Thursday, March 24, 2016 In Business, Productivity, Real Estate Websites, Social Media, Technology, WordPress

How we feel about Facebook Instant Articles

By now you’ve probably already heard about Facebook instant articles. This isn’t merely another Facebook update, it marks a shift in the use of social media and makes the consumption of content more efficient. The social media giant has been working on it’s instant article feature for months and is finally ready to launch! Facebook instant articles will not only affect the way you interact with content on your personal Facebook feed but also how your audience will interact and be exposed to the content you create and post on your Facebook business pages. The good news is that WordPress’ got your back.  Facebook partnered up with Automattic, a WordPress parent company, to create a FREE plugin that enables instant articles. Needless to say, we’re fans.

Facebook Instant Articles ClickSold Blog

So what are Facebook Instant Articles?

  • Starting April 12th Facebook has enabled the ability for publishers and business content creators to post whole articles on Facebook. This makes it easier for users to consume content without having to leave Facebook.
  • Whether it’s through your personal timeline, or business page, viewers will have the ability read full articles without being directed to an external site. Say you repost an article you found on http://mashable.com/, people will be able to read the entire article directly on you page.
  • 71% of Millennials navigate the web through mobile devices. While getting redirect might not seem so hectic on desktop, on mobile it can be more impractical. Facebook instant articles makes it easy to browser through a plethora of information all in one place.

 

How this new feature empowers Facebook… even more

  • It’s an overall win for the social media giant of course, instant articles will prolong visitor sessions. Ultimately Facebook’s goal of keeping users on their website for countless hours is not only feasible but could quite possible bring Facebook in the forefront of it’s biggest competitor, Google.

 

Facebook Instant Articles and content creators

  • The introduction of Facebook instant articles might seem a bit risky for publishers and bloggers at first glance. When users consume all content through Facebook, traffic to your website could decrease. But hey they have all the power. There is a trade-off however, if you make good use of instant articles your content will be get much more organic traction and reach on Facebook itself.
  • If you’re not blogging you should start. Get your content out there and increase your Facebook visibility.

 

Why You’re in great hands with WordPress

  • If you’re website runs on WordPress than you have an instant advantage. Facebook and WordPress’ partner Automattic have collaborated to create a free WordPress plugin that will automatically post your blogs as instant articles on Facebook.

 

With so many algorithmic modifications, it’s hard to keep up but important to embrace and accept them nonetheless. What might have been best practice yesterday could not work for you tomorrow. But we’ll do our best to keep you in the know. So set a reminder for April 12th and be one of the first to try the WordPress plugin for instant articles! We’d love to hear your thoughts on it!

 

 

Thursday, February 4, 2016 In Uncategorized

Real Estate Technology Meetup

Ubertor and ClickSold are partnering up with our good friends at RESAAS to bring back the Vancouver Real Estate Technology meet up. The evening will be filled with 6 speakers, each focused on a topic of Real Estate and technology. You can see more details about each topic below.

There will be a ton of networking, a cash bar, and catered finger foods – so if you’re free that evening, please come join us.

The speaker line up is as follows:

1. Tom Rossiter – President at RESAAS

• The power of networking

2. Darci LaRocque – Business Consultant at Darci Talks

• Why cloud email and documents are important to REALTORS

3. Tina Mak – Agent at Coldwell Banker and Board Member AREAA, CREA

• Feng shui basics

4. Chris Shannon  – Business Development Manager at Ubertor

• The Top 5 features every real estate website needs

5. Colin Burton –  Partner Channel Manager at Top Producer, Move, Inc.

• Lead generation and management

6. Denny Singh, VP, MLS & Industry Partnerships at Juwai.com

• International buyers in the Vancouver market

If you plan on attending the meetup, please register for a FREE TICKET here.

Thanks, and hope to see you there!

Saturday, January 23, 2016 In Design, Real Estate Websites, Realtors, SEO, WordPress

How To Generate More Leads From Your Website

Generate business online with a lead capturing website. More than just an online business card, your website defines your brand. Sellers want to see their property marketed on multiple platforms. Buyers want an easy way of searching for properties online. When your listings are featured on your website, search engines will pick up the address and direct traffic to your website. A beautiful website with great content will set you apart.

 

Our Websites
INTEGRATE IDX SEAMLESSLY

Our Real Estate IDX imports your listings automatically. ClickSold’s servers connect with the MLS every hour to import listings. You can design custom neighbourhood searches that are optimized for Search Engines to generate traffic to your website.

 

We Have
BUILT IN SEO

ClickSold has intuitive Search Engine Optimization features that will help your website rank higher in Google Searches. SEO is essential to bringing your website to page one. I can help you better understand the basics of page titles, meta tags, and descriptions.

 

We Offer
FREE SUPPORT & TRAINING

We’re industry leaders in customer support satisfaction. Our team in Vancouver, BC is here to help guide you. We’re online 16 hours a day and 7 days a week. If you’re looking to reach one of our representatives, contact us today.

 

 

Responsive design that works on any device

Mobile Real Estate searches have increased by 40% since 2012. Our websites have a location mapping feature so that users can find their location and view listings in the area. All of our custom design transitions flawlessly on iPad and mobile devices. We can hide sections that are less relevant and highlight whats important for quick browsing.

WordPress is trusted by millions worldwide

WordPress is one of the most powerful and graphically stunning content management platforms. Its fast to learn, and easy to use. Our support team will teach you and your associates how to use your website. Once your website is up and running, you can add new pages or use the in-page editor to change existing content.

Unlimited colors, layouts & styles

Your options are endless when it comes to the look and feel of your website. We are experienced in custom features and our programmers can build to your specification. After your site is live, you can change the colours and headings in your theme settings. Visual Composer will change the content when you’re looking at the page.

 

See it from another view
OUR CUSTOM WEBSITES ARE FULLY RESPONSIVE

From simple designs to full customization, we build powerful and elegant Real Estate websites for agents, teams, and offices around the world. Responsive design means your site provides all functionality in a sleek design that adapts to any device or screen size. We’re committed to providing our clients with new features and enhancements to engage site visitors and convert them to leads. Check out our portfolio of custom WordPress website design.

Friday, October 23, 2015 In Real Estate Websites, Technology, Templates, Upgrades, WordPress

New WordPress Website Theme – Introducing Anon

Anon-Showcase1

 

For a long time now, we have been wanting to create a product that would not only render top quality websites for our clients, but also have the capacity to do so without excessive third-party involvement. We want our clients to feel empowered and capable of running their own Real Estate website on a site that is both stylish and user friendly.  How were we going to do this? We summoned all our resources, put on our sweatpants, ordered copious amounts of takeout and sat down behind our monitors (as tech nerds tend to do) and worked on bringing you this brand new, state of the art WordPress template for Real Estate professionals – Anon.

 

Anon-Showcase

How is this template different you ask?

1. It’s made up of a parent template Anon  and 4 child templates:

  • Brio
  • Calm
  • Diverse
  • Exquisite

2. Both the parent template and all child templates are customizable, allowing for personal branding. In fact, we highly encourage getting creative!

3. It’s responsive! Seamlessly adjusts to the size of any device it’s being viewed on. That includes desktop, laptop, iPad and mobile. There is also a mobile version of the website that has location-based listing mapping technology. Your clients can visit your website wherever they are and view listings in the area.

 

Anon-Showcase-iphone

 

4. The content editor is embedded directly onto the site which facilitates the editing process and allows you to view changes as you make them.

5. The template includes an array of plug-ins and features that have been thoughtfully placed for optimum use. This includes an end-to-end rotating banner with full-screen images and an integrated search bar. We recommend using high resolution stock photos to add visual impact value to your site. Here are some helpful resources:

 

Key Features:

  1. Agent or team image section with introduction. Do you have a recent team photo or headshot? Introduce yourself here and link it to the about me page.Screenshot 2015-10-23 16.46.31
  2. Neatly laid out call-to-action buttons. How do you want your visitors to interact with your content? Direct them to lead capturing forms or custom pages by adding links.Screenshot 2015-10-23 16.46.54
  3. Featured Listings widget, allows you hand pick listings you want to showcase on your homepage and encourage your clients to navigate through all the listings on your site.Screenshot 2015-10-23 16.47.10
  4. Testimonials section: You’ve work hard and you earned bragging rights, flaunt what your happy clients have to say about you.

Screenshot 2015-10-23 16.47.28

We are proud to make this possible for our current and future clients. The best part? There’s more to come, this templates is the first pillar of a series of cutting edge products and services that we are working on. To find out how you can start using this template for your business today please let us know here.

Anon-Showcase-mb

Thursday, August 20, 2015 In Real Estate Websites, SEO, Social Media, Technology, Templates, Upgrades

Best Realtor® resources for your NEW ClickSold Website

So you’ve just finished setting up your first ClickSold website and wonder what else you can do with it? Here are some resources to reap the benefits of your ClickSold site.

 

Plugins

 

Contact Form 7

Have you always wanted a contact form on your site that you want potential home buyers or home sellers contact you with? Contact Form 7 is a fully customizable contact form plug-in that allows just that! Best paired up with the Configure SMTP plug-in to configure your SMTP settings or send through Gmail.

WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache is a static caching plug-in that generates HTML. This helps your site load faster as it stores a light memory in your browser. After an HTML file is generated on your ClickSold site the webserver will override the HTML file rather than processing the heavier and bandwidth costing WordPress PHP Scripts.

Visual Composer

 
This is probably our favorite plug-in yet, If you’re a visual person who has to edit some content on your ClickSold site, this plug-in enables you to edit your content in place.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is the most complete WordPress Search Engine Optimization plugin that exists today for WordPress.org users. It incorporates everything from a Google search preview and in-page analysis that helps you optimize your pages content, images titles, meta descriptions and submit XML sitemaps. It helps you to write better content with the built-in content analysis function, and easily optimize your site’s titles and descriptions for Google.

 

Themes

 

I’m not sure how you can’t be happy with our theme selection but just in case here are some sites where you can purchase more themes.

http://themeforest.net/

https://creativemarket.com/

Wednesday, August 19, 2015 In Marketing, Real Estate Websites, Realtors, SEO, WordPress

Why WordPress is the Best Platform for Realtors

Ability to customize.
ClickSold offers ready made website themes that are plug and play – you just choose your theme and off you go. You have the option to add a custom header and change the colour scheme as you wish. However, you’re not just stuck with just the themes we offer – if you find a particular theme that you really like but just want to make one or two tweaks, you absolutely can.

If you’re the visionary type, we can help make your dream site a reality. We offer completely custom website design packages. Check out some of these awesome custom sites here:

michele-defehr tan-team

You own it. There are many website providers for Realtors that make you build on their own proprietary software platform. The problem with this is that you don’t really own your website.  You can’t take it with you.  You can’t customize it to reflect your brand.  What happens to your website if that company goes out of business? When you build your site using WordPress you own it, can upgrade it, personalize it, and take it with you.

Trusted by millions Worldwide.  WordPress is one of the most easily used blogging platforms by new users. There isn’t much coding is required-if any. It boasts an intuitive content management system that anyone can learn to use. In fact, I taught myself how to use WordPress. Even technological dinosaurs can put new content on their website regularly without hassle. WordPress is a full blown content management system that makes it easy to add or update content to your website at any time, from anywhere. Add listings, post to your blog, edit the content on a page, you’re able to do it all. You don’t need a webmaster to make your updates. Best of all, our team at ClickSold includes a complete tutorial over the phone to make sure you’re comfortable using the WordPress backend.

Search Engine Optimization. WordPress is optimized for search engines out of the box. From day 1 to ranking number 1, your website will include all of the necessary components that Google and other search engines need to find and index your listings and web pages. As you probably already know, getting your website indexed by search engines like Google will lead to a steady stream of leads for years to come.  If your site isn’t optimized for search engines (and most real estate websites aren’t), then you’re missing out on receiving genuine leads from interested buyers. Soon, you’ll notice that your blog starts getting more traffic, and more and more people are visiting your site.

Beat the bots. Post your listing before it hits the MLS and beat the bots to page 1, number 1. Don’t let scraper Real Estate websites steal your listing’s leads. With the help of ClickSold and WordPress, we’ll help your listing get to the top where it belongs.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013 In SEO

Title Tags : SEO Best Practices

A title tag or title element define the title of a page and is required for all HTML/XHTML Docs.

Sample:

<head>

<title>NAME</title>

</head>

A title tag is the main descriptor for your page and will appear in several different locations, including:

  1. Browser title bar and tab header

    Screenshot of the top left of a Safari window

  2. Search engine results (only the first 70 characters will show here)

    Screenshot of a Google.com result

  3. External websites (will use the page title as link)

    Screenshot of a bookmarks list

Your title tag is meant to be an accurate description of your page content and will contribute to page relevancy in search engine optimization.