Ever wish you had a fast, simple way to calculate a mortgage payment, rent amount, how much to offer on a short sale, etc? If so then I think you will enjoy the Real Estate Munk set of widget plugins designed for use with WordPress blogs. If you don’t have your own WordPress blog you are still at the right place - we can set yours up, manage the backend for you and even provide custom content for as little as $29.95 per month.

The form fields are short and sweet to avoid taking up the space used by many calculator widgets so this link will remain permanent to allow you to download updated versions and send your visitors here for instructions.

Using the Mortgage Munk (Version 1.0 is current)
Download Link (Right click and “Save As”)

In the field labeled “Loan$” input the LOAN AMOUNT (not the sales price unless they are the same)
In the field labeled “Rate” input the INTEREST RATE (blended if it is a piggyback)
In the field labeled “Ins $” input the MONTHLY INSURANCE COST (estimate if unknown)
In the field labeled “Taxes $” input the MONTHLY PROPERTY TAXES (include HOA if applicable)
In the field labeled “Term” input the YEARS of the loan (if piggyback enter the longest term)
Click the button with the “?” and the 3 fields at the bottom should be automatically filled
The “Payments” field is the number of years of the loan multiplied by 12 (months in a year)
The “Monthly$” field is the amount of each monthly principle and interest payment at the indicated interest rate

Using the RentCalc Pro (Version 1.1 is current)

RentCalc Pro is a widget designed for real estate agents, real estate investors or just anyone who wants to give their visitors the opportunity to calculate a mortgage payment including taxes and interest. Most online calculators do not allow the inclusion of taxes and insurance in their calculations. This calculator takes it farther than any other widget I am aware of and helps the real estate investor determine the minimum amount of rent needed to acheive net positive cash flow on subsequent mortgages which only allow 75% of gross rent as net rent.

Download Link (Right click and “Save As”)

THIS IS THE AUTO UPDATING VERSION - if you want the static version it will be available soon.

Instructions for use:
In the field labeled “Loan$” input the LOAN AMOUNT (not the sales price unless they are the same)
In the field labeled “Rate” input the INTEREST RATE (blended if it is a piggyback)
In the field labeled “Ins $” input the MONTHLY INSURANCE COST (estimate if unknown)
In the field labeled “Taxes $” input the MONTHLY PROPERTY TAXES (include HOA if applicable)
In the field labeled “Term” input the YEARS of the loan (if piggyback enter the longest term)
Click the button with the “?” and the 3 fields at the bottom should be automatically filled
The “Payments” field is the number of years of the loan multiplied by 12 (months in a year)
The “Monthly$” field is the amount of each monthly principle and interest payment at the indicated interest rate
The “Rent$” field is the amount of minimum rent which should be collected to achieve enough cash flow to qualify for future real estate investment mortgages - or it is the amount a renter should reasonably expect to pay for a rental on a home they would be purchasing.

If you need custom widgets including math functions you probably can afford them. For example widgets like RentCalc Pro can be developed from scratch for as little as $199 call 866-946-0120 ext 101 to speak with Ken or email ken.cook AT icobb.com

Recently I decided to randomly do a manual check one of my Twitter connections just to see how well prepared their site is to dominate their market in their particular business. The results really are widely varying and worthy of touching in a short article.

The contact whose site I checked happens to be a real estate agent in a nearby town. I was pleased to see on the front page a link to an SEO consulting firm meaning this person cares about SEO and probably SERP. Taking a quick look at the page as it is presented in the browser I already smelled a problem when I saw what obviously had to be well over a hundred links and none of them had title attributes. There is disagreement between SEO consultants about the effect this has on a search spider but there is no disagreement that it causes obfuscation of purpose to the human visitor.

Next I noticed the link menu carved beautifully out of Flash. Very attractive, neat and tucked there in a vertical menu bar but slow to load and no spider juice. Even though the site has a site map - very good to have - any spider hitting the default (index) page will not jump to the site map automatically and will not follow the embedded Flash links. This makes the menu useless for SEO purposes. Propertly coded flash (not the type used by Dreamweaver or Firestarter for example) that has been hand coded with HTML heavy and link specific text can overcome this problem. The issue is, take this however you want, most webmasters are not really webmasters - they are users of technology and not masters of technology.

It would be easy to go on about this particular site with things like improper schema tag, no robots tag and bad use of image title/alt tags but I will stop short to say - the guy who owns this site is probably a fantastic guy but he didn’t get what he paid for in SEO and SERP. The fact that he proudly displays the banner from the SEO company tells me he is very concerned about search engine optimization and more importantly placement - but the fact that there are a half dozen blatant omissions or errors on the index page alone tells me there is a problem: Another SEO “expert” who isn’t.

The moral of this story is to study SEO and SERP. Understand what needs to be done even if you don’t do it yourself. SEO is not that difficult and not that time consuming but doing it right comes from plenty of study, observation and practice. Nobody associated with iCobb has less than seven (7) years of education, training and practical application.

Call me personally, Ken Cook directly at 678-946-0101 and see - I have 14 years of web coding and programming experience - predating all search engines. My costs are not prohibitive for anyone - For example I would provide a list of changes needed for this particular page for $40 and do the changes myself for $99 - it could improve their ranking dramatically as they are not even listed on Yahoo! or MSN Live.

SEO tools are great to have and powerful to use. They do help develop better SEO skills and even teach many people to have a deeper understanding of the science behind search engine technology. For one reason or many there are people who want to achieve better search engine ranking but either do not have the time nor the understanding to do anything with even the simplest of SEO tools.

Never fear! Anusha and Ken are here - and we will do more than just a standard SEO/SERP automated valuation for you for free. No obligation. Okay, we hope you hire us but if you don’t just don’t hire someone else, k?

All we need from you is either an email with a link to your site, your thought on your keywords and a short 2 or three paragraph statement on what you do and what you want your readers to be looking for when they find you. For example: “real estate sales” is not going to cut the mustard unless you have a really fat bank account. However, “real estate sales habersham community knoxville tennessee” just may be workable. You can email me at ken.cook AT icobb.com or just pick up the phone and call me. I don’t grunt and I have a gentle, southern accent. I think.

Part of what I will do includes creating a reverse metric of some of your competitors or just other sites that come up in the SERP ahead of you. Then I look at your site and use that reverse metric to pinpoint holes in your content, links, titling, etc. Once I have completed the evaluation - sometime within a few hours usually - I will send you a proposal ranging in cost from $49 and up depending on how broad your audience and services range. You can say, “Thank you I will keep this in mind” and I will not be offended one bit. Thanfully I have two jobs that don’t pay very well! Funny, they both used to pay fantastically well - and they will again soon!

Either Anusha or I will examine your site and propose a range of services within just a few hours. It won’t cost you a penny except the time it takes to email me ken.cook AT icobb.com or call me at 678-946-0101

Never link to craigslist. Seriously, if you want to link to craigslist link to this article. Why? Because they us the rel=”nofollow” tag in external links. For example if you post on craigslist and place a link the search engines will ignore your link. So when we link to craigslist - and others I will name and hopefully you will add - we also use the rel=”nofollow” attribute to our <a rel=”nofollow” href=”http://sorelosers.com”> tag.

But why?

Simple. We blog, post and massage our content to develop the highest search engine ranking and placement possible. Craigslist, in this venture, is the enemy. You don’t get SERP juice if you don’t have the link. But big sites like craigslist, now owned by eBay by the way, don’t give a rip about giving you juice. They think it is a way to reduce listing spam. They are right, but there are also other ways like limiting the number of posts per account, disallowing similar content or even charging at least a dime for placing an advertisement.

Here are some other sites that use rel=”nofollow”:

Wikipedia
Twitter
StumbleUpon
craigslist

The fact that Twitter does so is a real joke but here is the absolute evidence:
don’t forget to send your nomination for “Tweet of the Day” by retweeting to @<a href=”/thekencook”>thekencook</a> <a href=”http://twitterbits.com/?cat=10″ rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank”>http://twitterbits.com/?cat=10</a>

If you are a user of WordPress you can download and install the No-Follow Reciprocation plugin from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nofollow-reciprocity/ and it will automatically add the nofollow attribute to links in posts and comments which link to sites which do the same. Other external link tags are uneffected so your regular users and favorites will garner some SERP juice from your site.

Twitter uses nofollow. What a freaking joke.

Please excuse me if this short article gets a little technical but I believe it is important to emphasize the difference between someone who calls herself an SEO SERP expert and someone who actually is an SEO SERP expert. Also excuse the cut if you belong to the first group but here is a chance for you to learn. SEO is Search Engine Optimization and SERP is Search Engine Return Pages and we prefer to say the much more understandable Search Engine Ranking and Placement.

The average SEO consultant knows that key words are important to SERP and they are correct. They may even know that html document (web page) titles are important. Most novice or casual web users are easily amused by an SEO consultant showing them the page source and pointing out the meta-tags. And, indeed, these are important to most major search engines. The really good SEO consultant will even know about link titles, image descriptions and the importance of like content cross linking.

This is where the line is usually drawn between good SEO consultation and scientific Search Engine Optimization techniques. In the next couple of paragraphs I will try to give examples that are easy to follow while being accurate in the description of how eigenspace is examined and used to leverage the search engines’ heuristic algorithms to maximize Search Engine Ranking and Placement. I know, don’t worry, this is just a demonstration and I don’t expect you to fully understand. I don’t even expect you to continue reading - but you can look at the pictures

Eigenspace is a mathematical term used to describe the 3 dimensional area created between the points of a series of eigenvectors. Right, okay let’s put that in English: Stand in a point and throw two stones - one facing one direction and the other facing another direction. Now throw one up and record the highest point. This is a very VERY simple explanation of eigenspace but it is, none-the-less, an example. The eigenspace is all of the space between the lines and curves created by the arcs and distance the stones traveled. Eigenspace is the entire space with boundaries defined by the travel of the stones.

THE STONES ARE YOUR KEY WORDS - sort of. Because heuristic algorithms are used to compare the key words within the eigenspace defined by the cyberspace within your realm. Then there are variant data recognition and regularization and …. STOP!

Here is a whiteboard representation of a simple eigenspace created by points, vectors and arcs in a best world scenario of search engine optimization:

Okay, if you are a math student this is like 2+2 but if you aren’t it can be daunting. The above illustrates the perfect world eigenspace of an optimized search. This would be where all key words had equal value, all cross links were of the same weight, all searches were equal - this would be, for example, if “BLUE” always meant the color blue in the same shade and hue as well as in the same application (enamel paint sprayed in 80 degrees Fahrenheit at 20 percent humidity …) and so on.

The top of the point is the highest and best results. This is where you have information about the exact search terms, linked to and from the most popular sites with the most relevant information about the same terms and the searcher is exactly the person who wants exactly your information. Whew! To simplify we call this VERTICAL PENETRATION. At the very pinnacle of this highest arc is your best prospect. To them it is their very best source. The goal of your online presence is to maximize the relevancy of that point or the proximity of that point to provide you the best return on your investment of resources.

Now, look at the bottom “ring” of that eigenspace. It is shallow but wider than the pinnacle. This represents search results which less specifically want your specific information. Staying with blue paint these results are just blue, just paint, just spray, just enamel, etc. This is quite often what you get when you use Pay Per Click PPC campaigns without making the best possible use of your key words, key phrases, cross linking, and dynamically morphing eigenspace.

If you didn’t make it to this point, I understand. But I hope you at least skipped to this point to know that we understand all of these scientific principles and how to operate within these ever changing spaces. We do not sell PPC campaigns, we deliver precise content to your webmaster or make the changes on your behalf to ensure your web presence makes maximum vertical penetration into your specific market.

P.S. I don’t speak like this on the phone - call me at 678-946-0101 or email me at ken.cook AT icobb.com

Are you taking advantage of the Holiday Season to market to your client base and new prospects who would normally trash your mailings but will open a Greeting Card? How do you know who recieved and opened yours? How do you get them to allow you to follow up with additional information or even ask for you to contact them? The best online efforts, the highest search rankings and thousands of dollars invested into a PPC campaign are no good if you do not convert clicks to clients.

The answer is iLandings!

Here is the simple and quick “what it does for you”. When you send your Holiday Greetings this year you include a link to your iLandings page. The receiver of your greetings visits that page with an opportunity to win a contest sponsored by you or a prize from the iLandings prize pool. To enter the drawing they must supply at least a name and email address plus any other information you ask them to provide.

You do not need to know how to create the application, do HTML, MySQL, crontabs, validations or anything else. In fact this can be done over the telephone, fax or email because we do all of the work for you. Prices start at only $99 for three full months of service! See the site for more details or contact me.

iLandings is currently in the final stages of development and scheduled to be online on November 11, 2008. We already have several clients lined up and using the beta testing period so please contact me at your earliest convenience to ensure you are online on time.

Call Ken Cook at 678-946-0101 or email ken.cook AT icobb.com

Lately I have been interviewed by and interviewing more prospective clients who have already been in contact with SEO and SERP advisors and other services who offer higher ranking and keyword related services. My questions always include, “what keywords”, “what market areas” and “how much”?

How much is usually the easiest question for the client to ask because it is usually one of the highest concerns. You can trust me when I say I fully understand budgetary considerations in this time and I take it to heart.

What keywords is a 50/50 shot whether the client has a solid answer and usually meets a response like “well, I think Atlanta real estate.” Good answer. Good luck. You can kiss your budget goodbye. Guess what the normal response from most “SEO/SERP” consultants is? Right, AdWords from Google.

AdWords will indeed shoot your link right to the top of the page. To get to the top of the page using AdWords for the search phrase “atlanta real estate” would, as of this moment, cost:

Can you handle that? Need some help with the math? Minimum monthly cost would be $14,400 - which, if it results in generating enough sales volume would be okay. I would gladly spend $15k per month to generate $100k in revenue. Does it work that way?

With Pay Per Click (PPC) you run the very real risk of click scamming by your competitors or buy surfers who just click on your link because it looks cool. What you really need is people who really are looking for your exact services. These are never gained, in the real estate and mortgage industry, through any PPC plan.

Another thing to understand is that PPC like a college friend who hangs around as long as there is beer but quickly disappears when the beer is gone. Poorly planned and poorly executed online marketing programs can quickly drain your bank account and your hopes for acheiving a level of success on the internet strong enough to keep you going. Moreover PPC never works to its best use when you aren’t delivering the property content and proper lead capturing events on your landing pages. More to come on this.

Finally your market area is almost always neglected. In fact, more than your market area your market niche is key to developing an online marketing strategy that works for you. When I interviewed Terry Black of Super Smokers BBQ back in 2002 I uncovered 2 very important points about his product that needed to be addressed. First I asked him where he had restaurants - he said only in St. Louis. It didn’t take a genius to know we would be wasting money to try and tell people in Windhaven about the restaurant. Secondly I asked him what product he wanted to push - a six pack of sauces and a little bag of apple wood chips.

Now we’re talking. It was very easy from there to understand how to develop a marketing campaign using two distinct plans: one for the restaurant to people in driving distance and another for people in a more expanded area who may have heard of Terry’s national award winning sauces. Enter targeted marketing.

I cannot divulge how we truly create marketing directives and methods here because there are literally thousands of SEO and SERP and online marketers who need to know. Sorry! It took me years to develop my method and to make it simple to implement so you will benefit from it but you can’t read about it here. I will say I do not depend on costly PPC campaigns which only give the illusion of a successful campaign which ends the day you stop feeding it your profits.

Blogging may be an essential part of your success. I realize you may have neither the desire, time nor expertise to blog effectively. Not a problem - a post a week can help keep you in front of your target audience through SEO methods that work. I have proven it for years and still do. Call Ray Palermo at 770-575-5700 and ask him how I took his website from not even showing in a search on any engines to being number 1 on Google, Yahoo and MSN Live in under 30 days - without spending a penny on PPC.

I was recently quoted $15k per month by a competitor before he even asked keywords for my mortgage company. He assured me my link would be at the top of all three search engines for a month. Wrong! Impossible! But guess what? I am in the top 5 on all three major search engines for my important keywords without one penny going to PPC campaigns!

I am much (emphasized much) less costly than a PPC campaign and the results will last much longer.

Call me at 678-946-0101 today and I will speak with you about your needs and develop a solution tailored to your needs. I will do all the work and you will reap the benefit.

Service menu includes:

Website design and development
Website programming
Web hosting
Blog hosting
Content management (article writing)
Search engine optimization
Lead capture mechanisms
Online contact management system
Lead sharing and tracking system

For example if you are an RE broker with say 10 active agents with whom you wish to share online leans and you want the ability to track how and when those leads were touched I can develop a custom online lead management system specifically for your needs. Lead sharing can be automated or at the click of a mouse.

If you are an independent agent I can do the same thing for you but omit the lead sharing system.

If you are too busy to blog you can tell me what type of tone you want to set, what you want your subjects to be and I will create your content for you once per month, once per week or once per day. Morever I will massage the content to stress your particular keywords and attract the specific client you need and direct them to your lead harvester on your money making website.

I have been developing and optimizing websites since 1994. I have been involved in real estate investing since 1973. I have been a mortgage banker since 2001 - I understand your industry and your needs. Trust me, if I didn’t understand your needs you wouldn’t be reading my blog about SEO - you would be visiting my mortgage banking website!

Ken Cook 678-0101

Disclaimer: Google AdWords itself is not a scam. The way it is used by so many web services company to position your link at the top, for an undue and expensive season, is.

A client forwarded an email to me today from a company in Atlanta called “DoubleDome” (hi guys, I’m sure you have your Google Alerts set). Nothing against DoubleDome except this: selling search engine placement based on AdWords is a cheap trick that you can do for yourself. Either way it’s just as worthless.

AdWords places your ad in rotation for those links you see at the top and right side of Google as well as on Google “partner sites” that use AdSense, just like this one. You bid for positioning and you may, read that again - “may”, frequently come to the top of the paid ads.

The truth is, and you know this because you do it too, that most searchers who are really looking for a specific product or service know those are paid listings and they skip over those and go to the content based listings. So you are faced with a choice: pay for a ranked listing that appears only in the pay per click listings or have a seasoned developer create a content rich website which delivers your accurate and up to date information to searchers who deserve more than just an empty click.

You are a professional who knows when your competitors are selling fluff with no content. Using AdWords and Overture/Yahoo type PPC campaigns makes you the same person. Ouch.

iCobb has been producing content rich, top search results websites since before they was a Google, Yahoo or MSN. We are dedicated to delivering real, interested contents based on search engine replacement as a result of “real meat” instead of the phony, easy to acheive, temporary results you pay dearly for through PPC campaigns.

For a very recent satisfied client contact Ray Palermo at Innovacenter.com and ask how fast we took him from not even on the radar to number one on Google, Yahoo and MSN Live.

Call Ken Cook at 678-946-0101 for a no cost, no obligation consultation.

Why, yes, he certainly did. To some of you it may be worth dropping $15k per month to have the top advertised spots on Google, Yahoo and Live. If you really could do so! Go ahead, buy the top spot on all three major engines for your broadest keywords (mortgage for example) and see how fast you eat through $15k just on Google.  Let’s look at what you get for “fifteen-thousand dollars to be number one on all three major search engines”:

Average CPC: $4.17 (at a maximum CPC of $5.00)
Estimated clicks per day: 7,184 - 10,651 (at a daily budget of $53,260.00)

What? I thought I was getting number one positions on all three major search engines for $15k per month? Allright, I’m being facetious - but most of these SERP firms who call around are way off base anyway. The fact of the matter is I will never try to sell you on  using PPC advertising when we can do very well for 1/100th of the investment by proper and accurate SEO and SERP practices. But I digress.

Let’s say you really want to narrow this down to your market and let’s say your market is Dallas. So it stands to reason you want to be number one in PPC through the Google channel for “dallas mortgage”. Let’s see what that would cost you:

Average CPC: $4.41 (at a maximum CPC of $5.00)
Estimated clicks per day: 15 - 23 (at a daily budget of $120.00)

Now that’s a little more reasonable but are you going to pay a company $15k per month to spend $3600 just placing a PPC ad for you? Probably not. Even if you bid high enough to be number one on all three major engines and the cost was $3600 per engine that’s only $10,800 - so basically you are going to pay an ad broker $4200 in net just to click a few buttons?

I tell you this, for $4200 I guarantee you “above the scroll” placement on Google and top 10 placement on Live and Yahoo. If your site doesn’t make it to those positions within the 30 day period you get your money back for every engine that does not meet goal. In other words if you are in the top ten on only one of the three you get 2/3 of your investment back - no questions asked. Additionally I will do something Mr. Fifteen K won’t do: I will create for you a lead capturing system AND an online contact managment system you can operate with the click of a mouse. AND I will host your website and make sure you have no misspelled words and that your meta data, title and page names are massaged for the highest level of SERP.

But wait, not only do you get the bamboo steamer, I will do all of this for your 30 page website for only $3300. So you get a 30 page website SEO maximized for the best search engine placement, hosted on super fast D3 connected redundant servers and a guarantee of being in the top 10 on every search engine AND I will setup your customizable blog with an unlimited number of widgets and plugins. I will also register your domain name for you for 10 years, give you 100 email addresses with 20 email auto-responders. Last but not least I will touch every page in your website every day to make a change major enough to keep your web documents fresh for the search spiders. Pay 12 months in advance and save even more! $29,900 and you own my staff for a minimum of 10 hours per month, every month for 12 months.

Ken, I can’t afford $30,000 for a full year of your services but I really want to achieve maximum online results, what can you do for me? Perfect! Small businesses, independent agents and the like are my favorite and I fully understand! For an investment as little as $49.95 per month I will create your fully customizable website with a feature rich blog, much like this one, AND will provide SEO services to make sure you are found in your market niche on all three major search engines at least in the top twenty search results.

Mr. Fifteen K doesn’t even look at your website. I use my years of experience to make SURE you get results that are longer lasting and ultimately much more cost effective. Call me and I will interview you about your desired results, your budget concerns and tailor a program specifically for you.

Call me, Ken 678-946-0101

“Recently the Internet Archive, which is attempting to store archival copies of all Internet pages, announced that its Wayback Machine had 33 billion pages. 11 billion of these pages are now keyword searchable. It is also estimated that about 7 million new pages go online each day.”(1)

Seven million every day? So how in the world wide web are my little pages supposed to make an impact?

The truth is you can. You can make a very expensive global impact, you can make a nearly free global impact or you can make a highly manageable niche impact. The difference is in your hands.

Free global impacts are no accident. If you depend on your online presence to drive your business there are known and proven methods to get global attention for little to no cost. The no cost ones are your ideas put into action. For low cost, comparable to the results, iCobb can get global attention to your website(s) or specific pages within your website(s).

Getting attention is only part of the game and where most businesses waste the greatest amount of money. Once you get someone to click on your link and visit your site then what?

That’s where you have found help. iCobb will spend as much time as necessary with you to develop a complete plan of action and to implement as much of it as you need us to do in order to create the results you desire. Think it will be too expensive? Hardly - in fact we deliver results for as little as $150.

If you are technically savvy but too busy or inexperienced to drive the types of clients you need to make your website work for you we will point you in the right direction.

If you are a small, struggling business - where every dime counts - we fully understand and will tailor a suite of solutions specifically for you. Moreover we will tailor solutions that are instantly scalable to work with you.

Simply need a web presence? We have you covered there, too. Our web developers and programmers have decades of experience with clients ranging from small local shops to CNN, the NRA, Sharis Restaurants, Hunter Engineering, Loomis & Fargo and more. We have even done websites for local junior athletic teams.

There is no need too small or too large. Seriously. One of the top reasons small business owners or start up businesses don’t pick up the phone and call is because they have already spoken with someone from another company who gave a quote that was ridiculous - like the $15k per month quote I received in October. Yes, that was an OMG moment!

We will improve your online experience or your money back - guaranteed!

Ray Palermo of Innovacenter in Marietta Georgia says, “I had a good website with a nice Flash movie index page and cool music. When Ken showed me what he wanted to put up in it’s place I thought, ‘bleh - that is not what I want’. When he showed me the guarantee I bit. On September 30 if you searched for ‘east cobb office for rent’ my site didn’t show up anywhere. On October 5 I was in the top 4 on all three major engines, Google, Yahoo and Live. Total cost? $1800. Total results? I have already seen more traffic in the last 30 days than I have seen all Summer.” 770-575-5700 Innovacenter, Marietta, GA.

(1) http://21cif.imsa.edu/tutorials/micro/mmpdf/pagesonwww.pdf