First off, let me disclose that I am a “Traffic Guy” who had resisted blogging until last year. I resisted because I have always been able to get plenty of buyer and seller traffic, and thought that blogging wasn’t worth the time investment required. In fact, I grew my Boulder real estate company to nearly 60 agents, and I generated the majority of their sales because of the traffic I was able to generate.  I figured: “With that kind of traffic - who needs to spend time blogging?” (And to be honest, I envisioned the thought of myself being “a blogger” very much like the image to the right.)

Now, you could say I’m a convert, and I’m trying to motivate the agents on my team to start blogging as a way to convert more of the prospects I’m already giving them, as well as to become less dependent on me for bringing in new business.  Some of our agents have jumped in with both feet, and some still haven’t.  As I was working with the ones that have jumped in with both feet, I realized that most of them were only focusing on one aspect of blogging or the other, but none were focusing on both.

Blogging is like a reality TV show. When I say “one aspect or the other”, I am referring to my belief that blogging is like a reality TV show (or any TV show for that matter) in the fact that it has two parts, and neither can survive without the other.  TV is paid for by commercials. Without commercials, or sponsorship, network television (as we currently know it) wouldn’t exist.  Likewise, without good content (the show itself), commercials wouldn’t get watched.

Blogging is the same thing.  Writing informative & compelling articles about the area, and sharing your thoughts about certain topics (whether real estate related or not) is the equivalent of the TV show.  Getting your readers to know and trust you by writing your innermost thoughts, and sharing fun stories is what will keep people coming back to your blog for more.  HOWEVER, it’s the topics that aren’t as fun to write about that will bring in the traffic in droves.  Those topics are your city and neighborhood descriptions & market reports.

The funny thing is that most of the agents I’m working with are ONLY writing from one perspective or the other…

Approach #1: The “TV show approach”. Many Bloggers take a journalistic approach and write solely about what topics they think are important thinking “SEO be damned - I’m writing for my readers.”  I applaud that approach (and agree that it should represent the majority of your writing efforts).  Afterall - it’s that content that your readers (potential clients) will keep coming back for.  Unfortunately – taking only that approach means a slow, uphill climb in terms building a loyal list of readers.  (This, BTW, is why I see so many bloggers say it takes 6 to 8 months to “get any traction” from their blogging efforts.)

Approach #2: The infomercial approach. Other bloggers approach it from the other side of the fence, and focus solely on writing “search engine food” for what the majority of people are searching for. By that, I’m referring to people searching for “INSERT-CITY real estate” or “INSERT-NEIGHBORHOOD INSERT-CITY real estate”.  The good news is that if you do it right, you will get visitors… However, just like a 30 minute infomercial — they won’t keep coming back to your blog because if you’re only writing about city and neighborhood descriptions and never anything else — they’ll get pretty bored — pretty quickly, and won’t find a need to ever return to your blog.

The key is balance, and following a similar ratio to what the national TV networks follow is probably a good rule of thumb.  Since a 30 minute TV spot consists of about 24 minutes of interesting content, and 6 minutes of commercials, you could try to follow the same rules.  Dedicate about 20% of your writing to the local area, and then you can write about whatever you like for the other 80%!

When I say write about whatever you like, I mean it!

Case Study #1:

Ines Hegdus-Garcia - a prolific Miami Real Estate agent dedicates a day a week to pictures in the area (and she makes an event of it by calling it “Miamism Fridays”). Some people visit her blog just to see those pictures!  She also dedicates a lot of time talking about Mojitos.  What the heck does an alcoholic beverage have to do with real estate?!?! It doesn’t matter - because she gets it…  Ines gets the fact that blogging isn’t just about showing off your expertise. It’s about being who YOU are, and letting those who can relate to you keep coming back for more episodes of “you”.  When the time is right, they’ll watch your commercials (read about neighborhood market stats and search for homes, or ask for home evaluations) so you can pay the bills too, but if you want to make sure your potential customers keep coming back for more, write 80% of your posts to entertain your readers, not educate them. (I’ll show you at the end of this post a strategy you can use to get more traffic to your “boring, but traffic generating” city/neighborhood posts - despite them representing less than 20% of your blogging efforts.

Case Study #2:

Another example is Jay Thompson (AKA - The Phoenix Real Estate Guy). Jay knows the area like the back of his hand, and he writes about his opinion on the market quite often.  However, he writes about more interesting topics (that aren’t written with Search Engine Optimization in mind) far more often.  I took a quick perusal through the front page of his blog, and of the 5 most recent posts.  One was written with people looking for Phoenix real estate in mind… One out of five. The other 4 posts were written about topics that have very little to do with Phoenix real estate - but all 4 were posts that kept me reading.  One has to do with service at a hotel he stayed at in Colorado Springs, another has to do with one of his favorite places to “eat, drink & be merry”, another was a quick note to express his frustration with his inbox being full and the fact that emails weren’t getting through to him, and the 5th topic was defining a legal term.  (Granted - that could be considered real estate related, but when I read it - it was written purely to help anyone who wants to learn about the term “Lis Pendens”, and had not even the most remote scent of “local SEO enhancement” associated with it.  In other words, if he even closed his post with “if you’re ever in the market for a Phoenix home for sale”, he would have blown my 80/20 theory out of the water, but considering he wrote that post as a free tidbit for anyone reading his blog (regardless of where they’re shopping for a home), I’ll count it as “a part of the show vs. a commercial”.  I bet if you visit his site at any given time, you’ll find a similar ratio of 1 “keyword optimized” post for every 4 that are written purely for the benefit/enjoyment of the reader.  It’s that strategy (and the fact that Jay even makes his keyword optimized posts a very interesting read) that has Jay known as one of the best real estate bloggers in the country.

Case Studies 4, 5, 6, the list goes on…

Kristal Kraft - a fellow Denver Colorado real estate agent (who I admire despite the fact that she’s a competitor), and Teresa Boardman - a St Paul MN real estate agent are two bloggers who share their passion for photography first, and real estate second.  Jason Crouch (Austin TX Realtor), and Marc Rasmussen (Sarasota FL Realtor) are both very open about their families in a lot of their writing.  When it comes time for a buyer or seller to choose from the dozens of Realtors they have to choose from, I bet dollars to donuts that those buyers & sellers pick their agent based on a shared passion first, and their real estate knowledge second.

Don’t get me wrong - I can’t turn a boring neighborhood description into poetic prose like Jay & Kristal & so many other bloggers I’ve had the privilege of knowing can do, but that’s not necessary.  My goal is to get 10 times more visitors (who are 10 times more likely to buy) coming to my clients’ real estate sites by using those “boring neighborhood description commercials” as a gateway to get more search engine traffic.  Once those visitors enter my clients’ sites, if all they find is a bunch of other neighborhood descriptions used to please the search engine gods, they’ll leave.  However, if they find 10% to 20% real estate information, and 80% to 90% things to do, funny stories, thought provoking discussions, and things that make you unique - you’ll exponentially increase your odds of getting those readers’ business.

Now how do you get 10 times as many people to find your blog? The best way to do that is whenever you write a post about a neighborhood in your area (which, remember, should only be 10% or 20% of the time) - don’t just settle for that post ranking in the top 10 or top 20 for that neighborhood… If you notice that you only ranked #8, go out and get a couple links that point directly at that neighborhood post. With the exception of highly competitive neighborhoods, you’ll be surprised at how often that extra 10 to 20 minutes of effort will get you to #1 for that neighborhood.  That #1 ranking will get you 5 to 15 times as many visitors as compared to a #8 ranking, and considering the customers that find your Neighborhood post already have a better idea of what they are looking for than those who are just searching for “INSERT-CITY real estate”, you’ll be dealing with a far more motivated buyer.

My challenge to you is to put my theory into action and get one of your existing blog posts not in the top 10 - to rank #1 on Google.

1. Take a look at your existing blog, and find a post you’ve written about a neighborhood in your area. I don’t care if it’s only 150 words long - just humor me.
2. Now, go and search Google and make note of what position you are in when you search for “INSERT-NEIGHBORHOOD INSERT-CITY real estate”.
3. Point a link or two at that exact post. If you’re too bashful to ask one of your Active Rain friends to throw a link your way, and don’t know where else to get links, write a general interest article about real estate, and throw it up on a free site like GoArticles.com or EzineArticles.com At the end of your article, you’ll be able to insert a “resource box” - which will allow you to say something like “If you’re ever in the market for INSERT-NIGHBORHOOD INSERT-CITY real estate, visit my site.  (And make “INSERT-NEIGHBORHOOD INSERT-CITY real estate” a hyperlink that points directly at your post about that neighborhood.)

**The reason I am giving this advice about a less competitive neighborhood is because you’ll see almost INSTANT results, and those results will mean exponentially more visitors to that page from the search engines. The same principle applies to “CITY real estate”, but it will take a bit more link-building effort to see a measurable result.  Focus on a neighborhood, and you’ll likely get a boost to the #1 position (with only one or two links) within a week or two, and it will happen 7 out of 10 times.

Still hesitant? This experiment will take you a half-hour at most, and depending on where that post currently ranks on the search engines — the results could mean 10X more highly qualified traffic to that page.

STILL hesitant? Now it’s time to put my own advice to the test.  Just for grins - I picked out a friend Jim Duncan’s post from nearly a year ago about Fifeville Charlottesville real estate.  Despite the fact that he has an EXCELLENT blog with commanding authority in his area, that post is currently only ranked #7 for what is not a very competitive phrase.  (Screenshot below.) Whaddya wanna bet that this silly little link (whose “link juice” has been diluted by including about a dozen other links on the same page), from my silly little blog will boost his post to the top 3 for the Google term “Fifeville Charlottesville real estate“?

When is “now” a good time to start strategically building links so you can start getting more traffic to your blog?

For the record, here is a screenshot of RealCentralVA’s ranking as of 3-21-09 — before I sent a link his way: