Bill French's (bfrench) Blog

While we all strive to increase traffic, it makes me a bit edgey to see that your blog strategy is based solely on the idea that you want to send more people to your website.Isn't it possible that some people may want to establish a connection with you before entertaining an MLS search?Isn't it p...

Mary McKnight mentioned this idea in a comment the other day and it deserves a good debate. Her opinion is extremely biased because she sells a product that depends on adoption of specifically this strategy. I also promote a product that doesn't depend on this strategy, but it also doesn't rull o...

I hear this a lot; it's not surprising. Our inboxes are jammed, we all have a million emails to handle, and the pace of business and life is only accelerating. Where does anyone find the time to blog? This is also the most common reason cited why people don't start blogging.The reality is that wh...

The other day I heard (through the grapevine) that the Real Estate CyberStars had an ongoing debate about the value of blogging and questions arose about the very need for blogs and RSS. It's a good question...Do we need blogs and RSS?In 2002 I would have had a tough time answering this question ...

I've been very impressed with Mary McKnight's commentary on ActiveRain; she has exceptional insight and a firm understanding of why blogs and Web 2.0 are important. She also provides excellent guidance concerning search engine optimization; guidance that I find useful and accurate. If anyone aske...

I continually meet folks that assume popular search terms are the holy grail of web marketing success; they couldn't be more wrong. It's possible that in the history of mankind there's no other subject that more people are wrong about at the same time. ;-) [tongue-in-cheek of course]While it's sm...

A real estate agent recently told me that..."SEO is intended to - bottom line - generate more leads and create competitive advantage."I don't agree - bear with me.There's a sign on your building that broadcasts your business name and company logo - is it intended only to generate more leads?There...

I recently saw this message come through the WebProWorld forum... it cracked my up."From what I've been reading, this recent Google page rank update/data push from last weekend hasn't really effected many websites. For us, we saw a huge drop in traffic (about 60%) and the same drop in revenues. I...

I love data - it helps us understand how consumers behave. I've also made many references to Freakonomics - can 't stress the underlying issue of correlation versus causal variables. Here's a scenario that makes me laugh because people get it wrong so often and the bias is so obvious.The setting ...

A friend (who I won't name here) recently sent me a link to BlogBlaster - a tool that claims (among many things) to create 2 million links to your website or blogsite. One aspect is to generate better search engine results - the following claim speaks to this benefit."Blog Blaster will automatica...