I don't think it's abusing SEO by using your key words throughout your blog post.  If you are doing it excessively, than yes, but repeating your key words 3 to 5 times in a 3 paragraph blog is not excessive.  In your short example, that is way over done, but I think writing rich content and placing your key words throughout the content is acceptable.

Just my 2 cents.

I believe that SEO can be tastefully done to please the consumers eyes and minds as well as entice those little spiders to come back to eat more! ;) Check out my Localism posts sometime to see how I use SEO to stay on top. I use my keywords exactly as they are in my title at the bottom of my post in my copyright line. It works great. I learned that from a non real estate related web site that I built to success. But you are right, content is king. Katerina

Content has always been king, no doubt about that. You are correct!

SEO is the industry trend and not going anywhere. How SE's index sites is adjusting to an extent (sorry, off topic from your initial questions)

So, if I think it is harming our industry doesn't really matter as it's only going to become more important with Gen M and they way in which people educate themselves on everything...Writing is great, but Gen M wants video. They don't like to read~

Side note: I've been looking for a car for nearly a year. I hate car shopping. Truly, just like a first time home buyer, I don't understand the manuf. price, I don't want to look under the hood, I'm 100% emotionally attached and need a lot of leg room (I'm tall). So, I look on line and then go to a dealer to test Drive (just like buyers at open houses). When I am in the zone ready to buy, I connect with a sales rep that has offered great service and not been pushy (like in real estate, Service, not sales). I test drove cars this evening for the first time in 6 months. I am going to make a purchase late next week or the week after. My research and educational process was all conducted on-line. I used search engines to gain information. I pulled up sites at the top of the SE pages.

87% of buyers in 2007 did their searching on line. What most realtors DON'T get is that you can't just purchase a canned web site and expect buyers to show up. Fortunately, those that think it actually works that way are dwindling away from the industry or just retiring. Active Rain agents are not that way and will continue to thrive and buck the trend of this nutty market.

SEO is part of the process for any category on-line. It is a necessary evil that we must all embrace....The old adage "Grin & bare it!"

That fact that you are an excellent writer, Aaron, will just make your blogs and sites a notch above the rest with visitors coming back for more. Kudos!

Aaron - so true. I just wrote a post called "Robots don't Get Mortgages" to emphasize the point that you must write for humans.

Aaron,

I see more and more agents spending more and more time doing more and more SEO learning in hopes that they will be more and more higher up on more and more search engines.

Whew! That was hard to write actually!

But seriously...I can't tell you how many blogs I've read here at AR espousing the internet as the ONLY viable marketing tool left for the real estate industry. And they're convinced that the more time they spend on SEO, the more business they'll ultimately generate. The fact that they're blogging about it then leads others to believe they're experts and you'll see comments like:

"Thanks Sally...your information was incredible and very helpful. I didn't even know what SEO was until I read your wonderful words of wisdom. Starting this afternoon, I'm going to spend the next six months getting my site together, and using SEO to increase its position on Google so I can become a richer real estate agent than I already am."

The problem with this scenario....is if you do a search on the original blogger's town by typing in something like "Real Estate in Columbus Ohio"...you'll get 642,000 sites in the results...and the agent isn't listed anywhere on the first 50 pages!!

If I leave a comment on one of those blogs, I'll get responses like "Well....did you even bother doing a search on my NAME, huh smarty pants??

Um, what??? Sheesh...if you already have 87% of internet shoppers knowing your NAME well enough to search for it specifically, then you don't need to learn SEO that's for sure!! News alert: If you do a search on someone's name...their site will likely come up. That is NOT the highest and best use of search optimization! Doesn't even REQUIRE any SEO.  LMAO!

Meanwhile...it's been over a year since I've received ANY....I repeat ANY kind of mailer here at my own home.

This may sound self-serving since we're a real estate marketing company...but we do both print AND web work...so I'm not biased toward anything (other than RESULTS!)

I think the agent who simply goes back to basics, and takes advantage of the fact that so many of their competitors are busying themselves trying to figure out the magic "answer-all" to the industry's woes....are going to win in a HUGE way! No, make that a HUMONGOUS way! No, make that in THE BIGGEST WAY IMAGINABLE!!

Put your web address on everything you send out....and trust me, you'll generate 25 times the traffic to your site than if you attempt to beat the search engines at their own game.

And get back to selling real estate. There's more money in it than search engine optimization.

Dave

Seems to me that if real estate practitioners do not focus on SEO, they are relinquishing SERP to the aggregators, the lead machines and municipal sites which always have prominance. 

Sure, it's wonderful to write good content, but if no one sees it, it's a worthless Pyrrhic victory. 

Hi Aaron - You raise some good points.  What I don't understand, is why they think traffic only = results.  If they drive traffic to their site/blog, and have bad content, it not only doesn't help, it does a lot of damage.  People are not stupid, especially web savvy consumers, and will evaluate the content.  If it's bad, you are basically advertising incompetence.

But I am new to this, and your post has helped me put the issue in perspective.

We use SEO as a way to gain exposure. Im not a expert by any means but we do get traffic from it and showings and sales with some listings. Ill take them any way I can.

Dave - Your comment (or ebook LOL) is very on spot.  Look everyone, I am an SEO student so please don't think I'm saying SEO is bad.  But Dave makes VERY valuable points.  SEO has made every agent in the workd think they can own Google, and their terrible writing and abuse of the practice is bad for consumers.

BTW - LAS VEGAS REAL ESTATE LAS VEGAS REAL ESTATE LAS VEGAS REAL ESTATE LAS VEGAS REAL ESTATE

Sorry, just couldn't help myself but to try and attract more spiders to this post for self-serving terms.  Who cares about the readers needs. 

Obviously sarcasm.

Aaron, Looks like you hit a nerve with this one.LOL

Tom Garcia 

Yup.  I had a fealing it would hit a nerve as I told it like it is.  SEO-hungry agents are spamming their copy just to get first-page placement. 

Most SEO-focused agents are forgetting the golden rule - write for readers, not for robots.  And that's fine because their websites look bad and their copy is about 10 percent as valuable to a reader when compared to a good writer's copy. 

Yes, that sort of SEO stuff hurts my head. I think I need to pick up my SEO pace, but I don't. Its all good.