How To Rank Your Real Estate Website Using Local Blog Content
Last updated: Jul 26, 2019
As a real estate agent having your own website is great, but do you know what’s even better? Getting traffic to your website. Consistent blogging is one of the best ways of generating more traffic and positioning yourself as an expert in your area.
In this article, we are going to be taking a look at
- Why blogging is a great marketing strategy for real estate agents to implement
- Blogging ideas and strategies that will help you rank your real estate website higher in local searches and position themselves as a helpful expert in their community.
Blogging Brings in Long-Term Traffic
Blogging is a great way to bring in more traffic and generate more leads. While it takes a greater amount of time and effort to see results with blogging versus with buying ads, the traffic will keep coming in even if you ease up on blogging.
Traffic from ads will stop immediately after ending the campaign. This makes blogging a great, scalable marketing strategy for real estate agents regardless of your budget.
According to a Hubspot study that looked at over 1,500 small to medium sized businesses, those with a blog have 55% more traffic, 97% more inbound links, and 434% more indexable pages than those that do not have a blog.
Businesses that have a blog on their website get 55% more traffic than those who do not.
Quality Content Is King
Today, it’s quality over quantity, so writing one or two in-depth and helpful articles a month will yield much better results that pumping out a couple of 200 word posts a week.
These more in depth posts will help put you in front of your target audience, and if you provide helpful information they will keep coming back for more.
The benefits of having a blog on your website are clear, but it’s disheartening to spend all that time writing posts that do not convert readers into leads. So how do you make sure your blog is effective at bringing in qualified traffic?
Focus Your Blog Posts on Your Local Community
Writing about generic topics comes with two major problems.
- It’s much harder to rank high on Google for general keywords and keyphrases such as “Tips for Buying a Home.” You are competing with the entire country, giant companies such a Zillow, and all the local agents who are also targeting broader keywords.
- Even if it does bring in traffic, most it will be users from all around the country not people looking to buy in your target area.
Your potential clients are the people looking to buy or sell a home in the particular areas you serve, so your tips and information should be specific to those areas.
“Tips for Buying a Home in Cody, Wyoming” is a much better blog post. Not only is it going to be more relevant and helpful to your potential clients, it will be much easier to rank for those long-tail keywords.
People Are Looking for Helpful and Entertaining Content
One of the most important things to consider when moving is the surrounding area. It’s not just about the house; it’s about the neighborhood, the fun stuff to do on the weekends, the local events. Posts based on these topics will help tremendously with local SEO since they are hyperlocal by nature.
As a real estate agent, you can position yourself as an expert of your town. Insightful articles about events and activities will be valuable to people considering moving to your town, but they will also be valuable to people who aren’t even considering buying or selling a home yet.
If you are the website people look to for lists of fun activities, child-friendly restaurants, and neighborhood information, you will be first in their mind when they are ready to move or if a friend asks for a referral.
13 Locally-Focused Blog Post Ideas
Here is a small list of locally-focused blog post topics to help get your creative juices flowing. There are endless topics to write about, so focus on the ones that will bring the most value to your potential clients.
- Best time to buy/sell a home in Cody
- Fun summertime activities around Cody
- 5 best tourist destinations other than Yellowstone
- Fun things to do with kids in Cody
- 5 great cafés in Cody
- Cheap things to do around Cody
- Romantic night out in Cody
- 5 best Cody neighborhoods for small kids
- 10 cheapest houses in Cody
- Ultimate guide to summer events and concerts in Cody
- What you need to know when buying/selling a house in Cody
- Cody vs. Powell, which town is best for you?
- Before and after with client interviews about their new homes
What To Do after Writing a Blog Post?
You’ve taken the time to write up a great article; let’s make sure you start sharing it around for everyone to see. After publishing a blog post, the next step is getting traffic to it.
Promoting your post not only helps bring users to the post itself, but it can act as a gateway to the rest of your website as well. Sharing your post can also create backlinks to your site which are very helpful in terms of search engine rankings.
1. Share It on Your Social Media Accounts Several Times
Repurpose your long-form content into multiple bite-sized posts for social media. Grab a good quote or interesting statistic, or turn the post into an infographic and share it on every social media platform you’re on.
You can take multiple things out of each article and fill up your content calendar without having to create new content. This will help to get traffic back to your website.
Post it in relevant Facebook groups and LinkedIn. Start a Pinterest board. Tweet it multiple times on Twitter. You should try vary the types of posts as well.
One post can be a direct link to the article encouraging followers to read, another could be an image with a quote from the article, and if your post features a video, you can upload the video directly to your social media to share it.
Did you feature a business in your article? Let them know and ask if they would be willing to share that article with their fans. It's free publicity for both of you.
2. Send It to Everyone on Your Newsletter and Email Lists
If you have been building an email list, great job! Staying in front of people who have shown prior interest in your brand or business is a great strategy for converting them into clients. Make sure to let them know about your wonderful new blog post!
Some people make the mistake of putting the whole post in their email. This approach, however, will not get your website any traffic.
The best ways to funnel people from your emails to your blog posts would be to summarize what the blog post is about and how it will be able to help them and link directly to your post, or add the first paragraph or two in the email as a teaser with a “read more” link back to your post.
3. Gain Greater Exposure with Guest Posting
You could even take an article you’ve written and turn it into a guest post for another local business. If you’ve written a post about fun outdoor activities, find local businesses related to that topic (a website about climbing gear or a bike shop) and asked if they’d be interested in adding your article.
This will get you a locally relevant backlink to your website, and give them more content and exposure. The biggest upside to this strategy is that you can potentially get in front of new audiences who might not have found you otherwise.
4. Utilize Facebook Ads
Facebook has an easy to use "Boost Post" option that will help get your post in front of more people who are not following you. While this a good option to gain more exposure quickly and easily, Facebook's incredibly powerful Ads Manager platform allows you to fine-tune your ads for the best the results.
With Facebook Ads Manager, you can zero in exactly on your target demographic. You can narrow down your ad's audience and set goals based on the interaction you want users to take. The "traffic" option is a good choice when you are looking to direct people to your website.
Conclusion
Coming up with a content plan that is centered around helping your target audience is a great way to increase readership and bring in potential customers.
Is your real estate blog ranking in local search? Let us know if you’re going to try out any of these topics or if you’ve had success with other local topics.
If you need help making the best first impression with your potential real estate clients, feel free to get in touch today and find out how we can help upgrade your website!
