Yeah, we know: blog about what you know. Blog a lot. Blog about local stuff.
Do you know how to research the words or phrases that get search traffic in your area?
In other words, do you know how to use Google's External Keyword Tool?
Keywords are, of course, the words and/or phrases people use for searching for stuff on Google.
Google tracks these searches and provides an easy way to research the data in the form of the Google External Keyword Tool.
Here is sample of terms searching for real estate in Illinois:
The tool will let you export your results into comma-delimited files for use in Excel. You can narrow or broaden your search based on results.
You can see the there are 49,500 monthly searches for Illinois real estate. If you're a broker in Illinois, that might be a term you want to target if you have significant resources to spend on your web presence.
If you're an individual agent, though, covering a smaller area, you are better off targeting a more specific keyword such as "chicago real estate market" which attracts 880 searches per month.
Getting to know the keyword tool is time very very well spent. When you search for things you know about, you might be surprised at how many, or how few other people are searching for the same thing.
Then you have a nice list for a handful or more articles or blog entries for when you know you need to write something but are drawing a blank on a topic.
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