I participate on a lot of internet and real estate forums, and often see people talking about making it to the top 10 on google for a certain phrase.  It's always wonderful to see your efforts rewarded by getting decent placement on the search engines (and hopefully more traffic to your site.)  However, there is no reason you need to stop at only one top 10 ranking for a certain phrase on the search engines.  By that, I don't mean that you should get multiple phrases ranking (I'm assuming that's a given).  What I'm saying is that it's possible to own that phrase for 2, 4, or even 10 of the top 10 search engine results for that phrase.

When you are surprised at how quickly one of your blog posts ranks in the top 10 for a certain search phrase, instead of bragging to your friends about it, exploit it!  Take your easy ranking as a sign, and try to knock a few of your competitors off that first page by getting another one of YOUR sites to rank as well. I'm not saying you should go and register mutiple top-level domains...  I'm simply saying there are plenty of other free resources that you can get to rank just as easily (if not easier).

For example:
Let's say you wrote a blog post about "PurplePink Town", and to your surprise, it ranked in the top 10 for "Homes for sale in PurplePink town" within a day or two of posting it.  Keep your excitement to yourself, and get yourself even more exposure for variations of that phrase on other free web properties.

It's called "Parasytic Marketing".
There are hundreds of various ways you can get free exposure on the web, AND when done properly, it can both boost your website's exposure as well as reduce your competitors' exposure.  Here are a couple tips:

Video:
Don't let the word "video" scare you.  You don't even need to own a video camera!  All you need is several digital pictures of a neighborhood, or of a home you are selling, and you can make video!  Windows Movie Maker (or iMovie on a Mac) makes it extremely easy to make a slide-show of still pictures, spruce it up with some transitions, and add some background music.  Add a little plug for your website, and you've got a promotional tool that will rank on the search engines and drive traffic to your website!  If you're still intimidated at the prospect of creating video, sign up for an account at RealEstateShows.com. It's about $10 a month, and comes with a free 14 day trial.

After you've got a video you want to share, why limit yourself to uploading to just one video site?  RealEstateShows, Youtube, Viddler, Vimeo,Yahoo Video, GoogleVideo, and MySpace are all video sites that have been known to rank very well on the search engines.  Sometimes - they rank within minutes of posting the video, and with the proper tags and titles, they could possibly rank better than your original blog post!  (But that's a good thing because your single video could be one, two or even five more spot in the top 10 for you, and that many less slots for your competitors.)  Here's a little secret: Sign up for a free account at TubeMogul.com, upload your video once, and get it distributed to all of the major video hosting networks for free!

Free Blogging sites:
Wordpress.org, Blogger, HubPages, Squiddo & ActiveRain/Localism are just a few out of dozens of free blogging/social platforms out there.  After you write that post about "PinkPurple Town" that ranks so well on the search engines, write a few other versions of it and post it on one or two of your your other free blogs so you can get them ranking on the search engines too!  (Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying to spam the blogosphere with duplicate content.  A true re-write should have different perspectives about the same topic.) All of those blogs should have your phone number, and a link to your home search tool, so you'll have that many more opportunities to capture more leads.

Good luck, and remember: Ranking well on the search engines from simply writing a blog post and doing no other SEO is a gift... Don't waste it.