With a little practice you could learn how to blog with SEO in mind, but that's not the real problem. The real problem seems to be "what do I blog about?" That should be the easiest part, right? To rectify this let's tackle the root of the problem, "what do I blog about?" I've included a few topics to help get you started.
Why blog?
If you blog at least once a week you'll see a positive SEO effect on your web site and blog, which in turn delivers internet leads. Once you get comfortable blogging you may find yourself doing it more often. It's like any exercise, the more you do it, the easier it gets. Think of blogging as just another marketing necessity that takes a certain amount time and effort every week. Schedule 1 hour per week so it gets done. Do you expend effort, time and money creating and sending farm mailers? Blogging is no different, it's marketing and it also takes time and effort, but little to no money, that's a bonus! Keep it simple in the beginning so you don't get overwhelmed or discouraged. Start with these suggested topics, repeat each topic the following month until you come up with your own topics. Just make sure to change the content so it's current. I'll mention a few things at the end of this post to be careful about to keep you out of trouble with the search engines.
1. WEEK 1 MARKET CONDITIONS: REPEAT THIS TOPIC THE FIRST WEEK OF THE MONTH. Market conditions are interesting subjects for buyers and sellers and if they know they can depend that your web site/blog provides a regular market update they'll get in the habit of visiting your site to get that information. This could be as simple as stating the number of active, pending and sold properties in your area. Or, you could provide "months of inventory". Simply divide the number of currently active listings in your market area by the number of pending sales in the last 30 days.
2. WEEK 2 LISTINGS: REPEAT THIS TOPIC THE SECOND WEEK OF THE MONTH. Blog about listings. This will help your blog SEO and in addition provide greater exposure for the listing. If you don't have a listing, ask another agent in your office if they would be willing to let you provide additional exposure for their listing. They should not have a problem with it as they can inform their seller, "I'm providing additional exposure for your property". No one should have a problem with that.
3. WEEK 3 LOCALISM: REPEAT THIS TOPIC THE THIRD WEEK OF THE MONTH. Blog about your town or an interesting neighborhood activity. It may be related to church, soccer, baseball, tennis, PTA, block party BBQ, you get the idea. If you can't think of anything, take a walk through the neighborhood and I guarantee you'll come up with an idea. Take digital photos of streets or other points of interest to post in your blog. The worst thing that could happen is you might actually meet the neighbors and have an opportunity to discuss real estate. Don't depend solely on one of those purchased online neighborhood websites you can link into your web site. First hand reporting will get more attention from the neighbors and the search engines (original content, search engines love it). A big PLUS; I'm a firm believer that face to face with the neighbors is one of the best ways to get business. If they know you they won't be afraid to call you with real estate related questions or when it's time to buy or sell. If you or another agent in your office has a listing, bring some flyers to handout. Leave flyers on doorsteps if appropriate. If it's Saturday during spring/summer lots of folks are working in their yard. Great opportunity to introduce yourself and hand deliver those flyers. In my old neighborhood, every Saturday morning an agent would trudge up the hill and deliver flyers to those of us working in the yard. This is how he got started in real estate and today he is a top producer.
4. WEEK 4 THE BUSINESS: REPEAT THIS TOPIC THE FOURTH WEEK OF THE MONTH. This subject is a little more difficult for some as it is open to interpretation. Think about week four as your "open discussion forum". You can talk about the real estate business in general or what's happening on a national level. What is the fed doing that might affect interest rates, home prices, or the housing market in general? There are many places where information can be found for this subject. But please, it's very important to use your own words, DO NOT PLAGIARIZE. Did you take a short trip, or go on a nice vacation, tell your readers what you did and provide photos if appropriate. Did you attend a real estate seminar, take a continuing education course, whatever you did to further your education, let your readers know? General Guidelines; Use keywords and key phrase in your rich content. Think of search engines like hungry little robots crawling around websites saying, "more data, more data, more data". Bots never get enough data and the more they get the smarter they become. Use good rich content plying your key phrases and key words. Before long your blog posts and web site pages will be listed near or at the top of the search engine's organic results. The more web pages and blog posts you have the better chance of being found by search engines. Think of it this way. If you have a web site with 10 pages and no blog you have ten chances of being found by the search engines. If you have a web site with 30 pages and your blog has hundreds of posts, you have hundreds of chances to be found and ranked. There is one caveat for keywords and key phrases usage. DO NOT OVERUSE KEYWORDS or KEYPHRASES. Do not repeat the same word or phrase more than necessary to try and fool the bots. If your content is readable by a human without being redundant it's probably OK for the bots. Write good content and gracefully slip in your keywords and phrases. Don't think you can outsmart good search bots. These bots use algorithms that most regular folks can't fathom. Try to outsmart them and you'll end up in the sandbox. The sandbox is where they will put your URL as a punishment for trying to trick them. You won't show up in the search results until you've seen the light and changed your ways. There is so much more to discuss about blogging and SEO but I try to keep my blog posts a little shorter than this.
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About the Author:
Michael Volkin is the president of Area Pro Realty, an innovative real estate franchise. If you're a real estate broker, please check out our real estate franchise opportunities at http://www.AreaProRealty.com/franchise
