Building links by blogging does not the best link juice make. Stop wasting your time blogging/posting comments to blogs just to provide links to your site in an attempt to rank higher in the search engines. If that is why you blog then my suggestion is to do some research on link building and find other less time consuming ways to create links to your site. Blogging is best used as a means of rapport and conversation.
This was brought to my attention today at a class a mortgage company taught on social media. Agents were being told that WordPress is the greatest thing in the world and that everyone should get a WordPress blog. WordPress is terrific, but if you are going to set up a blog on a WordPress platform have a web developer/a coder do it for you, because it's pretty technical when it comes to customizing it. TypePad and Blogger are a little better if you are trying to do it on your own. In addition, other forms of blogging and social media should be driving people back to your own site (whether it is a blog or a real estate site built using a template). You should plan on keeping that site live forever not switching whenever a better looking template comes available.
Your comments should be of good solid quality. Although adding your own valuable insight to a blog may take time out of your day and not provide you with a follow link to your site - what it will do is provide you with a source of direct traffic. Think of blogs as a source of direct traffic and social networking as a way to make friends online and I promise you will start to see SEO a little more clearly.
Blogging is meant to bring you direct traffic. I build websites for agents, so this blog provides me with getting my name out there. This has been a hobby of mine for a few years now and I got hooked on SEO about a year ago.
I also blog about HUD homes on another platform, because I like selling HUD homes among other reasons.
But let's say you are here blogging in hopes of reaching a consumer or two.... Is writing something that only agents will comment on really worth all the time in effort you put into the post? Would you have been better off posting to your Localism? or calling expired with that time? Live in Chandler? then blog about Chandler parks or Chandler communities, but don't blog about the real estate market in Italy (to be simple about it).
Google works toward providing trusted sites to viewers, so if you write enough valuable content among taking other measures at your site, that is niche specific, you will get recognized over time with just a little link building effort. Now if you have nothing at your site, but the IDX and your picture then yes you will need to pay someone to optimize it for you and pay them a lot.
My advice (and maybe it's not the greatest, but it's better than nothing) is to write great original content for your website and worry about how pretty it is later. Google can't see how pretty it is or that you have nice forms, IDX and flash there. Search engines see content.
Having an agent website within a company website though .... well that's just not going to work. Hope that clears something up for someone ... anyone.
P.S. Let me clarify something. I am not saying that it is not worth posting links to your site within your blog posts or comments at other sites, but if that is the only reason you do it sites and readers will eventually view you as a spammer. Post good quality comments to avoid this.
Comments(13)