Quick Rant: A Blog is not a place for Open Houses or New Listings

Ok, I know I promised a longer rant regarding why Blogs are the most abused web tools by realtors. That will be forthcoming. But I needed to get this off my chest.

Please repeat after me:

• Blogs are not places to list Open Houses.
• Blogs are not places to list new ‘listings’.

Repeat this 5 times. Please, for the love of God!

Why? Here we go:

1. Generally, search engines ignore blogs unless they’ve been set up a certain way. Most are set up to be ignored. If it’s a free blog, guess what, it’s useless.
2. RSS feeds, auto generated by the blog, are good if you have something of value. When you don’t, they look lame. It’s like setting up a billboard in you backyard. Only you will think it’s cool.
3. Blogs are timeless. In simple english a blog entry about this weekends open house will exist forever. Woot! Generations of people decades from now will know you sold a house in 2005.  so while your legitimate listings will be fighting for search engine position with your competitors, they will also be fightng hundreds of dumb links to your site.
4. Search engine ranking depends more on the number of links to your site coming from other sites, and relevant content. Blogs with content = good, and chances are someone will list your link. Blogs listing open house times = bad, and chances are technically savy people (more than half your audience) will think you’re as lame as your content.
5. Relevant content – if you have valuable advice on changing market conditions, or you comment on a great development, or you talk up how enviromentally sound a new development will be – these are the types of GREAT CONTENT PEOPLE WILL VALUE.

I am still looking for a ‘great’ realtor blog. When i do, I’ll show you how and why it’s building his/her business.