So, you’re ready to start your very own real estate blog. No one starts a real estate blog thinking “Yeah, I want this blog to be a complete flop.” But you have to face the fact that more than 50% of all blogs created will be dead within a year due to lack of traffic, lack of interest and lack of focus. There are 10 common missteps of rookie real estate bloggers.   Knowing what they are and how to avoid them will ensure that your new real estate blog survives and thrives on the wild wild web.

Read also: Do you know the 6 signs of blog death?

No contact form.

I can’t even tell you how many blogs forget to place a “contact” button, form or email address on their site. It’s very frustrating for a reader. So, the number one thing you should look for on your blog is a clearly visible “contact” button or link. The two best places for contact buttons are in a top menu bar or in the footer. 

Read also: 10 features of successful blogs

No site search

Another super annoying trait of rookie bloggers is that they often forget to include a site search tool. People use the internet because it makes finding specific things easy and fast. Give your readers the ability to search through all your past articles to find the specific topics they are looking for. Otherwise, you limit them to only reading your most recent posts or having to weed through your entire body of work to find the one thing they are looking for.

Never answers the WIFM (What’s in it for me) question

Good blog posts not only provide quality information but they clearly spell out what the benefits of reading the post are. Many newbie bloggers forget to remind readers why they would want to read their posts in the first place.  Explicit benefits far out weigh implied ones. So, remind the reader throughout your post how what the article will help them achieve the promise you made in the post’s title. The word “because” is always valuable when expressing benefits.

Read also: Killing me softly with your blog

Don’t stick to KISS copywriting

Keep It Simple Stupid is probably the most important copywriting rule you should know. After you write a post and before you press “save” you should ask yourself if the post is so easy to understand that if someone knew nothing about the topic they would still “get” the article. If the answer is “no” go back to the drawing board.

Read also: Avoiding the bi-polar blog

Writing is too dry

There is nothing worse than a dry blog. You have to inject personality and wit into each and every post. Use your authentic voice. What that means is- you want to type the way you talk. People want to feel connected to you personally when they read your blog, not as though a corporation is speaking to them. 

Read also: Humanizing a blog for intimacy

Heavy on advertising and light on education

Too often, new bloggers just cut and paste all their sales materials from their website onto their blog. Or they go ahead and pen posts about how great a Realtor they are and how happy their clients are. And while there is nothing wrong with telling people how great you are, you need to do it the right way - through storytelling, not by directly stating it. Tell the story of how you turned a buyer’s frown upside down. Tell stories about how you single handedly saved a homeowners house from foreclosure or salvaged a messy closing. That type of self promotion is what people want to hear! Show them that you know their problem and you know how to solve it. Also, make sure to post at least one step by step educational post once a week. You want to build your reputation as an expert by providing quality tutorials to home buyers and sellers.

Read also: How to write successful tutorial posts

No means of collecting leads

Now, this one is just sad. You spend all that time blogging and forget to make sure your blog has a simple lead generation tool. Allow people to subscribe to your RSS feed by email or a opt-in for a newsletter. In our case, we allow for higher level lead generation like personal search subscriptions or CMA tools.

Read also: How to write a blog that generates leads

Blogging in a bubble

Blogging is about community. If you just blog and never reach out to other bloggers or blog readers, you are blogging in your own little bubble. To build community for your blog you have to go out and make a few friends. Two of the best ways to do that are to join a free blog network like MyBlogLog and start commenting on other industry and local blogs. Where do you find other blogs? The easiest way to find local and industry blogs is to just do a search for your farm area or specific industry terms on Google Blog Search. 

Read also: The rules for commenting for traffic

No link love

Now, I’m not talking blog rolls- I hate them for a whole variety of reasons. What I mean by link love is that each post you write should link out to other blog articles or websites to offer the reader more resources or references for your data. You should also provide internal links to other articles within your own blog to keep visitors moving through related stories on your own site. You have a 68% greater chance of acquiring a reader as an RSS subscriber if they read more than one post on your blog in a single visit- so link internally liberally!

Read also: Using links to retain visitors and generate leads

Lack of keyword density in posts

A blog helps you climb the search engine ranks (SERPs) because it provides search engine with fresh content to crawl frequently. However, if you do not pepper your posts with the keywords and phrases you want to be searched by, you simply aren’t providing the kind of content that will help you climb the SERPs for those specific terms. The trick to climbing the SERPs for very specific terms is to strategically place those terms thought your text.

Read also: Where does your site rank in the SERPs