Inbound Strategy using Blog Comments

Yesterday, we learned how to collect a list of blogs that rank highly for your targeted keywords.

Today, we are going to go to those blogs and leave a comment. When you complete the comment there is a field for you to enter your website. This comment becomes a hyperlink back to your website. This is definitely good for Google!

Step 1. Go to a blog on your list.

Step 2. Most blogs have a “search this website” box near the top. If so, search for your #1 keyword. In my example below, I searched for “mls” to find a current article that has heavy use of my #1 keyword.

Step 3. Select the article to make a comment.

Step 4. Add a comment. OK, at this point I have 2 goals. First Goal, I create comment that adds value. I usually complement the agent on the article then add some of my own insight. Second Goal, use you keywords in the comment, especially your #1 keyword or keyword phrase. For me that keyword is “mls”. Adding your keywords to the comment adds more value to the inbound link to your website.

I try to spend less than 5 minutes total in leaving a comment. Inbound Marketing for your website is a numbers game.

Time yourself on this activity. Today, I am trying to get a comment on all 13 blogs that I added to my blog keyword spreadsheet yesterday. My goal is to hit all 13 in less than 1 hour.

Step 5. After saving the comment, check to see if it already posted. Some bloggers will review comments before they post. This is why I recommended in Step 4 that you add value to your comments! If it looks like SPAM to blogger, you wasted 5-10 minutes and the comment will be deleted!

Now you have a great inbound link to your website!

Get the full Blog Calendar. Never work on the blog without a game plan! Today’s lesson was Day Seven on the calendar.

Collect List of “Keywords” Blogs

In Day Three of the Blog Calendar, you will collect a list of blogs for your market. Since this is going to become part of your link building strategy, you will want to find blogs that rank high for your #1 keyword phrase (learn more on keyword strategy).

Today I added 13 blogs to my Blog “Keyword” Spreadsheet:

Here is my spreadsheet on "keyword" blogs

There are 2 quick ways to compile a list of blogs.

#1 Do a Google search for your keyword and add “blog” after it. For me, my #1 keyword phrase is “search mls” so my Google search was for “search mls blogs” and YES, include the parenthesis! I found 5 of the blogs above this way.

On my spreadsheet, I include the following columns:

Hyperlink to the blog

PR = Page Rank as measured by Google. You csan download the Google toolbar to display this.

Follow =”Y” if they allow comments that also display your URL when you leave a comment. I only use “Y” blogs…

State = where are they located?

Company = I recorded this if they were one of the major franchises.

Comments = just notes to myself. I found a few features that I want to add to my blog.

#2 Another great way to find these “keyword” blogs is from http://blogsearch.google.com/ Since my keyword is “search mls” – that is exactly what I type into the Google Blog Search. This is how I found another 8 blogs.

Eventually, I would like to have a list of 30 blogs that also target my same keyword. Preferably, I always want blogs that have a higher Page Rank than my blog. Right now, I am a big fat “0″ on the Page Rank (all new blogs start here) so finding PR’s over “0″ is really easy!

Hold on to your list. This will be a big part of the back linking strategy, Day 7 on our Blog Calendar

Completed WordPress Blog Setup

It was a lazy Sunday of watching Football Games and Basketball Games, but I manged to bring my real estate blog into existence at http://searchmls.tv

Preview of searchMLS.TV

Just some technical details for the technically savvy bloggers out there…

Uploaded WordPress 3.0 to my server using Fantastico. I host all my blogs at HostGator.

Finally decided on the Lexicon Theme of StudioPress. I love the StudioPress templates and I have been using them since 2007. They have great tutorials and support from their online forum. The new Genesis Framework for this template is super SEO-friendly!

I already uploaded the Google XML Sitemap plugin, Google Analytics plugin, Like plugin (Facebook), SI CAPTCHA plugin. It is very important to create the sitemap in the first 72 hours!

Then I verified the site in Google Analytics.

Got my first 4 blog posts to power the carousel on home page. Too bad I will not have IDX until January…

The blog looks respectable. Far from perfect, but not embarrassing.

For new bloggers out there. Set up your blog in one day or pay someone to do it. Then focus ALL of your efforts on driving traffic, creating inbound links. That is the ONLY thing that you should do for the next 30-60 days.

I am taking my own medicine. I am strictly following my Blog Calendar for the next 30 days. (I actually finished the first 5 days of the blog calendar in 48 hours). Do not make the mistake of spending 2 weeks in design of the blog before you build traffic to the blog.

Competition Research on Keywords

In the previous lesson, we did keyword research using the Google Wonder Wheel. Then we batched the keywords onto a spreadsheet.

Now, we are taking that spreadsheet of keywords, adding a geographic location (in my example “Denton” Texas). These test searches were performed on Google to detect the #1 Real Estate website for each exact search term. Note that I added “Denton” after each exact search term on the Google Search.

So instead of searching “search mls rent”, I did a search for “search mls rent denton”. Why did I do this?

#1 Denton is my first target area

#2 Google has location relevancy on search results so if I did not add “denton”, I would not get an accurate reading (unless I was connected to the Internet from a Denton IP location) <–Google is very smart!

Also note, I removed any national websites from the competition. Realtor.com came up a few times, you may see Zillow, Trulia etc. Do not add these to your spreadsheet. Focus on the local competitors!

When I do this kind of research, I want to know the # of Inbound Links (Inbounds) to the website, # of pages indexed by Google for the website and the website grade from websitegrader.com

To get all 3 of these stats, just go to http://www.websitegrader.com and type in the website address of your competitor’s website. This will give you all the stats you need to add to the spreadsheet.

Look at the site that has 41,346 inbound links! This is a combination of savvy web development – the developer connected all of his client sites and site pages together and there are also links generated from social media. Great job on the links.

Note there is one site that has 19,700 pages indexed by Google! WOW!

Look at the lowest Website Grader score of 59 and this site still had top rankings for the “Denton” keyword phrases. That is good news for all of us! Target your niche online, you do not need a perfect website/blog to get top rankings!

Just FYI – I will not need 19,700 pages indexed on Google or 41,346 inbound links to generate more leads than these websites for the Denton area. The clear winner in my testing for the Denton keywords only had 518 inbound links and 33 pages indexed by Google. I will have this beat by January 1st.

P.S. I may show the competitor’s website address in a picture but you will never see it typed out in one of my blog articles. I do not want to help the competitor go from 518 Inbound Links to 519

Keyword Research and Google Wonder Wheel

Google is still the #1 search engine so I like to start my keyword research with the Google Wonder Wheel.

The Google Wonder Wheel is really easy to use!

After the search for my main keyword phrase of “search mls”, I started to compile the sub keywords from the Google Wonder Wheel into a spreadsheet. Notice the “X” was for crossing out keywords that are not relevant to my real estate business in North Texas.

I clicked on each keyword in the Wonder Wheel to get additional keywords

I noticed that the word “mls” was often followed by “listings” or “number” (see my spreadsheet of results).

My real estate website is http://www.searchmls.tv so with the research I have now, I may want to use “listing” and/or “number” in the tag line of the heading, page titles, blog posts titles, in the body of a blog article. This is great for SEO!

My tag line could be “Search the MLS by Listing Number” <–notice how I got both keywords into the tag line, along with my main keyword phrase, “Search MLS”.

Watch this video on the Google Wonder Wheel if you would like to learn more…

Ready to learn how to use this Spreadsheet to Find the Competition?

Backpack LeadGen (Video Blogumentary)

After taking a 2 year break from the practice of real estate to help build a world-class Technology Support and Training program at Keller Williams Realty International – I am back in the game!

I will still be training agents with our weekly webinars at KWRI in Austin, Texas. In my spare time I will be a rainmaker for North Texas (about 200 miles north of Austin).

This weekend, I will be launching a WordPress real estate blog so that when I re-activate my license on January 1st, 2011 I can hit the ground running. The real estate blog will be called http://www.searchmls.tv

Backpack LeadGen (short for lead generation) is my behind-the-scenes video blogumentary on the building of an internet lead generation blog! Kind of like the Seinfeld episode where George Castanza and Jerry come up with an idea to have a sitcom about a sitcom. This is a video blog about my real estate blog.

Watch my daily Backpack LeadGen videos from me on http://www.HousingLeadsUniversity.com as I build the blog for my real estate business at http://www.searchmls.tv

If you have any interest in internet lead generation, building a strong web presence, becoming 100% mobile in real estate – you will not want to miss a single Backpack LeadGen blog post or video!

Read More on My Backpack LeagGen (Video Blogumentary)!

Inbound Marketing Exam Review