Think you know when they will update PageRank? Then, use your crystal ball and give us a hard date you think Google will next export PageRank to the toolbar and win a 1 month long professional backlink building campaign from our professional SEO staff.
Do you have an inside track at Google? Think you know when they will update PageRank? Then, use your crystal ball and give us a hard date you think Google will next export PageRank to the toolbar and win a 1 month long professional backlink building campaign from our professional SEO staff.
What is PageRank
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual pages value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ˜important weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ˜important.
In simple terms, search engines consider each backlink a ˜vote for your site. It is a way for Google to determine the overall authority and popularity of your site. This is all you have to do to build authority for your blog. Ideally you should have about 1,000 backlinks in Google, however, be careful not to build these links too fast (100 links/week is acceptable).
Week of April 21: Real Estate Blog Training Schedule
Week of April 21: Real Estate Blog Training Schedule
LOGIN AS A PANELIST TO TALK
Tuesday 1 PM: SEO Training
Join me for a 45-minute SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Seminar. Learn how to optimize your real estate blog for better placement in Google. This seminar focuses on basic on-page and off-page optimization techniques that will help your blog place for prime short tail keywords in 90 days or less.
Webinar ID: 800645241 GoToWebinar Conference Call Service: United States Panelist: (641) 715-3399, access code 320-710-364 Attendee: (641) 715-3222, access code 304-380-428 Webinar Password: Not required
Wednesday1 PM: Blogging Training
Join me for a 45 minute real estate blog training seminar. Learn how to write focused scan-able and engaging content that both readers and search engines will come back for. This course focuses on proven SEO copywriting techniques and provides a system for writing blog posts in 30 minutes or less.
Thursday 1 PM: Backlink Building Workshop Join me for a 45-minute SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Seminar on how to build high quality backlinks. Learn just how many backlinks you need to have to be a PR 5 and what kind of quality backlinks you should spend your time building. This is a workshop where I will take you through the process of building 10-15 very high quality backlinks to your site. Be prepared to work.
Understand the differences in home buyers/sellers from a demographics and psychographics standpoint and how you can use that data to craft real estate blog posts that resonate with various generations.
OK, so you probably won't care a lick about the next couple of pieces I am writing. But my sociology and marketing muscles need flexing, so here is a resource for those of you that want to understand the differences in home buyers/sellers from a demographics and psychographics standpoint and how you can use that data to craft real estate blog posts that resonate with your market.
Have you ever considered if you would write differently if you knew your primary audience was male? Have you thought if you would take a different approach to your blog if you knew most of your readership was between the ages of 35 and 49? No? Well you should. Knowing the demographics of your primary audience is essential to sculpting content that converts visitors to leads. For example, if your primary readership is male between the ages of 25 and 34, you might want to consider writing more aggressively, injecting more humor and using more video whereas if your primary readership is female between the ages of 35 and 49, you might want to do more storytelling and pen more "how to" posts.
What are demographic profiles of real estate blog visitors?
Demographics looks at characteristics of people that include age, income, education, occupation, household size, home ownership and home value, among other factors.
Knowing your site's demographics is Marketing 101. Fortune 500 companies hire high dollar marketing firms to analyze their demographics so they focus their marketing to appeal to their most viable customers. Similarly, you should focus the content on your website to appeal to your primary readers. Luckily for you, you don't have to spend beaucoup bucks to know what your demographics are. MSN's Ad Lab can give you a ball park estimation of what the demographics are for both your prime key terms and your real estate blog.
How to use MSN's Ad Lab to determine your current demographics and your target demographics
1. What is the demographic profile of your site's visitors?
Use the Audience Intelligence Demographics Predictions tool by entering in your domain name and clicking the URL radio button, then press "Go." This will return the current estimated demographics for your real estate blog.
51% male, 49% female with 60% of traffic above the age of 34.
2. What is the demographic profile of Internet users searching for your prime key words?
Use the Audience Intelligence Demographics Predictions tool by entering in your primary keyword and clicking the Query radio button, then press "Go." This will return the current estimated demographics for your prime keyword.
EXAMPLE: Let's take the term "Miami Shores real estate" as an example: this term's demographics are:
57% female, 43% male with 60% of all traffic above the age of 34.
Resource: QuantCast (free): What are the demographics of people visiting similar sites? I love this site and highly recommend using it!
This gives you a general overview of what your traffic demographics are on your site and what the ideal demographics should be based on your primary search terms. You should see that both sets of demographics are reasonably close to one another. If you notice that the demographics are substantially different and your site is not ranking on the first page of Google for those prime terms, you might want to consider adjusting your blogging style to fit your demographics.
How to write real estate blog posts to different demographics:
Generation Y Housing Trends
Male 25-34: This demographic responds well to aggressive writing laden with off-beat humor. They may have an interest in technology enabled or green homes. They like slick copy and even slicker images/video and may want locations that feel collegiate or near urban resources.
Example of writing that targets this market: Car and Driver, ESPN, Maxim, Rolling Stone
Female 25-34: This demographic responds well to stylistic writing with rich detail. They are style conscious and may have an interest in the special details of a home like hardwood floors, new appliances and fireplaces. Images that focus heavily on unique details of homes will resonate well with this audience.
Example of writing that targets this market: Cosmopolitan, InStyle
Male 35-49: This demographic trends towards statistical data and will be interested in market reports, mortgage options and tutorial posts. This crowd does not want to waste time online but rather get what they need and get out, so write well organized copy that is easy to scan with bulleted or ordered lists and bolded headings and subheadings.
Example of writing that targets this market: Esquire, Men's Health, National Geographic, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Time Magazine
Female 35-49: This demographic has a greater interest in listing proximity to resources, school systems and the overall appropriateness of a home for family living. Neighborhood summaries will be important to this demographic.
Example of writing that targets this market: Better Homes and Gardens, Entertainment Weekly, Martha Stewart Living, Oprah Magazine, People, TV Guide, Vogue
Male 50+: Marketing to this cohort demands attention to providing more information to back up claims and to calm skeptical concerns. Boomer men prize holding on to their youth but may also plan well into the future, so showing the youthfulness of a home and/or the versatility of home will be important. Search statistics show that 48% of Baby Boomers phrase search criteria in the form of a question, so writing posts with titles phrased as questions (Will over pricing my San Mateo home get me better offers?) will improve your ability to reach this market on the Internet.
Example of writing that targets this market: The New Yorker, the Atlantic, AARP The Magazine, Reader's Digest
Female 50+: This demographic is characterized by a focus on home life and enjoying free time- whether it be retirement or weekends, so writing rich copy about listings that focuses on the home as a retreat from the world will connect well with this market. This market may also be most receptive to "how to" type posts.
*NOTE: the above characterizations of demographics are broad reaching based solely on age and do not account for income levels which can affect the overall attitude and interests of the demographic.
Week of April 14: Real Estate Blog Training Schedule
LOGIN AS A PANELIST TO TALK
Monday 1 PM: SEO Training
Join me for a 45-minute SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Seminar. Learn how to optimize your real estate blog for better placement in Google. This seminar focuses on basic on-page and off-page optimization techniques that will help your blog place for prime short tail keywords in 90 days or less.
Webinar ID: 614048179 GoToWebinar Conference Call Service: United States Panelist: (616) 883-8033, access code 282-710-506 Attendee: (616) 883-8055, access code 423-888-445 Webinar Password: Not required
Tuesday1 PM: Blogging Training
Join me for a 45 minute real estate blog training seminar. Learn how to write focused scan-able and engaging content that both readers and search engines will come back for. This course focuses on proven SEO copywriting techniques and provides a system for writing blog posts in 30 minutes or less.
Webinar ID: 610058190 GoToWebinar Conference Call Service: United States Panelist: (641) 715-3399, access code 509-966-613 Attendee: (641) 715-3222, access code 188-485-639 Webinar Password: Not required
Wednesday 1 PM: Backlink Building Workshop Join me for a 45-minute SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Seminar on how to build high quality backlinks. Learn just how many backlinks you need to have to be a PR 5 and what kind of quality backlinks you should spend your time building. This is a workshop where I will take you through the process of building 10-15 very high quality backlinks to your site. Be prepared to work.
The first month of your real estate blog's life is actually the most important. So, I thought I would put together a fail safe way to construct content that is hyper local, rich in information and will form the foundation of a successful blog.
The first month of your real estate blog's life is actually the most important. What you do during this period of time can affect the way Google will see your blog for the next year, so it is vitally important that you build hyper local, keyword rich content in a structured and cohesive way. So, the following is a step by step guide to building your first month's worth of blog content. So, I thought I would put together a fail safe way to construct content that is hyper local, rich in information and will form the foundation of a successful blog.
How to use this guide:
I basically provided 31 exact blog titles for you and where I felt my intention might be unclear- I detailed how the post should be constructed. To use this guide, you want to start posting between 3-5 times a week. Select 1 topic from the first section (About Me) on Day 1. On day 2, select one topic from the second section (Neighborhood Information) and so on, until you get back to the top About Me section again. Work your way down the list on each of the sections and by the end you will have a full blog of hyper local real estate content that WILL get you found on the search engines.
* FYI: when I type FARM AREA, that means you insert the town, city, neighborhood where you sell.
This post is a MUST READ that will give you a proven formula that uses proven SEOed copyrighting techniques to help you build a perfectly structured blog post that will get the attention of both Google and readers.
Think writing real estate blog content is like pulling teeth? Then check out this post on the 6 steps to building fail proof real esate blog content that generates leads and search traffic.
Category Recommendations:
I suggest creating the following categories if you don't already have them. These are probably the most standard and universal categories on real estate blogs and the following content will fit nicely into one or more of them.
About
Buyers
Sellers
Mortgages
Neighborhoods
List Neighborhood, Suburb, Condo Complex, etc Names as sub categories- don't get carried away- select your top 5-8 and if you have more just say "other"
Featured Homes/Listings
New Home Builders
Relocation Resources
Market Reports
I. About Content
Build the necessary About Content first since you want it show up last on your blog.
3. How to choose the best FARM AREA Realtor for your next home purchase or sale
Most consumers, especially first time home buyers don't know the first thing about how to select a Realtor, so get down and dirty in a specific how to post that details what to look for in a Realtor, why a buyer/seller needs one and what to do if they find themselves in the wrong Realtor relationship!
5. Boast posts: this is my favorite way to let you boast about your talents while couching it in an example and expert advice. As a Realtor, you have the unique ability to solve problems most people feel are overwhelming. Talk about your past experiences. People like to know that not only do you understand their problem, but that you have solved the very same problem for other clients. Example marketing helps you to establish your position as an expert and problem solver while also emotionally connecting with potential clients that share a similar problem.
The topic may vary but here are a few ideas:
a. How I helped a FARM AREA seller out of foreclosure
b. Sure fire ways to overcome a low FARM AREA appraisal
Appraisals are a part of the real estate business and every now and again an appraisal comes in that threatens to kill a deal. Talk about it. By covering a topic like this in depth you establish yourself as an expert and often can help work a buyer or seller through how to overcome a bad appraisal to salvage the deal. A post like this can be a beacon of hope to a nervous client.
c. How your FARM AREA Realtor can sweeten up a sour seller
II. Neighborhood, Subdivision, Community, Suburb Information
6. Neighborhood profiles
Profile each and every neighborhood you serve, be sure to include a photo, a brief description of the neighborhood and some general demographics like median age, income, etc. Average or median home price is also valuable. It might even be a good idea to list what types of homes can be found in this neighborhood, subdivision or suburb. These make great spider posts.
Flagship/Cornerstone content should actually make a readers life better, richer, easier, faster... Something that they search for in Google to find you by or something that directly benefits them. According to CopyBlogger, Cornerstone content is "something that is basic, essential, indispensable, and the chief foundation upon which something is constructed or developed. It's what people need to know to make use of your website and do business with you."
9. The secrets of zero down investing in FARM AREA (people love those commercials - so capitalize on them by generating traffic from people searching for zero down investing)
For Buyers
TIP: Buyers tend to only spend an average of 15 seconds on a single post before they click on your call to action to go search properties, so it is not necessary to post long, voluminous articles for them. Easy to read, scanable text like list or tutorial posts are best when targeting buyers. That said, you do want to have a few (around 5, built over time) longer ultimate guide type posts for Google to latch onto.
10. FARM AREA Home Buyer Resource Guide
You can publish this as an eBook (pdf) and create a little linkbait. Every state has different housing, taxation and mortgage regulations. By creating a very specific, step by step guide to buying and selling in your home state, you can build instant credibility and become a referenced resource.
11. How to compare two FARM AREA homes/condos to determine the best bang for your buck
12. How to buy a home in FARM AREA for $x under market value.
13. Ultimate guide to closing on your FARM AREA home in 30 days
TIP: Realtors, I know you know things that average home buyers like myself are just in the dark about... Share them. People like to think they are getting "exclusive" or "secret" information. Doesn't a secret peak your interest?
14. Secrets of painless closings for FARM AREA real estate
15. A FARM AREA Realtor's secrets to buying homes for less
16. The secrets to negotiating like a FARM AREA Realtor
17. What to do when a FARM AREA home seller refuses your offer
TIP: There wouldn't be a show called Mythbusters if people didn't like their myths busted. So, bust those myths. It makes for a fun, informative post.
18. Myth: I'll get the best deal on the FARM AREA house if I call the agent listed on the For Sale sign
For Sellers
19. FARM AREA Home Seller Resource Guide
Just create an ultimate guide that will help your fist time seller go through the process. This is an excellent place to plug yourself, tell the seller what you will be doing to market their home, what they can expect when you show the home, how to handle and open house and what to do when an offer comes in and finish it up with explaining the closing process.
20. Considering a FARM AREA short sale? What you should know before you dive in head first in the deep end
In a tough market like this, there are plenty of people facing foreclosure that could greatly benefit from a well executed short sale. Explain how a short sale works and what a seller can expect from their lender when entertaining a short sale to avoid foreclosure.
21. How to stage your FARM AREA home for sale
22. TIP: Nothing engages people more than the fear that we might lose something. So, from time to time, create a little fear when blogging to sellers. Make people feel like if they don't read this their entire buying, selling, investing future is in jeopardy. Sounds crazy but the fear of loss is a compelling reason to dig deeper into some topic. Consider that sellers spend more time on your posts than buyers, so you may want to spend more time engaging them and showing your expertise.
24. Top 10 things you might be doing that prevent your FARM AREA home from selling
25. 5 Things that will ruin you're FARM AREA closing
26. Are you preventing your FARM AREA home from selling?
27. Myth: Our new FARM AREA kitchen is a great improvement and will improve our home value
Build Mortgage and loan Information
28. What are your FARM AREA mortgage options?
This is such an easy post to put together. Just list out and profile the various mortgage options for buyers. This makes a great spider post as you can break out the various options and turn them into posts of their own later and link back to the large compendium post.
29. FARM AREA Mortgage Rates Report, Month Year
TIP: Instead of doing this yourself - Brian Brady syndicates his content and he does monthly mortgage reports and if you ask him nicely, I'll bet he'd be happy to lend you his content for a slice of your blog.
Build Real Estate Market Information and Listings
30. Blog your listings!
TIP: That's right, post your listings right in your blog. Your blog gives you the opportunity to give additional information, pictures, video, etc. about a listing and link out to other local resources. It's a good way to how sellers you are marketing their home while it can also offer buyers more info than the MLS. Be sure to turn comments off on a listing post as you certainly don't want disgruntled neighbors telling the world about the sewer problem or a jilted agent talking trash about the seller.
See how this New Hampshire Real Estate Blog handles listings.
31. FARM AREA Real Estate Market Report, Month Year TIP: Market reports are HOT. They give a bunch of info for both buyers and sellers. Provide market reports for each neighborhood by using your MLS data. Show how many homes are on the market, how many have sold, what the average home sales prices are and how long they sat on the market. This makes a great spider post and can often be used in your seller presentations to give them an accurate representation of the market so they know what to expect and how to price their home.
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Would you replace the listings in your real estate office's front window with the town's event calendar, restaurant reviews and local business profile? No. So why would you do that on your blog?
I'm going to say this up front, so there is no misunderstanding. The entire point of this post is to get you to understand that if your business is about real estate and you want to attract customers that have a real estate need you MUST write about real estate not skateboards and restaurants. Why? Because a home is not a whim purchase, it is typically a well planned decision. There are very few of us that pass by the local real estate office and say, "hey honey, I know we set out to buy a skateboard for Timmy, but let's buy a house instead, this store has pretty ones." Therefore, it is inconceivable to me that by driving people into your blog with an article about local skate parks, you will snag a home buyer. Seriously, find me one person that ever set out in the morning to buy a skateboard and came back with a house.
Your real estate blog is a store, not a newspaper.
What do I mean by this? A newspaper is something that usually gets read every day. Your real estate blog won't. Let's take our skate shop example again: if you are looking for a skateboard today, you will go down and buy one at the local skate shop. Once you have that skateboard, are you going to go visit that skate shop every day? NO. Why? Because you had a need and you filled it. When you have another need that requires you go to the skate shop, you will. Similarly, real estate visitors will only be surfing your site while they have a real estate need to fill. So, it is simply a waste of your time to cover anything that isn't real estate related.
Mary's Illustrated Guide to Real Estate Blog Traffic:
People that searched for real estate and end up on you blog are transactional visitors you can easily convert into leads with the right tools
When you chase down local real estate terms and are searchable by them, you get people who are interested in visiting a real estate site because they more than likely have a real estate related need. And last I checked, you are like the Doctor of real estate that can cure any ill with your house peddling pill. So, when someone searches for real estate and ends up at your blog :: you have the internet version of the couple that walks into your brokerage to deal with the agent on duty in put their home on the market.
People that search for skateboards and end up at your real estate blog, still want a skateboard at the end of the day, not a house.
Let's flip that coin. Let's say you are sitting in your cushy real estate office, behind your desk. The door chimes and you get up to greet the couple entering, you shake hands and ask how you can help them and they proceed to ask you where the local skate shop is because they want to buy a new skateboard for their little Timmy. Would that annoy you? Maybe you are nicer than I am (OK, no maybe involved- you probably are...) but that would annoy me. The point is- your business is not being the local business directory or restaurant reviewer or cruise ship director. Your business is real estate. You want people contacting you that have a real estate need. Not people that want a skateboard. It is a lot easier to convert someone that came to your site looking for a house than the one than came in expecting to spend $40 on a skateboard. You see, someone looking for a house is a qualified visitor to your site that you should have no problem converting into a lead, whereas it's going to one hell of a sell to get the skateboard guy to buy a house. This is what we call "bounce" traffic. Traffic that comes in on one article, possibly reads that post, but then leaves the site before reading other posts because the overall content on the site wasn't relevant to their search.
Chasing the long tail with off topic community pieces, doesn't get you any closer to generating qualified buyer and seller leads
It makes me laugh when I tour the real estate blogosphere and read post after post about where to buy the best skateboard or the bid to save the town's old oak tree or when the next PTA meeting is or where the best places to eat are, yadda yadda. It makes me belly laugh when I read other pundits or vendors touting the value of the real estate blog as a community network and how the Realtor should become a journalist covering local shindigs, cool eats and political shananigans so they can "connect with the community." Are you kidding me? How the heck is driving in blog visitors interested in skateboards, restaurants, politics and the hours of the local library going to bring ANY real estate business? Trust me when I say this, it AIN'T.
And if anyone brings up the long tail of keywords, I will slap you silly. Only losers chase the long tail. Why? Because successful bloggers know something you long tail chasers don't - if you chase the short tail (i.e. valuable keywords that are harder to rank for but have hundreds or thousands of searches per day) the long tail comes with it. It's a side effect of the short tail. And in the indominable words of The Artist Formerly or Possibly Once Again Known as Prince, "You can be the president, I'd rather be the pope/You can be the side effect, I'd rather be the dope."
If you blog about off topic community stuff, your phone will ring and you will get traffic. The problem is it won't be qualified traffic, so you will spend your time answering phone calls and emails that want to knwo when the next Red Bull Air Show is or when soes the water park open. Not exactly your best use of time.
If you think that a real estate blog will be your platform to rant and rave about local politics, favorite recipes and community event calendars? Think again. Your local newspaper website probably already does that much better than you could dream of. Your real estate blog is about, get this, REAL ESTATE. You are not a journalist! You are a Realtor. So, you need to write highly focused real estate content if you want to be found through the search engines for terms related to real estate.
You are not a journalist. You are a Realtor. You are not an event planner. You are a Realtor. You are not your town's newspaper. You are a Realtor. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Here is a simple example of why you want to be found for real estate terms:
According to KeywordDiscovery 4,669 people searched for Orlando Real Estate
By contrast only
277 people searched for Orlando Museum(s)
So, not only would being searchable by real estate terms net you more QUALIFIED traffic but it would also net you MORE traffic. Who knew?
What type of traffic do you want to your real estate blog?
You want people visiting your site that are searching for real estate or real estate related terms. These are what Joe of Sellsius calls "transactional real estate visitors." These are people looking to buy or sell real estate now (i.e. in the next 3 months). This is the kind of visitor you most need to attract because they mean business NOW.
Do you care that you have 500 people visiting your blog everyday searching for nude beaches in your town? Probably not. Wouldn't it be much better to have 500 visitors a day that have searched for condos for sale in Long Beach? If someone is searching for museums, nude beaches or the fate of your town's oldest tree, they are more than likely NOT interested in learning about real estate, not interested in searching for properties and may even be put off by the fact that they landed on a real estate site when searching for an unrelated topic. This is not to say that you should never cover community stuff, but you should put yourself on a strict blogging diet of 80% real estate related topics and no more than 20% off topic community pieces. (If you have a brand new blog- lay off the off-topic posts until Google "gets" your blog) You can also very easily work in a restaurant review in a listing post by simply stating the top 10 restaurants near this home or condo...
What makes a real estate consumer visitor unique in the world of Internet traffic?
Real estate consumers represent a very unique type of Internet visitor. They are likely to only visit and re-visit your site during the finite time that they are buying or selling a home. Why? Because the real estate consumer has a purpose. He/she is looking for one of three things to search listings, to find a realtor or to find their home value. They are NOT actively seeking your views on community politics or museums in the area or reviews of restaurants unless they somehow relate to a listing description! And just to flip that coin, when someone is looking for museums in your area, they are probably NOT looking for a real estate site. So, qualify your traffic through search by writing highly focused, hyper local real estate content.
Celebration Orlando Real Estate
Teri Isner of Celebration Orlando real estate has had her blog for over a year and had been guided to write about all manner of community events and attractions. The result? The phone rang relentlessly. The problem? She became the town's event planner. People were calling but they were calling to ask when the car show was or what hours the water park was open. Not exactly what she was hoping for. Another downside to this method of blogging was that you couldn't find her blog with two hands, a flashlight or the url in Google for the terms related to Celebration or Orlando Real Estate. Now, since she has changed her blogging strategy and now posts about real estate in Celebration and Orlando, she has begun to climb into the SERPs and currently site pretty on the second page of Google for many of her prime terms (continued attention to the hyper local real estate content strategy will net her even better results). The difference it made it in her business? The phone rings with real estate deals, her real estate lead generator sends her new clients daily.
The Hyper Local Blog Theory
Some of the most successful real estate blogs out there are what we call hyper local blogs. Meaning, they focus almost entirely on the various topics of local real estate and/or mortgages. These blogs tend to stay away from journalistic community pieces and more often than not pen longer posts somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 word plus posts at least 3 days per week. These types of blogs that focus on only local real estate and use their most valuable keywords throughout each post have a greater percentage of success than blogs that cover every local topic from things to do, local services, restaurant reviews and gossip etc.
Convert search traffic to leads
Because most new traffic coming to your blog will be through the search engines and people that find your blog by typing in real estate search terms want one thing... the ability to search for homes or find their home's value.
The content you write is the bait, your search tools and lead generators are the hook! So, if you consider that you are roping in the readers through search, you have to offer them something compelling once they get to your site. And, fact is, nobody but your mother, brother and dog care what you have to say enough to read your blog daily, so use your content to get search traffic to your site but then guide readers to your lead generator through a graphical call to action. That is what you want right? To generate leads? And not surprisingly, that is what the consumer wants too- to interact with your site and start searching for homes or find their home value.
How to write a successful real estate blog that qualifies visitors through search:
You can easily qualify your visitors and make your site more relevant to search engines by laser targeting your posts by writing about real estate instead of being the community guide for everything from nude beaches to restaurants.
1. Target a single keyword with each post.
Your most valuable keyword will always be "your farm area + real estate." Wanna test that theory? Use KeywordDiscovery and you can see search volume per day for any given keyword or term.
2. Write posts at no greater than a high school reading level.
Google actually has readability filters.
The preferred readability level is high school. So, don't bust out every polysyllabic word you know trying to impress people. Neither readers nor search engines want to be talked down to, so make sure you write in plain English. Otherwise you come off like a pompous know it all that nobody wants to work with.
For those of you new to copywriting techniques, there are trusted formulas for writing an article that is engaging, easy to scan and well suited for human and search engine visitors. The formula entails: a keyword rich title, keyword use in the post and the use of scanable formatting.
******sorry, no webinars this week, I am traveling********
FREE REAL ESTATE BLOG TRAINING
RSS Pieces Real Estate Blogs are auto SEOing, lead generating machines that can take you to the top of the search engines naturally in 4-6 months. We want to teach you how to blog successfully. So, step into our site and learn the tips, tricks and formulas successful real estate bloggers use to drive traffic to and rake in leads from their real estate blogs. Best of all, our tutorials are completely free to anyone whether you have one of our real estate blogs or some other guys.
I read it every day, "SEO doesn't matter... don't worry about SEO." Fact is, I couldn't disagree more. SEO is important. Why? Because when you rank for your prime short tail keywords, you
1. Garner more qualified traffic looking to buy or sell a home
2. Generate more real estate leads
I can categorically PROVE that SEO matters:
Let's clear the air- I don't sell SEO and nor have I ever sold SEO services to Realtors. I do, however, help Realtors SEO their sites for FREE and have helped to pull a number of Realtor sites back from Google penalties very quickly. Why? Because SEO isn't rocket science and enough people have their hands in a Realtor's pocket for me to need to sell a service you could easily and more effectively do yourself. Now, because I think SEO is important, doesn't mean I think it is the THE most important thing or that you shouldn't focus on writing on good, quality, engaging content. You need to do both. But knowing what terms to target and how to optimize your site so you can get found by those terms is critical to quickly ranking in Google.
Think SEO doesn't matter? Laurie Manny increased her real estate lead generation by 600% by hitting the number 1 spot in Google.
Case Study: When Laurie Manny jumped from the second position in Google to the first and second she went from 5 leads per day to 30. That is a 600% increase in real estate leads. Her traffic also took a flying leap forward from about 3500 visitors per day to upwards of 5000. So, clearly , the number one position in Google is more valuable than the number two position or any other position, for that matter. Therefore, you should do everything necessary to beg, borrow, steal, step over the competition to get to that coveted #1 position! Good news is, you don't have to beg, borrow or steal to step over your competition, you just need to know the basic premise of SEO. And that is: write keyword rich content, link to other posts on your site (a flat architecture is important) and build a few backlinks from other sites to yours.
See how when Laurie went to the #1 and #2 positions her traffic dramatically increased:
How did she get to #1 in Google for such a short tail keyword with such a high conversion value? She used on and off page SEO tactics. No secret sauce, no magic, just very trusted SEO techniques like a keyword rich domain, title tags and content coupled with a solid backlinking campaign on a platform designed to produce results when fed the right kind of content. The results are evident and undeniable.
Simple stuff you can do today to improve your search positioning.
1. Use keywords in title tag
2. Use keywords in heading tags
3. Use keywords throughout your posts where they make sense and sound natural
4. Build backlinks
5. Write new posts or update old posts 3-5 times per week
Can you get to #1 in Google without an SEO strategy?
Of course, but I can guarantee you it will take you a lot less time to rank if you have an SEO strategy that considers what your keywords are and how to use them effectively throughout your writing. I don't want you to become an SEO expert, but you should be educated on the subject.
Now, I always point to Laurie, but we have a large percentage of our clients that are on the first page of Google for their prime, most valuable key terms, so here are just a few:
Marc Blasi
Mariana Wagner
Ann Cummings
Ines Garcia
Heck, for my own site, I rank #4 for the very valuable and short tail term, "real estate leads."
Geez, you'd almost think we know what we are doing with SEO and lead generation. Who put the leads in my SEO? is exactly what RSS Pieces is about.
Long Beach Real Estate Blog Success Path
4 months old - Page 1 in Google
6 months old - #2 position on Page 1 in Google, generating 1-5 leads per day
1 year old - #1 and 2 position in Google, generating 30 leads per day
If SEO doesn't matter, then I challenge you to turn on the no follow no index meta tags.
Now, of course I know nobody in their right mind would do that- essentially tell Google not to index or crawl their site. I mean, Google is where you should be finding most of your new traffic from and as we have proven, you can generate some serious business from Google if you use the rigth tools.
How much traffic can you get from the various positions in Google
*2008 traffic percentages for each of the first 10 positions in Google (Data Source: SEOmoz):
Number 1 receives 42.1%
Number 2 receives 11.9%
Number 3 receives 8.5%
Number 4 receives 6.1%
Number 5 receives 4.9%
Number 6 receives 4.1%
Number 7 receives 3.4%
Number 8 receives 3.0%
Number 9 receives 2.8%
Number 10 receives 3.0%
Why do some blogs on the first page of Google not get any business?
I had this question asked in one of my webinars. This Realtor ranked on the first page of Google and said they ddn't get any business. The answer was clear when i visited the site. They were not asking for the business and therefore were not getting it! Sites without quality calls to action or effective lead generators do not guide the visitor through to the most important place for both them and you- the search for homes/lead generator, so be sure to call visitors to action and dump them into yoru lead gen.
Real Estate sites without calls to action and lead generators are guns with no bullets.
Learn how to optimize your real estate blog for better placement in Google.
LOGIN AS A PANELIST TO TALK
Monday 1 PM: SEO Training
Join me for a 45-minute SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Seminar. Learn how to optimize your real estate blog for better placement in Google. This seminar focuses on basic on-page and off-page optimization techniques that will help your blog place for prime short tail keywords in 90 days or less.
Join me for a 45 minute real estate blog training seminar. Learn how to write focused scan-able and engaging content that both readers and search engines will come back for. This course focuses on proven SEO copywriting techniques and provides a system for writing blog posts in 30 minutes or less.
Wednesday 1 PM: Backlink Building Workshop Join me for a 45-minute SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Seminar on how to build high quality backlinks. Learn just how many backlinks you need to have to be a PR 5 and what kind of quality backlinks you should spend your time building. This is a workshop where I will take you through the process of building 10-15 very high quality backlinks to your site. Be prepared to work.
On the flip side of that, a Realtor that blogs daily, Greg Neuman is generating 100+ more real estate leads per month just from just his RSS feeds.
This is the deal. I am calling out my friend, Vickie Townes. I gotta love her because RSS Pieces was born out of our desire to put together a real estate website her. That being said, Vickie IS the WORST blogger on earth (and she actually prides herself on that title!). I tell people all the time that if Vickie blogs once every 4 months, we have to show up on her doorstep with clowns and a bounce house to throw her a party. So, why am I calling out dear, sweet Vickie? It's simple, I want to show you how a few RSS feeds from her MLS keep her blog alive, thriving and generating leads against all conceivable odds.
Over the past two years, I have tried everything to shame Vickie into blogging, but, truth be told, she was already a successful Realtor when we launched her blog, so she simply does not have the time to blog. Therefore, when we developed the RSS integration code for 1ParkPlace, Vickie's site was the perfect crash test dummy. I mean she never used it! So, I threw up two RSS feeds, one for homes for sale in Cape Coral and one for condos for sale in Cape Coral and viola, 20 minutes later, Vickie had her first lead through 1ParkPlace. On the flip side of that, a Realtor that blogs daily, Greg Neuman is generating 100+ more real estate leads per month just from just his RSS feeds.
Why do we work with 1ParkPlace as our real estate lead generator?
When it came to choosing which lead generator we wanted to work with, we evaluated them on two primary factors:
1. Does the search feature offer a map based search interface and the ability to drill down into neighborhoods
2. Will it allow us to pull custom searches in RSS format so we can have automatically updated indexable content on the blog page
One system stood heads and shoulders above the rest, 1ParkPlace. It is the lead generator of champions which not only offers the features we were looking for but also offers lead incubation services like drip email campaigns. So, in our relationship with 1ParkPlace, we have jointly developed a simple and automated system for integrating RSS feeds from MLS' on blog pages. The result is: Google LOVES these pages! When I say LOVES, I mean it hearts and kisses these frequently updated, keyword rich pages. These pages account for almost 50% of all search traffic to sites that use them. And have proven to drive upwards of 150 quality leads per month for some sites.
*NOTE: if you want to put RSS feeds from 1ParkPlace on your site, you MUST have an RSS Pieces Blog-they don't work on any other blogging platform.
What does an RSS MLS feed look like on a Real Estate Blog?
Check out Greg Nueman's RSS Feeds. He set one up for every condo complex he sells in, here are a couple:
While you can format these to look better - they are really just for search engine eyes and a gateway for readers to find your blog. Notice how under every listing there is a link back to the blog owner's lead generation service. So, these pages are not just great search engine fodder but they are great conversion pages that can generate upwards of 150 leads per month.
How Well Do the RSS feeds Show Up In the SERPs?
See how well the San Diego Condo Blog indexes for the condo complexes Greg Neuman sells:
· Note: depending on the datacenter you hit, SERPs could be off by up to 2 positions.
How many searches do the rss feeds get each day?
Just check out Greg Neuman's blog's back end. This is a small sampling of searches performed that resulted in reaching his Downtown San Diego Condos site. Searches that resulted in hitting an RSS feed are hilighted in yellow. Of these 20 searches, a full 7 were for the RSS feed pages.
How many real estate leads do the feeds generate each month?
This blog generates between 1-5 leads per day. OK, OK, I will correct that statement. This is Laurie Manny's Lead Gen below and she just hit #1 and #2 in Google for Long Beach Real Estate and today alone generated 30+ leads. This is a screen capture of her site at the end of her day after she worked most of the leads. ANd to think, I was impressed with the 5 leads per day number. So, while her traffic increased by 50% today, she increased her transactions by more than 600%. Guess SEO does matter - being #1 in Google pays!
Want to learn more? Join this Webinar Wednesday at 1PM: Joe from Sellsius will be there too!
Wednesday, March 12, 2008 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EST
Join me for a 45 minute lead generation session. Learn how to structure your blog properly so you generate leads daily through your real estate blog. I will also review various lead generation systems from 1 Park Place to WolfNet.
SIMPLE EXPLAINATION OF WHY YOU NEED TO BUILD BACKLINKS: other sites that link to your site are considered"friends" of your website. A website with "friends" that have influence like a Donald Trump or an Oprah Winfrey are given greater trust by Google than sites that have Jenna Jameson or Tara Reid as friends. So, in a backlink campaign, you want to attract quality, authority sites and forget about anyone who has a lesser PageRank than your site or sits in a bad neighborhood. Basically you want your site to hang out with cool, popular and trust worthy sites rather than loser sites, i.e. sites below a PR3.
EDU backlinks are the holy grail of all backlinks. Google gives extra emphasis to these backlinks so building just a few can dramatically improve your site's performance. For example, if youa re able to build just 5 .edu backlinks, you can see a small leap in SERP within 72 hours and larger leaps over time. Now, this topic is highly debated and while Google often says it does not give extra weight to .edu sites, Matt Cutts and others have often tipped their hand at conferences alluding to the greater trust placed in .edu sites. The article below by SEOCrimson quotes Matt himself inadvertently mentioning the importance of .edu links.
JUST FOR FUN: SETH MACFARLAND GIVES HARVARD GRADUATION SPEECH AS PETER GRIFFITH OF THE FAMILY GUY
HOW TO SNIFF OUT YOUR COMPETITION's .EDU BACKLINKS WITH SEO FOR FIREFOX
To find quality backlinks from .edu sites, you can use the SEO for Firefox tool.
Download the tool and install it into your browser.
Now, go to Google and type in the key phrase you want to rank for
Under each result, you will see a bunch of new links, one of which reads Yahoo .edu links, click that
Now Yahoo will display the list of .edu results for each result.
This is a pretty easy way to identify where your competition is getting its .edu links from and where you can likely garner an .edu link as well.
For example, this Yahoo! search query represents many of the .edu results for my site (and yes, these ar REAL .edu backlinks, not the ones you can get from spammy sites posing as an .edu - you wnt to be mindful that you are not building spammy .edu links)
3D Animation Lab Home. Copyright. Contact Us. TTU Libraries Home. 3D Animation Lab ... If you have a question about any material presented at this Web site or if you ...
Yahoo! Is by far and away the best search engine for keyword and general link research. You can create simple queries to sniff out .edu links of competitor sites with the following search calls:
Alright, there are plenty of sleazy ways to build backlinks, and I feel compelled to mention this one. I want to make it clear, I do not recommend this but it is an option when all else fails. Find a job posting board on local college sites and post jobs or internships for your business. If you go this route, be sure to only do this if you have a real job posting so as not to get some poor college student's hopes up.
Join me for a 45-minute SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Seminar. Learn how to optimize your real estate blog for better placement in Google. This seminar focuses on basic on-page and off-page optimization techniques that will help your blog place for prime short tail keywords in 90 days or less.
Join me for a 45 minute real estate blog training seminar. Learn how to write focused scan-able and engaging content that both readers and search engines will come back for. This course focuses on proven SEO copywriting techniques and provides a system for writing blog posts in 30 minutes or less.
Join me for a 45 minute lead generation session. Learn how to structure your blog properly so you generate leads daily through your real estate blog. I will also review various lead generation systems from 1 Park Place to WolfNet.
Just in case you didn't make it into my devilishly devious white hat SEO trickery session, here is one of the hidden gems you can start taking advantage of today. Not ranking for your prime key terms? Target the typo. You can easily use the typos of common words to increase your search traffic by 30%.
For example, on Monday of last week, we had a training session with U-Haul corporate in Phoenix. They have been targeting their prime key term, U-Haul for some years.
U-Haul gets approximately 4,000 searches per day according to KeywordDiscovery. By simply removing the hyphen in the name, they could increase their daily searches to over 60,000. While this is an instance where targeting the typo would be more valuable than targeting the keyword, look at these numbers:
Phoenix, 117,365 searches
Pheonix 12,878 searches
Clearly, in this case, targeting the typo has a great deal of value. Let's say tat you target the typo from time to time and eventually rank #1 in Google for that term, you will see 30% of that traffic which translates to 3,867 visits per day. Not bad, huh?
1. If you use post slugs, that is the best place to include your typo target since very few people will ever read the actual url and you don't have to leave typos in your post title or pos body.
2. If you don't have post slugs, the next best place is in the post body itself. I generally don't recommend typos in the post title, but if you use auto healing urls, you could go in and change the typo later without changing the post url.
What is a Post Slug?
A word or two describing an entry, for use in permalinks (replaces the %posttitle% field therein), especially useful if titles tend to be long or they change frequently. Essentially, this a way to rewrite your post url to include more keywords.
Week of March 3: Online Training Schedule
Monday 1 PM: SEO Training
Join me for a 45-minute SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Seminar. Learn how to optimize your real estate blog for better placement in Google. This seminar focuses on basic on-page and off-page optimization techniques that will help your blog place for prime short tail keywords in 90 days or less.
Join me for a 45 minute real estate blog training seminar. Learn how to write focused scan-able and engaging content that both readers and search engines will come back for. This course focuses on proven SEO copywriting techniques and provides a system for writing blog posts in 30 minutes or less.
Wednesday 1 PM: Backlink Building Workshop Join me for a 45-minute SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Seminar on how to build high quality backlinks. Learn just how many backlinks you need to have to be a PR 5 and what kind of quality backlinks you should spend your time building. This is a workshop where I will take you through the process of building 10-15 very high quality backlinks to your site. Be prepared to work.
Whether you love Greg Swann or you love to hate Greg Swann, one thing is clear... he engages people. He knows something most people don't. Humans are emotional junkies and the more outrageous you are the more people will flock to you. Why? Because engaging is sometimes enraging! People love to be happy, mad, sad. It is one of the first things you learn when studying sociology. Don't believe me? Just look at how many people subscribe and read his blog daily. Look at how many people kill themselves to write on Greg's blog so they can experience just a sliver of his popularity fallout.
So, what did I do to stir up some Greg Swann fallout? With my coveted invite to Unchained (I'm not stupid, I never would have done this if I didn't have that yet and yes, this blog is a shameless plug for the event), I thought I would do what I do my best, stir up a little controversy. And where better to do that but on Real Estate Radio? So, with the Barrys in tow and my Unchained invite in hand, I said the most outrageous thing I could think of about the most contentious celebrity of the real estate blogosphere. I said, "Greg is my favorite fremeny, he is the Nicole Richie to my Paris Hilton." Then to add more fuel to the fire, I called out my compadre in crime, Brian Brady by disagreeing with him about who really needs a blog! Why on earth would I do this to these two respected guys? Because it drives traffic back to me. It gets me read, it gets me subscribed and moreover, it gets me trust. People trust people who are not afraid to speak their minds and say unpopular things.
"I consider myself the Ann Coulter of the real estate blogosphere - outrageous and thick skinned. Are you an Ann Coulter or a Princess Diana?"
You are not a dog, you don't need pats on the back or behind to keep your tail waggling. You need traffic and leads. This is a lesson many a Realtor or real estate tech pundit needs to get their head around. You can't always be loved. To be popular and I mean wildly popular you have to have a few dissenters. Hold fast to your opinion even if people disagree with you. I'm sure you all remember my first rails against blogrolls and single property websites. (and YES NikNik, I have changed my mind on SPS')
OK, so you probably won't care a lick about the next couple of pieces I am writing. But my sociology and marketing muscles need flexing, so here is a resource for those of you that want to understand the differences in home buyers/sellers from a demographics and psychographics standpoint and how you can use that data to craft real estate blog posts that resonate with your market.
The first month of your real estate blog's life is actually the most important. What you do during this period of time can affect the way Google will see your blog for the next year, so it is vitally important that you build hyper local, keyword rich content in a structured and cohesive way. So, the following is a step by step guide to building your first month's worth of blog content. So, I thought I would put together a fail safe way to construct content that is hyper local, rich in information and will form the foundation of a successful blog. 
Celebration Orlando Real Estate
SIMPLE EXPLAINATION OF WHY YOU NEED TO BUILD BACKLINKS: other sites that link to your site are considered"friends" of your website. A website with "friends" that have influence like a Donald Trump or an Oprah Winfrey are given greater trust by Google than sites that have Jenna Jameson or Tara Reid as friends. So, in a backlink campaign, you want to attract quality, authority sites and forget about anyone who has a lesser PageRank than your site or sits in a 