Real Estate Blogging: A Framework For Success

Blogging For Real Estate: How To Create Content That Drives More Business

The aim of this post is to create a replicable framework for real estate professionals to create content (blogs, infographics, etc.) that generate serious inbound leads for their business.

It's unfortunate but true that most real estate bloggers fail for two reasons:

1. They fail to build an audience
2. They fail to convert their current audience

These are two separate issues, but both can be addressed by following the framework outlined in this post.

Real Estate Content Creation Framework

We can break the framework down into 4 easily understandable phases:

1. The Idea & Research Phase
2. The Writing & Creation Phase
3. The Optimiziation (SEO) Phase
4. The Promotion Phase

You can read our in-depth guide to real estate content but we'll explain these phases in more detail below.

Phase 1: Research & Ideas

Before we write any piece of content we need to make sure there is a demand for it.

There are a few ways we can ensure (to the best of our ability) that a new post will be successful.

If you want to see a few proven examples, check out this list of real estate blog ideas.

Competitor Analysis

The first way is to analyze the local competition online.

Search for the top agents and brokerages in your community and head on over to Google to make a list of the first page results.

Now you can check out each company's blog and scan their past posts to see what performed well, and what didn't.

To start, pay attention to these metrics:

• Likes
• Shares
• Comments

Keyword Research

The second step is to generate a keyword list and use these phrases as the basis for your content.

A lot of people revert to Google's Keyword Planner for this, but that's not neccessarily the best idea because Keyword Planner is built for PPC and not SEO... 

...In fact, I know a lot of people that mistake the "Difficulty" metric in Keyword Planner as the difficulty for ranking in the search engines - when it really refers to Google's PPC difficulty in Adwords.

Instead of Keyword Planner, you can use one of these 3rd-party tools for a more accurate way to gauge the difficulty of "ranking" your website.

• Ahrefs
• Moz
• SEMRush
• Yoast

Compile your results and keep this list handy for future blog ideas.

Phase 2: Writing Your Post

Since we have some blog topics to write about now, let's discuss how to write and format your posts.

Maximizing Your Users

This phase is all about maximizing the retention and engagement you receive from website visitors.

What do we mean by this?

Retention = How many users frequently return to your site - this is essential for building an audience.

Engagement = How many users take an action (liking, sharing, contacting you).

So, how do we go about increasing these metrics?

Start by adhering to a few best practices.

Real Estate Content Best Practices

Consider these things when writing your blog:

• Line Spacing
• Images & Graphics
• Headings & Subheadings

Line Spacing

This plays a bigger role than you might realize.

Compare this paragraph:

To this:

When you write for the web you should separate your lines every 1-2 sentences.

This makes your content much more legible - which means more people will finish reading your posts, thus improving engagement.

Images, graphics and headings help do the same thing:

They break up your content into a more digestible format.

Be liberal with your use of them and you'll notice an uptick in session time and a decrease in your bounce rate.

Phase 3: Search Engine Optimization

SEO is a massive topic and cannot be covered in it's entirety with a single post.

However, you should make a habit of implementing these SEO priorities into each and every one of your pages:

1. Keyword Mapping
2. Tags
3. Link Building

These are the basics, but will still make a noticeable impact on your traffic count over a few months of consistent effort.

Keyword Mapping For Real Estate Content

This is the technical term for strategically placing keyphrases (from your list back in phase 1) throughout your webpages.

But be careful, you do not want to be found guilty of keyword stuffing - which is seen as an attempt to manipulate the search engines.

Aim for a keyword density of less than 1% - 2% and you should be fine.

That is to say your exact keyword shouldn't be found more than once or twice for every 100 words.

How To Use "Tags"

You can think of tags as little identifiers that help search engines determine your post's topic.

Most people ignore tags entirely, but if you utilize them you gain access to organic search queries.

The trick is to place your keywords inside these tags and then let the search engines do their work.

Here are the types worth consideration:

1. Title Tags
2. H1, H2 & H3 Tags
3. Image Alt Tags

Title tags are what you see in Google search results, here's an image of the title tag when searching for my business:

H1, H2 and H3 tags are commonly referred to as heading tags because they occupy the headings & subheadings of your posts.

This is another important reason for including headings in your posts.

Image alt tags identify pictures you upload to your posts.

For more info on tags you can read the guide, but let's talk about one of the most important SEO factors next...

Link Building

This is number one ranking as far as most SEO pros are concerned.

What's certain is the number (and quality) of links pointing to your website directly correlates with how well you rank in Google's organic search results.

There are quite literally hundreds of ways to build links to your website, but it starts at offering insane amounts of value in your posts.

The next section covers promotion and will help you earn more backlinks.

Phase 4: Promotion

You don't want your posts to be a waste of time so it's imperative that you promote the heck out of it.

In fact, the majority of your time should be spent promoting your new content.

Here are some easy ways to get started.

If you need clarification, see the full guide here.

One Last Tip For Success

If there's one thing that will determine the success of your blog, it's your consistency.

You have to keep at it to experience results - as a real estate professional this probably isn't news to you!

Thank you for reading, and please stay tuned for more digital real estate marketing tips!

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Questions? Ask me in the comments section below!