My first blog post, feedback please.

[Breckenridge Real Estate]

I just made my first ever blog post here:

http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/...nta/1488/show/

Please let me know if I did anything right or wrong.

Other than the ability to post immediately and have others offer comments, I really do not understand the difference between a blog like this one and article submission sites. Would someone please help to fill me in?

[jessiesc]

Looks pretty good to me

I learned quite a bit about ski rental real estate from that one entry.

I'd like to offer an alternative view on this type of blog entry. No offense is intended and my view will probably be counter to many others...

My personal suggestions are:

1. While the article is very complete and contains quite a bit of information, I believe it has too much information. If you were to continue writing about Ski Rentals, what else would you write about? I say this because I for one don't always have the time or inclination to come up with a new topic for blogs. When I get a decent story for the blog (which gets less and less as time progresses) I get worried that I won't have anything else to write about soon enough. Suggestion: Break up the information into several parts and add some additional "personal" or other local Real Estate information to fill up the space. That way you can have say 2-3 maybe even 4 blogs worth of information (without having to come up with topics all the time) and leaves the visitor wanting more and either coming back or visiting your site to get the extra information.

2. Another suggestion which I know is not favored by many is, I would add some SEO and a few well chosen links to the Blog. Highlight (bold/italic) some keywords (as in the above paragraph) and place a link or 2 to your site so visitors can click through and see what you have to offer that your competition does not. Links I believe are important, but should be used sparingly in blogs. Example: You have "pay the carrying costs" in your article, why not elaborate more in an additional article on your website as to what exactly are those costs. I'm sure many people like myself may not know: Snow removal (keep roof from falling in)?, maintenance costs, season preparation costs?

3. Expanding on the above concept, you could use this type of article for link/article exchange and submit it to several sites as unique concept. You may get more bang for the buck by breaking it up into ticklers for article exchange with links to the more complete articles.

Again, I found it to be a very informative article.

If you would like to contribute a scaled down version of this article with a few links to my site, I would like to include it as a link exchange. I would promote this article and your site as our Ski Rental Agent for that area.

Many Agents don't realize or capitalize on the fact that many vacationers and residents in Florida either live in snow packed areas, or are looking for winter investments that aren't beach related.

Hope this helps.

[Morristown]

Hi Jessie or anyone else,

would you mind looking at my 2 blogs and letting me know your thoughts, areas needing improvment?

http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/james-boyer/

Thank you,

Jim

[jessiesc]

Hi jim,

I sent you a pm. That information is not for public consumption.

May I suggest when requesting information about your site you start a new thread?

It may be considered 'hi-jacking' someone else's thread and you may not get as many responses.

Start another thread I'd be glad to review the blog for you.

[Breckenridge Real Estate]

Thanks for your feedback Jessiesc! To expand on some of your thoughts...

1. It was suggested in the article writting forum that word length should be 500 to 750 words and this one comes in the middle. I geuss what I gust learned is that blog posts can, and should be shorter. Your question as to what else I might write about along the same lines brings to mind several topics that will probably follow.

2. I do have additional information on internal pages of my site which get into the income / expense equation of ski rental property. Perhaps I will go back and edit the post to add links. On my first post, I wanted err on the side of caution in this regard.

3. There has been alot of talk in the other forums about link exchanging being dead and even potentially harmful from an SEO perspective. This is part of the reason I am now trying to learn about article writting and blogs. Can you expand on the kind of exchange you have in mind and site some examples?

And just as a side note, you are correct. Florida is the #1 state in the country for ski travel.

Thanks again!

[jessiesc]

3. There has been alot of talk in the other forums about link exchanging being dead and even potentially harmful from an SEO perspective. This is part of the reason I am now trying to learn about article writting and blogs. Can you expand on the kind of exchange you have in mind and site some examples?

Try looking here.

IMO, link exchange and article exchange are neither dead nor harmful, they just need to be done logically and with relevance.

[webmaster]

I am of a different opinion as Jessie, I don't think it needs SEO (You should never intentionally try to "SEO" a well written blog post, instead what it requires is "formatting" - it is very informative, but could really use some breaking up, stylization and heaven forbid an image or 2

In terms of the length, totally agree, I might have broken it into part 1 and part 2 or even further.

For those of you embedding links into your blog posts, they should NEVER be backlinks to your own websites unless it makes absolutely sense to do so, otherwise you will be regarded as being somewhat spammy. The same thing with related links: If you write a blog post about Ski Resort Real Estate Listings On the Rise, what you would put in the related links section would be other references, perhaps to a recent newspaper website story covering the same or similar topic. The related links area is NOT a place to give yourself a bunch more backlinks.

Not to say you would never link to your site from there, for instance you might write a blog post about how a local television station did a story on your amazing MLS search application or something. In this case, 100% you would like to that application in the related links (And possibly in the body) - you are speaking about it specifically in the post, so it makes sense if people wanted to see exactly what you were talking about you should provide them with a link.