6 Tips to Turn Your Real Estate Blog into a Lead Conversion Engine

Your success as a real estate agent is built upon your ability to generate and convert more real estate leads. Undoubtedly, your marketing efforts are diverse and include a variety of strategies. A key piece of your marketing arsenal should be active blogging on an integrated blogging platform. Many agents overlook the marketing potential of blogging.

If set up and done properly, your real estate blog can be a powerful engine to drive traffic and convert leads.

By honing in on six key features, you can easily maximize your lead capture and conversion potential.

1. Integrated Blogging Platform
2. Provide Value with Relevant Content
3. Always Include a Call to Action
4. Combine Blog Posts with IDX Listings
5. Optimize for SEO
6. Cross-Promote 

1. Integrated Blogging Platform

A big mistake that many real estate agents make is investing time, effort, and money into their real estate website platform - then go to WordPress, or another third party platform, to create a free blog. If you want to get the full benefits of blogging, your blog should be integrated as a part of your website system.

What’s the difference between an integrated blog and a WordPress blog? Everything.

When you write on a third-party site, your content resides on that third-party’s domain instead of yours. If you are trying to use blogging to boost your website’s SERP rankings (and you definitely should be!) you are not getting the SEO benefits if that content does not actually reside on your domain.

Search engines love content. Their algorithms greatly reward sites with active, relevant, updated content. Do not let your time and effort go to waste!

If your website platform has an integrated blogging platform (which it should!) all the content that you write goes directly into boosting your real estate website’s rankings - which is where you ultimately want visitors - so they can have access to listings and calls to action that will directly lead to enhanced conversion.

2. Provide Value with Relevant Content

The most important element to successful blogging is to consistently provide value to your readers by blogging about relevant content. Blogging is a powerful way to build your brand by earning the trust of your readers. If your blog answers the questions that your visitors have, breaks down complex topics for buyers and sellers, analyzes the market in a way that visitors can understand, and provides important information that readers should know when entering the market, they will trust your market expertise. Even better, they will keep coming back to your site to learn more.

Remember, it’s about conversion. Real estate is essentially a numbers game - the higher your conversion rate the higher your transaction rate. Buying or selling a home is the largest purchase in most of our lives. Partnering with an agent that they trust is a huge deciding factor for real estate clients. You can convert more leads by building your brand as a market leader through relevant blogging. When visitors are ready to list or begin their home search, they are more likely to turn to you because you have already built trust and recognition.

Additionally, a big bonus to providing relevant content is that search engine algorithms give a huge amount of weight to the most relevant search results. SERP’s are all about which sites provide the most value, so this is a big win-win for you and your visitors. Real Estate Marketing Tip: Do not blog with the intention of keyword stuffing! While you may think it is good for your SEO and rankings, it will actually have the opposite effect!

3. Always Include a Call to Action

Providing your website visitors with top-notch content is a fantastic way to build your brand. But without a clear call to action, you may be missing out on potential conversion opportunities.

A call to action reminds and persuades your visitors to move beyond what they are reading and inquire. An easy, “Click here to find out how I can help you get top market value for your home” link at the end of an article about how to properly price a home reminds the reader to act, which turns into a lead for you simply by providing a next step for readers in every post.

Calls to action can link directly to your contact page for easy lead conversion or to another relevant page with a lead capture form like an inventory page. It should flow easily within the context of the post and not feel forced to encourage engagement.

4. Combine Blog Posts with IDX Listings

One of the most potent combinations for SEO and, ultimately, lead conversion is content + listings. Your blog is the perfect place to do just that. You should include listings or links to inventory pages in every relevant blog post. At the end of the day, your blog readers are or will be interested in buying or selling a home and are looking for data and listings. Giving them easy access to view listings that are relevant to your post is a great way to boost conversion. It also sends a powerful message to search engines by providing relevant, dynamic information that feeds their algorithms.

5. Optimize for SEO

Your goal is to get in front of as many potential leads as possible by increasing your website visibility. One of the best ways to do this is through SEO. Search engine optimization does not have to be just for tech-savvy agents. There are a few easy tweaks that you can make that will enhance your SEO efforts when blogging and help with search engine rankings.

It all begins with your post title. You want it to catch the attention of those scanning search engine results. It should not only be intriguing and descriptive but include keywords that will bring it to the top of the search results and boost visibility.

Your web system should have easy tools that allow you to modify key elements of your post that relate to search engine optimization. Pay attention to the page title. Make sure to include a pertinent, searchable keyword in your page title. You can add this to the end of your blog post title for easy inclusion. For example, if your blog post is titled “Tips on Making an Offer,” you can add a quick keyword at the end. For example, “Tips on Making an Offer | Miami Real Estate.” This way you are including a highly trafficked keyword for search engines to crawl. You should also edit meta tags and meta descriptions to include important keywords as well.

In addition to these easy steps, you should include short and longtail keywords linked to inventory or other internal pages in your post body. You want to show up in as many keyword searches as possible where buyers and sellers are looking for your area of expertise. It is imperative, however, not to stuff your post full of keywords just for the sake of “SEO.” Keyword stuffing will get you penalized on the search engines as it leads to a high bounce rate. Remember, your blog is all about the user experience and providing value. Any keywords or links found within your post should make sense and flow within the text so as not to inhibit the readability. Linking to reliable outside sources, such as news outlets or government websites also helps to boost your credibility, not only with your readers, but with search engines as well.

Your blog posts should be easily digestible to an average reader. You don’t want to lose a potential lead because a blog reader either lost interest or got confused. A good rule of thumb here is to organize your writing in a way that is easily skimmable, using bullets, lists, and keyword-driven subheadings. Not only will this enhance the user experience, but will help with your SEO strategy as well.

6. Cross-Promote for Enhanced Conversion

Social media platforms can be a great way to drive more traffic to your website. Capitalize on your different networks by promoting your blog posts. Pique the interest of an Instagram follower with a screenshot of your post title. Set up a Facebook poll about a post topic. Entice your LinkedIn contacts with your market knowledge. Commonly, each social network will likely represent a different client demographic so it is beneficial to cast a wide net when using social media. Always include a direct link to your post. This will drive more traffic to your site and encourage more blog views, which will increase your conversion potential. Even more, it will provide invaluable backlinks to your website - a huge driving force in your search engine rankings.

Another good practice is linking internally to other blog posts. Cross linking in this way will provide your readers with better context and more information on relevant topics - good for both visitors and search engines as well!

Don’t overlook the vast marketing potential of your real estate blog. When done right, using the right technology, your blog can become a lead conversion engine. With just a few easy tricks, and your market expertise, you can drive your business to the next level!