On my normal route home last night, I noticed a bikini clad gal on a street corner with a sign that said "HOT coffee and BIKINIS!" She was “attention getting” and all..I was trying not to wreck my car as it startled me to see this in our just a bit too conservative digs. I began to think about blogging..odd huh? lol Anyway....must have been a management change at the neighborhood coffee house!
Onward!
I’ve seen many articles here on AR as well as on The Tomato about how often to blog. Those articles are a bit complex and most of my friends in RE aren’t that tech saavy so I thought I’d break this down into very simple terms.
As we all know, blogging is the most effective to "self-seo" yourself to the top of the "organic" search results. While this does take time, it can be done. As compared to traditional template websites and SEO efforts, blogging will vault you toward page one in what seems like WARP speed if done correctly.
While no one can really tell, other than the search engines techs themselves, exactly what the formula is to getting top ranked positioning on Google or Yahoo, there are 4 things that seem to work. While website age is a factor, I've seen older websites overtaken in organic position by newer sites simply by following some basic fundamentals. This chat is assuming that you’ve got a fully optimized blog AND you’ve been trained how to use it. (I mean, is your business dependent on luck? In this market?)
After that, some of what the search engines look for is current, consistent, relevant, keyword rich content. While there are other parameters, like linking for instance, this is what seems to drive organic search results toward page 1 and it’s easy to understand.
It seems that the more you blog correctly the better. The search engines seem to look for content that has recently been created. Consider blogging that mandatory activity you’ve just got to do and you’ve got to do it often. Having said that, don’t make it “unfun”.
For most of us Realtors, that shouldn’t be hard though. Most of us have a hard time taking a breath between words and therefore, blogging is a great form of therapy for this “running off at the mouth” disease that’s issued with every RE license. I got mine, you? lol
Heck, we don’t even answer our phones most of the time for the tidbit of info that we’ve just got to get out! Put it into words on your blog. Get it out of your system. Remember the old saying “an apple a day….”? Well, let’s shift that around to “a blog article a day will bring traffic your way”. Hey, that’s not bad! (Sorry, it’s late!)
Consistency. Writing an article everyday or every other day, is more productive than writing 4 in one day and posting them all at the same time. The more you feed the monster the more it will come back looking for more.
Having keywords that are the most relevant for the search term your target readership will be looking for is essential to being found. To that end, using your keyword term or phrase frequently in the body of your article will help searchers find your article. This will help you to "optimize" your site for a particular keyword or phrase. Target market and be relevant to your readership.
While this is a relatively simple explanation of a process that can be quite complex, I’ve been seeing people who are blogging their brains out and get noticed. If you follow some simple rules, you won’t have to blog your brains out to get noticed. Be efficient in what you do, do it often, consistently and with relevance. It’s broad, I know, but keep it fundamental and you’ll get higher organic rankings. That is key to the search engine game!
*What the heck does SEO mean?
And Pinging?
What? Trackbacking?
Who came up with this stuff?!
;)
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