Driving Traffic to Your CRE Blog?

Question

Hello Bigger Pockets,

I've recently started my own blog to provide a forum for commercial real estate professionals to share successes and failures, as well as find some inspiration when the times get tough.

However, I'm having trouble driving traffic to my blog, and while I've done plenty of research on SEO and other marketing techniques, I haven't seen much traffic.

So I wanted to interact with you all to see if you have any tips, and get some personalized help. If you have any experience building a website, please share how it went, what you leaned etc. here, I'd really appreciate it.

Cheers,

Michael

Joel Owens · Answer

Well my blog is 7,000 plus posts in this forum over years and years and it is kicking butt.

I don't have to know SEO and do dads and all of that. I messed around with all that stuff a decade ago and it's really just  a bunch gobble de gook that SEO companies push. The algorithm for Google constantly changes. What they want is pure concentrated high quality content to rank well. That's why Bigger Pockets is a juggernaut for SEO. I simply post and help people and the indexing goes into page one of many Google searches for strong keyword searches. There is Bing and Yahoo but most of the market share searching is Google.

Michael you might want to change your profile picture. It's very dark and you can't see you. You might have done it for some special effect but anytime someone on here posts a dark pic or uses the default icon, or their icon it puts a cloud of mystery over them and not in a good way. The more transparent you can be on this site the more people will want to connect with you.

Hope it helps.

John Steele · Answer

@Michael Morris I'm also going to piggyback off @Cody Martens and ask as to what you have implemented. There is a ton of stuff floating on the web about SEO and what to do, not necessarily everything you read is right as SEO is constantly changing. If you have specific questions I can try and help. This website is also a great way to learn the basics: http://moz.com/learn/seo .

Michael Morris · Answer

My site is growing slowly as I work on making time to consistently write posts. Thanks for the tip on the signature, I wasn't aware that 10 posts allowed you add one.

If you would, check out my site and let me know what you think.

Ned Carey · Answer

Well you are missing one  obvious example to promote your blog. You have over ten posts here on BP which means you can create a signature with your website address in it. So how many other SEO tips have you missed?

My guess is your expectations are to high. It is easy to read all this SEO stuff and hear about sites doing phenomenal numbers but the reality is today it takes time and patience.

Is your site growing? You can't expect it to have big numbers to start. You can only hope that it continues to grow.

Ben G. · Answer

Also @Jerred Morris can help a ton! Full of actionable advice to take you to the next level.

Ben G. · Answer

I've had my website for less than a year and I've been focused on blogging and posting in forums, along with posting on G+, Facebook and Twitter.  I've been slacking on Twitter and have really been focused on G+.  It seems to be working.

Here is a great post about the topic on the BP blog that may help: SEO Tips for Beginners

Michael Morris · Answer

@Joel Owens I've actually taken another profile picture, so I'll get that uploaded soon, thanks for the tip.

Otherwise, the thing with your "blog" is that you don't own it. I know it's a long and lonely road to build an audience for my own blog, but it's a platform for me to share great content with a loyal following of professionals that directly relate to me.

The people I aim to drive to my blog are commercial real estate brokers and investors. That is my niche, and that is who I plan on doing business with. I'd rather focus my efforts towards building a following and culture that is mine, which I control, and will hopefully make money from down the road. I can also give potential clients a unique url for them to go to in order to see what I've done, what kind of person I am, that I have a following, etc.

That is the reason I'm willing to work hard to build my own blog, let me know if that makes sense.

Jerred Morris · Answer

@Michael Morris I wouldn't spend the time on the e-book.  Instead you need to build your local citations for your website.  After you set those up then I'd build links.

Use getlisted.org for your local citations.

I just did this blog post on BP.  Hope it helps.

http://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/3103/blog_posts/39826-my-guide-to-building-an-online-lead-generating-website

Michael Morris · Answer

Jerrod,

One of my goals is to create an e-book to drive email subscribers. I haven't started it yet but have started gathering ideas for it. Great piece of advice as well.

Scott,

I agree with everything you've said. Consistency is quite hard to achieve but I've been pretty good about it so far. Otherwise, right now I'm focused on writing content that I know others like me are looking for. Down the line, I'll write as I learn and grow, making sure that my writing style and content are fantastic.

Thank you all for suggestions!

Like I mentioned above, I'm looking to build backlinks.. Any advice there?

Michael Morris · Answer

Cody and John,

The SEO plugin has been great so far, and I do have a couple main focus keywords that I researched through google planner. I've also chosen a couple of long tail keywords to rank for where I can.

I really appreciate the reading on the skyscraper technique, that's one I haven't yet come across, it appears to be valuable and I will work on that for sure.

The Moz content I have read multiple times and am working on building links as much as I can right now.

Driving Traffic to Your CRE Blog?

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