So, you’ve waxed lyrical, you have created, another, informative, succinct, original blog post. You hit publish, and you can see it, live, online. Feels good huh.

So what’s next, sit back and await the comments? What if you could encourage more search engines to come and take a look too, rather than simply waiting for them to come by.

Though, it’s certainly true that your blog may well be already pinging, or notifying search engines of your latest post when you hit publish, you can be proactive about it also.

Here’s how, visit http://pingomatic.com/

There you can ping multiple search engines that your blog has been updated. Here’s how you do it…as usual in just a few clicks.

Goto http://pingomatic.com/, you’ll see this page:

Type in your blog name, your blog’s home page, and your blog’s feed address, (normally your blog address followed by /feed

Then simple hit ‘check all’ to check all the blogs you want to ping:

Hit, send pings.

Ok, so now you are done!

Does your website strategy compliment the recent changes to google's interface?

Google has updated their user interface this week, thats the bit you use, and a ton of stuff that you don’t see. You may have noticed a subtle change in the way it looks, (that always throws me, my first reaction is that i have some malware installed, which has redirected me to a scam site!).

Really, the update brings some of the features that were ‘snuck’ in last time to the fore.

Type in a search query and you get the same set of results in essentially the same format. This is google’s ‘everything’ set of data. What’s new is the left column.

At the top you have, ‘everything’, all normal so far. Below that, they have moved the Maps, Images, Videos, News, Blogs etc to a much more prominent position. This means that its going to be more likely that people are going to perform subsequent search variations, from their original entry search.

As a real estate agent, you should make sure that your online strategies try cover all of these bases. Make sure that your website and blogs are loaded with local images, town images, development images, videos of the above, (even quickies from your smart phone) and blog posts.

Below, the ‘everything’ navigation is another category, More Search Tools, this is where users can find the most up to date information posted to the web. You can sort your results by the time they were updated such as latest, past 24 hrs, past week, past month, past year. Latest may show your twitter tweets!

I’ll say it again, you have to be blogging!

Ssshhhh... I am following you

Inman news today suggested that buyers and sellers can be ‘stalking’ or agents online for as much as 18 months before they do business with them.

If nothing else, this tells us that if you are serious about getting more business from your internet presence, you need to be in it for the long haul. We couldn’t agree more. Too often the feeling is that a website is the silver bullet thats been missing.

The article was dead on when it suggested that Gen X and Gen Y clients want to actively remain anonymous, until they are ready to want more. To us, this is a reaffirmation that you don’t want to have any kind of mandatory sign-in process in between potential clients, and your information, which is essentially public anyway.

Blogging is a great way to communication with your anonymous readership and build trust over this 18 month courtship. Blogging will also push your search engine rankings as their demand for fresh information can be solved through your posts.

Blogging also keeps your site fresh. If you are comprehensively covering all their informational bases, why would they go someplace else?

So what to say, what to say…

1. Market Updates: what’s closed, what’s new, market stats
2. Questions Posed By Clients & Your Answers: blog about the things you talk about all day in your car
3. Lifestyle Posts: love local businesses in town, or just a pic of the cherry trees in bloom, add it, write a paragraph and you have moved your blog forward. Make your blog the #1 resource for relo clients online. Include photos of your local schools. In many areas, there is an equal amount of search volume between schools and real estate.

To blog or not to blog...I think it's pretty clear, BLOG!

Still not blogging? Well, we’re not going to rest until you are. Are you blogging, but not really sure why?

Here’s yet another reason why it is such a good thing. It might get a little geeky here, but we’ll insulate you from the worst of it.

Ok, on a fundamental level websites and blogs are typically constructed using different frameworks. This is essentially because historically speaking they have been built of different purposes.

The Typical Website Model

Generally speaking websites, at worst, are rather like pretty fleshed out yellow pages ads. A series of pages who’s content seldom changes, (disclaimer: this is not the approach we approve of ), how many times does a Contact Us, or About Us page really have to change. So whenever a page changes or new pages are added, its wise to update your sitemap.

In short, a sitemap is a file that features all the links to pages on your website. When you have an updated site map, you notify the search engines that it’s updated and at some point they’ll pop over to take a look.

There is often a delay, of days if not weeks for search engines to come by and check out the changes. Frustratingly there’s not much that can be done to encourage them to by any sooner.

The Blog Model

Blogs are about being current, what’s happening now, or what’s just happened. Their MO is to get news out there.

The whole point of news is that it’s…that’s right, NEW.

When you write a new blog post and hit ‘publish’ something amazing (you might have to be a geek to use ‘amazing’ in this context) happens. Hitting publish, not only publishes your content to your blog but, importantly it sends out a ‘ping’ to the search engines to notify them that some news has just been reported.

Newness is what search engines crave.

By writing content on your blog you are giving search engines what they are looking for. Is it starting to become clear?

The Difference is Remarkable

Whereas it can be days if not weeks for search engines to find your new page on your website, you can get them to see (or index) your new blog post in minutes, which is frankly, astounding. Simply give search engines what they want and be rewarded.

See For Yourself

Click to enlarge

The blog post you are reading was published to the web at 9.15am this morning. It’s now 9.25am and google has already indexed or seen the post and this can only help our relevance in search results… That took 7 minutes.

Most Realtors call us to complain that they can’t be found at search engines. I think we both know what you can do to change that.

We can help you design and configure your real estate blog and coach you in your blog-craft.