Unify Real Estate

Blogging for Real Estate Agents

By Johnny Sebastian • Updated: 11/30/22 • 13 min Read
Lead Gen
Blogging for Real Estate Agents

Step 1: Get a real estate license.

Step 2: Start a blog

Step 3: Profit!

Right?

When I started in our real estate industry, it was assumed that you must have a blog. It wasn’t even a question.

Every agent in the office had a website, and at least a couple of 300-word “articles” in the tab marked “Blog.”

Most don’t earn a dime from their blog—or even their entire website. There are just as many reasons not to have a blog as there are reasons to. Before you waste time attempting a blog, ensure it is right for you, your business, your style, and your goals.

Pros and Cons of Blogging for Real Estate Agents

Before deciding on blogging as your lead generation strategy, here’s what to weigh.

Pros

  • Passive Lead Generation. Your blog can be evergreen content that works for you when you sleep. A page ranking on Google is earning for you without spending a dime.
  • Cheap to Get Started. A website is very affordable if you are willing to DIY. There are very few recurring expenses.
  • Warm Leads. A well-written blog will make you an authority in your space, earn trust, and even close the deal before you know your customer’s name!
  • Easy to Multi-Purpose. Blog content is a great foundation to begin a multi-channel marketing effort. You can repurpose your blog into a video, podcast, or infographic and share it on social media or an email marketing newsletter. Eventually, you can monetize it in other ways, like your little media company (think Curbed or Brick Underground).
  • Non-Confrontational. Perhaps the best thing about blogs is that it is one of the friendliest ways to sell yourself. No hard closes. No dialing for dollars. You attract business instead of hunting and killing it, which is perfect for introverts.

Cons

  • Takes Time. Google generally is wary of strangers, and a new blog will take time to earn its trust and build a library of content that will start turning in leads. I recommend 12-18 months before a blog can be expected to start delivering.
  • Expensive to Outsource. While blogs are dirt cheap to DIY, they are costly to outsource and maintain the quality you need to see results. That can become an obstacle to scaling.
  • Difficult to Research. Most keyword tools have to detect a keyword that is searched at least ten times a month before being able to track it. But the long tail and hyper-local keywords you target don’t always have that many searches. That can make keyword research hit or miss.
  • All in or Bust. There are only ten spots on the first page of Google. That means you need to have top 10 content in your market. It’s probably not worth your time and money if you can’t do that.

If these don’t appeal to you or your style, consider and compare them to other lead-generation strategies.

How to Start a Real Estate Blog

Before starting a blog, you must build your house on the
proper foundation.

Your foundation is your website.

How to choose and set up a website is beyond the scope of this guide. But it’s important to inventory your website, ensure it will work for blogging and SEO, and get you to your desired destination.

It does you no good to build traffic to a website that you will lose if you switch providers, or they change their terms, or you change brokers.

As a general rule, I recommend using sites built on WordPress for blogging. Or, you can quickly create your WordPress site without technical knowledge!

There are three exceptions to the WordPress rule, however. I’ve seen the following three website providers get good SEO results for the real estate professionals that use them and are worthy of consideration depending on your budget:

Sites I generally don’t recommend using to blog include many big platforms, many focused on conversion, buyer search, and your funnel, and not so much ranking on Google for organic traffic.

First Steps

So you have a new blog! Here are some essential steps to consider to start getting traction:

  • Ensure you’ve started a Google Analytics account and submitted your sitemap.
  • Consider looking for guest posting opportunities to earn backlinks and recognition for your blog.
  • Set up or update your Google My Business account.
  • Begin citation building in relevant and local business directories.

Best Realtor SEO Keywords

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the study and execution of the best practices that will get your website to show up on Google searches. The Google algorithm is a closely guarded secret, and there is an entire SEO industry whose sole purpose is to guess what it is and optimize their sites for it.

So, how does one get on the first page of Google? Zillow, Realtor.com, and Coldwell Banker already have all those spots taken, right?

Sure, for the tougher keywords like “[your city] homes for sale” (though I’ve seen agents break onto page 1 for that keyword, too).

Instead, you’ll want to target lower volume long tail keywords. Fortunately, these makeup most searches. Over 90% of search terms have fewer than ten searches a month.

AHREFs search volume research

What to Write About

I wrote a post on keywords I have successfully ranked at the top of Google. Keyword categories include:

  • Neighborhood names
  • Local builder names
  • Local real estate categories (e.g., HOAs, pool homes, condos, etc.)
  • Contracts (e.g., “seller’s disclosure”)
  • [your city] + [loan type] (e.g. “Killeen USDA loan”)
  • MLS statistics (e.g. “[your city] + real estate market”) and updates on market trends
  • Local places and events
  • Transaction steps (e.g. “[your city] home inspections”)
  • Buyer niches (e.g. “[your city] + investors”)
  • Local vendors (e.g. “[your city] + lenders”)
  • Housing market updates
  • Information for local real estate investors
  • Opinion pieces about industry news

Between those 10 alone, I could easily write over 1000 articles and pages, each of which would likely deliver a few visitors to my site monthly.

Blogging KPIs to Target

Measuring your progress is free! Linking your site to Google Analytics is necessary on day 1 of your new website. You can monitor a tremendous amount of information there, tracking your most popular pages, traffic sources, and more. You can even set up conversion tracking.

I personally track organic unique users, though I probably should set up conversion tracking. I look at my most popular pages and ensure those pages are optimized and look good.

If you are super nerdy, there is a great channel on YouTube called MeasureSchool. It has many tips on how to geek out in Google Analytics, split test, optimize, and do all sorts of stuff if you want to overthink your website.

My recommendation is not to overthink it. Google’s goal is to reward good content. You are naturally in a niche because you write about hyperlocal real estate. Your competition (for long-tail keywords, at least) is not major branded publishers and SEO powerhouses. Build good content, and the audience will come.

Blogging Tips for Realtors

  • Don’t Outsource Until You’re Successful. Creating content takes a lot of time. When you finally see success, time is the one thing you don’t have. While some might be tempted to skip the time investment and start outsourcing immediately, you risk investing a lot of money into an unproven lead generation source. Do it yourself first. Create successful examples that achieve your goal, and then use these examples to train your future hires.
  • Not all about SEO. You can repurpose content for your clients (e.g. “What to expect during the home inspection”). Or, instead of targeting Google, you can target social media with a viral click-baity piece of content. You can even ride the wave of current events for content inspiration, though that content is usually not “evergreen” and has a short shelf life.
  • 1000+ Words. With the possible exceptions of neighborhood pages and builder pages, you need to aim for at least 1000 words in each blog post. Google is rewarding longer blog posts. The $20 300-word post from 2009 doesn’t cut it anymore.

Examples of Successful Real Estate Blogs

The Denver Ear

the denver ear real estate blog 1

Mor Zucker is a real estate agent in Denver, Colorado, and has fully embraced the “content site” concept. Their top-performing page at this moment is an article about jazz clubs!

The Denver Ear is all about Denver, the community, things to do, and more. It is separate from her real estate website, which focuses on real estate services, but prominently includes a link in the header to point people in that direction.

They have a clever headline trick of including “psst” at the
beginning of each article, playing on the idea that they are sharing the rumors
and inside scoops of a true Denver local. Mor has given interviews about her content marketing successes, has been honored by RIS Media, and has spent time on stage presenting at Inman

Maximum Real Estate Exposure

maximum real estate exposure real estate blog 1

Bill Gassett is the grandmaster of real estate blogging. It seems his name comes up almost everywhere if you spend more than five minutes researching real estate blogging online.

He is a moderator on the Facebook group Real Estate Bloggers – A Group Designed To Help Promote Helpful RE Content!

I’d argue one of Bill’s top strengths is guest posting. You will find nuggets of wisdom, interviews, and articles from him all over the web (and everyone with a backlink pointing back to his website).

His site is a little bit dated, with an aesthetic still firmly grounded in the late 2000s of web design. But that is just further proof that blogging works. You don’t need a fancy website to make to work. Great content is enough.

Rochester Real Estate Blog

Rochester Real Estate Blog

The founder of the aforementioned real estate blogging group on Facebook is Kyle Hiscock, owner of the Rochester Real Estate Blog.

Their blog features a strong smattering of articles that rank for national audiences and hyperlocal content catering to his local community (with likely a higher commercial value).

Their Easy Agent Pro website is crisp, fun, and chock full of blog content. I like the flat design that makes for easy reading and the bold call-to-actions that is the hallmark of “EAP” websites.

Ruby Home

ruby home blog

RubyHome.com is the content site for Tony Mariotti, a Los Angeles agent who started in the tech world.

Tony owns two other sites at Luxury Homes, Los Angeles and Great Vancouver Homes, which also get 5 digits of organic monthly traffic. He is on a team with another agent in Vancouver. Tony does the website and marketing, and the other agent shows and sells homes!

Tony loves writing and content generation, and his family of websites is worth diving into!

Resources and Training

Remember, here at Hooquest, I believe in spending as little money as possible. I don’t recommend purchasing coaching, training, or advertising until your business is already working. Especially with blogging, you can easily trade time for money and get far with minimal investment. But it can cost a lot if you outsource the content, often without proven results.

YouTube Training

Online Publications

If you’re diving into content marketing and SEO, I recommend getting started by consuming content from the following online sources:

If you’re super into it, Moz, HubSpot, and the Content Marketing Institute have annual conventions for “inbound” content marketers.

Podcast Episodes

If you are interested in content marketing and blogging, I recommend checking out the podcasts at:

The following are some podcast episodes featuring Realtors discussing their blogging tips and tricks in our industry.

Coaches / Training

Lori Ballen

Tools and Software

There are infinite tools and software related to building a website, including forms, WordPress plugins, hosting, IDX, page builders, and more. There are also countless website providers.

Below are just a couple of handpicked tools I’ve used or used that can get the most out of your blogging efforts.

brightlocal logo 300 1 GO TO SITE

BrightLocal

$29+/mo. BrightLocal has a variety of marketing tools targeting local SEO for small business professionals. Their flagship product includes citation building, Google My Business audits, and reputation management.

semrush logo 300 1 GO TO SITE

SEMRush

$99+/mo. SEMRush is an all-in-one website tool, including tools like a keyword planner, on-page SEO tool, competition research, backlink tracker, and more.

Zapier Logo CHECK PRICE

Zapier

Zapier is an integration service that allows different apps, software, and websites to talk to all your other apps, software, and websites. You can set it up to route leads to your CRM, email, and text you, for example. It is an indispensable tool to connecting your entire tech stack.

Optinmonster logo GO TO SITE

OptinMonster

OptinMonster is a website add-on that creates elegant pop-ups and forms for capturing leads. Less intrusive than forced registration, they also offer “exit intent” popups and have very flexible rules to conform to how you want to integrate it into your site.

Others

The list of software and tools to help run your blog and website is endless.

Some other interesting ones to test out thought would include free software tools (or at least with a free starter plan) like Hotjar (heat mapping) and Ubersuggest (keyword research).

“Done For You” Blogging for Real Estate Agents

If you are an enterprise looking for a managed social media presence, there are social media management companies that can take this all off your plate.

Below are a few companies offering various content options, from professional writers to generic content you can post to your channels.

Keeping Current Matters

keeping current matters homepage 1

The Best Real Estate Writer

the best real estate writer homepage

Contently

contently homepage

Final word

Blogging works.

Receiving emails from potential buyers and sellers who have been following your blog for months or even years is a fantastic feeling. It’s a testament to your patience, consistency, and dedication to providing valuable information that people can use. Blogging is a powerful long-term strategy for establishing a solid foundation for your real estate business.