If you spend more than 3-5 hours working on your real estate blog each week, you need a 12 step program. Writing a real estate blog should not become your full time job, it is simply one tool among many you should use to build and grow your business. In order to be a successful Realtor, you need to use each of your marketing and lead generation tools effectively and efficiently. So, let's take a peek under the hood of a real estate blog:

Real Estate Online Traffic Statistics

With over 2,500 real estate blogs using RSS Pieces, we did a little research with the help of our statistics programs. The following numbers are based on visitors that came into the sites from the search engines:

Real Estate Visitor Behavioral Traffic

What do these statistics tell us?

If a buyer is only going to spend 15 seconds on your post, don't spend more than 20 minutes writing that post. Write the post to attract the engines by using keywords. Conversely, if a seller is going really read a post, be sure to spend some quality time on that post, about 40 minutes.

How can you train yourself to write quickly?

Set an egg timer by your desk and train yourself to write posts within 20-40 minutes depending n your audience. Start out small by posting a listing (which should never take you more than 20 minutes) then work your way up to community overviews and market reports. Then start in on the more thought provoking stuff like foreclosures, short sales and list posts (top 10 things to do to make sure your home sells), etc. Over time, you will learn to write quickly and effectively.

What is a Spider Post?

A spider post is a large post (the body) with a number of smaller posts (the legs) linking back to it all on the same topic. This type of post gives you blogging fodder for a full week, possibly more. It is exactly the type of post Google and readers will love. You simply write one large post that covers all the subtopics on a single topic, then break that post up into smaller posts and link those smaller posts back to the larger main post.

The basic premise is you write one HUGE post with all of your communities detailed. Talk about what kinds of people live in each community, the amenities or attractions that are nearby, medium home prices, etc. Now that you have the enormous post that is well over 1000 words, you post it. Google actually likes big posts with lots of contextual relevance. Now, the day after you post your HUGE community or neighborhood post, you start to break out each neighborhood into separate posts. Within these smaller posts, you link back to the HUGE post to create a hierarchy of relevance for Google. Essentially, when Google comes to your site and sees that all these smaller posts link back to the larger one, it will think, "huh, the author thinks that post is related to all these other posts and it is the most important of posts on that topic on this site, so I guess I think that too."

Example of a spider post:

Mark Ryan of Dayton Ohio Real Estate and Mortgages wrote this spider post with this month's market reports.

Primary Post:

Dayton Ohio Real Estate Market Update - Total market overview

Legs:

Dayton Ohio Real Estate Update - Beavercreek Statistics
Dayton Ohio Real Estate Update - Centerville Statistics
Dayton Ohio Real Estate Update - Miamisburg Statistics
Dayton Ohio Real Estate Update - Bellbrook Statistics

What kinds of topics make the best spider posts?

Market Reports: create market reports for each of you primary neighborhoods, string them together in a single post. Be sure to include the number of homes on the market in that neighborhood, the median price, how many have sold in the past month and your own commentary.

Community Overviews: write full community overviews that include the kinds of people that live in the community, the amenities that are nearby, local attractions (link out the websites if possible), and medium home prices. You can get much of this information from www.bestplaces.net. Be sure to include some photos of each community as well. For example: this is the info Best Places gives for Palm Beach Gardens.

Glossary of Terms for Real Estate and Mortgage: A great post to write would be to describe the differences between the different types of loan programs available to buyers. Similarly, a glossary of real estate terms would also be important for the first time home buyer.

Listings: As you post your listings, you should keep a master post that includes all your listings. By updating that post frequently, you can keep it fresh in Google's eyes and create an old authoritative post that you can link back to when you post a new listing.

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