Neighborhoods Undressed

Undressing SEO, Part 1

I never thought I would be writing a post with a title like that. SEO, is shorthand for search engine optimization. Real estate bloggers seem to be obsessed with the topic these days. The coaches, and the vendors that sell blog platforms write on the subject almost daily. There are groups of real estate bloggers who discuss it endlessly.

In the real estate industry I think the obsession with SEO is because in our industry we like to look for magic bullets and we search for ways to get rich quick. Blogs are almost magical but they are not quick. They take some hard work and dedication. Yes there are stories out there about people who found fame over night because of a blog but that is rare. Most have to work at it over a period of time.

Agents start blogs and after a few months if they are not getting enough traffic they read up on SEO. In some cases writing blog posts on a consistent basis, like every day, would be more beneficial and writing content that is of value to the intended audience would also help.

Some of what I have read about SEO seems to be designed to frighten bloggers and make them feel like they are in over their heads. One of the reasons blogs have become so popular is that they are so easy to create, a technical background or technical experience is not needed. Yes it is possible to screw up a blog but it isn’t as easy as we are lead to believe.

I ran my own site through a kind of SEO tester about eight months ago. My score was 95, which means that my blog was better, from an SEO stand point than 95% of the web sites out there. I ran the same report over the weekend and got a score of 88. My score has dropped a bit but my readership has about doubled. 64% of my readers find me through search engines. Even though my report has a B on it instead of an A, it doesn’t matter in terms of readership, and I am still meeting clients through my blog. I found the report interesting but I don’t plan on correcting any of the defects becasue I don’t think they are having a negative impact on my business.

When the blog was a page rank three I got just as much business through it as I do today with a higher page rank. The number of readers may not matter at all. Who is reading it is much more important. Traffic is nice to have but the right kind of traffic is wonderful and where I think the magic comes in. Those notes from people asking for help buying or selling a home. In the beginning of the note, or sometimes at the end it will say I love your blog, or I have been reading your blog.

A successful blog is about writing and posting consistently. A blog post does not have to be a great literary master piece. Instead it should be written in a friendly conversational tone and should be short an easy to read. As a rule less than 500 words is good. No one really talks about frequency of posts or what to write about. Blog posts should have unique content and sometimes it is the ordinary day to day occurrences that make the best blog posts.

After I wrote this I found two of the best posts I have seen on the topic of SEO for Realtors. I was going to delete my post but instead I will put in some links: SEO De-Programmers Needed for Re bloggers and Target and Focus Your Local Content

Hope Dave Smith at the blog Lab doesn’t mind, but his posts are excellent.