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Oct
09
Posted by Teresa Boardman
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.
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Oct
07
Posted by admin
Agents that blog about a local area give you an opportunity to know them before you meet them. Today we are in our test (beta) stage with real agents. These are agents we know. We know they will serve you well.
We have written for over a year on how to have a great mortgage experience. Our two consumer tranaparancy websites are worth studying, MortgagesUndressed.com and RealEstateUndressed.com. In a quick statement it is simple: Use a lender that can give you a current reference from a real estate agent. Talk to the agent. See how the lender is doing now. Are they too busy? Then when you call the lender or loan officer let them know you are referred by that agent. Guess what? You become a high priority.
In my loan officer career I was fortunate to build my skills to have that reference capacity. It is hard to get as you must prove you are dependable and skillful and you must maintain integrity. Integrity in lending should mean that a loan officer does as promised and does it on time. That loan officer will charge competitive fees, and put you in the right progam.
We start in Washington State, our home market. We will grow in a managed way.
Watch us grow, help us grow. Larry Cragun
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Oct
05
Posted by Teresa Boardman
When I started my real estate blog there were not many real estate blogs around and no blogs about St. Paul. I was lucky. My instinct told me that if I wrote to consumers, and kept it local because real estate is local, that people would read my blog and that I would get to meet them, and maybe they would become clients. I learned to keep it real and to be myself and not to imitate others or try to be something or someone that I am not.
Then at some point, maybe about a year ago the real estate industry got interested in blogs. I started seeing them everywhere. Many of the bloggers would start out the way that I did. After a few months they would begin writing to other bloggers and giving advice on how to blog. I understand how this happens. It is hard to stay focused especially in the beginning. Writing a local blog can be a lonely experience, even more so for someone like me who does not live any where near Seattle, but in fly over land where blogs are not as popular.
In most cases local bloggers do not get national recognition. I have had national recognition but only because I was an early adapter. There certainly are better blogs than mine. The first time my blog was noticed was by the Chicago Tribune and the reporter wrote about it because she was not finding local blogs written by agents. She was finding blogs written by Realtors for other Realtors. When she came to mine she found pictures of houses because I was writing a series on local architecture that week. The other blogs she visited had pictures of iPhones on them because that is what everyone was talking about that week. Those architecture posts generated about a million dollars in sales, the iPhone posts got more traffic and comments and links.
My goal was and is to stay focused and if you read my blog you will see that I have stayed on track. It can be fun to write to other bloggers who will leave comments, but my goal is to write about St. Paul and about real estate and it is a lot of fun to come up number one in the search engines, organically for keywords that other companies pay for.
Why am I writing all of this? Mostly to explain the undressed network. The idea is to have a local blog because real estate is local. Blogs are not technical, they are about content. What to write and how to write it. The undressed network is not about getting national recognition or about seeing which blogger can have the most real estate professionals reading. It is about building relationships with the consumers who live inside of our computers, so that they will contact us and ask for our help when they need to buy or sell real estate.
I contend that the real estate industry does not yet understand local blogs or the power that we as individuals have on the internet. As an industry we reward bloggers by how many others in the industry read them and have not yet embraced the idea of writing to potential clients. It is about being real and local and giving consumers the information they are looking for. It is about honesty and integrity and yes even undressing. In writing we are undressing online. We are exposing our beliefs, values and ideas. That takes courage but it is powerful.
I guess I have just exposed my beliefs and values about real estate blogs. It is OK to have a national blog, I have one of those too, and I read them, but if the intent is to win business try a local or neighborhood blog. National bloggers have a lot more competition because there are so many of them. There is almost no competition for local bloggers making it a great opportunity for agents who want to have a strong web presence that generates business,
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Oct
03
Posted by Teresa Boardman
No, I am not invisible . . Pictures
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Oct
03
Posted by larry cragun
She doesn’t like her picture broadcast on the web. Is She really “The Invisible Woman”?
Or this her?
Or this her and her bodygaurd?
Or is this her agent cutting a deal before she poses for us?
Or is she just somewhere counting her awards and accolades?
Whatever, wherever, however…… Teresa we are happy to have you!
