When trying to market yourself online Google wants you to be the authority of whatever it is you are trying to sell. In real estate, you really are selling yourself, not any one particular home. Anyone can sell a house, what you want is to sell YOU. Why should someone choose you over anyone else? That's the key you want to convey in any real estate blog post, article, or website. 

So how do you become the authority?

In this digital world of real estate there are the big dogs, Trulia, Realtor, Zillow, Etc... so how are individual agents and brokerages suppose to compete? It comes down to long tail searches and authority. Zillow doesn't personally know every neighborhood on Camano Island but you might! And you probably know it better than anyone so why not become the online authority in it? And this can go for any community, borough, township, county, neighborhood, or city anywhere! Zillow and the others can only pull from public information but if you know something it doesn't you become more of the authority than those guys. 

So start writing. 

Start with one area, one niche and cover it completely. Start with a great main, static page. This is not a rolling blog post that here today, gone tomorrow; it's a full page, with at least 500 words (more the better) about this area. Write up the history, local information, housing market, schools, shops, crime rates, any awards, just about anything you can possible think about this area. Add your own images (non-copyrighted if you're not taking them directly), videos, links to hospitals and clinics, schools and the chamber of commerce. Relocation information for people moving to the area for the first time. 

Then link to that article. 

In your revolving blog posts, write about events, activities, local news, changes, market reports, and such and always link back to that main page. Link to it from your social media pages, ask others to link to it and anytime you mention it, link to it. Google will find this page over and over again and the more times actual people find it, the more Google will rank it, but they have to rank it to find it. It's really a circle system, I realize, but you can get that page out there faster than anyone to start. 

Then keep updating that page. Blog posts should be on expiring information like events and market updates. They won't always be accurate, especially after the event, so it's okay to not include those items on the main page UNLESS you have a sidebar that rotates the blog posts, which is great!

Update the page if there is something new to share that someone would want to know. If it's a city page and you are doing subpages of the neighborhoods in that city, add each page to the city page when complete. You can keep building out this page so that the more Google finds changes on the page, the more often it will send its bots to cache and index the page. This means the more valuable and up to date the information is, which in turn means you are now the authority on that subject and Google will rank you higher. This will mean more people to your site, which means they will continue to rank it and round and round the circle it goes. 

This can work with any topic too, not just real estate. If you specialize in first time home loans, have a page for that and then link to it from new information, changes to the financial world, etc.. If you are proficient in self-employed home loans, go that route. If you are only a buyer's agent, promote that in every city and area in which you work. 

Even if you're not in the real estate world, find a niche and promote it to death until you start showing up and getting more traffic. Maybe you're a photographer, tree care specialist, carpet cleaner, or even a restaurant that specializes in something no one else does. Whatever it is, be the go-to site for it. 

Don't be stressed if this doesn't happen overnight. Remember, there are a lot of people that have been doing this way longer than you. But with the right niche and enough time, you can slowing inch your way into the top spot for rankings. Keep it up and don't burn out. Slow and stead always wins the race.