I know I'm preaching to the choir with most of you on Active Rain, but this is for the benefit of the Realtors on my team - most of whom have never blogged, so bear with me.
I was positively esctatic last night…
I talked a couple of the agents on my team into doing some hyper-local blogging, and they each started a blog 6 days ago. Yesterday evening, I got a Google alert about one of those agents’ posts, and when I searched Google, I found that his very first post is in the #1 position on Google for several phrases revolving around that neighborhood!
Even though it isn’t a highly competitive phrase, I was just happy that he could achieve a #1 ranking right out of the gate on a brand-new blog - with only one post!!! He hadn’t even finished his “about me” page! (It took me YEARS to learn how to even make it to the first page of Google without buying advertising or PPC campaigns, let alone make it to #1 for any given phrase.) I shared my elation with my online Twitter friends, and got a sarcastic response from a skeptic: “Good for you! Now you can rake in leads from a phrase that is searched all of a dozen times a week.” I responded with one of my favorite lines: “You may be right.”
For those of you thinking low-volume search phrases aren’t worth the trouble, here is a little story for you. It is inspired by an old favorite show of mine - “Newhart”.
Meet Darryl and his brother Darryl.
Both are Realtors, and both work separately in the same market (which we’ll call “BIG CITY”). They both started a blog at the same time, and both learned the same SEO strategies about search engine marketing.
Darryl 1 decided that since “Big City real estate” got 250,000 searches a month, he was going to roll up his sleeves, and get to the first page of Google to get some of that action. He made his blog all about “Big City”, and all of his optimization efforts focused on phrases like “Big City real estate”, and “Homes in Big City”. Darryl 2 happened to read “The Long Tail” - by Chris Anderson, and decided to optimize for much lower volume phrases by writing a post about “Small Neighborhood Big City real estate”. “Small Neighborhood Big City real estate” only gets about 400 searches a month, but hey, at least Darryl 2 can be a big fish in a little pond if he ranks well for that phrase.
Fast Forward 1 month:
| Darryl 1 has written a post and gathered about a dozen links with anchor-text of “Big City real estate”. He does a search, and he’s ranking #250 on Google for that phrase.
Since no one looks beyond result #10 or #20, Darryl 1 isn’t getting any traffic yet. |
Darryl 2 writes a post about “Small Neighborhood Big City real estate”, and gathers a few links pointing at that post. He does a search, and finds that he is #1 on Google for “Big City Small neighborhood real estate”, #3 for “Small neighborhood real estate.” and #6 for “Small neighborhood Big City”.
Those 3 phrases combined get about 1000 searches a month on Google, and Darryl 2 sets his first appointment as a result of the traffic he’s getting. |
Fast Forward 3 months:
| Darryl 1 writes 10 more blog posts, and continues to drive links at his site for the phrase “Big City real estate”.
He’s up to #125 on Google! Still no traffic though. |
After getting himself to #1 for dozens of phrases revolving around “Small Neighborhood”, Darryl 2 decided to write 10 posts about 10 neighborhoods, and is ranking on the first page of Google for 8 out of 10 of those posts.
Combined search engine traffic: 2500 visits a month. Darryl 2 also has had 2 closings, has 3 clients under agency, and about 300 internet inquiries. As it turns out, even though it’s low volume traffic, his prospects are highly qualified and know exactly what they are looking for. |
Fast Forward 6 months:
| Darryl 1 has written a few more blog posts, but is still putting the majority of his efforts into link building for the phrase “Big City real estate”.
Still practically zero traffic (and those that are finding him seem to be “tire kickers”.) But he’s close! He’s now #45 on Google for that high traffic phrase, and can’t wait for that day!!! After all — Once he gets to page one of Google, he’ll hit the motherlode!!! |
Darryl 2 has now written about most of the neighborhoods in Big City, and has now moved on to writing about neighborhoods in “Neighboring Big City”.
His listing presentations are now a piece of cake whenever he lists a home in one of the neighborhoods he has written about. Surprisingly, when he tells the sellers that 80% of home buyers start their search on the internet, and then shows that he is #1 for “Neighborhood Big City real estate”, “Big City neighborhood real estate”, “Neighborhood Big City” AND “Neighborhood real estate”, they cancel all of their other interviews with agents. Total closings to date: 6 |
Fast Forward 1 year:
| Darryl 1 is up to #20 on Google, but has been out-Optimized by several competitors with deeper pockets. It becomes apparent that even though Darryl 1 is starting to see some traffic, making it to the first page of Google is going to take a lot of work. Making #1 is near impossible given the fact that more and more competitors are focusing on this market because of high search volumes.
If Darryl 1 ever does make it there, he’ll learn that although the traffic volumes are higher, the leads are of lower quality than the leads Darryl 2 has been getting for the past year. |
Darryl 2 bought the “Waybury Inn” in “Small Neighborhood” to accomodate all of his out of town clients, and has 3 writers to continue to focus on Long tail topics such as restaurants in the area, hotels, etc.
As it turns out, because he has so many “low traffic, long tail blog posts” about areas within “Big City”, he is now ranking on page 1 for “Big City real estate” too! Darryl 1 is now going to work for Darryl 2 on a 50% split as a showing agent until he gets his blog up to the first page of Google for "Big City real estate." |
OK, OK — I realize that is a bit of an exaggeration, but the moral of the story is two-fold:
- Anyone can blog, and it doesn't have to be earth-shattering journalism. The important thing is that it is written with the reader's benefit in mind. Optimize for the right long-tail topic and you'll rank with almost no effort at all.
- Cumulative traffic from dozens of long tail phrases with low search volumes can easily equal (or surpass) the traffic of one heavily searched phrase, and it could very well be higher quality traffic.
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You are right. But you are missing one major point by being #1 on lots of small neighborhoods you become the expert and people think that you are "everywhere"