Many real estate agents have flocked to sites like Trulia.com to establish their online identities. As you should. It’s a marketplace where home buyers flock to search for the latest real estate listings. Trulia is a great place to make sure you are accessible to the thousands of home buyers and sellers who use the site to begin their real estate search.
Trulia is a great place to let people know you are an experienced agent. You have the ability to answer users’ real estate questions, post your listings, submit your resume as well as publish blog posts.
I’m a huge advocate of blogging by real estate agents. It has a number of benefits. But one thing that agents aren’t aware of when they do blog for sites like Trulia is that it’s a lot like renting. It’s like renting because you aren’t building up equity in your own website with search engines like Google. Let me explain…
Blogging is a tremendous benefit for many website owners because it generates content for their website. With every new blog post that you publish on your website, you increase the opportunity of a person finding your website in Google. Let’s say you publish a blog post on “Advantages of Owning Real Estate”, if you published it on your website you’ve just given yourself an opportunity to appear for search results related to that article. As you accumulate blog posts you are building up equity for your website in the eyes of search engines like Google. You’re site will be seen as an authority in your particular niche and other bloggers as well as other websites will begin linking to your website. Links in the eyes of Google is like a vote of confidence; which they use as a factor in determining who shows up first in search engine rankings. You are working your way to making your website a powerhouse in search engine rankings. You see…equity.
Blogging for sites like Trulia (as enticing as it is) only gives you short-term advantages. You are building up equity for Trulia’s website, not your own.You not only are giving Trulia the chance to be found in search engines based on whatever you post, but on Trulia it’s easier for a potential client to navigate away from your Trulia profile over to the next agent’s. Your blog on Trulia doesn’t give you lasting benefits of blogging. You are renting.
So stop renting and build up your “search engine equity” by blogging on your own website. You’ll be reaping the rewards once your site starts attracting free traffic to your website because of your blogging efforts.
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