It happens to everyone – you’re sitting at your computer with a blank screen in front of you and you feel like you’ve written about every topic related to real estate and your local market at least twice. Next time you hit a wall (hopefully not literally!) and can’t come up with something fresh to write about check out this list of ways to come up with topics for blog posts:

• Browse Q&A sites. Take a look at the online question and answer sites such as Yahoo Answers or AOL Answers and see what people want to know. Search for “real estate” and you’re likely to find several recently posed questions. If you end up doing a post that relates closely to the question you can even answer it on the Q&A site with a link to your post as suggested further reading.
• Read other industry blogs. Peruse the blogs of colleagues, competitors, and professionals in related industries. I’m not suggesting that you copy or steal their posts or topic ideas, but you’re likely to get inspired by reading what others have written. For example, a post directed towards first time home buyers might inspire you to write something for retirees looking at downsizing.
• Ask for ideas. Post something on Facebook, Twitter, or shoot an email out to family and friends. Ask if they have any real estate related questions, or if there are any topics they’d like to know more about.
• Look through the archives. Read through posts from a year or more ago. Are there any topics that could be revisited, updated, or expanded on?

Hopefully you’ll end up with more topics than you have time to write at the moment. Keep a running list of posts to work on later, and add to it as you have additional ideas.

• Encourage more incoming links to your website

• Increase traffic from other relevant websites

• Help build awareness and a strong reputation for your business

• Make your website practical and useful for readers

• Improve your efforts to better visibility for target keyword phrases

If you want to create successful online articles that will result in effective marketing for your real estate business, you must:

• Create the most useful and compelling content for your website – Before you even think about writing articles and marketing them to other websites you need to worry about your own website. After you have written effective real estate articles, make them visible on your website in a number of areas. You can post them on your blog, but you should also post them throughout other pages on your website.

• Bring readers page to your main webpage through links – Provide links in the article that will allow readers to click back to the main webpage or to the proper page as they relate to the article. Whether you put your links within the body of the article or at the end of the article, the result will be the same: your readers will be guided to the correct area of your website. Don’t ever assume your readers will go where you want them to; instead, bring them there with just a click of a link.

• Encourage your readers to share your articles – Adding social sharing buttons on your articles to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter will allow your readers to share them with others, thereby improving your ranking and spreading the word about your real estate business. Social media is, without a doubt, the easiest way to get others to spread the word about your real estate business, so take advantage of this new form of media and use it to your advantage!

• Find relevant information for your articles by performing keyword searches through the major search engines – If you want to know what people are talking about, perform a few relevant keyword searches. Then you can simply write about the topics you find. This not only helps you create the most pertinent information for your website, but it also may help you by sending readers to your site when they search using the same keywords. It is important, however, to use the articles you find as inspiration only. In other words, never, ever plagiarize, as it immediately ruins your credibility.

• Hire a good writer if you don’t have the time – If you don’t have the time to write quality articles, or if you don’t feel as if you could produce quality content, you may want to hire this service out. A good writer who is skilled in the real estate field is almost always worth the money.

In fact, if you want to guarantee high search engine positioning, you have to make quality content on the top of your list of things to do.

The bottom line is that if you want to make it big among search engine rankings, you must consider the quality of your real estate content.

What Does Quality Content Mean?

If you want to ensure quality search engine rankings you must consider your content. This means your content must be unique and well-written. Simply put, you can’t put out less-than-quality or unoriginal content and expect good rankings. Take your time and produce content that you know your audience will want to read.

As yourself what your audience wants and needs to know and then determine whether you are able to provide this information to your readers, or whether this writing task is best left to a professional writer.

Take the time to consider your content and don’t overlook this important step.

Don’t Forget your Keywords

In addition to your quality content, make sure you have fully researched your keywords. If you have a list of keywords in place you can better begin writing your content to reflect the keywords.

Finally, your quality content, in addition to featuring your keywords, will be compelling and will not only educate your reader, but also provide them with the information needed to get your business and the services you offer across to them. In other words, once you have captured your reader’s attention you will want to sell yourself.

Find out what information your audience is searching for, and try to provide them with an answer or solution to a problem or question.  Keep your information updated regularly and become a source of quality content for individuals interested in real estate and you will be a leader in your local real estate market.

Your online marketing efforts for your real estate business should include a strategy to provide updated content on your website. But while posting a few articles each week with researched keywords may help bring in search traffic, the content is what keeps them coming back and ultimately becoming clients.

Make it Informative – Your online content should contain information that is informative to readers. Tell them something they don’t know. Post articles showing statistics from a recent study. Perhaps you could write a follow-up or opinion article on a recent news topic.

Solve Problems – Your content should help visitors and readers solve problems. Write “How To” articles that give sound advice. Perhaps a step-by-step process for getting a home ready for showing to buyers. Or tips on finding the right selling agent.

Provide “Pillar” Content – Part of attracting visitors and gaining new contacts is providing specific, high-quality content that is consider “pillar” content in the online marketing industry. Pillar content is something such as a helpful article or e-book that attracts more and more visitors. You might write an article on the top 100 websites for real estate searches, or write an informative e-book in downloadable PDF format that you can give visitors if they comply with a simple email contact request. Pillar content is what you can use to advertise and promote your website, and if done well, can bring in even more traffic through viral sharing and outside linking.

Gets Noticed by Search Engines – Your content should contain specific keywords and content that get noticed by search engines. Find out what your intended client is reading and researching on the internet. Then use those keywords and topics to write fresh and timely content that gets noticed by search engines who provide your website link to their customers.

Online marketing, like any marketing, takes trial and error. But having a sound strategy in place with your own website content gives you a step up in getting your site noticed.

You need not be a Realtor/Brokerage company that publishes content but if you want to fight the stiff online competition, you must start looking at prudent ways of populating your website with keyword rich content. You will be able get good content from your users through number of ways. It can be through blogs or feedback. You can also think of forums or set up a social media platform. It is totally up to you to choose something that will match your website and your needs. The success of the method that you choose will depend on a number of factors such as user participation level, need for participation, ability of the users to make use of the online content updation tools, effectiveness of the strategies used, etc.

Here are some important factors that will help you make use of the user generated content as part of your SEO efforts

1. Patience: It will take a considerable amount of time before you can get your website users to participate in your content creation efforts. Not all users will be ready to jump into it immediately. However, once the ball starts rolling you will be able to see other users joining in more easily.

2. Age Factor: The age group of your target audience has a lot to say about the success of your efforts here. It has been reported that over 50% of the contribution to user generated content is from the Y Gens and about 46% of the contribution comes from the Generation X. Younger generation is yet to get their feet wet in this area. Your website should encourage all age groups to participate by providing the necessary baits. There are no hard and fast rules regarding what has to be used and what should not be used. It is totally up to you to choose.

3. Redefining your idea of user generated content: If you limit the avenues through which the users can participate to feedback, testimonial, blog comments and forum posts, you will not be able to tap the potential of user-generated content fully. Allow other formats including audio and video formats.

4. Choose what works for you: Not all forms of content generation will be suitable for all sites. Pick a method that works for your niche and your website in particular. It can be anything between online polls to an extravagant contest.

5. User generated content has high search engine value: When your users generate the content, it will be relevant to your website and they will automatically use targeted keywords, categories or tags.
This will make the content best-optimized content for your website.

SEO success is not something that happens in one day.  It takes patience, deliberate research, and oftentimes a lot of good fortune, to make SEO work for the success of your real estate web site.  But that’s why it is important to choose a web niche and specific keywords that best pertain to your niche.

Diligence is the key factor when starting and growing a real estate web site.  Once you have decided on a niche for your real estate web presence, you need to continually work at it by updating content often, adding keyword rich content, and promoting that content frequently.

Choosing the right keywords for your real estate website content can be challenging, but when done correctly your SEO becomes better and better.  You could choose a few keywords which are highly competitive on search engines, such as “real estate listings” or “real estate prices”, and have success with those if you promote your content frequently.  When checking with Google Adwords you will find that both of those keywords have millions upon millions of returns.  Your ranking could be anywhere in the middle of all those returns.

But just think what happens if you narrow the scope of your SEO to a group of very specific keywords.  Say you choose “real estate Portland Oregon” as a keyword phrase.  Google now shows an average of just over 300,000 returns.  This offers a much better chance for your site to get noticed with diligent promotion.

Choose your keywords wisely and your SEO can be much improved.

Blog posts do not need to be long, and do not need to be filled with awe inspiring content every time.  A blog post on your real estate website may be just a few lines long with a link to an interesting real estate web article.  Or it could be a short review and link to one of your own outstanding articles elsewhere on the site.

When you do write a blog post for your real estate website, you should always consider which keyword should be optimized within the article body of the post.  Keywords play an integral part in getting your blog post noticed by search engines.

Post frequently

Blog every day if you can.  Web search engine algorithms pick up more on websites that are updated frequently.  The more frequently you post and update your real estate website the better chance you can get new traffic from search engines.

Comments

Your blog posts can stimulate discussion and motivate your readers to post comments on your blog.  Comments are also a good way to keep your real estate website updated and show new readers that others read your blog as well.  Encourage comments from your readers.  Ask questions or take a poll in your blog posts.  Comment on other real estate blogs.  Usually they will reciprocate and comment on yours as well.  Your real estate website blog can be an interesting discussion hub for your readers.

The benefits of blogging for your real estate website are great.  Don’t neglect a blog on your website just because you think it is time consuming.  A simple blog updated frequently takes little time and brings big rewards for your real estate internet marketing traffic.

Below are a few of my favorite real estate blogs:

Austin real estate blog

Atlanta real estate blog

Dallas real estate blog

Las Vegas real estate blog

Real Estate Blog Lab

Sellsius real estate blog

Keywords can be a single word, or a short phrase that would be searched frequently on search engines like Google.  Before you ever begin your real estate article or blog post consider what your topic will be.  Broad keywords such as “real estate” are not narrow enough in scope to set your article apart.  But you can focus a topic on a more specific keyword such as “real estate calculator” that would more likely appear in a search list.

Keywords benefit your real estate website when they benefit your readers. Whether your readers come from a search engine result, or a link from a social networking site, or even a return visitor, they will read what catches their eye and interests them.  In that case, then, it is important to choose real estate keywords and topics that will keep your traffic coming back.

To determine a good keyword for your real estate website consider a few and run them through a keyword analyzing tool such as Google AdWords, or SEOTools.  Many sites like these can be used for free, but others you must pay a subscription fee.  If you want to write a lot of content and drive traffic to your real estate website the small fee may be worth the cost.

With the help of these tools you review the results of how often a keyword is searched, and receive suggestions for alternate keywords for your real estate topic.

When you have the right keywords for your real estate article or blog post, you will have the right focus and strategy to make the most and best use of that posting.

Writing an article rich in real estate content keywords will help drive traffic to your real estate website, and enhance your visitors’ involvement in your real estate website. When your content shows up high on search results you become an expert and are chosen as one of the first clicks for a visitor.

How do I create real estate content with SEO?

It’s important to keep articles and blog posts between 300 and 500 words. Online web readers are impatient and you need to get their attention fast and get them through to the end of your important article. So keep it short.

Since you have short real estate articles and blog posts it is imperative that you determine a narrow topic for your article. Rather than a general article on shopping for real estate, you could narrow that focus to “Shopping for Homes with Your Children.”

Choose specific keywords and phrases that pertain to your topic. Include that keyword in the title when possible. Then write your real estate article and mention the keyword numerous times throughout. A good keyword density ratio is typically between 3% to 5%. That means a 500 word real estate article should have a specific keyword or words mentioned 15 to 25 times.