California Central Coast REALTOR® Publishes 1000'th Blog Post

San Luis Obispo, CA (PRWEB) October 24, 2007 -- Keith Byrd, a REALTOR® for Century 21 Hometown Realty in San Luis Obispo County, recently published his 1000'th post on his local real estate blog. Keith was one of the first REALTORS® to start a local blog in 2003 and it continues to be an important piece of his overall Internet marketing strategy.

The San Luis Obispo Real Estate blog continues to grow in readership. In 2006, the blog received 25,000 visitors and for the first nine months of 2007, the blog has already exceeded 33,000 visitors.

"My blog provides me with content that keeps prospects coming back to my website until they are ready to contact me via phone, email, or one of my lead generators", said Keith. "It's great to have a prospect contact me saying they have been reading my blog for years and are now ready to buy or sell. They already know me from my blog so I don't need to do much to sell them on myself or my services".

Because of the success of his Internet strategy, which his blog is one piece, Keith's business model is 100% Internet-based for marketing and lead generation. His business has evolved to where he now has a team of agents who he refers the majority of his leads to. Keith has never used Pay-Per-Click (PPC) to get prospects to his websites and has at least one of his sites in the Top 10 of Google's natural search engine results for eighteen top city keyword search phrases for his area.

Keith offers the following tips to other REALTORS® looking to be bloggers for their local area:

* Put your blog on your own website, not a third party blogging site. If you're trying to get your website in the top of the search engines, you NEED unique content on YOUR website. If you put your blog content on a third-party site, you're just helping someone else's site become more valuable, not yours.

* Blog often. It's tough to get into a blogging routine when you first start and you always need to be on the lookout for blog topics. Reading the hot sheet, going on new listing caravan, or just surfing the net are activities that might lead to a blog post. One of the biggest mistakes I've found REALTOR® bloggers make is starting a blog and then becoming a "Dead Blog" which is one that has infrequent or no new posts. If you want people to keep coming back to check your blog, have something new to read when they visit. If you can't keep up with your blog, take the link off your home page until you can spend more time on your blog.

* Provide a variety of posts. There is no rule on what a blog post has to be. This isn't an English class where you have to write a minimum of 250 words on each blog post. A one sentence post with a link or chart can be as interesting as a post with six paragraphs. Have a mixture of both so you reach a bigger audience that may be turned off by having to read long blog posts every visit.

* Make it easy to read. Don't add a bunch of "widgets" or other stuff to your blog that makes it look cluttered. Impress prospects with the information you are providing, not with items that don't promote you or your business. Keep the links on your sidebars to additional information on your website or to your lead generators. Also, choose a layout that makes your blog postings easy to read.

Keith's blog can be found at www.SloCountyHomes.com

Contact:

Keith Byrd

805-459-4723

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