BloodhoundBlog is the number one real estate weblog? Technically true for a brief moment, but we still have some growing to do

A tiny trophy, a huge victory — to come.

We had a helluva week last week, our best ever — until now. So what did we do this week to top last week’s numbers? How about almost double?

The real estate category on BlogTopSites is the home of truly competitive real estate webloggers. We’ve always held our own there — the respectable low teens until lately, in the higher single digits so far for 2008. The top of the list has almost always been dominated by bubble blogs, but BloodhoundBlog has been among the top RE.net blogs — and almost always first among real estate industry weblogs — for quite some while.

But we’ve never been first overall before, and the chances are good that we won’t be again, not for a while. But first place on that list is ours to earn and ours to keep — eventually. We deliver so much more content — so much better content — that we will own the top of that list in due course. Just not yet.

So what gives? How did we get to be number one at the start of this brand new week?

Earlier this week, Brian Brady gave us all a practical demonstration in how to dominate a Google search. On Thursday, he wrote a post about Ashley Alexandra Dupree that was first, fastest and best — from Google’s point of view. He’s spent the past three days on the first page of Google for a number of Ashley Dupree-related search terms — sitting squarely atop major news organizations and A-list webloggers. As I write this, Brian’s post is second for ashley dupree — and first place is off-topic.

So what happened? With that first Ashley Dupree post and a follow-up about Ashley’s singing career, Brian by himself brought over 14,000 unique souls as hard clicks into BloodhoundBlog this week. He beat all of last week by himself. Yesterday we had over 8,132 unique visitors, of which at last 6,000 were brought here by Brian Brady alone.

Yeah, but, but, but– It’s just an SEO trick. No, it’s not. It’s an SEO demonstration. Brian Brady has been paying attention, and he made a small demonstration of how his careful attention has paid off.

Okay, let that simmer for a moment while we think about something else.

Earlier today, someone known only as Jacksonville Real Estate posted a comment on my post about using low-tech promotional schemes to bring traffic to a single-property web site:

It’s an old idea and it’s not mine … but if you are targeting just a certain areas then getting your flyer on the local pizza delivery box can work wonders.

Brilliant! Never thought of it, but that’s why I love this place: We bring bright minds together and set off a blinding brilliance. My reply:

Oh, very cool. I tend to think in terms of things we can do on our own, but this is actually an interesting cross-promotion:

“Visit our custom web site for 123 Mulberry Lane and your next pizza is on us!”

Build a PDF coupon in the site and redeem them with the pizza joint once a week. Meanwhile, your contact info is on the fridge for weeks or months.

That’s a Brian Brady-style idea. I must be channeling…

It’s a Guerrilla Marketing kind of idea, actually, a Duct Tape Marketing kind of idea — maximum bang for minimum bucks. It’s most completely a BloodhoundBlog kind of idea, in the sense that it combines (and recombines) physical with online marketing.

But nothing’s perfect in the first draft. My correspondent thought springing for the whole pizza might be too expensive as a “pay per click.”

Okayfine. How about this?

Buy the soda instead, then. It’s an upsell for the pizzeria — bigger mark-up, and therefore often deferred. Your cost is down to maybe three bucks — only on redemption — for the most valuable real estate in the house, the front of the fridge. That’s a smokin’ deal, and you can turn it into a locals versus The Big Chains thing, too: We support Luigi’s because Luigi’s supports Littleton Heights. There’s a lot you can do with this.

Make them fill out the coupon prior to redemption, then take them all back from Luigi — and share your database with Luigi; he’ll love you for it. Then send two more coupons to everyone who uses one. Better yet, hand deliver them. Sales is getting belly-to-belly. Everything else is either prospecting or marketing.

Sales is getting belly-to-belly. That’s not news. The news is that I invented and perfected a hyper-local online/offline marketing strategy today — in my spare time.

Time spared from what? We’re writing content for BloodhoundBlog Unchained, and I shared this outline with Jeff Brown earlier tonight:

Day 1, Class 2: The Way of the Farmer, dominating the Long Tail to dominate your farm

Six 20-minute segments:

Segment 1 — Listing strong to farm strong
Segment 2 — Building single-property web sites
Segment 3 — Using engenu to dominate the long tail
Segment 4 — Zestifarming to dominate Zillow
Segment 5 — Blogging listings with engenu
Segment 6 — Belly-to-belly farming the Web 2.0 way

It’s the Way of the Bloodhound, really: Online marketing to build real-world relationships and real-world marketing to build online relationships. Jeff wants to know how to get online leads that don’t suck. My answer: Build your traffic belly-to-belly. We’re Realtors, lenders, investors. We’re not selling an online product. Our product is big, very tangible and completely immobile. Our online efforts are undertaken to produce our offline opportunities. To which Jeff might respond, “Well, duh!”

But here’s the true fact about the blog with the dog: My battle plan for BloodhoundBlog, all along, was to shoot straight to the top. This is from an email I sent earlier today:

When we went to a group blog, my target was Inman. I said nothing at the time, because the idea would have seemed ridiculous to anyone but me. But I knew we could pull away from the pack and make a run for the end-zone. We’re not there yet, but look at the trends:

There are three million people out there who are starving for the feast we can bring them. Wanna know my carefully-detailed strategy? Keep getting bigger. The rest will come of its own.

Never doubt my gratitude.

That goes for you, out there, too: Never doubt my gratitude. We’re nobody’s fan boy, nobody’s water boy, nobody’s pony boy. What we are is a big dog on our way to getting a lot bigger.

So take it apart:

1. Who do you trust to help you put your weblog over the moon with Google?
2. Who do you depend on to come up with radical new marketing ideas — sometimes on the fly?
3. Who else do you know who will come up with online marketing strategies to help you sell your decidedly offline product?
4. Who do you know in the entire world who could look at a dinky little mom-and-pop real estate brokerage weblog and know with an icy certainty that it could take on the entire real estate industry — and win?

How do I know that we’re going to seize that number one position and hold it as our own, week after week?

That’s easy. We’re going to earn it. We are good writers with very good business, technology and marketing ideas. But BloodhoundBlog is good theater, too — as fascinating to me as to anyone. Untamed, unbent, unbowed, undaunted, unintimidated, unrelenting, unstoppable. Unchained.

The next time that little chicklet says we’re number one — we’ll be number one for keeps.

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