Creating new posts for your real estate blog may seem overwhelming at first as many of us are not born journalists. To keep your blog fresh and relevant to the search engines, you should add content to your site a minimum of three times per week. Overcome your writer's block by writing about what you know-real estate! Having a real estate blog that doesn't display real estate related content is not going to do as well as one that does. Here are some simple strategies to help you create quality content for your visitors and the search engines.

Tips to create quality posts for your real estate blog:

• Use your site's keywords in the titles for your content.

• Get creative and try to create catchy, memorable post titles to create interest and keep visitors on your site as long as possible.

• Use your site's keywords 3 to 5 times within each post

• Link to other sites on the web in your posts-cite the sources of your content and/or refer to articles on a similar subject that can be found on the web

• Link to your own posts within new posts-if you have posts on similar subjects, link them to each other

• Format your posts so that they read well. Use spacing between paragraphs to create digestible chunks of information

If you just don't know where to start or are running out of new ideas for posts, here are 30 days worth of blog post ideas to get you going:

1. About Me-Introduce yourself to the world by creating a biography for your blog. Include your experience level, education, accomplishments, affiliations, and interests. Tell visitors why they should choose you to buy or sell their home. This will sell you to potential clients so keep it professional!
2. How to Sell Your Home in a Buyer's Market-HOT topic!
3. How to Convince a Seller to Accept Your Offer
4. Why You Should Hire a Real Estate Professional to Sell Your Home
5. What to Look for When Purchasing a Foreclosure or Short Sale-HOT topic!
6. Staging Your Home for a Speedy Sale
7. Why You Should Buy A Home Now in (enter your farm area here)
8. How to Price Your Home for a Quick Sale-HOT topic!
9. What is a Conventional Mortgage?
10. What To Avoid When Remodeling Your Home
11. What is an Adjustable Rate Mortgage?
12. Why You Need A Real Estate Professional To Buy A Home
13. How To Use A CMA: For Sellers
14. How To Use A CMA: For Buyers
15. The Closing Process: For Sellers
16. The Closing Process: For Buyers
17. What is a FHA-insured mortgage?
18. What You Should Know About (enter your farm area here)-go to www.bestplaces.net for statistics and information on your farm area
19. Why You Should Be Buying Instead of Renting
20. New Homes vs. Existing Homes-Which One Is Right For You?
21. 5 Things You Can Do Now To Increase Your Home's Resale Value
22. Why Now Is The Best Time To Buy Real Estate in (enter your farm area here)
23. How Rising Foreclosure Rates Affect Your Home's Value-HOT topic!
24. How To Choose The Right Home For You
25. Negotiating with a Seller in a Buyer's Market-HOT topic!
26. Do You Qualify For A VA Mortgage?
27. How To Properly Prepare To Purchase A Home
28. How To Know How Much Home You Can Afford
29. How To Use Technology To Find Your New Home Now
30. How To Invest in (enter your farm area here) Real Estate

Remember, you have a real estate blog so you all of your content should be real estate related. Some other sources for additional post ideas are www.realtytimes.com, www.msnbc.com, and www.cnn.com. Now stop reading and start writing your way to the top of the search engines!

The key to a successful real estate blog is generating and maintaining your blog's position as an authority on real estate in your farm area. A great way to do this is to connect with other real estate professionals and potential clients through various social networks on the web. So what is a social network? For those that don't know, a social network is an online community centered around a common interest. A very well-known example of a social network is MySpace, www.myspace.com. While social networks may not sound very business-like, they are valuable tools you should use to generate traffic to your site. There are many professional social networks these days, many not worth joining. Here is a list of the five social networks all real estate professionals should join:

• ActiveRain (www.activerain.com)-This is a community of real estate professionals that share real estate and mortgage information via their ActiveRain blogs. Membership is free to this site and the maintenance of a blog on ActiveRain can generate new business contacts and partnerships as well as increased traffic to your blog site.

• Squidoo (www.squidoo.com)-This site is a network of member sites called "lenses". Each member creates a "lens" on a particular subject. As a real estate professional, you would create a lens based on real estate in your farm area. Membership is free to this site. A well-maintained lens can obtain its own traffic and generate ad revenue for you as well as drive additional traffic to your blog site.

• HubPages (www.hubpages.com)-This site is very similar to Squidoo. It is a network of member sites called "hubs". You will create a "hub" for real estate in your farm area. Membership is free to this site. A well-maintained hub will generate traffic and ad revenue for you and your blog site.

• Facebook (www.facebook.com)-This is a well-known social network that was originally centered on connecting college students across the country. Now it has been expanded for use to people of all ages and businesses use it for promotion of their brand. Create a free profile for your real estate business and include a link to your blog site.

• Twitter (www.twitter.com)-This is a micro-blogging service that is based around one question:"What Are You Doing?" By answering this question and updating your Twitter account each time you make a new post to your blog site, you will attract "followers" that can later turn into leads.

Maintaining these sites and profiles may seem like a lot of extra work but there are ways to simplify that process. Here are a couple of tips to make updating your social network profiles and pages easy:

• Sign up for Ping.fm (www.ping.fm). You can update your Twitter and Facebook accounts right in one place. You can post new status messages here-include links to recent blog posts and any videos you may have on the web for additional exposure.

• Recycle blog posts for use on your ActiveRain blog, Squidoo lens, and HubPages Hub. Do this by rewriting an old blog post, making sure that it is different from the original by at least 30%. Post your rewritten posts to the other sites. This process makes sure that all of your sites are being updated regularly with fresh content.

To further maximize the buzz on your blog, consider the use of FriendFeed (www.friendfeed.com). FriendFeed gathers all of your updates to your various social network accounts and creates an automatically updating feed that you can use on your blog site. By creating a FriendFeed and implementing it on the home page of your blog site, you can significantly increase your sites importance in the search engines and get enhanced results.

For more information and additional tips on using social networking to promote your real estate blog, check out these great articles:

Problogger - How to Promote Your Blog through Networking

Kikolani - 9 Ways to Use Social Networking for Blog Promotion

Chris Brogan - Nine Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts

Do you have expert real estate or SEO knowledge that you would like to share with the world? Do it here on RSS Pieces by contributing a post to our site! Email five of your potential post topics to njames@develementllc.com for consideration. If your topic is selected, you will have the chance to share your experience with our readers and gain exposure for your business and/or blog. Don't let this opportunity pass you by-apply today!

As a professional bio writer, I often get asked "how do I write a bio when I don't have direct experience in the business?"

Don't sweat it! I can tell you that your realtor bio is not necessarily JUST about your industry experience. More than anything, readers want to know that you:

1) know the local market; 2) understand the client's needs; 3) are going to work hard for them.

And you can satisfy each of these criteria even if you are brand new to the real estate business.

Let's take each of these client concerns and see what you can write in your professional bio that will wow them.

1. You know the local market.

OK, so maybe you don't have 20 years experience as a realtor in the community. But you live in the community, right?

So talk about what your connection to the community: the hidden gems you treasure, the groups you're involved with, or the networks you belong to.

Whereas an experienced realtor might write about their twenty years experience as a real estate agent, a brand new realtor can write:

Jane has lived in Townville for X years and just loves it. She knows all the neighbourhoods inside-out, and can help you select the best one for your family's needs.

OR

As a lifelong resident of Mayberry, Andy can put his insider knowledge to work to find a special property in your neighbourhood of choice.

You're showing that you know the local market, and the client won't care how many years of experience you have.

2. You understand the client's needs.

What do people really want when they are buying or selling real estate? They want an agent who will help them meet their needs. These needs might include understanding exactly what they mean by "cozy home", having a particular type of business style, or using the latest marketing tools.

So how do you express this in your realtor bio? You might say something like:

Andy also uses the latest Internet marketing tools to expose your property to the widest possible range of qualified buyers.

3. You are going to work hard for them.

When thinking about how to write a bio, remember that the bottom line for clients is "are you the right real estate agent for me?" Often this translates into "Do I like you?"

So don't forget about the personal qualities that qualify you for the job. People reading your real estate bio will feel confident knowing that you are pleasant, professional, hard-working, enthusiastic and organized.

Here's one way to write this in your professional bio:

Why choose Jane as your real estate agent? For one thing, she really listens to you and will work tirelessly on your behalf.

Trust me, it makes all the difference when trying to sell yourself to show who you are and why you are enthusiastic about the topic.

You don't need decades of experience and a wall of awards to write a winning real estate bio. Just show that you know the local market, understand the client's needs, and are going to work hard for them. Then you'll have a great professional bio that will be a strong part of your marketing materials.

About the author: Barbra Sundquist is an experienced technical writer and business coach who provides fill-in-the-blank templates for how to write a bio. Visit HowToWriteBio.com to get your free copy of "84 Sentence Starters for Writing A Bio".

On November 20^th, Google released a new feature called SearchWiki. This tool is meant to allow users to customize their search engine results pages (SERPs) by adding, removing, and rearranging the listings. Keep in mind that you are manipulating your personal search results, not the results of every Google user. With SearchWiki, you can:

-Move a listing up and down in your personal search results. Using the arrow icons, you can make a listing #1 or move it to the bottom of your results page. If you vote a site up, it will automatically become first in your list so it make take some finagling to get your results to appear exactly the way you want them to. Same goes for any results you vote down.

-Remove a listing from your personal search results. Don't like a particular site? You can delete it from your results page with a click of the "X" button. From that point on, that site will not appear in your results pages.

-Add a listing to your personal search results. Like a site but don't see it in your results pages? You can add a URL to your results using the "Add a Site" functionality. Then you can move it up or down in your results pages.

-Comment on the listings in your results pages. You can leave a public comment on the sites that appear in your results pages and they will be visible to all SearchWiki users. You can let the world know if a site was useful to you or not by simply leaving a comment.

For the full 411 on Google SearchWiki, read this article from Search Engine Land.

Also, watch the video below for a demonstration of Google SearchWiki:

So what does this mean for your real estate blog? Well, a feature in SearchWiki is the ability to review the notes pages for a particular keyword. These pages are meant to allow you to view the comments made on sites that rank for a particular keyword in an effort to let you know what pages are useful and what pages are not. In the future, SearchWiki notes pages may become popular among search engine users. At this point you can vote for and comment on your site's listing using SearchWiki. When you do this, you will increase your site's chances of being seen at the top of the SearchWiki notes pages. Depending on the impact of SearchWiki, we may see the votes and comments become a part of how Google ranks sites overall and it may affect your sites placement in the search engines for your keywords.  So it may be a good idea to go ahead and comment on your site for all of your keywords to get your site noticed on SearchWiki now rather than later.

See what others have to say about Google SearchWiki:

Aaron Wall of SEOBook

Michael Gray of Graywolf's SEO Blog

Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch