According to the National Association of REALTORS, 90% of potential home buyers use the internet as a source of information for purchasing their next home.  Want to use blogging to help improve website traffic and traffic to your model homes? Check out these ten tips for blogging to improve your traffic.

Post Helpful Content: Although your target audience is looking for the perfect home, blogging only about your company and the homes you have available is not an effective strategy. You need to blog about topics that will help bring your audience closer to the buying stage of the sales process. To do this, you should provide information that educates them on why it’s best to buy new construction in your specific area. Here are a few ideas for blog topics that accomplish this.

• Ten Reasons Why It’s Better to Buy a Custom Built Home
• County School District Rankings Compared to State Rankings
• Local Community Programs for Children under 12
• 5 Great State Parks Near [city/town]

Choose Enticing Titles: Keep in mind, the suggestions above are meant to be topics, not titles. The titles of your blog posts are very important. They can mean the difference between someone reading your blog post and sharing it with all their social network friends or just plain ignoring it. So, if your topic is about reasons for choosing a custom built home rather than an existing home, make the title enticing. Instead of saying, “10 Reasons to Choose a Custom Built Home,” you could say, “10 Reasons Home Owners Are Happier with Custom Homes.” It’s also good to work keywords into titles when you can. So, if you are a home builder in Raleigh, NC, an even better title would be, “10 Reasons People Are Happier with Custom Homes in Raleigh.” Try not to exceed 60-70 characters (including spaces) when choosing a title.

Use Keywords (Wisely): Blogging is extremely important for strengthening a website’s search engine optimization. The more posts you include, the better your SEO will be. To really take advantage of blogging for SEO, your blog posts should include keywords and phrases that home buyers use in search engine searches. To identify these keywords, imagine yourself in the shoes of a home buyer. What phrases would they search if they are trying to learn more information about new construction or custom built homes, especially in your area? Folks in Raleigh, NC might search “Raleigh custom home builders” or just simply “custom home features” if they are brainstorming ideas for a new home. Including keywords and phrases will help your blog posts appear in search engine results. However, you should not over-stuff your posts with keywords. This could actually lessen your chances at showing up in search results if Google feels your posts are unnaturally stuffed with keywords. So, only use keywords when they logically fit into your content and don’t sound unnaturally forced into sentences.

Use Content Calendars: A content calendar is a tool that allows you to plan your blog topics for an extended period of time. It’s a document where you assign blog topics and due dates to individual writers. Even if you only have one blogger, it’s important to use a content calendar to ensure that blogger stays on schedule.

Post Consistently: Blogging requires a time commitment, but it’s very much worth the time. It’s best to post at least once per week. The more often you blog, the more website traffic you will eventually receive.

Choose Interesting Images: Most readers are attracted to visuals within blog posts. Blogs that are attractive when shared on social media are viewed and shared more often. Choosing an attractive and informative image can lead to more clicks, readers, and subscribers to your blog. So, always include interesting pictures with your blog posts.

Make it Easy to Subscribe to Your Blog: One of your blogging goals should be to constantly acquire blog subscribers. When people subscribe to your blog, they will receive an email each time you publish a new post. This will keep them returning to your website frequently, and it will ensure your company remains top-of-mind as they go about making their home buying decision. If a reader wants to subscribe, you want them to easily find a way to do it. Making it difficult for them to subscribe can cause them to leave your blog without signing up.  Therefore, you should have a simple signup process so visitors have a stress-free experience. 

Use Your Social Media Accounts to Your Advantage: One of the easiest ways to gain exposure for your blog posts is through social media.  Share each of your blog posts within all of your social networks. It can also be helpful to add your blog posts to social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg and Delicious. Don’t be afraid to reshare your blog posts several weeks, months or even years after you first publish them. Just be sure you don’t share the same post too often. Don’t forget to include social media buttons on each blog post so that readers can easily share them to their own social networks. Be sure to buttons for the networks you feel work best for your business. For the building industry, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest are very important.

If you haven’t begun blogging yet, or you have been disappointed in your past blogging results, implement these tips. They will help you use blogging to increase traffic to your website and your model homes!