The Scenario

There is a local event and people are searching for the event using “Google”   Really?

Local Event Sites Love Bling

Yep Eye candy rules in the world of event websites.   Most have no idea how to optimize for search engine placement.   They make it pretty.   If you ever find the site, it is pretty.

Your Open Door of Opportunity

1. Write a short simple post about the event a few days (or weeks if it is a big event) before the event.
2. Put the old Who, What, When, Where, How much it cost.   In the post.
3. Create a good title tag. (Hint put the year in the title).
4. Create a couple good keyword tags.
5. Put all the keyword details in the Excerpt field.
6. Link to the event website.

These are your six steps to search traffic on your blog for local events.

Examples of Bling without Zing

The Oktoberfest celebration

"oktoberfest-500-773" this is their title for the image

Great image don’t you think.   All the pertinent information is in this jpg file.   Except THIS IS THE ONLY PLACE IT IS ON THE SITE.

Notice the Times of the event. The Admission Cost, the sponsors.   All inside a BLING picture which GOOGLE BOTS CAN’T READ.

Put this same information in your post and you have more search able information about the event than they do.

Tucson Air Show

This one is a real killer.   It is an event that people look forward to for months, sometimes years, (it wasn’t held last year).   They search and search for details.   Times Dates, but it is very difficult to get any information about this event.   It is held at the Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson.

First, They don’t call it the Tucson Air Show,   everyone else does, but they don’t.   They call it Aerospace & AZ Days.   Catchy title don’t you think. It just rolls off the tongue and is easy to remember for searching.

The only information about the 2010 event is in a .jpg file.   No text no words, no details.   Makes it really easy to find on the search engines.

Here it is:

AeroSpaceAZDays Yep, this is it

So what do I do?   How about write a post for “Tucson Air Show 2010″ and provide the dates, the real name for the event and the graphic.

Bonus Nugget:

Remember when I said to put the year in the title.   I have a post for Tucson Air show 2007, Tucson Air show 2008, Tucson Air show 2009 and now Tucson Air show 2010.   Each still ranks high for Tucson Air show.   I go back to each previous year post and put the link to the new post at the top as an UPDATE:

When those posts are returned in the search results do you think it looks like I’m an ongoing authority about this annual event?

These posts are a service to those searching for information about your local events.   They drive traffic to your site.   They provide an opportunity for you to engage your community.   They drive traffic from Google to you.   That sounds like a Win/Win/Win to me.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab How To Beat A Local Event In Google Rankings

Yes, you might get a “lead” or “referral” from Active Rain, but what is your ROI?

This is not a post against Active Rain

But All I need is one Lead and it is all worth it

Active Rain is a great social site for people associated with the Real Estate industry.   It is a virtual water cooler for those in the “Biz”.   A source for referrals? of course for some.   But for the vast majority on AR it isn’t.   But like I said this post isn’t about Active Rain.   It is about Serendipitous Marketing in a Hyperlocal environment.

What you won’t get out of it

You won’t get a lot of comments or feedback from a hyperlocal blog; at least not in the beginning.   It takes time to grow this kind of an audience.   If that is what you want to call it.

What you do get is a lot of opportunity to become a voice for and about your local community.   If it is all about “leads” then you probably won’t want to bother blogging at all.   Blogging is a   marathon not a sprint.   It isn’t a program you buy and put on auto pilot.   It is an ongoing opportunity to share information and details about what makes your community unique.

No Need for Rose Colored Glasses

There is no need to paint a Norman Rockwell image of your community.   Sharing about what makes it unique, local events, and things to do will create a strong online presence for you in your community.   If you are in a small community that has no idea what Social Media is or what Facebook or Twitter are then all the better.   They will get there, it will happen, and if you are there when they arrive guess who the pioneer with the online presence will be when they arrive.

It all Depends

Every RE Business is local.   It depends on your location how you approach blogging.   If you are in a small community with other small communities around you could write an Area Hyperlocal blog.   Is there such a thing?   There is if you create it.   If you live in a large metropolitan area then you get to pick what you want to cover.   I live in a big small town.   Tucson has about a million people in the surrounding area.   But there are events going on throughout Southern Arizona that people living in and around Tucson are interested in attending.   It is easy to write about these events, attend them one year and write about them with photos from the previous year for the next.   Remember this is a marathon not a sprint.

This type of blogging will pay huge dividends.   For one thing your content is always out there.   It is always going to be working for you on the world wide web.   I now have 777 posts on the Tucson blog.   Those posts continue to bring in new visitors everyday.   Some become clients for a variety of reasons.   And I become more knowledgeable about my community with every post I write.

Need something to talk about when you are in the car with clients?   Blogging about your community provides you a wealth of information to share.

It is a matter of where you spend your time.   Some time spent around the water cooler is fine, but remember people don’t go to work to stand around the water cooler (okay, maybe they do, but they are supposed to be there to get water then back to work).   They are there to take care of business.   If you don’t make the effort to become an online voice for your community you will never know how many clients you won’t come into contact with because you ignored the many while fishing for the few.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Fishing for the Few While Ignoring the Many

Along the way I wanted to see the country from a different perspective than I’ve ever considered before.   As I rolled down the highway and pulled off for fuel for the car or fuel for myself, I looked around as someone who might want to live here.   I know there were people wondering why that idiot was taking pictures of a McDonald’s sign, (is this guy from some other country?   hasn’t he ever seen a McDonald’s?)   I took pictures of gas stations and car washes and more than one McDonald’s or McDonald’s signs.

If there was a small park or historical display of some kind I pulled out my camera and started shooting.   One early Saturday morning I even turned around, found a place to park and photographed a . . .   A White Castle.   Not in honor of Harold or Kumar.   It was a good image, the sun was in the right place, the grass was green, the flag on the flag pole and the colors of the building were vibrant.   I got some interesting looks that time too.

Sure I took some places that were very photographic as well, like Kingwood Center in Mansfield, Ohio and the Botanical Center in Des Moines, Iowa.   One night I even was standing on a bridge with a bunch of cat fishermen who wondered what the heck kind of pole I was pulling out of my vehicle.

I stopped and shot windmills and corn fields, and Rest areas, one that looked like a barn.   I even got a shot of a couple of garbage cans in Illinois I call Frank and Al.

I’m using many of these photos on my various RE blogs; talking about things I encountered, real estate related and life related along the way.   Now back home I’m driving around town with a fresh eye to what others who are considering moving to my community might find interesting.

When you have lived someplace longer than a year a lot of things about it become second nature, lost to the senses and eye of a new comer.   But, you want to speak to more than just the newcomer, you want to reawaken those who have lived in your community for years themselves.   You want to awaken the emotions and passions your neighbors have for their community.

Evoking Emotion and Passion

White Castle, you really think someone would be interested in a picture of White Castle.   I wondered the same thing so I posted the image in my JPGMAG.com account.   Yes of all the thousands of images uploaded there each day there were people that clicked on an image of a White Castle in Ontario, Ohio It might be a small burger joint at the edge of town, maybe one that used to be called “Dog and Suds” and now is called “The Warrior”.

Buildings, parks, schools, places where peoples lives touch other peoples lives create emotional connections.   They can spark a note of passion in a person touching on something they are or have been very interested in or a cause they champion themselves.

These are Subjects and Topics of a Hyperlocal Blog.   Not just the Fireman’s Chili Cookoff in the fall or the annual Air Show, more than events which are annual are the places that touch peoples lives almost daily.

They might drive by this place a hundred times a year and give it no thought, till they read your post and see your images displayed and you strike a cord with that individual.

This is one of the core tenants of Hyper Local Target Marketing.   It has nothing to do with selling yourself or your service, it has everything to do with establishing a connection.   A connection to individuals and a connection with your community.   The word transparency has been so over used I think many are numb to it.   But, this is what is meant by transparency in your real estate business, transparency isn’t providing free unregistered access to local MLS Searches.   Transparency is more than a couple of posts about your dog or children, though those are nice touches.   Transparency is about touching emotions and passions in people with your images and words.

Sensitize Yourself to Your Community

Having trouble picturing this?   Drive to a nearby community someday and take pictures of anything and everything.   The parks, main street, stores, coffee shops, homes that catch your eye, buildings which have character, gas stations, burger joints, fast food, etc.   You get the picture.   You can either assemble these into a post, a slideshow to go along with it; or you can see this as an exercise to open your eyes to these same things in your community which have become invisible to you.

You want to build your Real Estate business in your community, then step outside of your Real Estate Box and into your local community.   Stop being a sales person for a while and become a member of your community, see it as someone would who is seeing it for the first time.   Stop thinking about poeple as prospects, or leads and think of them as potential neighbors who contribute to your community.

This is the stuff of Hyper Local Target Marketing.   Your Subjects and Topics have been right in front of your eyes all the time.   Can you see them?

If you want to see the larger versions with titles click on the “View All Images” button at the bottom of the slide show.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Hyper Local Target Marketing Subjects and Topics

A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words and Juice

What have we learned so far, the subtitle h3 tag above is a clique. It makes a terrible title because you can’t rank for it on the search engines. Hyper Local Target Marketing with Images does what I want it to do. If you search on the phrase Hyper Local Target Marketing you will see most of the posts in this series returned in the Google search results.

Photos can be an intricate part of Hyper Local Target Marketing

Flickr photos

Teresa Boardman wrote a very good post at Agent genius on Web 2.0 The Land of Opportunity There was a long running discussion on social networks and Teresa said ” Flickr is a social network built around photos, instead of real estate.” It is true and I would recommend you reading her post.

Anyone can get a flickr acount ((well, almost anyone)

• You upload your photos to your account to share with others.
• You put
  • titles on those photos
  • and tags
  • and a description (In which you can place a link) about the photo.
• You can build a network of friends who will leave comments on your photos and get to know you better.

You will also get your photo’s title and tags indexed so they will appear in search engine results.

If you set up a Flickr account pay the $25 bucks and get a Pro account. It is cheap and you won’t be restricted on the number of images per month and they display in whatever resolution you upload them.

It takes a little time to enter the title, tags and descriptions, but remember this is all part of your multi pronged approach to Hyper Local Target Marketing for your Real Estate blog.

Tucson Photo Blog

I recently started the Tucson Photo Blog Visual Tucson Tucson Arizona Moments in Time. A few minutes ago I uploaded a new image titled “Tucson poppies and blue bells” It is already indexed and being found.

Bonus Gem: I did a blog post on the location where this image was taken in Oro Valley, Arizona. In the description on the post of the image I put a link to the blog post about the spring wildflowers in Oro Valley.

When I set up the photo blog there were a series of links on the default about page. One of those links was to JPGmag.com.

JPGMAG.com

Jpgmag.com is another Photo social network. However, it is not like Flickr. It is free, but there are restrictions on the images you upload to your account. They have to be high resolution 300 dpi. They have to be at least 2200 px in one direction. They are not to be retouched (ie Photoshopped). You can take out dust spots but no major tweaking. There are more restrictions. What they want are your best images, high quality, submitted to themes and if chosen for publication your image will appear in a copy of JPG Magazine. (WARNING) There is some nudity submitted to this site. I’ve seen very little but it is present at times if you are browsing the photos section.

I have a couple of images submitted to themes and one of them you may have noticed in the right hand navigation. Someday I might have one of my images published.

I browse images under the Photos to see what other people are submitting and when I find an interesting image I click on it to see the photographer and view more of their work. Sometimes it is just a fluke that have a good image : ) and other times it is one of many. Those are the people I add as contacts.

Amanda Means

Amanda is one of those with a lot of very good images. She has a real sense of composition and color and when I read the blurb about herself I was/am impressed.

“I am just taking pictures like everyone else. I shoot with a Kodak Easyshare Z712 IS. Nothing fancy. I do not own photoshop or any other photo editing software. What you see is what I saw”

Amanda’s images and her title tags became the subject of one of my Lab experiments. (But she is not a lab rat). I started taking my principles of Title Tags and doing searches on Google for some of her titles. Some of her images have no titles, some are descriptive but short “Wire” “Barb”, you get the idea. There are some with titles containing “Texas Pan Handle” which is descriptive and geographic but there is some heavy competition for that phrase. However, here are some examples of Amanda Titles showing up on Page 1 of a Google search.

• Windmill Against the Dark Sky
• Broomweed and Barbed Wire
• Historic White Deer Hotel
• Mama Cow in The Snow
• The Dreaming Tree Has Died

I don’t think Amanda even realized some of her images were coming up in google searches till I mentioned it to her in message. Amanda has some great images. I know she just had one selected for a theme which will someday be published in JPG Magazine. Thank you Amanda for sharing your images with us here at the Lab.

The point: she is getting placement for search terms based on title tags in images without even trying.

I am targeting my Title Tags on my JPG images in my account. I also have a link to one of my blogs on my account home page. JPGMAG.com has some real juice on Google. When I run a site:www.jpgmag.com I return 733,000 pages indexed. This is some series juice.

Why This Post Almost Wasn’t Written

I debated hard about not even writing this post. First, this is not a gimmick, it is not some kind of SEO magic to get back-links and higher PR for your posts or blog. I like JPGMAG.com very much and I don’t want to see it flooded with poor quality images in an attempt to take shortcuts in SEO. If you don’t take photos and aren’t interested in Photography use the principles here to be applied to another form of social networking.

The Photo Gem

This isn’t a bonus gem. This is the whole mine. For those like me that don’t grasp what I’ve outlined I’ll put it in a short easy to understand process and formula. (This is what I need all the time because most of the time I don’t get it)

1. Take some good photos for a blog post
2. Write the blog post and include the images (reduce the images in the post and use the lightbox js plugin to display a larger version)
3. Submit the image to JPG, Flickr or both
4. Put a specific Title Tag on the image
5. Link back to your post for more information in the description (flickr) or link (JPGMAG)

Your Post now has one or two links coming back to it from either flickr or JPG. If your image ranks higher than the post in the search engines (don’t make the title of the image the same as the post, make it a variation) and they click on it the first thing they will see is the “For more information . . . and the link to the blog post.

Tucson Poppies

Tucson Poppies was an image on the Title Tags post which is a part of this total Hyper Local Target Marketing experiment. Here is the Google Search for Tucson Poppies As of right now I have 5 of the 10 positions returned. The post I wrote earlier on Title Tags with the poppies picture and the photo tags (and photo name) Tucson poppies. Is already indexed. I have a result from JPGMAG.com from the Tucson Photo Blog and from the Tucson AZ Real Estate blog.

Remember my final question on the Title Tags post about why the picture of poppies? The title tag on the image is Tucson Poppies. As I write this that post is returning #1 for the Google search in the paragraph above.

JPGmag.com Images in Google Index

It doesn’t happen 100% of the time, remember this is Google we are talking about. But 90% of the time when I submit an image to JPGmag.com it will be indexed in less than a minute in Google depending on the Title tag.

Do you find it ironic there are no images in a post about images?

This is the last post in the series on Hyper Local Target Marketing. If you read these post again as a series they will provide a good foundation and guideline for how to market your Hyper Local Blog.

Thank you again Amanda. Please take time to view her images of life around the Texas panhandle. Amanda is producing some very fine images. She is also now working on targeting her Title Tags : )

That’s a wrap. I hope everyone reading this series has found at least one tool to put in their hyper local blogging bag.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Hyper Local Target Marketing with Images

The pilot responded: “Well I’ve got some good new & some bad news (don’t you love these kinds of stories) We have a tail wind and we are making incredible time, the bad news, we are lost.”

Driving Traffic or Herding Traffic

This should be a no brainer for you but sometimes the thrill and desire for traffic is like the all consuming passion Edmond had for “Turkish Delight“. When this happens traffic stops being a means to an end and becomes the end itself. So much so we can loose our focus and relevance to the audience we are targeting.

We can fall under this spell by taking advice like “Create a controversy, it will create traffic” Or we are advised to use words like:

Yes these things will drive traffic to your site. But what kind of traffic are you after?

Don’t forget we are talking about Hyper Local Target Marketing to those who are surfing and searching the Internet. Not so much the surfers, though we will take them, it is the searchers we are targeting specifically.

Traffic Addiction Deprogramming

What is your market? WHAT is your MARKET? WHAT IS YOUR MARKET? Yes, I’m shouting at you to break the spell or Traffic Addiction.

You can not target your market if you have not defined your market.
You can not target your market if you have not defined your market.
You can not target your market if you have not defined your market.

For a Hyper Local Real Estate blog it is “The Buyers of Real Estate in (Your Town goes here) and the Sellers of Real Estate in (Your Town goes here again).”

We had to take that focused break before moving on.

Driving Traffic means we get lots of unfocused traffic, Remember flock shooting

Do you really think hyperactive hormonally driven teenage boys are interested in buying real estate from you? Or anyone else that is going to be coming to your site because of such traffic driven words being used in your post and on your site.

Herding Traffic

Herding Traffic is not like pushing string. Herding traffic is create a traffic net that only catches the surfers you are after.

We already discussed this in Creating Title Tags, Creating Back-links, and Targeting Local and National Events.

If you are doing the kind of target marketing we have been talking about in this series of posts you won’t have to stoop to Driving Traffic and then trying to sort it out. Worse yet wasting your time dealing with issues and people that might be increasing your traffic but not producing any positive results for you our your business.

What kind of traffic do you think I’ll get from this post?   Are you sure?

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Hyper Local Target Marketing Driving Traffic or Herding It

Most of the time it turns out to be a service to the community you serve. Other times it becomes an introduction to you and the service you offer.

Timing is important

If you know your posts are getting indexed in a relatively short period of time (minutes and hours not days) then post about 4 days before the event. If it is taking longer then post earlier according to when your posts are being indexed. If I have a weekend event coming up I write the post, take some pictures if there is setup involved ahead of time or a subject that is relative to the event and then post on Wednesday.

Post too late and your information will be available after the event is over (not what you are wanting). Post too early and newer information could push you down the page or worse off the first page entirely.

Your Local Sources

1. Read the paper and the smaller area papers and the neighborhood inserts every week to see what is going to be happening in the weeks ahead.
2. If you have a local magazine that publishes a calendar of events for the upcoming year. Set those events you want to cover aside and if you are really organized go ahead and start the post with the Title and a holding paragraph.
3. Read those free publications laying around the grocery store. I get a “Living Life after 50 and loving it” magazine at a local McDonalds. (Barbara laughs when I take it) Lots of local events for that vertical market are covered in those publications.
4. I’m not interested in sports. I don’t watch any sports and I don’t follow any sports. You will never find a local sports post on any of my blogs. For me it is just boring. (The accenture match play is an event, Tiger Woods is a national figure) LOL But you might be interested in sports and writing about local sporting events is another venue and topic.

There is every possibility there are no national events in your area. I’m sure there are local events to write about, provide information and bring fresh eyes to your blog.

Bonus Gem: Do you have any local non-profit social services or events. Write about them.

If you have the “What would Seth Godin Do” plugin you might get someone to subscribe to your blog. Because they like what they see and will come back when they have time.

Finally, this isn’t the most exciting post in this series. It isn’t the post I intended to be next after Title Tags. I hope you will see how community events being covered (even though they are not directly real estate related) is a great way to bring local readers to your blog. And please, please, please, DO NOT PUT “FOR ALL YOUR REAL ESTATE NEEDS” at the end of these posts.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Hyper Local Target Marketing Local and National Events

These little babies are the Turbo Charged Engines that makes the wheels go round and it is unfortunate they are also the Rodney Dangerfield’s of the Internet. I say the internet and not just blogging because they are the Super Nova’s which speed your content to the top, or the red dwarfs which go nowhere at all and are often never found.

It is a real shame that bloggers spend so much time creating thoughtful and well written posts only to have their material thrown on the garbage heap of “Over used keyword”, “Over used cliques”, “Over used phrases” and Titles that are not descriptive of the post.

Target Specific vs. Flock Shooting

You want to focus your post as well as your title tags to your target audience. I might have good advice or a resource for buyers, or sellers, or people looking for information on a mortgage. But I’m not interested in attracting the attention of “Buyers” or “Sellers” I’m interested in attracting the attention of people who might be potential “Tucson Home Buyers” or “Tucson Home Sellers”. This is my target audience. Title for the target.

I can write a post about low flow toilets and what can happen if they are put on a 50 year old cast iron sewer system. A title of “Low Flow not the way to go” is catchy but it is flock shooting. “Tucson Lets Talk Toilets” is Targeting.

Bonus Gem: If you really, really, like your catchy title, use it as a sub-title using an h3 tag at the top of the post. I did that on this post. I had the “the engine under the hood” in the original title tag for this post but it diluted the title (Titles that are two long can hurt ranking) so I put it as an h3 tag inside the post. It helps temper my lame sense of humor and keep my title tags targeted.

Spammy or Specific, there is a Difference

Not all blogging advise applies to all blogs or bloggers. For a Hyper Local Real Estate Blog what might be considered a spammy title by a national or industry focused blog will be targeting for a hyper local blog. If you are writing about something that contains information which applies to a certain group or a specific area then don’t be afraid to identify it in the title. Am I saying the same thing I just said above? YES!

Bonus Gem: Being specific is especially important if there is competition for the words in the title. There is a town outside of Tucson named Vail. But there is this little town in Colorado by the same name.

Gem in a Gem: I sometimes do a google search for a specific term to see if the title I have chosen will rank high or should I change it by adding a descriptive word or by chosing a different title.

Using Geographic terms in the Title

Tucson, Oro Valley, Canada Ridge, are all local geographic terms. In an earlier post in this series I mentioned the results we were getting for the Accenture Match Play. I could have set the title for these post to be just the tournament name, but then I’m competing with all national media on that search term. To distinguish and get my content to the public I expanded the title tag “Tucson Accenture Match play” Or “Tucson Accenture Match play 2008″.

Bonus Gem: If I’m writing about an annual event I will put the date in the title for the event coming up. This helps distinguish it from posts in earlier years and shows continuity in covering the local event. When someone searches on the “Tucson Firefighters Chili Cookoff” It is great to have results come back on two of your posts with different years in the titles.

Using local terminology to describe the content of the post

Drip system, xeriscaping, water harvesting, Old Pueblo, Snowbirds, Sabino Canyon Trail, are all terms associated in one way or another with life in Tucson and living in the desert.

Bonus Gem: When talking about a specific product or service put it in an h3 tag or a post tag. You will be amazed how often you will get a hit from someone looking for that particular item. For example: A post on Hot water recirculating systems I put a tag for Autocirc Undersink Instant Hot Water Circulating System and Watt hot water system in the post I explained where each could be purchased.

Title Tags and the Google Index

If nothing I’ve said so far gets your attention this one should. I’ve been doing some research on Title tags and the effect they have on post/pages being indexed. I’ve done this not only for my own posts but for others as well. I select pages I know have been around for at least three months.

The observation:

• When the Title Tags are specific they stay in the index.
• When they are generic they often fall out of the index in a few days or weeks.
• The posts with specific title tags tend to be the ones with higher PR.

There is more to say on title tags and how they get you quickly to the top of a Google search.

I’ve found a way to get to Page 1 and often with a search result #1 in a Google search in less than a minute.

This is not black hat or any kind of trickery. I’ll explain how to do it in the next post which ties together the concepts of creating your own back-links and creating good title tags.

Final Thought. Have a target and a reason for everything you put in a post. Pull together all the elements and you will have a great Hyper Local Real Estate Blog.

Having said that: What is the reason for the picture of poppies in this post : )

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Hyper Local Target Marketing Title Tags

True, and a good piece of advise. How do you do that? “Write quality content that people want to link back to” Sounds good so far doesn’t it.

Now add into this little formula the fact that you are the author of a hyper local blog. How many people are going to link back to a post you have written on topic for your local market? Let’s see, after the number zero nothing seems to come to mind does it.

Outside.in

Find the local URL for your town or area of Outside.in and create an account and read about submitting your blog and posts to outside.in. Maybe your blog is already there and you didn’t know it. They keep changing their policy on what blogs are listed automatically and content pulled by Outside.in to their site. However, you can submit your post to Outside.in manually.

Open your tabbed browser with your newly published post in one and your outside.in in another.

• Select Submit
• Add title
• add url to the post
• add tags (the more tags the better)

You can also add tagging to your post for it to be picked up. I have a where tag automatically added to the bottom of all my posts on one of my blogs for the local area code.

Bonus Gem: Here is an example of an Outside.in page on Reid Park Zoo in Tucson You will notice I have two links to posts on Tucson AZ Real Estate. This Outside in page has a pagerank of PR2. If you follow the links to those two posts (tucsonazrealestateblog.com) I’ve referenced you will see both posts also have a PR2, coincidence? (If you follow this link you just might see the guy in the red shirt in the “Neighbors” navigation on the left.)

Create A New Blog

Huh? Yep, start a new blog about something you are interested in. If it is about something you are passionate about it will be easy to write. You end up creating a who new sphere of influence and audience.

It will make you a better blogger because you are writing more.

I know there are things you think about and want to write about but it doesn’t fit the theme of your RE blog a.k.a. the business blog. So start another blog. You can link to it, you can reference posts and topics that might be of cross interest which generates back links to your RE blog.

When I started the Lab it was as a hobby, I even call it my hobby blog. I was setting up my first blog for RE and couldn’t believe how bad the documentation was for getting a blog going, from hosting to platform, choosing a theme and which plugins to use. The programmers must have a deficient gene when it comes to documentation. They either leave out a lot of steps or they don’t document at all, they just figure somehow we will all figure it out. DUH! I work at this stuff, nothing is intuitive to me, I’ve said this before.

I wanted to write about the experience but it didn’t fit with the theme of Tucson real estate. I wrote a post about new blog or not, keep the theme of the blog focused or write about tech issues and local real estate. Some of the pioneers of RE blogging that came to the internet in covered wagons weighed in (by invitation). The decision was to keep the focus and start a new blog. The Real Estate Blog Lab was born from that post and comments.

Bonus Gem: For every link you put in a post to another blogger or blog post you are sending out a personal invitation to come and read this post. I know I do. I see a backlink where someone has put a reference in a post to the Lab or a specific post in the lab. I’m all over that clicking to find out what they said.

Read before you write, “Out-link” generously and you will sow seeds for back links in the future. But the key is still to write something they will be interested in reading.

When I posed the question about starting the Lab in the post referenced above, do you think anyone would have even seen the post if I hadn’t sent the personal invitations included in the post?

This hobby blog has more PR on pages than all three of my RE blogs added together. It has a higher number of readers, again add all the readers from the other three and they don’t add up to the Labs subscribers.

Barbara sometimes wonders about “What good is the Lab for our business?”

• It helps me be a better blogger
• It is my personal online journal (hey I forget how to do this stuff so I come back and read my own posts)
• It shares the love (I share the juice with other bloggers, and plenty goes to the hyper local blogs I author as well.)
• It lets me give back to the RE blogging community
• It gives me an outlet to share something I’m passionate about

“Oh, that’s good isn’t it.” “Yes, that’s good.”

Craig’s List

Sometimes Barbara just does something because she heard something at the office, she read an article, etc. I don’t know the source for this one. But one day I noticed in my Hittail results a link that looked strange. It didn’t come from a search engine, it came from Craig’s list. Barbara had entered a listing of ours. She had read about how to do this and what to include and not include to be within the Craig’s List guidelines. We got a few hits from it and I looked at the Title she had entered. Then we had a discussion about Title Tags.

Bonus Gem: From time to time I’ll be blathering on about things like the importance of “Title Tags” and showing Barbara how we are ranking because of the words in the title. I usually get this deer in the headlights look indicating either “I don’t get it” or “I really don’t care about this at all” usually it is the later. But Title Tags stuck. She started writing some really great title’s for her Craig’s list submissions and putting links in to the single property sites for the listings as well as the blog which is closest to the listing (geographically on topic).

I can always tell when she has been entering on Craig’s List, the traffic spikes and we bring a lot of readers to the various blogs through these links which are (back links created by us). Think about it, these are people looking for a home in the area we live and work. They find the listing, they find the blog, they find us. THIS IS TARGET MARKETING!

A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words and Juice

There is one more way to create some quality back links but it is part of a post of it’s own in this series. I really like this one and my love of photography is a perfect fit. I found this one quite by accident, but I found it by knowing where to look. And yes, Title Tags once again play a very important part.

You can create your own backlinks. I look at it like this, every post I write, no matter which blog it is on is another line in the water, another strand in the web another sign post on the net to get the attention we are looking for from those looking for what we provide in our hyper local market. Hyper Local content and message broadcast to the entire world.

I love the internet and I love blogging : )

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Hyper Local Target Marketing Create Your Own Backlinks

The closest thing to a blog with a broader readership is this one. Targeted at the Real Estate blogging community, often dealing with WordPress and hosting your blog. Attempting to provide you with ideas and tools to get your content before the audience you intend to impact and hopefully impress. I’m going to write a series of short posts to try and help Hyper Local Bloggers target their marketing.

I know there are a lot of posts out there already on this topic. My intent is for these posts to add quality content and ideas to those already on the net. The things I’ll be sharing come from personal experience and experimentation.
The good thing, almost anyone can do the things we will talk about.

This post is to whet your appetite. As always anyone is welcome to add to the discussion and share ideas. Here are some of the things I’ll be covering in the next couple of weeks.

• Local & National Events in your market
• Target Specific vs. Flock shooting
• It’s not all about traffic but sometimes it is (Driving Traffic or Herding It)
• Long tails are great but when you can go for the short tail
• Create your own quality back links (You Can Do That?)
• A picture is worth a 1000 words and Juice too
  (jpg more than a photo format)

Bonus Gem:
I’ve applied several of these area into a single focused target for a national event taking place in my hyper local area. You can compete for high ranking keywords that are broader than your local area. These past two weeks I’ve applied many of the above to the WGC Accenture Match Play which is held just down the road about 10 minutes from where I live. Here are my Google search results for the week. Based on my hittail traffic it has increased about 100 % over the past two weeks.

Are there any Local or National Events coming to your area. Target, Focus, Shoot to the top of the search engines.

Your posts are the projectiles, (better than arrows or bullets) aim at nothing, you will hit it, aim at the flock, you will miss it, aim at the target. . . . Hyper Local Blog Market Targeting bringing it into focus and having some fun while we are at it.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Hyper Local Blog Market Targeting