Stumped

The question isn’t whether you need to blog — it’s what you need to blog about.

Blogging demonstrates industry expertise, increases your network and improves overall ranking of your site.

Online real estate marketing demands content creation, and blogging is a common way to share your content. Blogs result in direct lead generation if the post itself ranks in Google’s search engine results page.

For purposes of search engine lead generation, the blog must be tailored to common search terms. If you’re clients aren’t searching about the topic, the post won’t generate organic leads.

However, choosing a good blog topic isn’t as simple as identifying common search terms and writing about them.

For example, there were 44,750 search queries for “selling a house” in August 2017 nationally (see these numbers in Google’s Keyword Planner).

Although heavily searched, you’d have to pass Investopedia, realtor.com, Trulia, HGTV and Time to crack the top page. Not likely for a low authority website.

I often see real estate agents write about curb appeal, yet, they’d have to pass Better Homes & Gardens, DIY Network and Popular Mechanics for visibility.

If you’re blog isn’t ranking, it doesn’t matter if your clients search the topic. It doesn’t help that these articles are written hundreds of times each year.

So that’s the crux of the SEO lead generation issue: How do you find your client’s common search terms that high authority sites haven’t covered?

One way is to tailor the blog post to the local market, but that’s not the only way.

Google will tell you what you should blog about – if you know how to ask. There are at least three ways Google gives you this information:

1. Google Adwords search term report
2. Keyword Planner
3. The search engine box

Google Adwords search term report

If you’re unfamiliar, Google Adwords allows advertisers to bid on “keywords” in order for corresponding ads to appear in search engine results. This advertising system is free to set-up, and you “pay per click” on your ad.

Google Adwords is my favorite means to find golden nugget lead generation blog topics. Here’s how it works:

• You create a keyword such as “selling a house,” and your advertisement displays on queries relating to “sell a house.”
• Whenever a user clicks your ad, Google records the search term.
• Go into the “search terms” in Google Adwords, and learn exactly what potential clients are searching.

Use this information in the right way. Ignore “general” searches that triggered your ads — those suffer from the problem noted above (high authority sources already covered it).

Look for unexpected “long-tail keywords,” and you’ve found a lead generation blog topic.

In my Google Adwords for the last week, I have long-tail searches for “I want to sell my condo in Miami,” “what costs are involved in selling a house” and “can I buy a house in just my name if I’m married.”

Out of curiosity, I googled “can I buy a house in just my name if I’m married.” There are no formal blogs on this — but there are two threads (Trulia Voices and Zillow Forum Question) with homebuyers asking this question.

That’s a good topic for a buyer’s agent to step in and answer as the authority!

The downside to the search term report is you need to pay for Google Adwords or connect with someone willing to share their report.

Google Keyword Planner

Google’s Keyword Planner is a free tool (though you have to sign-up for Google Adwords) that let’s you explore keywords based on a phrase. Google’s goal is to make you enter those keywords into a Google Adwords “pay-per-click” campaign — but instead, you can use the Keyword Planner to find blog topics.

Enter the Keyword Planner, and you have the option to “Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category.” This is a free playground, and you can search as many phrases as you can think of.

For this exercise, I entered “real estate agent,” and Google provided 633 related keywords.

The average monthly searches are included in sortable results. The trick again is to look for “long-tail keywords” that haven’t been covered.

Take advantage of the fact that you can try any phrase related to real estate: appraisal, closing cost, home inspection, contingencies, commissions, deed, etc. You also see the “search volumes” and narrow results to your geographic location.

The advantage of Keyword Planner is immediately obtaining massive amounts of potential searches.  The downside is — unlike the Google Adwords search term report — you will not get “surprising” search terms that have zero organic competition because Google isn’t showing actual queries.

Google Search box

Don’t want to pay for advertising? Not willing to spend a few minutes to sign-up for free access Keyword Planner?

A simple way to identify blog topics is to type in a real estate phrase into the Google search box. The box then displays common searches that include the entered phrase. You can use those common phrases to come up with blog topics your clients will want to read.

These three tips will help any blogger come up with better, more relatable topics to blog about and rank better on search engine results.

Earl White is  vice president of House Heroes, a Florida cash homebuyer, and co-founder of licensed brokerage House Heroes Realty.

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