5 good reasons you need a blog.
If you have a website that you are proud of and it has been designed specifically to increase your levels of sales, then it stands to reason that you want as many of your target audience to view it as possible. This effectively comes down to SEO and how your website is ranked on Google. We advise many of our clients that there is no silver bullet with SEO, it is a combination of factors that allow Google to see that your website is built for the end users benefit and serves a purpose. Inevitably quite a lot of SEO comes down to the way that the websites are physically built, however this will only get you a foothold on the ladder, once your website goes live it is the on & off site content work that will move you up Google’s rankings.
Now that you have read my very simplified explanation of how Google works, I will give the top 5 reasons why you need to have a blog!
Here we go…
1) LET GOOGLE KNOW YOU ARE ALIVE!
Your website in Google’s eyes is a living breathing entity with a pulse. They crawl your website nearly every day and monitor it for change, whether it be good or bad. If you never update the content on your website or never update your news blog, how are Google supposed to know that your website is alive and kicking? As an estate agent you might say “I update the website nearly every day with properties though!?”. While you may update your website with properties and that is good for business, Google are clever and know that is the function of your website rather than an effort to keep the website on trend and up to date with the latest news. If Google think you put no effort into updating your website for your users then they will not move you up the rankings.
2) DON’T LET YOUR BRAND COLLECT DUST!
Ironically Google come before the customers in this list because without following their rules you won’t be seen by your target audience! Once your target audience land on your site it is important to let people know that you are a company that is up to date with current affairs and that you are diligent about your own marketing. If I go on a website and the last blog post on the homepage was written in 2012 about preparing for the Olympics, to me that is the signal of a business that is out of touch with what is current; not a good image to adopt!
3) SPICE UP YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA
Posting blogs regularly gives you great content to spread across your various social media platforms. Aside from just giving you content to post, the blogs allow you to spark up conversation with your followers and generate more traffic back to the blog on your website. Directing people straight back to your website from various social media sites is seen as very good practice in Google’s eyes and it can only help you move up the rankings. The more interactions you have on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc the more up to date the social media section will look on your homepage, again following the theme of keeping up the appearance to your customers that you are behind the times.
4) SHOUT ABOUT YOUR SUCCESS
How else are your client supposed to know what you are doing and when you have had a big win? Posting news blogs doesn’t have to be boring, it should be used as a technique to sell your services to your clients, subtly. Some Agents use their blogs as a case study to talk about how they handled the sales of various properties and how they overcame certain issues. If your competitors are regularly posting this kind of information in an easy to read bite sized news blog then they will inevitably gain favor from potential vendors in your area. If the first thing someone sees when they land on your website is a news article shouting about your success it is very unlikely that they will click straight off your homepage, this provides to benefits. One is that your target audience will read about your services and the second benefit this provides is you reduce your bounce rate (number of people who land on your homepage and click straight off) which is a factor used by Google to rank.
5) ITS A GREAT HIRING TOOL!
Business owners are always looking to hire the best possible people to fit the role that they are advertising for. In Estate Agency this ultimately means hiring people who are good net workers and able to negotiate with every different stakeholder in the industry. Your news blog serves as a tool to not only talk a little bit about what you do as a company and how you differ to other but also shows people potentially joining your business that you are on the up and aren’t sitting still. Make people want to join your business by posting about all the new properties that you are taking on and direction your are heading in!
CONCLUSION
Blogging is free and you can pretty much write what you want, so why not use it? It is a forum to express your thoughts about what is going on in your market place and demonstrate to your customers that you are more than just a few people in an office answering calls. Not only this but you get the added bonus of going straight into Google’s good books. I’m not advocating writing a new blog every day because that just isn’t manageable but writing 2 or 3 a month on various topics, is more than enough. Blogs don’t have to be long either, in fact it is better when they are concise and easy to read! If you weren’t convinced before you read our blog I hope this article has swayed your opinion!
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