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For the entire month of December I will be writing articles as contributions to what I call the Rewrite Project. Instead of writing on new topics, I am going to be digging through the advice archives and rewriting the "oldies but goodies". Why? Why not? But it is also an exercise to show you that you can never step in the same river twice, and finding relevant blog content to publish is as easy as looking in the rear-view mirror. One of the first advice articles I wrote on the power of blogging was called “If You Write It They Will Come!" - The Long Tail In Real Estate. Starting with the title… it’s not bad, but it could have been better. For the rewrite I’m going with: Exactly How The Long Tail In Real Estate Blogging Will Bring The Ready-To-Act Home Buyer. Now that we have all made purchases...

As you know, we think the blogosphere and Internet offer a great way to market your real estate business and drive leads to you for FREE. Viscape.com, a Web 2.0 social marketplace for buying, selling, and renting vacation homes, agrees. That's why they've invited me to participate in a virtual panel discussion on how to blog your business to the top on Monday, October 6 at 9pm EST / 6pm PST. The Bay Area Team and Caribbean Islands Realty owner and blogger Jim Walberg will also be on the panel with me. Jim's extensive knowledge of search-engine optimization and his blogging strategies have helped CaribbeanIslandsRealty.com get more than 35,000 hits from 16 different countries each month. Jim and I will be talking about the ins and outs of blogging and marketing real estate on the Internet. We'll also share some of the strategies that have made our businesses so successful....

Thanks to the recent frequency and quality of guest posts, I’ve had the pleasure of taking a little time off from shouldering the content on the Tomato. Keeping in stride, we have another treat for you. Todd Carpenter, ubiquitous RE.net participant, and owner and author of the globally appreciated mariah.com (a web 2.0 real estate network of websites), just emailed over this solid piece weighing the value of blogging for Search Engine exposure. Writing Your Real Estate Blog Primarily to Google is a Squandered Opportunity. By Todd Carpenter What’s the difference between a blogging expert and a real estate expert? Blogging experts may or may not understand how the real estate industry operates. Take, for example the theory forwarded that, for the sake of superior Google search results, bloggers should not write about their community. That instead, they should stick to posts that are only about real estate itself. You’ll...

I know what you are thinking…”not another SEO article, please…” SEO focused companies have secrets. They want you to think that you need them to get you to the top of the search engines. They want you to think that you need to learn the complex details or you will fail. They want you to think that there is so much that goes into it, that you'd be a fool to not put your faith in them. They want you to think that your success depends on their knowledge and tools. They want you to think that their advice will make "all the difference". Well folks, the truth is, when it comes to blogging, SEO consulting is a lot like cold medicine. When you catch a cold, if you don't take medicine you are going to be sick for seven days. However, if you do take cold medicine it is...

Last year I wrote a post called 96% of All Real Estate Blogs Will Fail. It has become more and more clear that I failed to mention another clear reason why real estate bloggers are bound to abandon their blogging efforts. S.E.O. Search Engine Optimization Realtors help buyers buy property. Realtors help sellers sell property. If this is going to their business model for success, it needs to be a full-time job. Business Blogging is a marketing effort. However, it is a marketing effort that, as we've pointed out countless times, needs to be a discipline in order for it to work. In order for a full-time REALTOR to install a demanding discipline such as blogging as a piece of their marketing puzzle, it needs to be something that is not a challenge to embrace. The more challenging that it becomes, the less likely it is going to work into...

A little knowledge is dangerous thing, as can be a lot of it The Challenge: How to be found in Valley of Search and write Compelling Content that has you building relationships with your readers. This article is not about helping you be more compelling of an author, but rather an effort to keep you from overstepping the comfort level with your readers and the search engines. There are two very different concerns that people discuss, with all sorts of conflicting opinions. What is the tipping point of including relevant keywords that will a. Have you being found, but not enjoyed? b. Have you punished for over stuffing? They are not the same. What your audience may find bothersome, can still be acceptable under the Google Guidelines to creating a Google friendly site. That said, the understanding I have gained in order to stay within the comfort levels of both...

I have a theory about the effectiveness of our blogging that is supported as I look for its effect in the search engines (read: Google). Regular Blogging + Core Focus + Ping = News Source Recognition in Google. I have to maintain that this is a theory, because I am not in anyway claiming to have inside knowledge on Google's handling of blog content. However, I can say that from personal experience, and from that of my clients, this theory consistently proves to be a convenient phenomenon. So much so, that I know it can happen for you as well. There is a dichotomy in the the world of real estate websites: There are Real Estate websites that are generating natural traffic from the search engines and Real Estate websites that aren’t. With blogging, there is an opportunity to be the former, if executed properly. I refer to the successful...

Chris Hotz, the director of our education division is back with some insight on a topic that has turning up quite regularly lately: Reciprocal Linking and it’s effect on Search Engine results. White Hat SEO For Real Estate Blogging By Chris Hotz I never played on a baseball team growing up, but I loved when the little league baseball season started. I loved baseball games because of the easy access to candy. Every year when baseball season arrived I would hop on my bike, ride to the fields for the opening day pitch and dart straight for the club house to use up all my allowance on Big League Chew, Bottle Caps and Fun Dips. I loved the sugar candy! But by the last pitch of the season I was so sick (sometimes literally) of candy that I could not look at another Fun Dip bag full of red sugar....

This article has been provided by our Director Of Education & Training, Chris Hotz. Thanks, Chris! Everyone wants their real estate blog to appear on the first page of a Google's SERP. Why not? You're the best real estate agent in your area on the web, right? Of course you are... Yet when you consider that a search of "real estate" in Google currently brings up 312,000,000 results you must realize that you will have to do a little more than just throw your site into the mix. The Oompa Loompas in the mysterious Google factory work hard everyday to make sure users are returned the most relevant search results when a query is created. Much like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, few outsiders are allowed within the confounds where Google engineers are constantly strategizing better methods to organize data and spit out the best results for your queries. Until now......

"With Great Power There Must Also Come Great Responsibility!" - Stan Lee, Creator of Spiderman As Google has become a household name (and a verb), a certain amount of faith has followed that recognition. We all now seem to have a certain level of trust in the results that Google provides, regardless of the fact that some if it may not be. In September 2000, keen bloggers soon discovered a search engines results loop hole, coined Google Bombing. The idea that if enough bloggers all linked to a predetermined page and all used the same anchor text, that webpage would soon appear at the top of the results under the anchor text search phrase. At one time, the search phrase "miserable failure" would bring up George Bush's Biography. "On June 2, 2005, Yooter reported that George Bush is now ranked first for the keyword 'miserable', 'failure' and 'miserable failure' in...

Some of you are sick of hearing about the 'long tail.' Some of you still have no idea what it is. Finding a way to leverage the long tail is what keeps it interesting. The long tail phenomena can be read about here. However, it is best understood by example. The mainstream music scene crams their latest releases down our throat as the must have, and they will certainly sell millions of records, cd's let's go with units. The long tail effect is that there will also be millions of units sold by thousands of other less popular artists combined. The tail may very well out-sell the mainstream. Online companies offering millions of titles such as Napster, iTunes and Rhapsody experience enormous success because they offer the whole tail. You can see the long tail in real estate as well. The internet traffic to sites like Zillow and Realtor.com is...