting ALL conversions types against clicks, so sales and leads might be in represented in that number. You, of course, will want to know how each part of the funnel is converting, not just overall conversions rate. Make sure your team has results oriented, bottom line driven goals.

The first 2 weeks are romantic, but then they might try to slip it in the butt. I know, that sounds gross, but it’s true. You see, it may take 2 weeks or more for your account to get a final “look over” at which time you may go on as usual OR have all your quality scores dropped and find yourself having to pay many times your min bid. I’m not even sure there is a method to the madness at Google, but always keep a close eye on your quality score and bid requirements. Don’t be surprised if your team is trying very hard to sell you on how good the first 2 weeks numbers look only to find your budget has to be raised 3-4 fold just to keep up on month 2.

After the first month your team should know more about your competition that you do, and if they don’t you need to fire them ASAP. Real AdWords experts LIVE and BREATHE AdWords everyday. That doesn’t mean they are obsessed or spend all day on Google, it simply mean that they view everything online through this prism of advanced advertising and targeting. Simply by WORKING on your account they should be absorbing what’s going on in the PPC market for your keywords, and by the nature of that they would be seeing your competitors ads daily. They should know which ad copy they use the most, what kind of offers they have, and their URLs. If not, fire them, you’ll thank me.

“How did you come up with this ad copy?” Writing copy for PPC ads is a science more than art. Ask your team how they plan on writing the ads for your account. They SHOULD be making sure to put the keywords in the ad as much as possible and begin by testing ad copy similar to competitors in the marketplace who are consistently successful (this is why competition research is so important). Don’t let anyone wing ad copy.

Do they care about landing pages? Or do they just send traffic to your home page? This is a big one. It seems to me that anyone responsible for your advertising should know how best to serve the prospects based on medium. That is to say, an AdWords expert should know exactly what type of page to send PPC traffic to in order to convert it and understand that it might be different than traffic sent from SEO, social media, joint ventures, or any other channel or medium. If your team is not prepared to consult you on landing pages and how best to convert the traffic then you need a new team.

If you have any questions, feedback, or additional advice simply leave a comment below.

Here is my list of the 9 deadliest online productivity killers. Enjoy…you lazy bastard.

1. StumbleUpon- You install a little button (and some toolbar action) into IE7 or Firefox. Upon sign up you check off some topics that interest you. Now the StumbleUpon button has an idea of what you may like. You click the button to go to random sites. It’s like channel surfing 100,000,000 sites. You have a thumbs up and thumbs down button to rate the sites you visit. The system learns and serves sites more to your liking as time goes on. It’s so addictive I almost wanted to NOT put it on the list for fear of spreading it.

2. Wikipedia-The community encyclopedia. I can get lost in that thing in minutes. The other day I started by looking up "Altered States" with William Hurt. Somehow I made it to "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" before ending up at an entry about jello shots. The whole process took about an hour.

3. Blogging-ya, ya, ya…blogging is the savior of public relations blah blah blah. Blogging equalizes the publishing playing field so everyone can have a voice. Guess what else it can do? It can drive you on a wild goose chase across Google, Wikipedia, Flickr, and more just to do "research".

4. Twitter. If I have to explain this be thankful.

5. Blackberry-Gtalk, Gmail, Browser, Games, Email, SMS in the palm of my hand.

6. Linerider-I tried this once and never returned because I knew I wouldn’t make it back if I went to far into this thing. I’m not going to explain it, just try it.

7. YouTube-Do I even have to say anything about this one?

8. Web 2.0-TechCrunch and Mashable have this odd affect on me; I have to sign up and try every friggin’ site they cover!! I don’t know why.

9. any social network

Technorati Tags: productivity fun

I found two very cool sites the other day. The first one asks people to create tension with only 2 sentences. The other one talks about how Hemingway once wrote a story with only six words ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn.") and felt that it was his best work.

Alan Moore (writer of V for Vendetta and The Killing Joke) tried the six words idea and came up with "Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time".

I found one cute quote from the 2 sentences project "He sat on the edge of the pavement. His Legs Dangling." Although whimsical it still creates tension.

Both of these are really good excerises for writers. Copywriters and marketers take note: LESS IS MORE. If I read more copywriting like this I’d probably buy more crap. So here’s the deal, I am looking for comments that use one of the two methods above. You must tell a story in 6 words or use only 2 sentences to create tension. You can submit as many different comments as you like as long as they follow the rules.

SHAMELESS REQUEST: Link to this blog post and help me get as many comments as I can on this.