Events, Happenings & Cool Stuff

Many realtors and property management companies feel they are trapped in having to advertise their property listings through 3rd party companies. People just don’t realize there are hundreds of solutions out there like Joomla.

Joomla is a free open source PHP based content management system which is available to anyone who wants to use it. These websites come with the basic coding done and you simply add on the features you want. If you have no experience at all you probably won’t be able to get one up and running to your liking but it can be good practice.

Once Joomla is downloaded and intalled on your server it takes some practice on what to do next. I like Joomla because in a couple of days you can have a fully functional website, and if you wanted to change the entire format it’s very easy to do without breaking your website.

This week’s project is a real estate and property management company in Lakeland Florida. They will have a full content rich website that the search engines will gobble up. They will also be able to post their own properties on their own website. If you’re looking for property rentals in Lakeland Florida, check them out.

Here is how it’s looking:

Rentals In Lakeland Florida

Now this isn’t your ordinary Realtor website, it is 100% search engine friendly and with the proper amount of backlinks pointing to this website I expect it to rank high on searches. It may take 60 days but in the long run they will get some great leads for a fraction of what they’re paying now. The best part is the website only costs $6.95 per month to host, and that’s your only expense!

As a trial, the tenants of Old Town Square in Lakeland Florida plan to build a strip mall blog to help promote each other. This is a great idea for all business owners, whether on not they have their own website.

Old Town Square Lakeland Florida

“The problem with most small business websites, they don’t have the content in them that a reader would link to” says Mike Annable, Co-Owner of PAWS Print & Web Solutions based out of Lakeland Florida. “Having quality links pointing to your website is hard to come by these days. This is a great way to promote your store and your website at the same time. If a strip mall of 10 stores all chipped in, they would have their own blog for $2.08 a month. This small price would include hosting for 2 years and a unique domain name. It’s a no brainer, really think about it.”  Mike’s fiancee’ Tracey adds, “For less than the price of 1 cup of coffee, we could all benefit.  If you do the math, it’s about $.07 a day, I find more than that doing the laundry!”

Search engine like Google, Yahoo and MSN love blogs with quality content. If every store posted “1″ blog entry every 10 days, you would end up with a powerful blog as it would be updated daily. The Search Engines Love Fresh Content, and this is the best way to get out there.

Many people are intimidated by anything technical, but blogging is very easy. Each shop owner would have their own username and password where they would log on and easily publish their own stories and photographs.

The following businesses operate out of the Old Town Square (with links to their website):

• Nichols Insurance Group
• Family Medical Center
• Bob Hogue School Of real Estate
• Superior Property Management and Sales
• Porter GPS
• Primerica
• Salon Allure
• Mission Health Massage Therapy

Mike Annable can be reached direct at 863-812-6411.