Gabrielle Jeans Real Estate Web Solution Real Estate Trainer and Coach

Having a real estate blog is one of the best ways you can build your email database and build your business. With your blog you can inform prospects on local real estate and demonstrate your expertise while allowing them to get to know the real you. Today, you need not even write your own content, and your site can get automatic article updates! But there are a few definite do's and don'ts you need to keep in mind with blogging.
First, let's define blog. Blog is short for weblog. Basically it's a kind of online diary. Blogs have been around since the internet began and have evolved from people writing personal things for all to see to a solid business tool business people can use for promoting themselves.

Use A Search Engine Ready Blog

One of the key things your blog should have is search engine readiness. In other words, your blog entries should be readily indexable on search engines like Google. If they aren't, people may never find your website nor your articles. There are many free or inexpensive sites who specialize in blogs. I use WordPress and recommend it. One of the reasons I went with WordPress is so many people blog with it. WordPress currently hosts over 200,000 blogs. The more popular a website is, the more readily pages related to it will get indexed in search engines.

Calls To Action

Make it clear you want people to sign up for your email mailing list. They're more likely to do that if you make it very clear what information you'll be sending them and how often. It's a good idea to ask prospects to indicate whether they're ready to buy or not. If they are, indicate you'll send them email updates of new listings. If they aren't ready to buy and are in research mode, indicate you'll send them information on the local real estate market and any of your sold listings from these areas.

Relevant Content

Make sure your blog's content is interesting to your target audience. The best thing to have is information on your farm neighborhoods, particularly on the real estate market and price fluctuations. Everyone likes to know what's happening with the local market, even if they aren't planning to move for several years. For other information on your farm neighborhoods try the service Outside.in which I discussed in a previous article. They provide you with ready-to-go articles on neighborhoods across the US. You can even have your website automatically updated with these articles.

The most important consideration with your blog and website is definitely search engine optimization (IE ranked highly in search engines). Learn about how to get high ranking in Google and Yahoo by taking my course Building Your Ecommerce Business. This course has been approved by the Registrar, REBBA 2002 to qualify for 6 credits.

• Your online and offline corporate image should be consistent

• your site should be easy to read

• your site should be easy to navigate

• try to use as many content-rich pages as possible.

• your web pages should have a consistent layout

• make the listings pages printable in flier format

• have a what's new section to let visitors know what has changed.

• steer clear of scrolling marquee text. These marquees are difficult to read and are not compatible with many search engines on older computers

• design your website for various screen sizes. try to always accommodate visitors regardless of the screen resolution they use. twenty percent of web users still run their systems on screens set at 640 pixels wide by 480 pixels high. keep your image size small enough to be fully view-able at this resolution.

• use thumbnail graphics where applicable. when you have a page with a lot of large images, such as listings of houses for sale, thumbnail images will load more quickly. don't make the client wait for large images to load.

• Include contact information on every page. this information should always include your address, phone-numbers, email address and fax number.

• Provide a privacy policy statement. explain to your customers that any personal information they send to your website will be used only to contact them directly. Assure them that their mailing addresses, phone numbers and email addresses will not be sold or shared with others.

• Minimize the use of background and auto-play sounds. some site visitors may be using the internet from their offices and will want to surf from page to page discreetly. if you decide to use sound, give visitors the option to play or not play them.

The internet is similar to a continent sized forest, and things like search engines and social networks are like park rangers or guides. If these people can’t find your website, then your website is like a huge sign board in the middle of these woods. No one will know it’s there.

Search engines endeavor to have the true authorities in any subject matter at the top of their search results. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a many faceted discipline that includes unique, compelling content, listings, blogging, press releases, article submissions, and other activities. Consequently, with so many options you must build a content strategy.

For most real estate professionals creating original content is one of the most difficult aspects of having your own real estate website. Common objections to writing site content include:

“I can’t write”

“I don’t know what to write”

“I don’t have time”

and so on.

This guide will help you recognize the importance of your website’s content and help you create a plan that only involves working on your site 3 hours per week yet will still help you steadily move your website toward page one ranking in major search engines.

A critical thing to understand is how search engines assess and rank a website’s content. Search engines have rules for determining how good a site’s content is and you must follow those rules. The more you follow those rules, the more likely your site will rise in search engine rankings. However, not all approaches to SEO necessarily follow these rules. Consequently, there are 3 basic approaches to SEO and each is defined by how well it follows the SEO rules:

1. Black Hat SEO

These are SEO techniques that break search engines rules and regulations with the goal of getting better SEO sooner and with less effort and expense than if the rules were followed. Black hat techniques are deceptive ways of creating site content aimed at trying to fool search engines into ranking your site higher than it truly deserves.

Black hat SEO practices often provide a fast track to high ranking, but if the search engines eventually discover you’ve been using using black hat techniques on your site then you risk getting penalized with lower ranking or even banned from the search engine altogether. SEO is like the tortoise and the hare: “slow and steady wins the race”.

Black Hat Techniques To Avoid

Keyword Stuffing – this is deliberately planting extra instances of certain important keywords in your writing beyond what is warranted with what you’re expressing. For instance, if your farm area was Toronto and you wanted to be ranked under searches for “Toronto real estate” a black hat method would be using the word “Toronto” an excessive and gratuitous number of times on each page in your writing (eg. more than 10 times). Your readers will simply recognize this as poor, annoying writing.

Another Keyword Stuffing technique is having areas on your page devoted to important keywords (eg. “Toronto real estate”) with no context that aren’t part of some descriptive writing. So make sure any writing on your site with important keywords is either used for descriptive, informative purposes or used sparsely on your pages and always in the same spots as part of your branding consistency.

Invisible Text – this is where Keyword Stuffing is done on a larger scale. Someone puts lots of instances of keywords on their site but hides all of them from the viewer by making the text color in these areas the same as the background color.

Doorway Pages – this is a page that isn’t indexed or referenced anywhere on the website and so visitors will never see it. The reason visitors aren’t able to see it is the page is full of keywords and has no informative content. The hope is a search engine’s bots will find this page loaded with the keywords the person wants to be ranked under and give major brownie ranking points to the site for having them.

Pages like this are major breaches of SEO rules and are increasingly able to be detected by their bots. Once these pages are discovered by the search engine they will get your site booted indefinitely from rankings and you won’t get re-instated and given a second chance.

2. Grey Hat

These are SEO techniques that bend and nearly break search engines rules and regulations with the goal of getting better SEO sooner and with less effort and expense than if the rules were followed. Since these techniques try to work within the rules yet find loopholes within those rules they fall into a grey area as they’re not good (white) but not technically bad (black). Using grey hat SEO is not always unethical, but you may get into trouble and penalized in ranking if a search engine finds out about what you’re doing.

Reputable companies usually avoid gray hat SEO, but those who don’t know the search engine rules and some agencies will occasionally use one or two of these tactics for getting ahead further with their SEO. Grey hat techniques include:

- Paid links IE buying links in directories who aren’t really directories and whose only purpose is providing links

- Keyword spamming – excessive instances of relevant keywords in content or ALT tags

- Duplicate content or duplicate meta data IE copying content from another site with zero changes or additions

Some paid links such as paid advertising or sponsorship (eg. banner ads, pay per click ads) aren’t considered grey hat SEO. The same holds true with duplicate content. For instance, if some of your content is referenced by a friend on their Facebook page then this is obviously not an intentional effort to dupe search engines.

Wording is only considered grey hat when key words are used excessively and/or outside the context of proper articles for tricking the search engines. Keyword spamming is another grey area. Some high ranking websites use particular keywords they want to be ranked under in every sentence, even highlighting them. This detracts from the visitor experience as keyword spamming in articles comes off as poor writing when words are used excessively and unnecessarily.

3. White Hat

These are SEO techniques that follow the search engines rules and regulations with the goal of getting high SEO ranking by using honest, ethical practices in posting website content. With White Hat there’s no trickery or deception involved in seeking greater SEO. Sites who use White Hat SEO use above board website content, navigation, Meta data, and linking strategies for achieving progressively greater SEO. White hat techniques include:

- Using keywords in URL structure, title tags, and meta data

- Keywords as links in internal and external linking

- Keywords not used gratuitously in header tags and navigational elements

- Keyword rich content relevant to your intended visitors

- Creation of landing pages for niche keywords and thought leadership

- Article marketing, blogs, hub pages, video content sharing

- Submitting an XML sitemap to search engines

The information you send your prospect database needs to be laser focused on their particular interests and needs. If you send run-of-the-mill real estate information, you’ll be doing little or nothing to build relationships with these people. But if you send timely, relevant information, you’ll go a long way to building relationships and turning prospects into clients. So here are some compelling things you can send your prospects:

1. Sold And Available Listings In Prospects Areas It’s a valuable service to your listing propsects if you consolidate the many sold and available listings in their area into one spot on your website. It’ll be even better if you offer some commentary and analysis on current and future market conditions in the area. It’s your opportunity to show them you’re a real estate expert

2. Sold And Available Listings In Your Farm Areas This is an ideal complement to sold and available listings in other areas. The more areas you have this information on, the more expert you’ll look.

3. Price Reductions Prospective buyers always love hearing about price reductions, especially in seller’s markets. A price reduction can be a powerful motivator to put in an offer.

4. Interest Rate Changes People are always wondering, “What’s going to happen to interest rates in the near future?”. So post any updates and commentary on significant happenings in the home financing world. This is another opportunity for you to demonstrate your expertise. If you don’t know much about financing, look around the web for some articles that address these common questions people are asking about financing.

5. New Construction In The Area If there are any significant building projects coming to the area in the near future (eg. shopping mall, recreation centre), let your prospects know about them. Also let them know about any changes to building codes. Prospects and investors looking for fixer-uppers will especially value this information.

6. Real Estate Web Sites Send along links to any real estate sites that focus on a particular part of home ownership (eg. home improvement, investing).

7. Local Activities Keep your prospects updated on any interesting community happenings. For instance, tell them about any garage sales, estate sales, community events, and so forth.

8. Testimonials Many people take testimonial letters very seriously. If you don’t have any, ask some of your past customers to write one for you. Learn more about how to build relationships with your prospects via email in my course The Awesome Power Of Email. This course has been approved by the Registrar, REBBA 2002 to qualify for 4 credits.

Use Enticement

When you write sales or marketing material, entice prospects to keep reading to the end by breaking off your writing abruptly. For instance, on your website’s home page, for any articles linked there have a brief introduction to the article on the home page, or put the article’s first one or two sentences on the home page and break off the writing mid sentence. This makes prospects more likely to keep reading. I use enticement on my blog. On the blog’s home page I include two to three sentences for each article, introducing the topic and why they should read the article, but I always break off this introduction just before I get into the details. This ‘break off’ technique should especially be used for any lengthy writing for sustaining the reader’s interest.

Write Sequentially

Your writing should have a consistent, logical sequence. It should unfold like a tree. As a tree starts with an acorn, your writing should start with a single, root purpose. A tree has a few basic trunks, and so your writing should have a few basic points. Jot down these points in point form. These points can be the first sentences of each paragraph. Then your writing branches out as each paragraph is developed just as a tree develops. Using this tree method helps keep your readers interested in reading to the end because your thoughts unfold in a systematic, logical progression. This tree method is a great method of planning anything including your website.

Use Headlines

When you have lengthy paragraphs, break them up and interject headlines. If you’re using the tree method this will be easy to do. Your headlines will be a succinct summary of the first sentence of each paragraph. In deciding whether to read an article or which parts to read, many people rapidly scan the article’s headlines for things that interest them. So the more headlines you have, the more likely they’ll read at least part of your writing if not all of it.

Use PS

Using a PS at the end of your writing draws as much attention as headlines. Use your PS for emphasizing your most important points.