This started out to be a comment on Joe Zekas' blog post, 10 Things You Should Stop Doing Immediately on Your Blog. (Have a free link, Joe)

It got too long so I just decided to bring it here and say what I wanted to say.  I think the points have been posted enough times, or you can go read the posting if you want to get your feathers ruffled.

Here's my take on the whole blogging thing...from an SEO's standpoint, and as a person who bought a condo 5 years ago.

There are two kinds of blogs in the real estate business, and on the internet.  There are business blogs, which are often boring, and there are humorous, sometimes sarcastic, and fun to read blogs.  If I want to be entertained, I'll go visit something like this. http://myrtlebeachramblings.blogspot.com/

If I was a customer buying a home (and I HAVE BEEN A CUSTOMER BUYING A HOME) I'll tell you what I would be looking for on the internet.  A blog would not be the deciding factor, but I wouldn't be looking for entertainment, either.  First, and maybe it's because I'm in the business, I would be choosing one of the real estate websites that ranked well in Google.  Why?  Because it's very very hard to rank in Google anymore if you aren't a legitimate business.  Any website I go to, from an infomercial or an ad...that doesn't have a good Google pagerank, I will usually pass on.  There is a reason why Amazon, Ebay, QVC, Adobe, Dell, and others are at the top of the search engine rankings...it's because they are good, legitimate businesses.  Obama just won the election with no small help from Google.  It's starting to rule the world, and eventually is going to.

The next thing I'd personally like to see is a PICTURE of the agent.  I might pick a kindly older man, or a nice looking younger man, or a 40-something experienced and hard working lady Realtor.  But I DO want to see what they look like!  About the only thing I wouldn't choose is some 20-something year old in a low cut top that is flaunting her sex appeal.  Now I know for a fact that those kind do well here in Myrtle Beach - among the male clients.  So if you want to limit your business to men who are staring at your boobs the whole time you're selling them a home, you'll certainly get some sales from it, no doubt.  But you'll lose the middle aged women, the men with jealous wives, and the religious people.

This brings me to another point...the religious references.  I myself am turned off by that and probably would go straight to the next agent.  But there is a HUGE group of highly religious Moral Majority types in this country...and THEY would pick that site that had the Biblical references over one that didn't.  So you may limit yourself, but then again, some people prefer to work with people they have something in common with.  So this is not a "don't do" in my opinion.  It's simply a matter of preference.  One of my customers is real big into the Gideon International Society and promotes it on his stuff.  I was a fanatical Hillary Clinton supporter, and I blogged about it.  If I lost a few Republican customers that way, it's not a problem.  We blog about our passions, and it's a good thing, as far as I'm concerned.  It shows who we are and what we believe in!

The next thing I'd look for is an excellent IDX that I do NOT have to register to use.  I'll go right by one that does require that.  I advise my customers NOT to require it...some take the advice and some don't.  Offer an email notification of new listings and get the info that way.  Then you don't offend anybody.  Use an IDX product that has great photos and is simple to use.  Don't make me fill in 10 boxes just to look for a 3 bedroom home with a fireplace, please.  When I find a property I like, I'll click the contact button and ask you about it.  And if I do this at 7pm on a Friday night, don't make me wait till 9am on Monday morning before you answer me.  If you don't care about my needs enough to give me a call over your weekend, then I'll find somebody who does.

Lastly, I would probably glance over a blog and see how professional and knowledgeable the posts were.  If the agent can't spell, I would run for the hills.  Nothing is worse than posting things on a business website that sounds like a school kid who flunked the 2nd grade.  If there are property listings on the blog, I'd probably look at a bunch of them!  So I think that's a great thing, personally.  I would love lots of photos and some local attractions and news, too.

I've been working with Realtors for 6 years now, and I don't know what all those abbreviations mean.  Do I find it offensive when it's in a signature?  No...although I've seen it overdone.  There's a fine line between being proud and advertising one's accomplishments, and appearing to be a braggart.  If this was my customer and was paying for my opinion, I might kindly point that out.  But I would not feel like I had the right to blindly post on a site like Active Rain and blast somebody about doing it.  There are ways to talk to other people and get your point across without being insulting.

BUT...for those of you who don't follow the SEO forums and know this...everywhere you go, you read that one of the best ways to get comments, views, and GOOGLE juice (aka "link-bait") is to say something controversial, be nasty, or otherwise get an upset audience to participate.  My personal opinion is that Joe's post was at least partly for that reason.  It certainly isn't going to win him any customers.  I suspect that was mostly for the attention and the SEO.  'Course I could be wrong...but that would be my first guess.

One more point I wanted to make is about SEO.  I have about 6 blogs that I'm active in, and I do it for the SEO benefit.  I have one personal blog that I use for my own therapy.  I try to keep my AR blog to use for long, interesting (I hope) articles, and I don't spam here or make useless posts.  But posting a listing gets the same SEO benefit as posting a long, trolling, hateful post about doing the wrong things on a blog.  It doesn't get the comments...but it's content.  Perhaps some people are not trying to build a big reader base for their blog, but are doing what they have to do to get their website to rank.  Just a thought.  I do post listings occasionally for my customer's blogs, although not on here.  I try to only do the really good looking homes and include a lot of photos.  Personally, I like looking at a home in Flower Mound Texas  just to see how different they are from homes in Greenville SC or Myrtle Beach real estate.

A couple of other points of Joe's that I don't agree with - Profiles: Absolutely I disagree with that.  I think you need to take time to create a GREAT profile on AR.  Include links to your website.  Include links to your blogs and to profiles on the social sites (You ARE using Digg and StumbleUpon, right???)  Link your AR profile on those, too.  Get the Pagerank up on your AR profile and it will do an amazing amount of good towards helping your website to rank!  Active Rain has become a high authority site to Google.  You can bet they are keeping tabs on it.

Last of all...Ya'll need to use your signatures for your keyphrases.  I think Jason Crouch pointed that out before.  It really does help...maybe more than all the designations...:-)  When you post a comment on someone else's blog, it throws a link to YOUR profile...making it rank better.  If that link has "your city real estate" in the anchor text, it makes your profile stronger for that phrase.  Then when you link to your website from that profile, it does even more good!  Try to always look at everything you do and everything you write on the internet as a way to boost your main website in the search engines.  It will become 2nd nature to you eventually, and one day you may find yourself with a top ranking.