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For those loyal souls who are waiting for an ActiveRain "outside" blog here's a question for you....
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Find OH real estate agents and Columbus real estate on ActiveRain.
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40 Comments on "Why would a real estate agent pay for a blog?"
Thanks all for the comments.
Hank a blog on your website could be / should be a wonderful thing.
hmmm has anyone ever asked AR about the mystery of the missing AR Google alerts? Do you Google to see if your posts are picked up? I guess that's what I do with alll of my blogging.
Yes, They show up on a Google search. Just not on the alerts. For example I would get an alert if you used my name in a post on AR...always. Still do on other blogs but on AR anymore.
There was some discussion about it a while back but I'm not sure if it was ever answered.
Presonally I feel it is not about the price, it is about does it work? Since ActiveRain.Com is so effective...why pay? If they allowed a private label ActiveRain.Com that I could personalize and be as effective....I would pay for that! Some firends of mine are paying, and I cannot see the value in the price they are paying.
I've experienced the same thing that Ginger has. I've got the google alerts set up to notify me once a day, not ASAP. If I write a post on my WP.com blog, then when Google notifies me of the alerts, the post I did the day before shows up. Most amazing was on Jan 30, I wrote a post about the 30-yr anniversay of the 'big blizzard'. TWO HOURS later someone googled those terms and landed on my blog. That means that Google read my blog almost immediately!
When I was still posting on AR, it always took 24-48 hrs for Google to find it. Once I switched to my WP blog, I did SO much better on page 1. Just didn't get those results with AR. Plus, my WP blog has helped my web site as well.
The long tail of my posts is working great to get the people I want to reach. I had an upscale listing appt this week due to my blog. I just put a home in-contract because the buyer read my blog, saw the house, read about the neighborhood and only viewed my listings in the neighborhood. I just never got those results with AR during the months I was posting to Localism. And to address Rich's initial comment, people don't google terms like ColumbusOhioRealEstate. They write in ordinary words, which makes the long tail so important.
So I say, FREE WP.com is great. It's what you write ... whether you pay to have it self-hosted or not.
Jim Crawford wrote: "I feel it is not about the price, it is about does it work? Since ActiveRain.Com is so effective...why pay? If they allowed a private label ActiveRain.Com that I could personalize and be as effective....I would pay for that!"
You know they are right? ActiveRain is offering "outside" blogs within a couple of weeks.
I vowed earler today to not allow any more comments like
"I think AR does a great job of getting my name out there; I just don't know that I have time for more than 1 blog. To each his own. "
and the "I second Kevins comment. I just dont have time for another blog and I love AR. I love the fact that it's free so you get this wide array of people on here posting."
This is not about what we have NOW on ActiveRain vs. paying for a blog but I know the conversation has turned to Google alerts for ActiveRain... which still IMHO is a lot better than the comments I don't care for... which boil down to, I like ActiveRain and have no time for anything else.
I appreciate the comment about the long tail Elaine... This blog being named Columbus Ohio Real Estate, it ought to come up for that search. People don't search that way from what I have seen although I don't mind coming up for that. It is a tough search term, it is not necessarily the way someone will search.
Great news on your business from your blog.
Consistantly writing is the key. It's content. Our focusing on ActiveRain having Google Juice encourages the spammy advertising posts that ActiveRain is spoiled by IMHO.
I get more traffic on my RealTown blog than I do on anything else. They changed the URLs in late September and Google can find it now.
Glad you got over your fear of commenting here.
Same topic on all three blogs yesterday... Groundhogs Day. These are NOT unique visitors, these are page views. Look at the numbers for yesterday.
This is kinda sorta about Rich J's comment about "Columbus real estate..." as a search... no groundhogs aren't real estate and just because someone reads what I write about our groundhog does not mean I am going to get any business out of it... I get a lot of traffic on my RT blog for long tail searches since the urls were changed at the end of September 2007. Most of my traffic is from Google.
Oops when I am on stat counter those link goes to my websites... I thought... Thanks Monika I am going to break the links.
Discover Columbus is the RealTown blog. Since RealTown changed the URLs on RealTown blogs I get lots of traffic from search engines, particularly Google. A big part of it though is there is so much content there. If you search for Groundhogs Day I have 2006, 2007, 2008 and by linking the new entries to the old people go from one article to an old one. Right after they changed the URL in Sept. 2006 I could see all the "halloween" and "trick or treat" traffic for local events and schedules on Discover Columbus.
Earlier this week, I checked my stats for my web site, for AR and my WP blog with a starting date of July 07 which is when I began my WP blog and ending this week.
According to StatCounter, the traffic to my AR blog was 5324. According to my web site's internal stat recorder, I had 6231 visitors to it. And per my WP blog stat record, it obtained 12,668 visits. Golly gee, why do I focus on the WP blog and not AR.
I'm not sure I agree with Ryan that a blog must look just like a web site. I like the fact that it can look more casual, less formal. It makes it more fun that way, but that's just my opinion. I think it depends on the objective of the blog and the domain name of the blog. It can be made formal if one wants it to be. Some of them are very, very nice & classy. The name I selected would look a little strange if I tried to make it formal like my web site.
Thanks Ryan and Elaine for the comments.
There are lots of options for real estate blogging... It's not one size fits all. Free works for some, others want something else. I've seen great blogs on websites, great blog that have a lot of the capabiities of a website and great stand alone real estate blogs.
5-6 and 9-10? Place on Google? with what search? Clients from WP and AR?
I was half asleep typing this last night.
Using the search term ... hampstead new hampshire real estate
She comes up 5, 6 with WordPress and 9-10 on the first page of Google with AR posts.
I have three outside blogs, a website, an then there is AR. As far as AR, the only thing I have been able to pull up high in rankings is my AR profile, it pulls up everywhere. Not once have I seen a blog post from AR rank high. Case in point, I blog about historic homes. I have tested it out by posting the same post on AR and on my outside blog. The outside blog post always comes up on google, but the AR ones never do. For my search terms, my outside blogs always rank high because I am able to SEO the title page and meta tags myself....you can't do that with AR.
In regards to paying for a blog. I have heard many people say that they suggest a real estate agent go to Typepad or Wordpress because it looks more professional, and that they hate Blogger. I have been with blogger for two years now and I love them...best of all because it is free. All I care about it writing good content and then having it rank high in search engines. My sites look good and they get traffic. That's all that matters. I do not see myself moving to an AR outside blog, especially if they make you pay for it.
It is interesting that some people are sure AR has the lock on Google Juice and Monika, Elaine, you... get better search results on your other blog... of course what a lot of people are saying is they don't want to do anything else... they don't have time and ActiveRain suits them fine...
The "outside" blogs on AR are definitely going to cost money but not much. I think "outside" is what ActiveRain started calling them... I think maybe Premium or another word might be better. I don't know as I ever thought of my blogs as outside blogs before. They might as well have a crack at it... look at all the blogs RSS Pieces and Tomato Blogs have sold as a result of meeting people via ActiveRain.
That's one thing I have always been impressed with. ActiiveRain promoted, actually ran the Project Blogger last summer where the contestants all started a blog on another platform.
I thought of them as "My other blogs..." or as my REAL blog...
Thanks for the comment Jennifer... I think I thought you had two other blogs.. you have four with AR! You and Jeff Dowler are prolific.