Once you’ve authored a real estate blog for several months or more, what you end up with is this very big database of F.A.Q.’s.
Answers to consumer’s every day questions about buying and selling real estate in your local market area.
That’s both great and not so great at the same time. Here’s why…
When most people visit your website for the first time, all they see is your most recent 4-5 posts. It’s not often that they click through and read through the rest of your content stashed away in the archives.
If you display links to your archives or you have a “Best Of” page for buyers and sellers, good for you. If you don’t, you’ve got to work on organizing your content better so that the old but relevant stuff is still accessible.
Why does it matter?
Because the more time people spend engaging with and learning from your content, the more likely they’ll consider hiring you as their real estate agent.
If your content is disorganized, they’ll never get that opportunity.
WHY YOU SHOULD MAKE YOUR OLD BLOG POSTS NEW AGAIN
Like I said, the more time site visitors spend engaging with your content, the more likely they’ll consider hiring you as their real estate agent. But you shouldn’t feel like you have to hustle your butt off to write each and every single day. Sometimes, updating some of the content from your archives will do the trick just fine.
Yes, some of your content is outdated but there’s still a lot of really good stuff you can re-use to educate people who are interested in buying or selling real estate right now. Stuff like:
- Using gift-money as a form of down-payment.
- Other real estate terms and definitions that explain various parts of the escrow process.
- Information about the local community like things to do and places to eat.
How do you identify what you should update?
First, look at your analytics for specific search terms people are searching to land on your site. If you find that people are searching phrases for a specific community, then you know that you should not only write more posts about that community, but also, update some of your old posts to keep them current and optimize them for better conversion.
Second, dig through your archives and look for those old, evergreen and educational posts. The one’s that you’ve written that explain the escrow process and/or the financing process. It’s great informational content on the type of things first-time home-buyers are interested in learning. They just don’t always have access to it right away when they first land on your blog.
Third, search through your email for those frequent questions people keep asking you over and over again. My guess is, there’s always a question or two that people keep asking. Have you written a post for it? Is it updated? If not, now’s the time to update some of that old (but still useful) content.
Really, what you’re doing is identifying the type of content people like to read. What do they find useful? Then, armed with that information, work on updating your content so it’s fresher, more descriptive, and more useful.
The more useful your content and the more engaged people are with what you have to say/teach, the more likely they are to want to do business with you.
RE-ORGANIZE YOUR BEST CONTENT
Once you’re done updating your content, the last thing you need to do is re-organize it on your site so that it’s a easily accessible to those first-time site visitors. You can do this in a couple of ways…
1. Create a “Best Of” page. Here’s one of my favorite “Best Of” pages from blogger/author Jonathan Fields. Yes, it’s non-real estate related but you can organize your “Best Of” page in much the same way. Only organize your content around things like: Buying Real Estate, Selling Real Estate, Mortgage Rates, etc. The idea is to give site visitors an easy way to access some of your older content. Remember, just because you wrote it 8-12 months ago, doesn’t mean it’s not useful.
2. Create a blog page for a single category. You can do one of two things here… 1.) Create a “Best Of” page for both Buyers and Sellers to hi-light your best content in each of those categories, or 2.) create a blog page for a single category. #2 is like creating a “blog” page and adding a link to it in your navigation only in this case, you’re linking to a single category (for example, Buyers or Sellers). Then, in your sidebar for that page, I’d include links to your most popular posts for that category as well as links to the latest listings in the area and things to do.
A little organization goes a long way!
So, feel like you’re in a blogging rut with your real estate blog but know you need to keep writing to draw in new leads?
Don’t worry, with just a little bit of effort, you can repurpose and re-use some of your old material and turn it into a lead generating machine!
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