RSS is such an interesting technology.  It has truly spearheaded a complete mind shift in the way people design, look at, and interact with the internet.

When I first read an e-book in 2003 about this new RSS technology that was becoming more mainstream, I have to admit, it was a little fuzzy.  The only RSS readers available were software programs you had to download and install.  Only a few sites even published RSS feeds, and the few popular blogs that existed only had a handful of subscribers.  But even in my ignorance, I ran out to get a blog realizing at the time, that it was one of the fastest and cheapest ways to publish your own RSS feed.

Now look at where we are today!  Most sites that publish content on a regular basis have an RSS feed.  All blogs have one, or multiple feeds.  We have over a dozen very high quality web based RSS readers that keep getting better, and subscription options are more plentiful than ever.

Awareness of RSS is still growing, and it has really begun to pick up steam in the last 2 years.  Even for people that aren't very technically saavy... it's easier than ever to get them plugged in as an RSS subscriber through new easy to use tools.

Still Unclear About RSS?  Here are some resources and a video that will help: 

• Seth Godin's Squidoo page on understanding RSS
• Justin's - Beginner's Guide to RSS
  
• Jim Cronin's Real Estate Tomato RSS Explanation

Great Video Explaining RSS:

If you are just getting started, I highly recommend the new version of bloglines, which can be found at: http://beta.bloglines.com  or Goolge Reader.  Both offer easy ways to subscribe to new feeds, and are realy easy to manage.  I particularly like Bloglines because it has a great folder organizing option, and automatically checks off articles you've already read.

Quick Steps to Getting Started as an RSS User/Reader/Subscriber

Really quick... if you are still unclear about how to sign up to an RSS feed, I'll make it really easy for you:

Step 1:  Make sure you have Firefox 3.0, or Internet Explorer 7 or 8 installed. 

Step 2: Navigate to a website you want to subscribe to.

Step 3: Find the Orange RSS Icon in the browser bar and click on it.  (some sites don't have an RSS feed)

Step 4: Choose Your feed reader

Step 5: Visit your RSS reader to make sure you subscribed (optional)

~ Homework~   Go sign up for an RSS reader and subscribe to 10 blogs or websites.  This will get you familiar with the RSS technology, and prepare you for what we are going to cover next.

Do You Publish An RSS Feed?  If You Have a Blog, Then The Answer Is YES!!

In this 2 post series, I want to review not only what it means to be an RSS user/reader/subscriber, but what it means to be an RSS publisher!  If you're reading this, I can safely assume that you're an ActiveRain member that has an account.  If that is true, then you have your very own RSS feed!  I want to show you how to use it to it's full potential.

*** This section will explain how to find your ActiveRain RSS Feed.  If you need help finding your feed on an outside blog, please comment and I will help you.  (Keep in mind, some blogs have multiple RSS feeds!)

First, let's find your RSS feed.  Navigate to your ActiveRain blog, and scroll down until you see the RSS chiclet in the right sidebar.  Or simply type in "rss" after your blog URL, like this:  http://activerain.com/blog/YourARusername/rss

This RSS feed is important, it's your lifeline to your readers.  One of your primary goals as a blogger is to get as many people as possible to subscribe to your feed.  The beautiful thing about RSS is that your content will be pushed to your subscribers.  You won't have to trust that people will come back to your blog every time they want to read your articles (which isn't likely to happen). 

Your Activerain RSS feed is a great tool, but it has it's shortcomings....

What is Feedburner, and Why Should You Care?

Feedburner is a Google owned company (as of recently), that is in the business of RSS delivery.  In a nutshell, they will take your plain old RSS feed, and will provide a number of services including:  more browser flexibility, more subscription options, subscriber statistics, RSS email delivery, and alot more...  Feedburner is your RSS feed on steroids.

If you are serious about getting RSS subscribers, giving your readers more flexibilty, viewing subsriber stats, and delivering your feed via email, then I HIGHLY suggest you sign up for feedburner.

Getting Your RSS Feed Set Up With Feedburner:

Step 1: Sign up for an account at Feedburner.com

Step 2: "Burn" your RSS feed.  (tell Feedburner to start managing your RSS feed)

Step 3: You're done.... wasn't that easy?  Now you simply need to promote your feed.

~Homework~  Find your RSS feed, and get signed up for Feedburner.  Then, make sure to subscribe to this blog so you can read the second part of this RSS Series.

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Feedburner is an essential tool in any blogger's arsenal.  My post next week will cover advanced tactics to optimize feedburner.

Learn How to:

• Set up Feedburner email subscription options.
• How to add an email subscription box to blog posts and sidebars.
• How to replace your email newsletter list with your Feedburner feed.
  
• How to add social bookmarking options into your Feedburner feed.
• Tips on increasing email subscribers and RSS Reader Subscribers.

Hope to see you there!

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Please comment if you have any questions!!

This post was stirred out of the overwhelming number of questions I get about how to optimize an ActiveRain blog and profile for the search engines.  I realize that many of you have outside blogs, and only use ActiveRain as a supplemental blog, but that is ok!  Your AR blog is still a very powerful tool, and one that should be optimized properly so it can be successful not only within the AR network and Localism, but on search engines too!

Here is a Basic SEO Quiz For You…

“What is the number one thing search engines look at when deciding to rank your site in the search engines?’

1. Page Content

2. URL’s

3. Title Tags

4. Incoming Links

Any ideas??  Well, if you answered #3, you answered correctly.  Title tags, or Meta Titles are the most important factor in search engine ranking.  Of course all the above are important, and #4 is a close second, but Titles have consistently shown to be the most important attribute to search engines.  And don’t take my word for it, take a look at this study that polled the top SEO experts in the country on what the top factors were.

What is a Title Tag???

Let’s start with the basics.  For those of you that aren’t really saavy to website architecture, this may be helpful.

“A Title Tag, or Meta Title Tag is an HTML element placed on webpages to help identify the page”

It’s commonly used by search engines to determine what a page is about, and thus help rank that page for keywords included in the Title Tag.

Where Can You Find a Title Tag?

Most pages on the internet have a Title tag.  You just need to know where to look.  Here are 2 places you will probably see Title Tags most often:

The easiest way to determine what the Title Tag is for any given page, is to look at the top part of your browser when looking at a page:

The other place where you can find titles commonly is in the search engines themselves.

So… with the understanding that title tags are the most important part of search engine ranking.  What can YOU do about it? A few things…

Title Tag on Your Activerain Profile Page

Many people on ActiveRain have utilized this feature already, but for you newbies out there, and others that may not have realized why this was important, take note…

When you type in a first and last name for profile, it automatically becomes the meta tag title of your profile page, and is used on may places of the site to identify you.  So make sure to tell people who you are, AND the areas you serve (including keywords that will help you rank better for your profile page).

Want proof that this can help your ranking?  Take a look at this:

Title Tag on Your Activerain Blog

The Title Tag on your blog works much the same way as your profile page.  Whatever you insert as the Blog Title becomes the Title Tag of your blog home page.  My blog home page is at: http://activerain.com/blogs/hismove  notice that the title tag is the same as the title of the blog.  In other words… I want to use the keywords that I want to rank for the most as the title of my blog.

I don’t suggest creating a blog title that simply reads:  “Las Vegas Real Estate”…   Use something that separates you from the pack.  Something Catchy, memorable, etc.  But DO include some relevant keywords in the title… that is the point of this whole post.  Showing you how to customize these titles so you can rank better.

Title Tag on Activerain Blog Posts

Ok, so this part may be basic for some, but I’ve found that so many people simply don’t understand this concept.

When you post a blog post, the title of that blog post automatically becomes the Meta Tag Title of that page.  This is also true for many other types of blogging platforms: wordpress, blogger, and Typepad all use a similar system which is one of the reasons blogs rank so well in the search engines.

So, what is the significance to understanding that blog post titles become Meta Tag Titles?  Hopefully, you’ll think alot harder when it comes time to writing your blog post titles!!!

Not only do post titles need to describe what you’re writing about, but they need to include keywords that can help that post rank higher in the search engines.  If you don’t include strong keywords in that title, don’t expect to see that post ranking well.

I hope this short tutorial was helpful for you in understanding why Title Tags are important, and how you can maximize them in the search engines.

Please comment if you have any questions!!

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Keyword cannibalization is an important topic with any website.  It typically becomes a problem when over zealous website owners and designers decide they want to choose 1 primary search term that they want to rank for.

Definition of Keyword Cannibalization:

“The act of placing the same keywords or phrases on multiple pages of a website in titles and content in order improve ranking in the search engines… leading to confusion with search engines on which page to rank in the results.”

This is extremely important to the general health of websites.  I see people so often trying to rank well for certain keyword phrases using this technique.  But unfortunately, their efforts are misguided.  Placing the same keyword in every title, every page, and every piece of content you create is a very bad idea.  The common misguided notion goes something like this:

“Well… I really want to rank well for the keyword “Las Vegas Real Estate”, so I’m going to place that phrase in every title and every piece of content I create.  After all, Google loves keywords, and the more I use it, the better chance I’ll have of ranking.”

Let’s explore why this doesn’t work:

Google ranks each page of a website independently of each other

You may have a home page, and 10 articles that all include the same keyword phrase in the title and body… but guess what?  Only one (possibly 2) of those pages are ever going to rank in the search engines for that specific keyword phrase.

Using the same keyword doesn’t help gain extra relevance

Creating multiple pages with the exact same keyword phrase in the title and content does not force the search engine spider to interpret the site as being more relevant for that same keyword phrase.  All it does is force the spider to choose which page is the best.  One page will rank, and the others won’t show up at all.

The quality of your content will suffer

If you are using the keyword “Las Vegas Real Estate” in every title of every article, what are you readers going to think?  Need I say more???

You are severely limiting your search engine traffic potential

Many of you probably understand the concept of the long tail by now.  It works.  Don’t get me wrong, “Las Vegas Real Estate” is a great keyword.  But do you really want to put all your eggs in one basket when there are literally thousands of variations of that phrase that could do just as good or better?  Why waste your time trying to get every page of your site ranking for the same term when there are so many others out there waiting to be ranked for?  Think about it.

——

Meta tag titles are typically the biggest problem with keyword cannibalization.  Not only on the home page, but on sub pages and article pages as well.  Each page needs to have it’s own unique title.  This will give you the most likelihood of ranking for many different keywords and give you the most traffic potential.

Probably the most common place for keyword cannibalization is in blogs.  People will create blog post titles that are often very similar to each other, and this becomes a problem because most blogs are set up by default to make the article title the meta tag title.  Thus creating the keyword cannibalization effect with multiple articles.

Tips on Avoiding Cannibalization

1. Write unique Meta tag titles for your home page and sub pages.  Use specific words that describe that page.  If you can’t think of anything besides “Las Vegas Real Estate”… seek professional help.  Or try this keyword suggestion tool.
2. If you have a blog, make sure your article titles are unique to what you are writing about.  Using variations of a keyword are fine: “Las Vegas Condos”, “Las Vegas Real Estate Agent”, but don’t over do it.  Try to appeal to your readers first, and to the search engines second!
3. Choose which pages are the best candidates for certain keywords, and send internal links with the anchor text of those keywords to that page.
4. Start broad on your links, and build out.  Your home page and top level pages probably have the most potential for ranking with more competitive broader terms.  Make sure you target those tougher terms on your top level pages (shallow pages), and work on the more specific long tail keywords with articles, and blog posts (deep pages).

~ Secret Tip ~

If you are really struggling with how to title pages, and can’t think of any more good keyword phrases to use, try using a good keyword research tool.  Google Keyword Suggestions, SEO Book’s Keyword Research Tool, or even Wordtracker or Nichebot.  Start by searching for a broad term, and use the results to find the most relevant, and the most popular keywords for your page.  You may just find that the keyword you wanted to use in the first place doesn’t get as many searches as you thought… and that there was a related phrase you should have been using all along.  Hint: I do this every time I write a new article…

So go get to work!  Remove all those duplicate Meta tag titles.  Do some keyword research.  I think you’ll find that with a little work, you’ll see a much bigger return on your investment with broader search traffic.

Original Article:

Is Your Website Eating Itself Through Keyword Cannibalization?

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Related Articles:

Long Tail Keywords vs. Short Tail Keywords

Is Your Market Saturated with Other Bloggers?

The Top 10 Most Common SEO Mistakes

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The opportunities for Internet business branding on search engines has really come as a revelation to me in the last couple of years.  It’s such a simple concept, but one that many SEO practitioners and companies don’t understand.  This concept of branding has brought me so much enlightenment in the area of search engine marketing, and helped me to understand my overall purpose as an internet marketer.

Here are a couple of brief definitions of branding just for reference:

“in marketing, the sum total of a company’s value, including products, services, people, advertising, positioning, and culture”

“in marketing, the use of logos, symbols, or product design to promote consumer awareness of goods and services”

We all know the classic branding examples: Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Etc…

But what about branding online? To some extent, we see the same branding efforts online from many of the big companies.  This usually comes in the form of banners, text ads, video sponsorships, etc.  That’s all fine and good.  I don’t question the supreme wisdom of Madison Avenue in this regard.  But what are companies doing to brand on the search engines?

This is obviously an important question as search engines command such a huge amount of traffic and eyeballs.  It would seem like such an obvious place to build brand awareness through higher visibility in search results.  But sadly, so many marketers skip this step and go straight towards the “SEO drug” that so many people are hooked on these days: higher ranking.

I’m full aware of the temptation of purely going after higher rankings, it looks good, it boosts your ego, it’s impressive to show to clients… but it doesn’t always translate into more success in the long run.  SEO is so much more than simply achieving higher rankings.  And I want to point out some of the reasons why that is the case.

Search Engine Branding With Meta Tags

This is talked about quite often in the SEO space, but it is hugely important, and I want to spend some time covering it.  Meta titles and descriptions are very important here.  When you include company names and even tag lines in your Meta tags, you are maximizing your branding potential because that is what people see on the search engines.

Here’s an example for a “Car Insurance” search on Google:

What’s wrong with this picture? Everyone on the page has branded properly in their meta titles and descriptions except for autoinsuranceremedy.com  Have you ever heard of them?  I haven’t.  But I have heard of all the other companies on the page.  Coincidence?… or just poor branding?

Let’s take another example for a local real estate search:

Imagine this as a scenario:  a first time home buyer is considering a purchase 6 months down the road.  They have no idea what to do, and they have been researching for properties in their price range, good real estate agents, and information about the local area.  They happen to use Google on a regular basis, and are doing multiple real estate related searches.  This is where branding can make all the difference in the world. Take a look at the above results.  Who is branding and who isn’t…   Just because a title says La Jolla Real Estate, (which was the search term) doesn’t mean people are going to click it… and even if they do are they ever going to remember who you are?  Of course, you may get lucky, and they might like your site and bookmark it for later.  But the more likely scenario is that they will go right back to Google the next time, and the sites that displayed their brands in the results through meta tags will gain the mind/brand share.

Meta tags play a huge role in this online branding process because that is what people see in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages).

So what did we learn here? Place your name, company name, or site name in your titles and descriptions.  Here are a couple of examples of good use:

You can see that placement tends to be different based on preference.  I personally prefer to have the brand in the front of the title tags on my top level pages and money pages.  And move it to the back on deeper level pages like articles, and product pages.  The point is that you are building brand awareness with every search result that you appear in by placing the brand in the titles and descriptions.

Not Convinced Yet? Ok, here are a couple studies that prove my point:

A report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Nielsen NetRatings suggest that “27 percent (of survey respondents) were more likely to name a specific brand if it was in the top spot of the search results page.” (Sponsored Listings Effectiveness Study, July, 2004).

And again, a report by the Dieringer Resource Group, which surveyed 3,000 respondents regarding their online purchasing habits, found that 60% of the respondents’ brand opinions were changed or enhanced as a result of online research (American Interactive Consumer Survey, June, 2004).

The problem that I’ve found with many SEO consultants is that they don’t come from a marketing background, but from a technical background.  Thus, they can fall into the trap of trying purely to acheive that higher ranking, but not pay as much attention to effective search marketing in terms of results.

I admit that I am still learning how to be a good marketer first, and an SEO second… but understanding how to brand in the search engines has definitely opened my eyes to see a deeper purpose in my SEO efforts.

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This article was originally published on my Searching Solutions blog:

Ultimate Guide to Internet Business Branding on Search Engines

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If you’ve never checked out Chris Pollinger’s blog, you need to.  His insights always impress me, and I’m a regular reader.  One of his most recent posts is about why he is frustrated with the real estate industry, and it really hit home for me.

In case you didn’t know, the Christian Real Estate Network is a lead generation service.  When you strip everything else away, that is what it really boils down to.  We generate real estate buyers and sellers around the country that want to connect with a real estate agent.  We then send out these leads to one of our members which totals around 1,600 currently.

I share Chris’ frustration when he isn’t able to get agents to follow up on leads.  It is truly maddening to get a followup email 2 days later from the client saying that they were tired of waiting, and made an offer with another agent.

Why is that??  In such a tough market, I would think that agents would jump over their own mother’s to get leads, but it just isn’t the case.  In his post, Chris talked about agents becoming jaded with lead generation companies, but I’m becoming jaded about the general service of real estate agents!  I’ve grown up my whole life around the real estate industry, and I’ve seen enough to know that some agents simply get it done, and the other 90% just sit around and wait for deals to fall into their laps.  It’s unfortunate that the 90% even exist, because they simply give the other 10% a bad name.

Here are some basic tips for the 90% of agents that don’t know how to manage real estate leads. (translation: common sense for the rest of us)

1.  Pick up the phone, look at your fax machine, and check your email

Pretty incredible insight huh?  Isn’t it the most amazing advice you’ve ever heard?  I should tour the country as a motivational speaker or something.  Of course I’m being facetious…  or am I?

It is seriously shocking how hard it is to get in touch with some real estate agents.  When we send leads out to our agents, we call, fax, and email the information just to cover all bases.  But it never ceases to amaze me how many clients aren’t contacted.

2.   Email and call the client immediately

Again… I should win a pulitzer for this stuff.  I have a personal theory that 80% of internet based real estate leads are lost in the first 12 hours.  And that is probably a huge understatement.  People on the internet want instant satisfaction.  They don’t want to have to register for something, they don’t want to fill out long complicated forms, and when they are requesting information, they want it now.  Don’t make them wait, or you will probably miss out on the lead.

3.  Be persistent, but don’t harass

Your average person is unlike your average real estate agent.  They will actually return your call if they want to talk to you.  If they don’t want to talk to you, they won’t call back.  Calling them everyday for 2 weeks is not going to help.  Be nice, be persistent, but know when to “take a hint”.

4.   Put buyers into the loop immediately

Don’t wait until after you’ve had the chance to visit with the lead in person.  You need to put them on a listing drip campaign immediately.  This means you will need to get their basic criteria during the first phone call or email.  That way, they will be getting active listings emailed to them right after you first talk which will gain their trust, and may even get you an easy sale if they see something they like.  There is nothing worse then showing 50 properties with gas prices these days.

5.   Long term clients still deserve the same level of service

This is one of my pet peeves.  Just because you get a lead that isn’t ready to do something for 6 months doesn’t mean you should kick them to the curb.  It’s just bad service.  The best agents recognize that they can’t live paycheck to paycheck and will have solid effective ways to stay in touch with people over the long term.  A simple email or phone call every couple months is sometimes all it takes to stay on someone’s radar screen.  I can always tell a good agent… they are the ones that send us a referral fee from someone we sent them 3 years prior.

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If you are one of the 90% (you know who you are), please clean up your act.  The simple courtesy of returning phone calls would be a good start.

Ok… my rant for Chris and myself is over.  

To read the original article, click here:

How to (Mis)-Manage Internet Real Estate Leads

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In the classes I teach, this is a topic that comes up quite frequently.  A company will already have a website that does pretty well in the search engines and is generating business.   But the company gets an idea in their head (I’m not sure from where) that more domain names will equal more business.

There are some problems with this mentality…

1.  New Domain Names = More Time & Money to Develop

Just because you have a new domain name, doesn’t mean you automatically have a website.  This is obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many people simply don’t understand this.  You are going to have to put something on that new domain name and that is going to take time and money.  Why do this when you already have a perfectly good website?

Some people buy domains only to have them redirected to the original website.  What is the point of this?  Why would you market a new domain name only to have it point back to a different site?  Branding comes into play with domain names like I talk about in reason 4.  Just because you have more domain names doesn’t mean you’re going to get more traffic to the original site.

2.  Multiple Domain Names Waters Down Your Search Engine Ranking Effectiveness

This is an important point.  Assuming you purchase multiple domains with the plan of marketing them individually… this is really going to water down your potential to build incoming links.    As you may or may not know, the number of incoming links to a domain is one of the most important factors in search engine ranking.  When you set up multiple domain names, and market them separately, those links are being spread too thin.  All that hard work you spent building 1,000 links spread over 10 different domain names should have been focused on building 1,000 for 1 domain name giving that one domain maximum effectiveness in the search engines.

3.  Multiple Domain Names Water Down Your Brand

To continue reading this article, Click Below:

5 Reasons Why Your Company Doesn’t Need More Domain Names

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The Christian Real Estate Network has been around for over 6 1/2 years now… But during that time we never opened up our websites or customer base for Christian advertising. That is now changing with our release of a new advertising product for businesses looking to market to an extremely niche group of people: Christian consumers, and real estate professionals.

We will have many traditional ad methods to advertise on the site including banner ads and text link ads, but will also include some unique opportunities like advertisements on our member website, special article advertisements to our large email list and blog, and ads on our highly targeted niche websites like christianappraisers.com & christianpropertymanagers.com

You can view our full Rate Card, and get more information here: CREN Advertising Rate Card

Marketing to a Christian Audience

• Banner ads on Hismove.com
• Text link ads on Hismove.com
• Targeted email sponsorships or articles to our 6,700 opt-in subscribers

Marketing to a Real Estate Audience

• Text link ads on the CREN member website
• Email newsletter email sponsorships or articles to our 1,600 opt-in members

Marketing to Niche Audiences

• The CREN Christian business directory
• Ads on special niche sites for appraisers, property managers, and home inspectors
• Banner and text link ads on the CREN Blog
• Article sponsorships and guest article opportunities delivered to over 500 opt-in subscribers.

You can view our full Rate Card, and get more information here: CREN Marketing Rate Card

This was originally posted on the CREN blog here:

Christian Advertising & Real Estate Advertising

It seems like there has been alot of talk about link building lately… maybe it’s just me, but most SEO’s know that quality link building is a pretty important part of offsite optimization.

So, I thought I’d share something that has helped me quite a bit. There is a great seo link building tool put out by SoloSEO (of which I’m a happy customer). It was built a while back based on a post by my hero: Rand Fishkin.

I highly suggest you try it out if you are looking for some link building help. I’ll also post some of the queries that it uses here for your reference. Just take any of these examples to Google, and it should really help you to find some good quality links.

Thanks again SoloSEO for a great tool!!!

Add/Submit

your keyword “add url”
your keyword “add site”
your keyword “add website”
your keyword “add your site”
your keyword “add a url”
your keyword “add * url”
your keyword “add * site”
your keyword “add * website”
your keyword “submit url”
your keyword “submit site”
your keyword “submit website”
your keyword “submit your site”
your keyword “submit a url”
your keyword “submit * url”
your keyword “submit * site”
your keyword “submit * website”
your keyword “suggest url”
your keyword “suggest site”
your keyword “suggest website”
your keyword “suggest your site”
your keyword “suggest a url”
your keyword “suggest * url”
your keyword “suggest * site”
your keyword “suggest * website”

Advanced

allintitle:your keyword
allinanchor:your keyword
allinurl:your keyword
allintext:your keyword

Directories

your keyword directory
your keyword * directory
directory * your keyword
intitle:directory “your keyword”
inurl:directory “your keyword”
“list of your keyword sites”
“list * your keyword sites”
“list * your keyword * sites”
“recommended links” your keyword”
“recommended sites” your keyword”
“favorite links” your keyword”
“favorite sites” your keyword”

Blogs & Forums

your keyword forum
“your keyword forum”
intitle:your keyword forum
inurl:your keyword forum
your keyword blog
“your keyword blog”
intitle:your keyword blog
inurl:your keyword blog
“add comment” your keyword
“post comment” your keyword
your keyword members
your keyword join
your keyword tag
intitle:tag your keyword
intitle:post your keyword

I’ll also add a couple of my own to this list:

• site:.edu inurl:your keyword

• site:.edu inurl:blog “your keyword”

• site:.edu inurl:forum “your keyword”

• site:.edu intitle:blog “post a comment”

You can also replace “.edu” with “.gov” to find those types of links, or replace “inurl:”, with “intitle:”

Have fun. Let me know if there are any other special operators that you use to find links!

Read the Original Post Here:  How to Build Links to a Real Estate Blog

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Here are some fun search engine and blogging statistics I pulled up. I like doing this about once a year to see what is going on in the search space to see if there are any trends I’m missing. Plus, it’s just really interesting data to look at. Most comes from comscore, hitwise, and technorati. enjoy…

Blogging Statistics

* 28% of all visits to blogs in 2007 resulted in some kind of action (email signup, contact form, etc.)

* There are currently about 15.5 million active blogs (blogs updated within 90 days)

* Total blogs tracked by technorati: 74 million

* There are 120,000 new blogs being created every day

* 3,000-7,000 new spam blogs (splogs) created per day

* Total blog posts created per day: 1.5 million

* 36% of those blog posts were written in English

* The Japanese language now boasts more blogs than another language (37%)

Search Engine Statistics

* 75% of Americans use search engines on a regular basis

* 56% of Americans use Search Engines every day

* 40% of all search engine searches are for local businesses and services

* 54% of Americans regularly use the internet instead of the phone book to find local services

* 56% of Google users click the 1st organic result after a search query

* 25% of all search engine queries are unique (never been searched before)

* 92% of all local searches will eventually convert into a sale

* Roughly 10 billion search queries made per day

* Google’s share of search queries: 59.2%

* Yahoo’s share of search queries: 22.2%

Taken from my blog at SearchingSolutions.com:  Blogging & Search Engine Statistics

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Mary McKnight wrote an interesting post on why she believes that the long tail does not work well for real estate bloggers. I found it to be an interesting read… but like so many of the “how to” real estate marketing blogs out there, I found it to be too one sided and unbalanced. It reminds me of the argument that has become classic in the real estate blogosphere: should you write for the search engines or write for readers? The answer is BOTH!!

By the way, Mary: you know I love ya, and I’m not trying to start an argument here, just wanted to share my opinion on the subject.

I strongly believe in the concept of the long tail. It is a sound principal, and it works for many different industries including real estate. By the way, if you don’t know what the long tail is, try this link. Does this mean that everyone should be going after the long tail keywords? Not necessarily… let me explain:

The Problem With Targeting Long Tail Keywords

An example of a long tail keyword for a real estate blog would be something like this: “Seven Meadows community pool hours Katy Texas”. As you can see, it’s very long and specific, and it is probably only searched for a handful of times per month (if at all). I’ve seen many people that will write posts like this thinking somehow that they will really get some great targeted traffic from it. That may be… but there are a few simple problems with that idea. First of all, there are very few people searching for this phrase on the search engines. Even if you get top positioning, you may only get 1-2 visitors per month. Secondly, is this search phrase related to real estate? The answer is no, which means that chances are extremely slim that any traffic coming to the site will convert. I’ve seen many well intentioned RE bloggers try to target phrases like this, and I’m sorry to break it to them, but they will probably never convert into a customer. There is nothing wrong with posting helpful community information, but with the relatively low number of search queries for that phrase you will likely never see anything out of it.

The Problem With Targeting Short Tail Keywords

Targeting the short tail keywords is what Mary is suggesting as the best way to target customers with your real estate blog. As I see it, there are a couple problems with that view. An example of a short tail keyword would be something like: “Katy Texas real estate“. The first problem is that everyone and their mother in the Katy market is trying to target this same keyword phrase. The competition is fierce, and you need to have an authoritative well written, and well optimized site to rank well. It’s not necessarily a problem if you know how to get a site to rank well and have the time to spend on it, but many people have a difficult time achieving this.

The 2nd problem is that the phrase: “Katy Texas Real Estate” is extremely generic. Just because it receives many search queries per month does not necessarily mean that everyone searching for that phrase is looking to buy/sell real estate. Many studies have shown that the short tail phrases do not provide the best ROI (Return On Investment). This is because of the fact that many of them are too broad and do not convert well.

Thirdly, as a blogger, it’s simply not practical to keep targeting the same 5-10 keyword phrases over and over and over… Can you imagine if you used one of your top 5-10 keyword phrases in the title of every single blog post? You’d be arrested by the spam police! LOL (that may not happen, but it will really turn your readers off, and it won’t help your ranking)

So, as you can see, there is a problem with both views. Which is why I present the third view…

The Money Tail

Ok, I know it’s a corny name, but it was better than “medium tail”. Here’s why you should be targeting the “Money Tail”:

These would be keywords like: “katy texas condos for sale” or “real estate listings in Katy Texas”. The benefit of targeting keywords like these is that they are searched fairly often, but are specific enough to not have a high level of competition.

The side benefit of targeting the Money Tail is that the keywords usually have a very high ROI. They are specific phrases targeting real real estate consumers, and they convert extremely well. “real estate listings in Katy Texas”, will always convert better than “katy real estate”. The Money Tail Keywords aren’t too generic like our short tale example, and they aren’t too obscure like our long tale example.

So, in my opinion… a balance must be struck. Target those money tail keywords, and you will see a higher ROI, better rankings, and a higher conversion rate.

Read the original article Here:

Long Tail Keywords vs. Short Tail Keywords

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