I like big photos. I like them to fill as much of the space on the screen as possible. On an individual post the page size by K isn’t too bad with large images. But when there are 5 to 10 posts on the home page all with images on them, it can bloat the size of your home page and make it very slow to load.
Need I write or even say the Ruler associated with PR. No not the Price is Right. Some would think it Pretty Risky, or Purposely Ridiculous. It was waited for two month longer than some thought it due.
We all have high bounce rates. Even the people that say they don’t do. It is inevitable. We can’t control how or when the search engines will place us high on a page for a search. It might not be relevant to the search at all.
Write Relevant Posts
I once write about the start of the Oro Valley Real Estate site explaining how it was a blog with posts rather than a typical website with pages. I provided information on the location of our office in the sidebar. In less than a week my Hittail results were showing I was getting a lot of clicks for the search phrase “Oro Valley Post Office” There are a lot of people moving to Oro Valley some as winter visitors for part of the year and some as permanent residents.
Well you can imagine the bounce rate was really high, because I got the traffic but the content they were looking for wasn’t there. Until the next day when I wrote the post on “The Oro Valley Post Office” and put up a map, marking the location.
These are the ones you can track and realize “Hey, I should write a post about that”
How do you slow down the bounce rate when it isn’t that obvious.
Where is your Site Search
High placement on your blog of a search box saying, “DIDN’T FIND WHAT YOU WERE LOOKING FOR” Search the site, it is probably here.
This grabs their attention and some will quickly enter their search and find what they are looking for “ON YOUR SITE”
Finally, Grab them with something they aren’t looking for. Huh?
This is the best reason for putting pictures on your blog post and doing so at the top not down in the context of the post. Why do you think so many sites have pictures in the sidebar, flickr photos flashing, or images in posts etc.
I try to have a photo that will catch the eye of the reader and keep them on the site longer even if this isn’t what they are looking for NOW. I want them to find the site interesting enough to tag it for future reading and investigation.
There you have it. A few simple ways to slow the bounce from your site when someone pops in for some information. After all that is why people search, they want to find information.
Don’t forget this simple equation. Search+Information=Results. Finding Results = Lower Bounce Rates.
I initially wrote this post for home buyers getting ready to move to Tucson. It’s not a real bells and whistles kind of tool but I think some of you might find a use for it with your buyers. Doug Trudeau at Tucson RE Blogs calls this process of all the listing getting mixed up in a buyer’s head Cerebral Jello. For Tucson I added it would be Stucco Flavor.
I purposely made the Home Evaluation Sheet generic so it could be adapted for any market.
I’m adding this post as an example of how any RE blogger can add something to their blog as a “take away” for the reader besides just good information. I’m sure if you think about it you can some up with similar ideas for useful forms to help buyers and sellers through the Real Estate Transaction Process.
There are so many homes to choose from and after looking at stacks of listing sheets and visiting 10 or 12 homes a day; they start to blend together and it is hard to remember what you saw or didn’t see and what you liked best of all the homes in the pile. The more you sort the more confused you can get. What do I want to see again, what do I want to eliminate. Top it all off you are scheduled to go to another bunch of homes tomorrow. It really can get confusing. Here is a little tool that might help.
Home Evaluation Sheet
Make a list of what you are looking for in a home. Divide the list into columns to make the process a little easier. What are the things you consider to be Must Have and what are the Wants. Here is an example:
How to use these sheets
- Download the empty Evaluation Sheet
- Make a list of Must Have
- Make a list of Wants
- Using Word or Wordpad fill in the form
- Save and Print out one sheet for every house
- Staple an Evaluation sheet to each listing sheet
- Check mark each item on the list in the house
- Total Must Haves and Wants
- Add them together for Total Score
- Check your notes and comments for additional thoughts
- Eliminate all the sheets that get a low score
- Assign numbers to those that remain #1, #2, etc.
- Try and keep these to 4 or 5 top picks
Each day you add new homes to the list do the same thing. Add that days picks to the top picks and check your scores and again weed out the lowest ones. Keep just the top picks.
This will help keep the task of narrowing down your selection from becoming overwhelming.
There are two forms One a PDF which you can download and print out. This one you have to fill in by hand.
The other is a DOC file which you can open in Word or in Wordpad. All windows computers come with a copy of Wordpad in the Accessories directory.
Fill it out. Save it and print as many copies as you will need.
Blank Home Evaluation Sheet PDF
Blank Home Evaluation Sheet Doc
Add Photos to The Process
If you are taking pictures of the homes you are visiting during the day; make it a habit to take the first picture of the homes address. At the end of the day you possibly will have more than 100 images. Taking a picture of the address makes it easier to associate pictures with listing sheets.
Use them as you want. It would be nice to know someone is actually using adapting or modifying them for their own buyers.
I’ve just written about SEO deprogramming; because of the urge to focus most of your time and effort into SEO for your blog. SEO might get people to come to your site, but SEO won’t get them to stay there.
This is referred to as the bounce rate. How many people click to your site, don’t see what they want on their screen, and hit the back button to move on to the next result.
There are ways to slow this down and I’ll address slowing down bounce rates soon.
For now lets talk about target and focus for your local content.
Targeting Content
We have categories for organizing or posts. We should also have targets for those post.
For this blog that is very easy to identify. I have just one target which greatly simplifies my task.
My Target:
- Real Estate Bloggers. Primarily self hosted WordPress bloggers, but concepts are transferable from platform to platform.
Selecting Good Targets
Here is the quote from the comment to Kathy.
“Think about the things a person getting ready to move to your town would want to know and write about these things”
They are getting ready to move, might want to buy a house. Hum. Can you see where this line of “What to write about” could lead.
Local Targeting of Content
- Services of interest to people moving to your town
- Activities of interest to people thinking about moving to your town
- Information on local rules and regulation on home purchasing and selling
- The process and terms used in real estate transactions in your area
Focused Content
This leads me to focus on several primary areas:
- Wordpress and it’s functionality or lack thereof
- Real Estate Blogging concepts and tools
This is pretty easy for me I have a limited target and easy focus as a result. Here are some examples to get you thinking about local focused content.
Local Focused Content
- Local Hospitals and medical clinics
- Local specialty stores organic food stores
- Local Events coming up
- Local Clubs and Organizations
- Local City Government (Google Map: police, fire, post office, City Hall, etc)
- What is it like living in your town
There are lots of resources with list of things to write about. Topical suggestions to stimulate your thinking. But without Targeting your audience and Focused Content it is like pointing a gun at a flock of birds and pulling the trigger hoping you hit something.
Final thought:
Stop thinking like a real estate agent with a product or service to sell.
Start thinking like a best friend. If your best friend was getting ready to move to your town what would you tell them, show them, help them find, help them do. Write your posts to that best friend. You might just find one.
I’m going to count backward from 3 and when I get to 1 I want you to wake up. Here we got 3. . . . 2. . . . 1. . . . WAKE UP!
There is a growing cult in the Real Estate blogging community. It is the Cult of SEO. More and More RE bloggers are being recruited to this cult almost every day. The seduction begins with “Look into my eyes, I can get you search results quickly. I can get you rankings and PR almost without effort. Follow me, it is easy, it is quick, it is painless.”
They are being sucked in and brainwashed to believe that if they just focus on SEO they will rank high and blessings will flow from their contact form.
Headline: SEO is the Fast Buck approach to RE Blogging
How many times does it have to be said,
- “Write for the Readers not for the bots”
- “Content is King”
- “Find your voice, not your marketing strategy”
- “Personal is Professional”
Poor SEO advise can hurt your site, but not as much as good content can help it.
ReBlogWorld 2010
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.Yeah Right !
Wordpress 2.3 and Askimet Approved Comments
By Dave Smith Wednesday October 31, 2007
I have moderation turned on for comments on the blog lab. The setting is for approval of all first time comments and once approved the person making the comments can continue to make comments as long as there are not more than 3 links in a comment.
I’ve noticed lately, that all the people that have been approved before are no longer approved. This happened with the last WP update.
I have not added any additional spam filters to the lab or even updated any. If you don’t see a comment wait a little while. It might be stuck in the spam filter, because instead of them going to be approved with an email notification to me they are going directly to the spam filter.
This is appears to be an undocumented “feature” of the last upgrade. : )