Need a blogging routine that works!

[frommetoyou]

I have been reading these forums for months! I still cant figure out which ones work! I am getting some response, but still havnt sold many properties!

All advice would be appreciated!!!

-M

[Joelrunner]

If you want to see something that actually works (almost overnight), focus on the long-tail (ie: write 200 to 400 words about one of the neighborhoods you serve.) Depending on how competitive that neighborhood is, you'll most likely get a "top 20" ranking without any effort other than that.

THEN - write another article or blog post, but DON'T put it on your blog. Put it somewhere else like hubpages, squidoo, goarticles, or ezinearticles. When you write that article, make sure to include an anchor-text link that points back to the long-tail neighborhood post you wrote on your blog. 9 times out of 10, that will shoot your neighborhood blog post up to a top 3 position & it will stay there for quite a while.

I call this the "article pairs" strategy & it's very effective. While everyone else is fighting tooth & nail over "CITY real estate", you could own a top 3 position for ALL of the neighborhoods within that city with 1/100th (if not 1/1000th) the effort.

Although search volume is 1/100th as much as search volumes for the city that neighborhood, the buyers searching for those terms are 10 to 20x as likely to become clients. It's a VERY easy way to get high quality visitors to your site relatively quickly.

[CarlosAT]

I second that. That was a great post Joel.

I will add that he can't forget to add some call to actions. For example, a link to your website listing properties for sale on that community/neighborhood. Or a call to action asking people to contact you for a report on that neighborhood with sales information and trend.

You'll be seeing the benefits much quicker that way.

[Joelrunner]

Thanks Carlos!

I get a lot of resistance from bloggers who don't believe in putting work into writing content for other sites, but considering what that strategy does for rankings (#1 vs top 10 or 20), I'm sticking with that strategy ;-)

[Dave Kovaleski]

I fell off the blog wagon for a year. My website went from page 1 for 2 of my main keywords, to page 4 and 8 for the same 2 keywords.

I finally got off my butt and wrote 2 blogs, on 2 diferent platforms, got back involved on the forums here and one other spot, and in just 1.5 weeks my site jumped up 2 pages on both of these keywords.

Not sure if this is great information for the OP's question, but just wanted to point out the importance of blogging and forum participation to help your site rank well in google.

[Logan UT Real Estate Gal]

Joel's advice is amazing. After doing your neighborhoods, then start trying for smaller towns within your area, and build your way up. Also, the key is time and patience. I started blogging about 10 months ago, I recenlty landed a 4th spot on Google for my most "precious" keyword, but I blog daily. If you put in the time, continue to learn, and research what your competitors are doing, there is no reason why you can't do it to.

Good Luck!

[nyccountryhomes]

Really great advice Joel ! I have read SEO guides that describe exactly what you have mentioned.

[Joelrunner]

Thanks folks! I just remembered a couple case studies I did on Active Rain where I lay out this strategy in more detail. Here's one, and here's the followup to that post if you're interested.

[Robert Worthington]

I like Joel's advice. You should dominate the easy neighborhood words and then work on the big city name real estate.

[livinginsantiago]

Joel

Those are for very interesting ideas. I need to look into that and see what I can do. I might be in a bit of a different situation where most of my website traffic do not know the areas of the city since they are looking to move to a new country so I have to stick with Santiago as a whole. Now here are some of the things that I have picked out of some post so far.

1) I should have both an on site blog and offsite blog. - Q) will I be penalized for duplicate content if they are both the same post?

2) I need to write articles for the blog and post to other sites, Makes perfect sense. So not only use the blog to post listings but use it to post articles like steps to rent here and how the contracts differ from let's say the States, maybe others like mortgage rates from the different banks and their requirements for foreigners to buy here.

3) here is a question, if a person post 7 post each sunday, does it carry the same weight as 1 post each day? is it quantity or frequency?

4) Are there certain places we should be targeting for these articles on other sites?

Kind of like the site as it is making me think, but yet it is kind of depressing thinking about how my work load just went up!

But thanks Joel. Good information.