Great post Dean! I have been working on all this for the past year in my area. I pay attention to it everyday and work on my blog whenever there is a minute. Clients find me here.

Lizette, Thank you and that is great news to hear. Active Rain provides a fantastic platform for Realtors. But if you really want SEO strength and Google placement you must create a stand alone blog and tie it to your website for optimal performance.

Keep on blogging!  dean

Great post.  Blog about your community your area and of course about real estate and it will come.  You have to use long tail keywords to get noticed for your area. 

Giving specific local information in a fun way has begun to work for us as well!!!

Checkout www.thecenturytreereader.com and tell us what you think!

Hi Dean,

Good points. If I may expand....

Most real estate agents do not have the "scope of experience" to understand how web traffic from search engines comes to a well-presented site.  You have to see a lot of site traffic stats reports examples to grasp it.

Traffic will usually begin with very low competiton terms. It may be government realted, if that is kind of content on your site. It might be tourist realted, if that is some of your content.

But, it all adds up, over time. It is AMAZING what people search for, in local communities.

With a good SEO progam, and links, eventually you might hit the first page if Google for "Your Town ST Real estate". That's "three cherries" on the slot machine.

But even ifyou don't make that payday, then you can get traffic. Sites with limited content can't get this secondary traffic. 

So, get the main optimization in place focusing on real estate terms, combined with local community names, but then "season it" with other locally relevant content.  

I've seen it, too. It works.

Hi Russ- Thank you for your kindness. You are right on the money with the idea of long tail searches! A blogger can rank much quicker in a long tail search and the blogger knows that people searching this specifically are usually more interested than the average reader.

Susan- I really enjoyed your blog. Thank you for your kind words. I am happy to see a stand alone blog with such great Hyper local content. I haven't heard the term "two-bits" aka 25 cents since I was a kid. The first three articles are haircut, 10 Tips to Make the home standout to buyers, and a civic post about a Texas A&M student winning a congretional art contest.

This is a great example of what John Harper does on http://theharperteam.com and it will create the kind of source people will come back to read. Well done!

Hi Dirk, I must agree most agents do not know enough about blogging or how Google works. I believe the burden should lie with Broker-owners to push this forward-but sadly most Broker-owners don't understand either. Consequently this is a great time for Realtors to establish and dominate their market's searches on Google. Solid comment!

Dean - Stop It - it's starting to go to my head.

Just kidding - what do I owe you???

Great post - keep 'em coming. Really, the subject matter is right on. Thanks for using us as your example. Could you hyper-link - ...can be found at http://theharperteam.com authored by Bay Area Realtor John

so it reads like this - can be found at Danville - San Ramon Real Estate authored by Bay Area Realtor John...

Always looking for more link love and SEO.

I felt truly blessed to be able to sit in on Dr. Mukesh Bajaj's presentation to a group of angel investors where he talked about the subprime mess and his take on it as a financial economist. It is the blog that is responsible for generating opportunities like this.

BTW - Tom Proell says he actually talked to you and you guys might actually grab beer someday. Are yyou actually contemplating driving across the bridge?

Good Work Dean,

Tom Davis

World Class Delaware Realtor

Active Rain Blogger

Thank you Tom! I hope that I added something new and valuable that you can utilize.

dean