Archive for Real Estate Blogs
Do You Think Your Visitors Always Understand How to Use Your MLS Search?
If you have a full-featured MLS search (learn more about choosing an MLS search), you know how valuable it is for a visitor to establish their own account on that search. You know how much time a visitor can save by saving their favorite searches and listings. You know that saving favorite homes can help a visitor compare and contrast different homes for sale. But, do your visitors know? Do they know how to set up an account or login once they have one?
MLS searches vary in their user-friendliness. Some searches do a great job of explaining the advantages of establishing an account, and encourage visitors to do that. Some make it easy to register. Others. . . not so much. But, you have an excellent opportunity to promote your MLS search through your blog.
Kill Two Birds with One Stone
It’s always gratifying when you can find an opportunity to help Internet visitors and improve your SEO at the same time. Are you using your blog to promote the tools on your website like your MLS search? If not, you’re missing one of those opportunities. Here’s some ideas on how to do both.
Write a post titled something like “Who Doesn’t Want A Quick Way to Find Atlanta Homes for Sale?” Good start, huh? You’ve already got a title that uses one of your keyword phrases. In the post, explain how your MLS search works. Describe the advantages of and mechanics for establishing an account. Assure the reader that you won’t take advantage of them by driving them crazy after they sign up.
In the post, you can logically include a link to your MLS search page on your website. Naturally, you’d use good “anchor text” in that link. That means, rather than writing “click here for more information”, you’d write something like “search Atlanta homes for sale”. Using that keyword phrase in your link to your MLS page will provide a strong backlink to your main site.
Have you set up pre-defined searches for communities in your area? If not, you really should! You could then use the same principles to encourage readers to visit a community page on your website that includes a pre-defined search for a popular community in your area.
And, if you have other tools or compelling propositions that visitors would find useful, there’s no doubt you can find ways to write informative and useful posts to help people identify those things they’d really like to take advantage of – if they knew where to find them!
Examples of Hyper-Local Real Estate Blog Success
There’s a great post on Active Rain written by Donna Harris from Austin Texas. Donna does a great job of illustrating how her blogs are ranking well for long-tail search terms. As you may know, long-tail search terms are those search phrases that are related to your website’s main search terms, but are not as popular.
For example, in Austin, the main real estate related search phrase is probably something like “Austin homes for sale”. But, Donna is having success by focusing her blog posts on less popular search phrases that relate to communities or area names around the Austin area.
Make Your Post Titles Count!
It’s worth a trip to Donna’s blog to read her post for another reason. Her post includes links to several of her blog posts that contributed to her great ranks on long tail keyword phrases. Take a good look at how her post titles are written.
For example, one title is “Real Estate Hill Country Austin TX Homes Are Selling!” I know that many real estate bloggers might have written a title like “Local Homes Are Selling!”. That title might attract readers, but you’ll be hard-pressed to get readers to find that post! Using keyword phrases in post titles has a big impact on the ability of the post to rank.
It’s always a challenge to write titles that attract both search engines and readers. Another way to write the title could be “Hill Country Real Estate: Austin TX Homes are Selling!” As Donna mentioned in her post, her new approach may seem a bit more “robotic”. But, given the progress she’s made so far, I’m sure she’ll continue to find ways to satisfy both her readers and the search engines!
Get the GreatSchools.net Info Widget
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It’s been a while since I posted anything about school information. But, you can review the information on this blog about GreatSchools.net cobranding. The cobranding opportunity allows you to keep visitors on your website while they review detailed school information.
If you’re not familiar with GreatSchools.net, I think you’ll find it to be a very good school resource.
- GreatSchools.net lists a wide variety of schools in most places — not only public schools, but a large number of private schools, also.
- You’ll find Parent Reviews, information on Test Scores, Teachers, Spending per Pupil, and District Overviews.
- The Compare feature is also very helpful for people relocating - it allows the visitor to compare area schools based on several criteria such as Test Scores.
I recently discovered that GreatSchools.net has developed a widget that you can place on your website. Learn more about the school widget.
While the widget does open a new window directly to the GreatSchools.net website, it is free! And, since the site focuses on schools, you won’t find advertisements from other real estate agents. So, I’m more comfortable with this widget vs one that doesn’t do much more than give your competition some exposure.
Give it a try. Let us know how you like it!
How to Use Google Images & Stay Out of Court
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I was talking to a client about images she wanted to use in the header of her new website design. She had just attended a webinar conducted by someone from one of the very well-known (or should I say top;-) real estate vendors.
A good portion of the webinar centered around using Google Images to find photos for use in real estate marketing efforts. To my total amazement, the person conducting the webinar never even mentioned the issue of copyright infringement!! Certainly a representative of this well-known firm should have known better!!
As you may know, Internet theft drives me crazy. It’s not legal, it’s not necessary, and I encourage everyone to take strong action to stop Internet theft. And, I know of more than one instance where an Internet theft issue was taken to court and the plaintiff won. Internet theft isn’t something to be taken lightly. You can’t just figure “How will anyone know?” There are more ways than you think to spot thefts, so the best bet is just not to get involved. Learn more about what to do about Internet theft.
How CAN You Use Google Images and Stay Out of Court?
If I were Google, I’d have set up Google Images a lot differently. As it stands now, for my money, Google is encouraging Internet theft, and I really think it’s about time that they address the issue.
When you go to Google Images, it looks like a great way to find images you need. There is nothing on the “home page” that says anything that is even remotely like a notice or warning about using photos you find there.
The “Options” link you see after you’ve performed a search simply gives you options to limit your search by type, size and color of the image. But, if you dig around through the Google Images support pages long enough, you’ll come across this page.
Ah, Usage Rights!! Imagine that! A small indication that perhaps you can’t just use any image you find! Read that page carefully.
Then, you need to understand that anything you produce related to your business (such as brochures, postcards, websites, etc) is considered to be a commercial use. You’re not using these images to go in a personal scrapbooking project, you’re using them to promote your business, so it’s a commercial application.
Google - Advanced Search
Looking at the Advanced Search page, you’ll notice a link that you have to open called “Date, usage rights, numberic range, and more”. After you click on that link, you’ll see a number of alternatives under the Usage Rights category. There are two alternatives that relate to commercial usage:
- free to use or share, even commercially
- free to use, share or modify, even commercially
You need to be searching for one of those two alternatives. If you want a photo to place on a page of your website, you’d look for the first alternative above. If you want a photo to incorporate into a website header, you would actually be modifying the image, so you’d look for the second alternative.
Google - Advanced Image Search
If you use the Advanced Image Search, you’ll also find a Usage Rights category. There, you’ll find the following options under Usage Rights:
- Labeled for commercial reuse
- Labeled for commercial reuse with modification
The same rules apply to these options as to the ones available under the Advanced Search.
Using Google Images the Right Way
Using Google Images the right way isn’t as exciting as using it the wrong way. You won’t find all the amazing shots taken (and copyrighted) by professionals, but you will find some shots you can use. Actually, a number of them will be on Flickr.
There are a lot of very good photographers on Flickr who may not be professionals, but who come up with some great photographs. And, you won’t end up in court if you use them!
Get Local News for Your Real Estate Blog
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Here’s another good resource for finding information to write about on your real estate blog. The source is a site called Outside.In. It’s a free resource that lets you know what is going on in cities, zip codes, and even neighborhoods.
Once on the Outside.In home page, just enter an address, city, neighborhood or zip code. You’ll be taken to a page showing the latest news in that area.
Then, you can also search by topic, so in the search box at the left, you can search for topics such as events, art, education, festival, restaurants, and the list goes on.
You’ll be presented with local information on the topics you’re interested in. And, don’t forget, you can always use keywords in a blog post. You could write something like: “When you purchase Atlanta real estate, you’ll be pleased to find that October is a busy month in the area.” Then, you can write about some upcoming events.
You can link “Atlanta real estate” to your website’s community page, for example, and at the end of the post, you could write “Review Atlanta homes for sale on our website!” , and link “Atlanta homes for sale” to your MLS search page. Your post could be put in a tag or category for Atlanta Real Estate as well as one similar to Events in Atlanta.
And, the possibilities are endless. You’d be better off using a smaller geographic area than Atlanta, of course, but you get the idea.
Enjoy!
