By Anita Clark

Finding it difficult to make an impact with your real estate blog? In this industry, half the battle is making sure that your traffic is actually relevant. Use these guidelines below to do exactly that, then take a look at this extended guide to creating and promoting real estate content.

The last thing you want your blog doing is wasting your time or the precious time of your readers. To avoid those unseemly scenarios, follow these steps:

Validate Your Content

You will save a lot of time and frustration if you validate your posts before you build them. How do you do this?

You can subscribe to real estate blogs, check online forums, join groups, and follow successful real estate professionals on social media. Create a list of their content and categorize it by type in a spreadsheet. Track the shares, title, date, and topic. You will start to notice trends over time and can cherry-pick the content ideas that work best. Just make sure the content you create is unique…do not copy what others have already created!

Build A Keyword List

Keyword research can help you hit the mark when you create new content. Place these phrases throughout your posts and you will start to generate organic traffic over time. There are a ton of tools to help you find these keywords, but here are some of the best:

• SEMRush
• Ahrefs
• Moz

These tools allow you to see the number of monthly searches, as well as the difficulty to rank for these phrases. Remember to keep the keywords natural, and when in doubt: write to consumers, not to please the search engines.

Real Estate Blogger Best Practices

Follow these tips to make your blog more enjoyable for your users and easier to find by Google. Developing SEO-friendly content is key to getting your information found.

Use Tags

There are three main types of tags to consider. By placing your keywords throughout these tags you will send a signal to Google that helps them understand your website’s content.

1. Title Tags

Title tags are the clickable links you end up seeing in Google search, it is important to make these catchy and to include your target keyword.

2. Header Tags

H1, H2, and H3 tags should also include some of your keywords. You can find these in the headings and subheadings of your articles.

3. Image Alt Tags

You can name your images to help the search engines identify what your pictures are. Use these to describe your photos and graphics as best as possible.

Use Your Keywords,  Focus On One Per Page

It is all too easy to make the mistake of focusing on too many keywords for a single page. You do not want to confuse the search engines, but that is exactly what will happen if you’re not careful.

For instance, take two separate websites…

The first site has three pages targeting the key phrase “real estate in NJ.” The second website has one page targeting that same key phrase. It is going to be much easier for the second site to outrank the first on Google. Why? Because the first website is cutting its SEO juice down to 33 percent of what it would be with only one page. Having three pages means you are diluting your efforts instead of focusing your resources completely on a single page. Do not force search engines to decide which is the key page.

One page ranking in the top five is better than three pages ranking in positions 10-20. This is known as keyword cannibalization and should be avoided whenever possible.

Get Backlinks From Major Players

You do not want to forget manual outreach. This is where you reach out to the people and websites you mentioned in your posts. The idea is to have these people link back to you, capitalizing on their website traffic. A little known fact is the more quality real estate blog backlinks you have, the better your chance of ranking in Google.

How To Drive Traffic To Your Blog

What is the point of a website if you are not getting traffic? You want consumers on your site, checking out your articles, doing home searches, and ultimately contacting you for help. If you want more real estate leads start with the tips below:

Add Sharing Buttons For Longevity

Make sure every page on your local real estate website has sharing buttons. Posts with sharing buttons have a much longer lifespan than those without. Many people will share good content…make it easy for them to do just that.

Post Multiple Times!

It is possible to post the same piece of content more than once. Plenty of people are a little hesitant to do this, but you are missing out big time if you do not repost old content.

In reality, you are only reaching a small portion of your audience when you post something new, which is why it is so important to post on several different days and at several different times.

Look For Groups & Communities Online

Search for real estate groups on your favorite social media platforms. But be careful! The last thing you want is to end up looking like a spammer. Only contribute when you can add value that is relevant to the discussion at hand. If the information is good, you can bet others will be more inclined to share it. Always reciprocate—it is a good way to build relationships and it shows you are not just there to get something. Giving pays dividends!

Syndicate Your Content

Plenty of sites out there are hungry for good content. In fact, some of them will openly accept articles from new real estate bloggers. This is known as syndicating your content and can help you gain valuable traffic for free. It can also be a valuable resource for obtaining backlinks.

Guest Posting

This is similar to content syndication except for a major difference: Guest posting usually warrants a unique article, whereas syndicators will reuse old content. How do you find guest posting and syndication opportunities?

Try searching in Google:

• Submit article real estate
• Write for us your neighborhood
• Guest post real estate

Follow these steps and you will be well on your way to becoming a successful real estate blogger. If you are already blogging, what can you do to improve your online presence to increase the chance consumers will find your information and call for assistance?

Anita Clark is a residential real estate agent with Coldwell Banker SSK, REALTORS®, in Houston County, Ga. She is from Coventry, England, is a retired military spouse, and has been assisting buyers, investors, and sellers in middle Georgia since 2007. Connect with Anita on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, or on her Warner Robins GA Real Estate Blog.

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