Realtor Websites - Real Web Results Blog

The most valuable thing you have is your time and how that time is spent will determine your wealth, health, and happiness.

Ever since the inception of the web, there have been many opportunities to participate in activities that are a waste of time. I first wrote about this long before there was such a thing as blogs - but the issues were the same. Back in September 1999 I wrote an article titled “Get off the computer and back to work!” in my newsletter that was subscribed to by thousands of Realtors at the time - the forerunner of this blog.

Spending your time maintaining a real estate blog at one of the many blog communities may just be a colossal waste of time. Yes, I know that statement is politically incorrect but I did not say blogging was necessarily a waste of time - just the reasons most agents give for frequently writing blog posts at blogging communities may no longer be valid.

If you check, you will find that I have been writing this blog since 2004 - so I am not anti-blogging!

If you are spending your time blogging at real estate blog communities because you enjoy the socialization - rock on! However, Realtors often give other reasons for their time there and those reasons need to be looked at a bit more closely.

One of the main reasons given for maintaining blogs at blogging communities is for the “link juice” - one can always find ways of getting links back to your main website within your posts.

Recently however Google has lumped blog posts at blogging communities in the same category as link exchange directories and article sites, and has awarded them all the “grey bar” on the Google Toolbar. This greyed out Page Rank indicator is used by Google to show that no Page Rank has been awarded to the page being viewed.

It seems that Google has abandoned their campaign to have us all use “no follow” to render links valueless and has instead decided to make the pages themselves valueless - making the links on the pages of little or no value whether they use “no follow” or not. Blogs maintained independent of blogging communities often fare better - the posts in blogs on your own website for example are more likely to have Page Rank .

If you are maintaining a blog at a real estate blogging community for link juice purposes - there would be better ways to spend your time.

Another reason often given for blogging is because blog posts often show up in Google quickly for what is called “long tail” search terms. - i.e. search terms that are rather obscure and seldom searched for. That may not really be a valid reason for spending time in blogging communities either as such terms are generally only searched for once in a blue moon and each term usually would bring just one or two visitors a month. Those one or two visitors could be directed to your site using pay-per-click for mere pennies instead.

If you spend a half an hour writing a blog post that will generate the same traffic to your site as a few pennies will - I would argue that your time is better spent elsewhere.

Another reason given for frequenting blogging communities is the opportunity to network with other agents and perhaps pick up a buyer or seller referral. I was an active participant in one of the first networks of Realtors on the internet a decade ago ( the E-Team Referral Network) and I did receive a referral or two in the process. In order for this to happen though I had to spend a hour a day at least working on the network and participating in the community.

When you take all this time into account - I probably would have been better off and made more money just spending that time marketing the old fashioned way - calling past clients for example. It seems that the other members came to the same conclusion as the network did eventually die.

Within the real estate bloging communities only a miniscule number of agents in a very few select cities will ever have clients moving to your area. You would be better of spending the time zeroing in on the cities that produce the most newcomers to your area and “farming” a large number of agents that work those cities.

With the spring market approaching it may be a good time to evaluate your use of time. The reasons why you spend time in real estate blogging communities should be one of the things considered during this process.

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