If you think that a real estate blog will be your platform to rant and rave about local politics, favorite recipes and community event calendars? Think again. Your local newspaper website probably already does that much better than you could dream of. Your real estate blog is about, get this, REAL ESTATE. You are not a journalist! You are a Realtor. So, you need to write highly focused real estate content if you want to be found through the search engines for terms related to real estate.

You are not a journalist. You are a Realtor. You are not an event planner. You are a Realtor. You are not your town's newspaper. You are a Realtor. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

What type of traffic do you want to your real estate blog?

You want people visiting your site that are searching for real estate or real estate related terms. These are what Joe of Sellsius calls "transactional real estate visitors." These are people looking to buy or sell real estate now (i.e. in the next 3 months). This is the kind of visitor you most need to attract because they mean business NOW.

Do you care that you have 500 people visiting your blog everyday searching for nude beaches in your town? Probably not. Wouldn't it be much better to have 500 visitors a day that have searched for condos for sale in Long Beach? If someone is searching for museums, nude beaches or the fate of your town's oldest tree, they are more than likely NOT interested in learning about real estate, not interested in searching for properties and may even be put off by the fact that they landed on a real estate site when searching for an unrelated topic. This is not to say that you should never cover community stuff, but you should put yourself on a strict blogging diet of 80% real estate related topics and no more than 20% off topic community pieces. (If you have a brand new blog- lay off the off-topic posts until Google "gets" your blog) You can also very easily work in a restaurant review in a listing post by simply stating the top 10 restaurants near this home or condo...

Read also:Things Losers Say: SEO doesn't matter: Fact: Ranking #1 in Google can improve your real estate leads by 600%

What makes a real estate consumer visitor unique in the world of Internet traffic?

Real estate consumers represent a very unique type of Internet visitor. They are likely to only visit and re-visit your site during the finite time that they are buying or selling a home. Why? Because the real estate consumer has a purpose. He/she is looking for one of three things to search listings, to find a realtor or to find their home value. They are NOT actively seeking your views on community politics or museums in the area or reviews of restaurants unless they somehow relate to a listing description! And just to flip that coin, when someone is looking for museums in your area, they are probably NOT looking for a real estate site. So, qualify your traffic through search by writing highly focused, hyper local real estate content.

Celebration Orlando Real Estate

Teri Isner of Celebration Orlando real estate has had her blog for over a year and had been guided to write about all manner of community events and attractions. The result? The phone rang relentlessly. The problem? She became the town's event planner. People were calling but they were calling to ask when the car show was or what hours the water park was open. Not exactly what she was hoping for. Another downside to this method of blogging was that you couldn't find her blog with two hands, a flashlight or the url in Google for the terms related to Celebration or Orlando Real Estate. Now, since she has changed her blogging strategy and now posts about real estate in Celebration and Orlando, she has begun to climb into the SERPs and currently site pretty on the second page of Google for many of her prime terms (continued attention to the hyper local real estate content strategy will net her even better results). The difference it made it in her business? The phone rings with real estate deals, her real estate lead generator sends her new clients daily.

The Hyper Local Blog Theory

Some of the most successful real estate blogs out there are what we call hyper local blogs. Meaning, they focus almost entirely on the various topics of local real estate and/or mortgages. These blogs tend to stay away from journalistic community pieces and more often than not pen longer posts somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 word plus posts at least 3 days per week. These types of blogs that focus on only local real estate and use their most valuable keywords throughout each post have a greater percentage of success than blogs that cover every local topic from things to do, local services, restaurant reviews and gossip etc.

Convert search traffic to leads

Because most new traffic coming to your blog will be through the search engines and people that find your blog by typing in real estate search terms want one thing... the ability to search for homes or find their home's value.

The content you write is the bait, your search tools and lead generators are the hook! So, if you consider that you are roping in the readers through search, you have to offer them something compelling once they get to your site. And, fact is, nobody but your mother, brother and dog care what you have to say enough to read your blog daily, so use your content to get search traffic to your site but then guide readers to your lead generator through a graphical call to action. That is what you want right? To generate leads? And not surprisingly, that is what the consumer wants too- to interact with your site and start searching for homes or find their home value.

Read also:Generate 100+ More Quality Real Estate Leads per Month by Feeding Your Blog RSS Feeds from the MLS

How to write a successful real estate blog that qualifies visitors through search:

You can easily qualify your visitors and make your site more relevant to search engines by laser targeting your posts by writing about real estate instead of being the community guide for everything from nude beaches to restaurants.

1. Target a single keyword with each post.

Your most valuable keyword will always be "your farm area + real estate." Wanna test that theory? Use KeywordDiscovery and you can see search volume per day for any given keyword or term.

Read also: How to select the best possible keywords for real estate blogs

2. Write posts at no greater than a high school reading level.

Google actually has readability filters.

The preferred readability level is high school. So, don't bust out every polysyllabic word you know trying to impress people. Neither readers nor search engines want to be talked down to, so make sure you write in plain English. Otherwise you come off like a pompous know it all that nobody wants to work with.

To check your readability level use: WebsiteGrader

3. Use a trusted formula for writing posts.

For those of you new to copywriting techniques, there are trusted formulas for writing an article that is engaging, easy to scan and well suited for human and search engine visitors. The formula entails: a keyword rich title, keyword use in the post and the use of scanable formatting.

To see the actual formula, read: Formula for a Successful Blog Post

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