This week, I spoke with two different AHF agents who had drastically different experiences with something we did system-wide, and I can't help but share...

Last week - when a Forbes article came out announcing Denver as the city with the best housing deals in the nation, we sent a quick note and link to every prospect in our system.  With the exception of the prospect's name being inserted, each email sent was identical and went out on the respective agent's behalf to their respective list of prospects. The funny thing is that one agent said he hardly got any response at all, and the other agent called me to say it was the best response rate he had ever seen for a "blanket mailing" (and they were all very positive responses with two of those responses resulting in an appointment being set!)

Why in the world was there such a difference in response rates?  That prompted more digging...

• Now keep in mind that the two agents I spoke with each have a list of between 1300 and 1500+ prospects in their database who have at some point in time expressed an interest in searching for a home.
  
• Both agents have been using our real estate prospecting system for about the same number of years, and have built their list of prospects at about the same pace.
  
• Both agents were within 10% of each other in terms of the median home price that their lead list is searching for...
• Neither of the two agents have a website, and rely predominantly on our system for their marketing/prospecting.
• The biggest difference I found was that the two agents lived in slightly different areas, and therefore served different cities, but that couldn't have been it... Afterall -- they're both in the greater Denver metro area.

Then I found it:

• The first agent mostly relied on auto-emails, and drip email followup to maintain his relationship with his prospects.  He was quick to respond to his prospects when they had questions, and demonstrated exemplary knowledge of the area whenever possible.  
• The second agent used all of the same auto-generated marketing tools our system provides, but in addition:
  
  • He made a point of writing a personalized email to each and every one of his new leads that didn't give a phone number. 
    
  • If he found them on Google, he'd comment about it, and he'd follow them on Facebook or Twitter whenever possible. 
    
  • When they gave a phone number, he personally emailed them, and called them within an average of a few hours of them signing up. 
    
  • I could tell from his contact log notes that he was going out of his way to get to know his prospects as people. In fact, a lot of the conversations that appear to have gone on had nothing to do with real estate!
  • Instead of number of bedrooms & bathrooms a prospect is looking for, I saw notations of how many kids and kids' names. (In one case, I saw the name of a family pet!)
    
  • I saw birthdates and anniversary dates entered in customer profiles.
  • I even saw annotations about whether they're golfers, coin collectors, or outdoor enthusiasts...
  • The only thing I saw that this agent had been doing that actually cost any money was sending thank-you notes to customers who gave an address via snail mail.
  • Needless to say - the other stark difference between the two agents is actual production. Can you guess who is the bigger producer (by a ratio of nearly 4 to 1?)

They might not admit it, but your prospect's favorite subject is themself.  Whether your prospect list is 15 people, or 2000 people, no level of automation is a substitute for a good old-fashioned conversation. What can you do to engage your prospects in conversation and find out about one of their passions today?

Put yourself in a buyer's shoes: You're moving to a new area, and you've signed up with a half a dozen Realtor® property update services.  All of those Realtors send you about the same list of properties, and all of those Realtors appear to be reasonably knowledgeable about the market.  How are you going to choose which Realtor to work with?  When all Realtors send the same properties, and most of them appear to have the same level of competence, a very scientific process must ensue: Eenie, meenie, minie mo...  Unfortunately, that's how many buyers choose their Realtor.

15 years ago, before the days of IDX I used to copy and paste MLS information into an email (and snail-mail that same info to those that didn't have email), and getting new clients was like shooting fish in a barrel.  These days, just about every Realtor out there has a property-update feature on their website -- not to mention sites like Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia, and buyers can get whatever information they need.  When nothing else differentiates you as a Realtor, you're left to the odds of "My mommy told me to pick the very best one, and you are not it" - 9 out of 10 times.

"No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care." This is why building actual relationships with your prospects (and showing that you care about them as a person) is so extremely important if you want to get their business.  In fact, when it comes to getting them to choose you over your dozens of competitors, it's probably more important than actual knowledge of your marketplace.  One of the most powerful things we enable our agents to do is talk to their prospects about things other than real estate, and one great way to do that is to keep track of who is moving from where.

Let's say you have a large database of prospects, and you happen to know what states those prospects are moving from.  When you see on the news that a category 4 or 5 hurricane is going to hit Louisiana, why not filter for those folks and send a quick email:"Hi <customer>, I see that a category 4 hurricane is likely to hit Louisiana tomorrow. I just wanted to send you a quick note to say that you and your friends & family in Louisiana are in my thoughts and prayers."

When the time comes for those folks to actually pick up and move, who do you think they're going to buy from? One of the agents who have been spewing out tons and tons of property updates with no interaction at all, or you - who actually took time to engage in conversations that allowed you to get to know them as individuals? Not only will you stand out from the crowd because you showed you care, but you'll build valuable friendships in the process.

With our IDX real estate prospecting system, we ask all new buyer prospects where they are moving from for this exact reason. Whether you get 10 leads a month from your system or 500, try adding a "where are you moving from?" field to your inquiry form. If you take advantage of knowing that information, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised -- not only at your increase in conversion rates, but at how much more pleasurable it will be to work with the clients who will naturally gravitate to you because they like you - not because you won the "eenie meenie minie mo" contest.

I've been swamped with the recent expansion of Automated Homefinder, and speaking engagements so I haven't contributed to my blog like I should.   Reading this post from Jason made me feel compelled to re-post it to make sure no one missed it. 

Enjoy!

Last week, I had two conversations with two different Realtors about systems they should use because their current website just isn't doing it for them.  Both agents seemed to think that the grass was greener on the other side of the web, and after a bit of discussion - I suggested that they both try an experiment for a month, and then if they still wanted to get a better website, I'd help them figure out if they really need an upgrade.

The experiment: Call Leads ASAP. Yup. That's it... According to most sources, less than half of internet leads ever get followed up with, and even those that get followed up with don't get a call until more than 24 hours later.  Our company allows for our agents to get text-alerts for each/every lead they get. In fact, they can elect to get text alerts only when certain "hot" prospects sign up so that they're not distracted with leads who don't meet a certain minimum set of criteria.  Not surprisingly, there is a very high correlation between our top producers (who follow up within the first hour), and other agents who don't follow up as quickly.

Do you need a bigger/better/faster website? My answer is "absolutely not".  Whether you have a multi-million dollar CRM tool custom designed to your specs, or a canned solution that hundreds of thousands of other salespeople are using - there is only one thing you can do to exponentially increase your odds of getting a "worthless internet lead" to the closing table. That one thing is calling your prospects as soon as feasibly possible.  Heck -- You don't even have to talk about real estate! Just call, talk about whatever comes naturally, and your odds of getting their business will go up exponentially.

How to improve your conversion rate without changing websites/CRM tools: As long as your CRM tool has the capability of receiving email alerts when you get a new lead, you can convert that to a text alert on your phone so you can follow up with your hard-earned leads ASAP:

To get an instant text message as soon as a lead signs up, all you have to do is find out what your carrier's email extension is.  Once you know your "email to text" email address, all you have to do is enter that email address in your prospect alert system.  For example, if you are with Verizon and your cell phone number is (555) 555-1212, your email address is 5555551212@vtext.com Here are some of the email-to-text addresses for the major cell phone carriers:

• Verizon: 10digitnumber@vtext.com
• AT&T: 10digitnumber@txt.att.net
• T-Mobile: 10digitnumber@tmomail.net
• Virgin Mobile: 10digitnumber@vmobl.com
• Voicestream: 10digitnumber@voicestream.net
• Sprint: 10digitnumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
• Nextel: 10digitnumber@messaging.nextel.com 
• Alltel: 10digitnumber@message.alltel.com

See results by next month.  Before you go looking for a bigger/better system, make a habit of calling your leads as soon as feasibly possible and I promise you'll see a measurable difference in your close rates.  It's that simple. If you don't believe me, take a look at an early version of Automated Homefinder from about 10 years ago. It was only a one page site at the time (and had been that way for 2 years), and it was uglier than roadkill, but it worked extremely well for our sales team for one reason: Because we called our leads as soon as possible.

Of course - a very close second when it comes to increasing odds of getting a sale is having a system for semi-automated long-term followup but without the former, the latter is practically worthless.

I had a great phone call from one of the agents in our Automated Homefinder family last week.  Matt Kolb -- a Boulder real estate agent and owner of Pedal to Properties -- called to say thanks for a recent closing he had from a lead we sent him.  Although I can't take credit since it was he who actually built the relationship with the lead, and earned a fantastic commission in return.  I did a quick calculation, and determined that in this case, the $25 lead he bought from us earned him a 311,300% return on investment.  It's too bad all of them aren't that good.

We had a wonderful conversation about how although the economy is down, it's the agents who choose not to allow themselves to be victims who will look back on these times and be thankful for them.  We also talked about internet leads in general and the fact that success has very little to do with the leads themselves, but instead the systems, followup and attention we give to each of those leads that makes the biggest difference.

Yesterday, he sent a thank you note along with a copy of the check & I thought I'd share:

In addition to being excited about his recent closing, he informed me that this year is going to be his best year yet. 

Slow market? Pbbbbbtt.

Even though it wasn't my closing, I can't help but esctatic for Matt considering he only got his license about 4 years ago. He has since built a team of agents at Pedal to Properties after only 2 years in the business. Go Matt!

Matt, BTW has a very interesting business model at Pedal to Properties.  If you ever have a Boulder real estate referral (Especially in the Whittier Neighborhood), feel free to look him up.

I get into discussions with folks all the time about "paid traffic" vs. "free traffic", and my contention is that free traffic is wonderful when you can get it, but the control you get with paid traffic can far outweigh any amount of free traffic that you might get.  Much like why many people prefer the precise control of a manual transmission over automatic transmission, paid traffic can have the same benefits when you know what you're doing.

Here are 10 things you can do with Adwords, Yahoo, and MSN Pay-Per-Click marketing (PPC) that simply can't be done (or is very difficult to do) when you're at the mercy of the ever-changing organic search engine algorithms.  Apologies in advance - this list is off the top of my head and in no particular order.

1. Track which keywords convert into leads, and which don't.  In most cities, "[CITY] real estate" gets 3 to 10 times as much traffic as "[CITY] [ST] real estate" or "[CITY] [STATE] real estate", but in others, it can be the other way around.  I've identified some cities where "[CITY] real estate" only gets 20% more traffic than "[CITY] [STATE] real estate" -- but "[CITY] [STATE] real estate" converts into a lead twice as often.  While everyone else is battling it out to be on the first page of Google for "[CITY] real estate" because they assume it is the most searched for phrase, I own the #1, AND #2 spot for "[CITY] [STATE] real estate" and pull in 3 to 20 times as many leads as the other suckers optimizing their sites for the wrong phrase.
   
2. Market on other people's websites (including your competitors). Google has this wonderful thing called the Content Network that allows websites (both big and small) to advertise your site - when appropriate by using "Adsense".  I'm not talking about going and adding valuable, non-spammy comments on someone elses blog... I'm talking about flat-out advertising where you're telling visitors exactly why they might want to come visit your site.  Anytime they display your ad and someone clicks on it, they get paid a few cents, and you can end up getting traffic that simply can't be had elsewhere.  I've received very qualified leads from legal blogs, local eateries, and even competitors' websites. In some cases, those leads have cost me as little as twelve cents!
3. A/B split testing.  Wondering if you should offer a "7 deadly mistakes every seller should avoid" report or "7 tips to help sell your home fast, and for top dollar" report?  One just might get twice as many signups as the other, but unless you test them side-by-side and track which report has a higher interest from your visitors, it's going to be difficult to tell.  With Adwords, all you have to do is have Google drive half of your traffic to one offer, and the other half to the other offer and within a few days, you'll know which offer gets you more leads.  (In fact, as long as you are using their tracking code -- they'll tell you which version is better.) If you're not good at math, you can use a tool like splittester.com or Google's own "optimizer tool" that is built into adwords to make the decision for you.
4. Target two different audiences searching for the exact same term.  A person who lives in Dallas Texas searching for "Dallas real estate" can be directed to a page that caters to someone with local knowledge who might also have a home to sell and wants a free market analysis on their home.  Throw in a "buy & sell through me and I'll move you for free" type coupon, and you're likely to get a double-header.  However, someone living in California searching for "Dallas Real Estate" is most likely considering relocating & you'll be more likely to convert them into a lead if you direct them to a page that offers a free relocation package.  Send local sellers to one page directed at sellers, and send people relocating from another state to a different page that offers a free relocation package.  This can be done by using the "geotargeting" feature built into Google Adwords.
5. Get traffic from people searching for your competitors.  If "XYZ Realty" has a strong presence in your area, there will be a lot of people looking for "XYZ Realty in [CITY]".  Funny thing is that they are usually just looking for real estate information.  With the exception of a couple major franchises, there is nothing saying you can't happen to have an ad for your website displayed when someone searches for that term. It doesn't have to make any mention of their company -- just mantioning "[CITY] real estate"
    in your ad will get enough of those visitors coming to your site.  (This traffic, BTW, can be 50% to 75% less expensive than bidding on "CITY real estate.", and it usually converts into leads at a higher rate. Granted - this could be done organically, but you have to optimize your landing page for that company's name, and that can be hard to do when mentioning a company that you are not affiliated with.
6. Drive traffic to the highest converting page - not just your home page.  It's a proven fact that most websites' lowest converting page on their website is their homepage. This is because visitors are usually required to search for what they are looking for, and the more hoops your visitors have to jump through, the less leads you'll get.  However, many search engines display the homepage of your website even though there might be another page within your site that would convert a higher percentage of visitors into leads/sales.
7. Rank for hundreds of long-tail phrases instantly. Are you a hyper-local marketer?  Great. What if instead of spending hundreds of hours writing hyper-local posts, you could simply bid a nickel per click on hundreds of those phrases, and determine which of them get the highest search volume.  Then, after spending $5 or $10 on hundreds of visits (and thousands of impressions), write posts based on the phrases that get the most traffic. That way, instead of hundreds of hours writing content for phrases that might, or might not get traffic, you can focus on the phrases that will get you the most traffic possible.
8. Get exposure 5 minutes from now - even for highly competitive phrases.  Again - free traffic is great, but it can take time before the search engines find you and decide that you're "worthy" of being displayed on the first page of the SERPS for the phrases you'd like to get found for.  After you take the 10 or 15 minutes required to set up an Adwords account, you pick what keywords you want to rank for, and bid on them.  You'd be surprised -- A budget as small as $50 a month could get you a lot of leads if you're smart about what phrases you bid on.  The beauty is that you never pay for a click unless your visitors actually click on your ad.
9. Get the most bang for your buck out of classified ads/postcards. Do you canvas mail neighborhoods, or still run classified ads for your listings?  Before you spend who knows how much on such a campaign, test a headline or two via adwords.  In a matter of minutes, you could write two or three ads on adwords, and test which ad gets the highest clickthrough rate.  After spending $25 to $50 on Adwords, you might find that one ad "pulls" 3 to 5 times as often as the others. The same will likely happen if you use similar language in your newspaper ad or postcard mailing.  (This could be done via thousands of postcard mailers, multiple phone lines, and direct response tracking methods, but why bother? It's way cheaper to do via Adwords.)
10. Switch websites or overhaul your old site, and never worry about losing your hard-earned search engine traffic because Google or Yahoo don't like your new site as much and drop your site from the search terms you were ranking for before.  With Adwords, you can change the page you're driving traffic to in about 2 minutes.

If you're among the 1% to 2% of Realtors who have a knack for getting respectable volumes of organic traffic, these 10 tips might be of no use to you, but for the rest of us - Adwords can either be a great way of getting additional traffic otherwise not obtainable, or it can be a tool that can be used to increase the efficiency of your SEO efforts.

Let me know your thoughts!

PS - If you ever have a Boulder Colorado real estate referral, please look us up.

A couple weeks ago, I cited an example of how to use off-site linking strategies paired with long-tail phrases to get big (and near instant) movements of the dial in terms of better ranking on the search engines.  The example I cited was a friend - Jim Duncan in Charlottesville -- whose blog post went from #7 to #1 solely because of a link to that post from my article.  I then followed that post up with another post showing the results.  I checked again this morning, and he's still #1 for that phrase, and I'm sure it will stay there for a long time to come.

Why didn't other links I gave out see the same jump in ranks for the phrases I used to link to them?  The point here isn't to demonstrate the power of links as much as demonstrating the power of choosing the right phrases (and right pages to link to) in order to get significant movement of the needle.

• Jim's neighborhood post went from #7 to #1 in a little over a week, and not only will it very likely stay there with no further effort, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he will own the #1 and #2 spots for that neighborhood within a couple weeks. (This is called a "Double Indented listing" and because double indented listings control two of the top 3 spots, they get EVEN MORE traffic than just having a #1 ranking.) Click here to keep an eye on "Fifeville Charlottesville real estate" on Google.
• Because I used more competitive phrases for all of the other sites I linked to, I didn't see nearly as impressive of an improvement in terms of rank for those specific phrases.

Disclaimer: Is this a scientific study? Absolutely not, but it's close enough for government work. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

[Edit] Please note that all of the examples and "before" and "after" rankings are for the phrase I highlited.  ie: Teresa Boardman's rankings are for "St. Paul MN real estate agent" -- not St. Paul real estate. I chose this method because it's hard to improve upon #1, but I still wanted to send links to my friends for other phrases where they weren't ranking #1 - albeit less trafficked.[/edit]

Case Study #1: Jim Duncan -- Fifeville Charlottesville real estate - 85% improvement in rank which should yield a 10-15X improvement in traffic for that phrase.

Going from #7 to #1 will likely generate 5 to 10 times as many clicks for him for that phrase. (Granted, it's not searched for often, but:

1. Those visitors are probably 10x times more likely to buy than someone searching for "Charlottesville real estate". 
   
2. It takes little to no effort to make it to #1 for long-tail phrases, and results can be seen as early as a few hours after the link-building process begins. If someone had 10 Charlotte neighborhoods ranking #1, they'd probably get as much business as someone ranking #5 or #10 for Charlottesville real estate, and they'd likely be dealing with less "tire kickers".
   

Case Study #2: Jay Thompson - "Phoenix real estate" - 39% improvement in rank.

By no means am I trying to say that my piddly little link is the reason Jay went from #13 to #7 for "Phoenix real estate", but I'm sure it helped. Going from #13 to #7 is fantastic because it puts you on the first page, but with a phrase as competitive as "INSERT-BIG-CITY real estate", seeing improvements in ranking for that phrase is going to get exponentially harder once you're on the first page.

Case Study #3: Kristal Kraft - "Denver Colorado Real Estate Agent" - 50% improvement in rank.

Moving from #6 to #3 is fantastic, because a site in the top 3 will get a lot more traffic than anyone in #4 through #10.  Still, in terms of percentage increase in traffic from that exact phrase - it's nowhere near as good an improvement as going from #7 to #1.

Case Study #4: Teresa Boardman - "St Paul MN real estate" - 40% improvement in rank.

Same observations as Kristal's change in rank/traffic.

Case Study #5: Jason Crouch - "Austin TX Realtor" - 30% improvement in rank.

Although Jason's site bumped from #10 to #7, this won't see much of a change in visitors because sites ranking #5 through #10 tend to see about the same clickthrough rate, regardless of position.

Case Study #6: Marc Rasmussen - "Sarasota FL Realtor" - 0% change in rank.

No change in ranking. I'm guessing that this is because Marc is such a prolific linker that my piddly link didn't even make a dent, but again - this goes to demonstrate the difference in results between long tail phrases and more competitive phrases. ;-)

Case Study #7: Ines Hegdus-Garcia - "Miami Beach real estate agent" - 9% loss in rank.

Ines' example stumped me at first. Then I realized there were TWO reasons for this:

1. That the post that was being displayed was getting a LOT of "link love" from Ines' home page when I first made note of her #22 position for that phrase.  Once that post dropped off of her home page, the number of authoritative links to that post also dropped.  (This is why a lot of blogs see a quick 1st page ranking with new posts, but see that post fall off the first page all together after a few weeks.)  It'll be interesting to see how her post ranks after Google crawls this page and finds another link to her site
2. I had a typo in the link I sent her way in that initial post.  OOPS! Sorry Ines! I've corrected that now & bet she'll make it to the first page for that phrase after Google finds this page, and re-crawls the old post with the invalid link.

The moral(s) of the story:

1. I don't care how much content you write for your blog/website -- that's just a small part of the equation. The more important part is the links that point at the posts you want to get found. 6 out of 7 of my case studies were examples of that (and I bet #7 will be a good example in a week or two.)
   
2. It's not just links that are important - it's the competitiveness of the phrase, AND the actual anchor text of those links that make a real difference. (In other words, call me lazy, but I'd take 10 or 20 #1 rankings for neighborhoods in any given city over a first page ranking for that city -- anyday. )
   

Brought to you by your (inserting gratuitous link) Boulder Real Estate guy.

Happy Linking!

Last week, I wrote a post entitled "Blogging Is Like a Reality TV Show".  It had to do with the fact that you don't have to write EVERYTHING on your blog about real estate, but 10% to 20% of the time that you write about your city (or even better - neighborhoods in your city), there is a strategy you can use to rank higher on the search engines to get more traffic. BTW: It's usually well worth the extra 30 to 60 minutes of effort because by ranking in the top 3 for any given search phrase, you are 300% to 1000% more likely to get someone to click through to your website.  If you're STILL not a believer in this strategy, read my "case study" about Darryl & his brother Darryl.

At the end of the post, I cited an example using my friend Jim Duncan's blog post about "Fifeville Charlottesville real estate", and noted that he ranked 7th on Google for that phrase.  I demonstrated the fact that it takes very little effort (as in -- one link from my Active Rain blog), and let's just say I'm thankful to Active Rain that I don't have egg on my face. 

Here's a screenshot of Jim's #1 ranking a week later.  Note that he bypassed Zillow, city-data AND the city of Charlottesville itself for "Fifeville Charlottesville Real Estate".  Thanks for pulling through AR!

Again, here is the initial post on how you can do the same thing in your area.  I hope you go do it, and come back and share your success by commenting here!

Missed Deadline???

Have you ever had an occasion where you represented the buyer, and hired the best inspector possible, attended the inspection, discussed all of the details for your inspection notice, and then noticed that you missed the inspection objection deadline? Or worse -- what about the time you submitted an offer, the seller countered with an offer you KNEW your buyer would accept, but you couldn't reach your buyer before the seller got another offer and rescinded their counteroffer?

Those can be some of the most frustrating experiences ever, but go easy on yourself. You're a busy professional with a lot going on in your life.  You're bound to have those kinds of things happen every once in a while...

For that reason, we've developed a handy application you can attach to Gmail, Outlook, and even iMail that allows you to quickly back-date any email you want to have back-dated.  That way, even though you knew you missed the deadline, you can send an email that is time-stamped at an earlier date and time.  This is especially useful in the cases where the other party extends a verbal offer or message because your written (and time-stamped) message sent via email trumps their verbal message (due to the statute of frauds.)

To get full details, of this useful "get me out of a pinch" application, simply visit this link. Be sure to check it out during this free beta-testing phase.

First off, let me disclose that I am a "Traffic Guy" who had resisted blogging until last year. I resisted because I have always been able to get plenty of buyer and seller traffic, and thought that blogging wasn't worth the time investment required. In fact, I grew my Boulder real estate company to nearly 60 agents, and I generated the majority of their sales because of the traffic I was able to generate.  I figured: "With that kind of traffic - who needs to spend time blogging?" (And to be honest, I envisioned the thought of myself being "a blogger" very much like the image to the right.)

Now, you could say I'm a convert, and I'm trying to motivate the agents on my team to start blogging as a way to convert more of the prospects I'm already giving them, as well as to become less dependent on me for bringing in new business.  Some of our agents have jumped in with both feet, and some still haven't.  As I was working with the ones that have jumped in with both feet, I realized that most of them were only focusing on one aspect of blogging or the other, but none were focusing on both.

Blogging is like a reality TV show. When I say "one aspect or the other", I am referring to my belief that blogging is like a reality TV show (or any TV show for that matter) in the fact that it has two parts, and neither can survive without the other.  TV is paid for by commercials. Without commercials, or sponsorship, network television (as we currently know it) wouldn't exist.  Likewise, without good content (the show itself), commercials wouldn't get watched.

Blogging is the same thing.  Writing informative & compelling articles about the area, and sharing your thoughts about certain topics (whether real estate related or not) is the equivalent of the TV show.  Getting your readers to know and trust you by writing your innermost thoughts, and sharing fun stories is what will keep people coming back to your blog for more.  HOWEVER, it's the topics that aren't as fun to write about that will bring in the traffic in droves.  Those topics are your city and neighborhood descriptions & market reports. 

The funny thing is that most of the agents I'm working with are ONLY writing from one perspective or the other...

Approach #1: The "TV show approach".  Many Bloggers take a journalistic approach and write solely about what topics they think are important thinking "SEO be damned - I'm writing for my readers."  I applaud that approach (and agree that it should represent the majority of your writing efforts).  Afterall - it's that content that your readers (potential clients) will keep coming back for.  Unfortunately -- taking only that approach means a slow, uphill climb in terms building a loyal list of readers.  (This, BTW, is why I see so many bloggers say it takes 6 to 8 months to "get any traction" from their blogging efforts.)

Approach #2: The infomercial approach.  Other bloggers approach it from the other side of the fence, and focus solely on writing "search engine food" for what the majority of people are searching for. By that, I'm referring to people searching for "INSERT-CITY real estate" or "INSERT-NEIGHBORHOOD INSERT-CITY real estate".  The good news is that if you do it right, you will get visitors... However, just like a 30 minute infomercial -- they won't keep coming back to your blog because if you're only writing about city and neighborhood descriptions and never anything else -- they'll get pretty bored -- pretty quickly, and won't find a need to ever return to your blog.

The key is balance, and following a similar ratio to what the national TV networks follow is probably a good rule of thumb.  Since a 30 minute TV spot consists of about 24 minutes of interesting content, and 6 minutes of commercials, you could try to follow the same rules.  Dedicate about 20% of your writing to the local area, and then you can write about whatever you like for the other 80%!

When I say write about whatever you like, I mean it! 

Case Study #1:

Ines Hegdus-Garcia - a prolific Miami Beach Real Estate agent (currently ranking #22 on Google for that term) dedicates a day a week to pictures in the area (and she makes an event of it by calling it "Miamism Fridays"). Some people visit her blog just to see those pictures!  She also dedicates a lot of time talking about Mojitos.  What the heck does an alcoholic beverage have to do with real estate?!?! It doesn't matter - because she gets it...  Ines gets the fact that blogging isn't just about showing off your expertise. It's about being who YOU are, and letting those who can relate to you keep coming back for more episodes of "you".  When the time is right, they'll watch your commercials (read about neighborhood market stats and search for homes, or ask for home evaluations) so you can pay the bills too, but if you want to make sure your potential customers keep coming back for more, write 80% of your posts to entertain your readers, not educate them. (I'll show you at the end of this post a strategy you can use to get more traffic to your "boring, but traffic generating" city/neighborhood posts - despite them representing less than 20% of your blogging efforts.

Case Study #2:

Another example is Jay Thompson (AKA - The Phoenix Real Estate Guy) who currently ranks 13th for "Phoenix real estate" on Google. Jay knows the area like the back of his hand, and he writes about his opinion on the market quite often.  However, he writes about more interesting topics (that aren't written with Search Engine Optimization in mind) far more often.  I took a quick perusal through the front page of his blog, and of the 5 most recent posts.  One was written with people looking for Phoenix real estate in mind... One out of five. The other 4 posts were written about topics that have very little to do with Phoenix real estate - but all 4 were posts that kept me reading.  One has to do with service at a hotel he stayed at in Colorado Springs, another has to do with one of his favorite places to "eat, drink & be merry", another was a quick note to express his frustration with his inbox being full and the fact that emails weren't getting through to him, and the 5th topic was defining a legal term.  (Granted - that could be considered real estate related, but when I read it - it was written purely to help anyone who wants to learn about the term "Lis Pendens", and had not even the most remote scent of "local SEO enhancement" associated with it.  In other words, if he even closed his post with "if you're ever in the market for a Phoenix home for sale", he would have blown my 80/20 theory out of the water, but considering he wrote that post as a free tidbit for anyone reading his blog (regardless of where they're shopping for a home), I'll count it as "a part of the show vs. a commercial".  I bet if you visit his site at any given time, you'll find a similar ratio of 1 "keyword optimized" post for every 4 that are written purely for the benefit/enjoyment of the reader.  It's that strategy (and the fact that Jay even makes his keyword optimized posts a very interesting read) that has Jay known as one of the best real estate bloggers in the country.

Case Studies 4, 5, 6, the list goes on...

Kristal Kraft - a fellow agent ranking #6 on google for the term Denver Colorado real estate agent (who I admire despite the fact that she's a competitor), and Teresa Boardman - a St Paul MN real estate agent (#5 on Google) are two bloggers who share their passion for photography first, and real estate second.  Jason Crouch (#10 for Austin TX Realtor), and Marc Rasmussen (#7 for the term Sarasota FL Realtor) are both very open about their families in a lot of their writing.  When it comes time for a buyer or seller to choose from the dozens of Realtors they have to choose from, I bet dollars to donuts that those buyers & sellers pick their agent based on a shared passion first, and their real estate knowledge second.

Don't get me wrong - I can't turn a boring neighborhood description into poetic prose like Jay & Kristal & so many other bloggers I've had the privilege of knowing can do, but that's not necessary.  My goal is to get 10 times more visitors (who are 10 times more likely to buy) coming to my clients' real estate sites by using those "boring neighborhood description commercials" as a gateway to get more search engine traffic.  Once those visitors enter my clients' sites, if all they find is a bunch of other neighborhood descriptions used to please the search engine gods, they'll leave.  However, if they find 10% to 20% real estate information, and 80% to 90% things to do, funny stories, thought provoking discussions, and things that make you unique - you'll exponentially increase your odds of getting those readers' business.

Now how do you get 10 times as many people to find your blog?  The best way to do that is whenever you write a post about a neighborhood in your area (which, remember, should only be 10% or 20% of the time) - don't just settle for that post ranking in the top 10 or top 20 for that neighborhood... If you notice that you only ranked #8, go out and get a couple links that point directly at that neighborhood post. With the exception of highly competitive neighborhoods, you'll be surprised at how often that extra 10 to 20 minutes of effort will get you to #1 for that neighborhood.  That #1 ranking will get you 5 to 15 times as many visitors as compared to a #8 ranking, and considering the customers that find your Neighborhood post already have a better idea of what they are looking for than those who are just searching for "INSERT-CITY real estate", you'll be dealing with a far more motivated buyer.

My challenge to you is to put my theory into action and get one of your existing blog posts not in the top 10 - to rank #1 on Google. 

1. Take a look at your existing blog, and find a post you've written about a neighborhood in your area. I don't care if it's only 150 words long - just humor me. 
   
2. Now, go and search Google and make note of what position you are in when you search for "INSERT-NEIGHBORHOOD INSERT-CITY real estate".
3. Point a link or two at that exact post. If you're too bashful to ask one of your Active Rain friends to throw a link your way, and don't know where else to get links, write a general interest article about real estate, and throw it up on a free site like GoArticles.com or EzineArticles.com At the end of your article, you'll be able to insert a "resource box" - which will allow you to say something like "If you're ever in the market for INSERT-NIGHBORHOOD INSERT-CITY real estate, visit my site.  (And make "INSERT-NEIGHBORHOOD INSERT-CITY real estate" a hyperlink that points directly at your post about that neighborhood.)

**The reason I am giving this advice about a less competitive neighborhood is because you'll see almost INSTANT results, and those results will mean exponentially more visitors to that page from the search engines. The same principle applies to "CITY real estate", but it will take a bit more link-building effort to see a measurable result.  Focus on a neighborhood, and you'll likely get a boost to the #1 position (with only one or two links) within a week or two, and it will happen 7 out of 10 times.

Still hesitant?  This experiment will take you a half-hour at most, and depending on where that post currently ranks on the search engines -- the results could mean 10X more highly qualified traffic to that page.

STILL hesitant?  Now it's time to put my own advice to the test.  Just for grins - I picked out a friend Jim Duncan's post from nearly a year ago about Fifeville Charlottesville real estate.  Despite the fact that he has an EXCELLENT blog with commanding authority in his area, that post is currently only ranked #7 for what is not a very competitive phrase.  (Screenshot below.) Whaddya wanna bet that this silly little link (whose "link juice" has been diluted by including about a dozen other links on the same page), from my silly little blog will boost his post to the top 3 for the Google term "Fifeville Charlottesville real estate"? 

When is "now" a good time to start strategically building links so you can start getting more traffic to your blog?

For the record, here is a screenshot of RealCentralVA's ranking as of 3-21-09 -- before I sent a link his way: