Your real estate blog can benefit your search engine visibility, but there are several aspects of your blog to keep in mind.

Utilize your one of your real estate blogs key features: fast and easy to write and upload. You don’t need to be a master of HTML to use your blog. You can write in the template, proof-read your entry for grammar and use of keywords, maybe add a small graphic and upload. Choose topics of interest to your clients and add your expert

Be consistent with your real estate blog entries by creating them daily or several times a week. This consistency is what trains the search engines to crawl your site at more frequent intervals and more quickly affect your search engine ranking.

Make your keywords work for your site. The drawback of free blogs is that they are not integrated into your site. All your good writing and keyword usage is not building up your website with the search engines. Make all your real estate musings work to attract the search engines to your blog and your website. Your website designer can show you how to integrate a blog into your real estate website.

The three bywords of your real estate blog are: relevant, recent and rememberable. OK, so rememberable isn’t a word, but it is memorable and so makes the point.

As a real estate professional with some experience with your own real estate blog and a great deal of experience with home buyers, sellers, real estate loan officers, appraisers and title companies, you have a lot of qualified insight to offer. Expand your visibility by offering your insights on other real estate blogs. As the saying goes, “the tide raises all boats”, by commenting at another’s blog, your address is attached to your comment allowing blog visitors to jump to your site.

Conversely, if you quote another blog to add heft to one of your entries, provide a link to that blog. The creation of more inbound and outbound links to your real estate site serve as tremendous boosters for your ranking with search engines. An inbound link is read by the search engine algorithm as “someone in the world thinks this site has good information”. Think of a link as a testimonial in computer code.

Word to the wise: Make sure your comments are informative and helpful to any blogging conversation that you join or you may be seen as “comment spamming”, which hurts your image as an expert and a person worth talking with.

Blogging 101: Educate yourself.

You can also go to blogging about blogging sites to learn more about blogging and leave comments about your experiences. Your comments may bring warm sales leads, but this is a very wide market. Some of the most educational blogging sites are:

www.bloggingpro.com: A site for blogging software & applications news, plug-ins and themes.

Blogwild!: A Guide for Small Business Blogging author Andy Wibbels covers small business’ blogging points.

Blogging for Business: Author Ted Demopoulos goes over the whys and wherefores of blogging and podcasting for businesses.

Expand Your Real Estate Presence

More to your market, real estate blogs you can interact with are: The Inman Report is one of the biggest in the industry and regularly appears on Google’s first page results for the key phrase “real estate blogs”.

Active Rain is “free online community for real estate professionals designed to help them promote and grow their business”. Once you join, you can post a bio of you and your company. Read a few interchanges and see if it is something you want to join.

Also, commenting on real estate website blogs that are out of your market area, especially an area that consistently sends buyers such as snowbirds or retirees to your real estate market, is a way to build links, traffic and a growing stream of sales leads.

Start Getting Listed in Directories…Wisely

Also, once you have some entries - hopefully interesting, informative and possibly scintilatingly witty - get your real estate blog listed in web directories, especially the real estate blog directories. A real estate directory that shows up high in Google’s rating is Real Estate Blogs.

General directories that Google “respects” are DMOZ Open Directory Project, Yahoo Directory and Business.com. DMOZ is free and takes a while as they check your site. Business.com is a paid listing directory.

Warning: You don’t want to go and try and get listed in any and all listing directories on the web. This can backfire on two fronts: one Google lowers your ranking if the directories are not in your industry or viewed as fake directories. Fake directories can also lead to more spam hitting your inbox and some even list your site, but if you check the HTML code they have a “nofollow” tag or some other instructions blocking the link from connecting to your site.

Blogging is the growing communication tool of the 21st century. So, look over the fence, check out what the real estate blogs are doing in your internet neighborhood. Comment, exchange information, read, and get listed in directories. Wait, this sounds like things you already do in other areas!

Your real estate blog is one of your most cost-effective small business marketing tools to raise your real estate services’ visibility and add to your market. Your web designer can help you add a blog to your real estate website using one of the blog templates on the market. The help of a designer for the set-up phase makes your set-up trouble-free, faster and seamless. Also your designer can add a theme, plug-ins and graphics that will give your site both a professional look and tie it to the look and feel of your real estate website.

Internet Marketing Consultants, a real estate web design company, has found WordPress to be one of the easiest blog programs since it has well defined template and is intuitively easy to add articles and images. “The ease of use of WordPress is very important for real estate agents”, reports IMC’s John Naschinski. “WordPress Blog software makes it easy for non-technical people to quickly add articles and then go and view it immediately online is important. If creating a real estate blog entry turns into a federal case, agents feel their time is better spent with clients directly and only sporadically or never make entries.”

Earlier entries discussed the simple blogging rules of keeping your messages concise and the tone informal and casual. The following “best practices” will also make your blogging efforts easier and with more effective use of time.

Under your theme of real estate, work with your designer to set up the initial categories of your blog. It is better if your categories also are keywords connected with your website, such as: real estate markets and [your town] real estate.

Create a list of subjects relevant to your customers and for each subject list a few of your keywords or key phrases. Then set up a schedule for writing your entries. Match your writing schedule to the natural rhythm of your day. If you have a block of time on certain days, use that to create several entries that you can add to the blog over the next few days. Sometimes it works to use your “decompression time” when you get home to write a few paragraphs. Whatever works best for your schedule, set that up and stick to it. Your blog is better rated by the search engines when they track that you make entries during the week. Don’t forget to double check the spelling and grammar. A fast way to check is to use a program like MS Word, then save the file as a .txt file.

Google’s default time for checking a site is usually every three weeks. If it finds blog entries appearing on your real estate website made more often than that, it changes its program to crawl the site more often.

If you want the visibility a blog will add to your real estate website, but you do not have the time or writing skill, hiring a writer to fill in your checklist is also an option. This may increase your marketing budget, but as successful real estate agents have found out, getting the business that ranking high on the search engines causes is worth it.

Enjoy your blogging by keeping it fresh, fun and frequent.

Are you using your real estate website as your correspondence secretary, eye in the sky, or comparison shopper? Website technology has evolved to improve the information available on your website and also multiply the tasks your website can handle.

Use your real estate website as your secretary while you are on the road. When a potential home buyer or seller contacts your website, use the auto responder technology to send them an email. This is one of the multiple advertising touches to imprint your personal brand. Use it creatively! Your return message should carry your enthusiasm and personality as well as the traditional “Thank you”. And as always repeat the contact information. Your auto responder message is another potential business card that can be printed or forwarded to a friend. Innocently suggest the referral route by adding an official looking post script “If you have received this email as a forward, you have very perceptive and intelligent friends.” OK, its not that innocent, but it is leveraging your marketing using real estate technology, which is the subject of this entry.

Over 80% of real estate agents use a digital camera to capture images of properties. The obvious benefit of digital pictures is that you can quickly store, sort and upload them to your website. But another area that is rarely used is that it is easy to do minor edits on your pictures. One simple editing task is lighten areas of pictures that are too dark to see the house features - a common problem when shooting a house against a bright sky. Another is cropping - cutting the image to focus on the impressive part and possibly lop off the neighbors drooling Saint Bernard at the fence.

Image editing has become very inexpensive with the release of GIMP software, a freeware similar to Photoshop. The latest release has both a built-in help feature as well as a user manual to lead you through the steps to crop, lighten, enhance the color or improve the contrast in your photos! Freeware that improves your effectiveness is a boon for the mobile professional people and pleasing the population of real estate agents.

The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) found that the top way to improve your real estate website is to have many property photos with descriptions. Both buyers and sellers responded in a 2004 survey that pictures and the properties are the two most valuable features on a real estate web site. Virtual tours - video walk throughs of a house - ranked third.

The NAR’s second most effective website tool is the webpage for your MLS listings. Make sure this link is incorporated into your web design so that your clients don’t lose your website when they link to the listing site.

Google Earth and Zillow are changing the way people research property. In the ten years from 1995 to 2005, the NAR found that the buying trend shifted from 2% of the population to 77% of the population use the internet to search for properties. Decide how you want your real estate website to integrate with this fast changing and evolving part of the market place. Consult your real estate website design professional to see what they have found works with this budding opportunity.

In this day and age of visual and virtual marketing, your real estate website must stay up with the technology the same way you keep your physical office well painted and carpeted. The buying and selling public responds well to technologically helpful real estate sites that have the human touch shining through.

How much of your real estate office is really your automobile? Between house showings, meeting clients and checking potential properties, real estate technology has benefited from the trend to mobility. According to the National Association of Realtors, “The most popular devices Realtors® use in their day-to-day business include digital cameras, desktop computers and cell phones. The survey also revealed the growing popularity of smart phones or PDAs, which provide phone, Internet (website & MLS access) and e-mail capabilities.”

Cell phones (especially smart phones) are the obvious first candidate for an office mobility award. Firmly established for its ability to be on the phone with people anywhere and be your portable answering machine, the phone is now taking on aspects of a mini computer. The Internet is invading the cell phone home turf with tools for real estate agents like website, MLS access and Google Mobile’s “My Location” which mimics a GPS device. GPS devices use satellite signals to triangulate your position on the globe. The My Location technology can show you a map of where you are on your web-enabled cell phone using the geographical positions of nearby cell towers. To download this technology, browse to www.google.com/gmm or text “bluedot” to the number 33669 and download the application. This technology is now included with Apple’s iPhone (as of firmware update 1.1.3).

With laptops offering the same computing power as desktop models, The NAR found that since 2004 more Realtors® are buying laptops instead of home desktop computers. Real estate agents in the market for laptops now have an economical way to both go mobile adn present their real estate websites to prospective clients. Refurbished IBM Thinkpad laptops are a great investment! Long the standard in complaint-free, easy to use laptops, Thinkpads are now available for under $500 with 15″ screens (very readable), wireless (make better use of your coffee shop), and with one of the best keyboards around. The fact that it’s encumbered with a status symbol aura can’t hurt your image either! Of course, since it is portable, you can also opt for lighter laptops with 12″ or 13″ screens.

Another great portability breakthrough is the flash drive technology. These portable memory sticks act like mini hard drives that plug into your computer’s USB port. Once plugged in, they are ready to save any of your files. A flash drive’s memory capacity is tremendous. You can save folders full of real estate pictures, letter templates, and PowerPoint presentations. Any files you work with at home and work can be carried in your pocket. One gig to 8 gig capacities are basic sizes. The consumer wins in this technology market, since flash drive manufacturers abound. Look around on the internet and find the deals. Name brand providers such as Kingston regularly have 50% off sales on their drives.

The only office item still missing from your car is a portable printer. Printer technology has advanced with quite an array of portable machines. Some, like HP’s PhotoSmart printers only print 4 X 6 color photos, while the inkjet work horses, such as HP’s 460CB or Canon’s Pixma iP90 kick out high quality color images and print on standard 8.5 x 11 paper.

Phones that can be used to get maps, send emails and visit websites; computers that can present property folios and personal PowerPoint presentations; and websites that automatically maintain your new relationships - now you can be in more than one place at once. Well, virtually. Now, if you only had a chauffeur, think of all the work you could get done.

Add a “neighborhood news” area to your real estate website to educate your Internet visitors, boost your search engine ranking and increase your knowledge of these niche markets. The neighborhood news tool allows you to post articles on your website about your target market neighborhoods. It is an opportunity to add eye-catching titles, keyword-rich content and facts to educate your visitors on the benefits of each neighborhood.

The “news” aspect means that this tool is most effective when it is kept fresh - a mix of neighborhood background information and news. This is news on the neighborhood level, such as PTA meetings, high school plays, and zoning hearings. Get to know the neighborhoods where you want to increase your real estate marketing presence. Talk to local store owners and business people and include their insights in your articles.

Don’t be shy about quoting neighborhood and community leaders or mentioning the stars of the local high school play. The first rule in advertising is that people love to read about themselves. Become a name dropper and frequently update your real estate website’s neighborhood information as part of your long-term strategy to gain clients. As people begin to bookmark and regularly check your real estate website, you become more of an expert in their life and a greater candidate for them to naturally choose when they decide to buy or sell their homes.

Another topic to be sure to cover is any neighborhood traditions - July 4th block parties, Cinco de Mayo celebrations, neighborhood seasonal garage sales, or Thanksgiving dinners or firehouse breakfast fundraisers at the community center. A side benefit is that your contact person on these events can also become a source of referrals!

On a more general side, topics such as the local job scene - new companies coming into town or businesses that are increasing/decreasing their work force - and public works projects (usually road improvements) can be of interest or affect several neighborhoods.

Have a game plan on your neighborhood articles. List the neighborhoods you are going to cover and then outline groups or areas that affect the neighborhood: homeowners associations, active civic and youth groups, all the different schools and churches, and the local businesses and services. Start to attach names and phone numbers with each group. You can see how a little networking can build referrals and provide plenty of material for your neighborhood news tool.

How does your real estate website serve your customers? Sure, your website exists to bring in hot home buyer or seller leads. But your visitor is there to get information. The real estate website tools that your offer gratis are a key ingredient to keeping visitors on your site.

Why offer your tools and information for free? Simple. Buyers and sellers hate to feel uninformed (i.e. stupid). By offering tools and information, your visitor can anonymously educate themselves on the market, what parts of town they may like the most, and what the changes in their monthly budgets will be. As you educate the visitors, they begin to view you, through your website, as a knowledgeable expert who knows what real estate clients need. Review your website tools and real estate information with the thought “What question am I answering?” in mind.

How much house can I buy? Home buyers will check out your home listings, but first, with a calculator on your website, they can get an idea of what monthly payments will be on that great looking Craftsman home across town. A basic mortgage calculator allows your client to pre-screen your real estate listings and find their market niche without first divulging their annual income.

What is that neighborhood like? As more buyers rely on the internet to quickly screen real estate listings, the idea of visiting neighborhoods with a knowledgeable real estate agent may appear as a time consuming luxury. Don’t waste all your knowledge! Use a neighborhood news tool on your real estate website. Add articles on different neighborhoods showing their benefits, notes on the local schools, and items that make that neighborhood an attractive place to live. Continually add articles to keep the news fresh (and excite the search engines to visit your site more often).

Is this the right time to buy/sell in the current real estate market? The answer should always be “Yes”, but go in depth on your answer with your real estate blog. Have your website designer set your site up with a blog and make it your real estate diary. The beauty of a blog is that it is conversational writing, short entries, and covers one point on each entry. The above question can be revisited on a continual basis using different reasons and benefits every time you address it.

How can I improve the value of my house for minimum investment? Or how can I best evaluate a house for sale? Articles, buyers and sellers guides and moving checklists for buyers and sellers are a goldmine of great information for your visitors. Dedicate a web page to each real estate topic. These pages can also host links to people you trade links with, such as home cleaners, home maintenance companies, etc.

Use this list to review your real estate website and see where you can improve your offering to your website visitors. By helping your visitors, you also help your website, since new keyword-rich articles and pages help improve your search engine ranking.

Writing your real estate blog can be as easy as talking about your real estate business or the concerns of a first time home buyer. Unfortunately, translating your verbal skills into writing skills is often blocked by how schools have taught us to write. Accept the following rules on writing fro your real estate blog and you will find that writer’s block is not a problem and unleashing your creativity is a lot easier and more fun.

Rule #1: Be brutally honest. Forget what you were taught about writing impersonally in the third person - anything you write is unavoidably autobiographical. Use this to your advantage. You become more real, believable and authoritative to your reader by writing about what you know. Interestingly, by writing and answering questions your real estate clients ask, you get to know yourself better.

Rule #2. Find the common ground. By speaking to your reader using the second person present tense, you bring them into your one-way conversation. We are not as isolated as we think. You have worked with enough clients to know the stress everyone feels when they are buying or selling their house. We may all handle this stress differently, but we all feel it. A real estate blog entry addressing handling this stress may not address real estate directly, but it will help your clients deal with their real estate concerns better. Plus you position yourself as someone who really does understand real estate transactions.

Rule #3. Keep it brief. Writing tends to create run-on sentences. These are OK to get your thoughts out, but go back and shorten them. A good key is watching for the “and” in the sentence. It is probably a good place to separate two thoughts with a period.

Rule #4. Use subtitles on long blog entries. Let your reader skim the article and get the gist of it. This also creates an outline that helps you tie the end of the entry to the beginning.

Rule #5. Sell yourself wisely. Offer the juicy tidbit of information first, then write about your skills or knowledge in that area. Be subtle in blowing your own horn.

As a double check when you start writing - run your real estate blog posts by a teenager. They tend to have no problem unmasking unauthentic writing. And after offering you their juicy tidbit, they’ll sell you on the idea that their unmasking skills are worth a financial reward.

Your real estate blog provides you with a foundational part of your solid sales strategy - building relationships. Your real estate blog creates the direct connection necessary to building your sales relationships. This direct connection between buyer and seller disappeared in layers of marketers, designers, pollsters and managers that is a part of mass production markets. Though items are more available and cheaper, production costs replaced customer needs as a market driver. Blog entries addressing customer needs customizes your real estate website to the current market drivers.

The Harvard Business Review has dedicated several articles to “one to one marketing” and “mass customization”. All buzz words that say manufacturers are relearning “listen to your customer and sell them what they want”. Maybe the spirits of Silk Road merchants are rolling their eyes at this new understanding. Blogs make this interchange happen time and again for your benefit.

By giving your real estate website visitors both current information and the reasons behind your real estate insights, you build trust. Since the real estate market is based on customers looking for their desired home from among available homes created for other people’s likes, the real estate agent’s expertise is funneling the search to a particular target market. With the stature of an expert, your insights and knowledge of the market will be trusted more. The blog is another doorway to lead people to your website’s online listing search and your services.

Show your customers you care. By introducing a recent concern of a customer as a subject in your blog, you are quickly conveying to your readers how well you respond to customers. Your blog entries are 50% what you say and 50% how you say it. By connecting directly with customer concerns and writing in a conversational way, you improve the “how”. When readers email you feedback to your entries, use some of their responses to get your creative juices going on the next entry and reinforce your caring and responsive personal brand.

The content of your real estate blog entries (”what” you say) is aimed at both your readership and the search engines that index and point to your website. Make sure that your articles include the keywords or key phrases that are pertinent to both your blog entry and the markets targeted by your real estate website.

Expand your influence further by sending journalists who cover your real estate market a link to your blog. Journalists and reporters are always looking for an expert to quote and with your blog you become an easily quotable expert. Blog entries on current legislation or trends affecting the real estate or mortgage markets are great targets for this market.

Your real estate blog entries following these guidelines create a solid foundation for reaching potential sales leads, search engines and journalists.