Fair warning — opinionated rant ahead.<\/p>\n
Yesterday someone I’m working with on a real estate blog sent me a link, and asked me:<\/p>\n
Is this kind of writing – a blog stuffed full of key words – a good thing?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The blog post in question contained 19 references to “YourCity Realtor” or “YourCity State real estate”.<\/p>\n
And no, I’m not going to link to the specific blog. My intent isn’t to point out one particular blog, but rather the practice of “keyword stuffing” that I see becoming more prevalent every day.<\/p>\n
Reading a 557 word post that contains 19 references to “City real estate” is a
painful<\/strike> excrutiating process. I can only assume that writers who do this think they are “doing SEO” on their blog posts.<\/p>\nGoogle is smart. It doesn’t need to see “Phoenix Realtor” (for example only) nineteen times<\/strong> to figure out your post is about a Phoenix Realtor. Once or twice should suffice. Better yet, write multiple posts with your choice of keywords scattered about.<\/p>\n
Maybe the folks who practice this style should step away from the keyboard and and ask themselves this question — Am I writing for the reader, or the search engines?<\/p>\n
Search engines don’t buy houses. Yeah yeah, I know — you have to be found in search engines to get readers. But there is something called balance<\/em> people. You can be #1 in the universe for your chosen search term, but if people get to your site and see an obvious attempt to shove YOUR CITY REALTOR!!<\/strong><\/em> in their face over and over and over and over, said people are quite likely to run away screaming. And they won’t be screaming your name or running to the phone.<\/p>\n
This particular blog was designed by the Real Estate Tomato<\/a> team. No I am not here to bash Jim Cronin or the Tomato. For the record, I have a great deal of respect for Jim. He is very open and shares ideas freely. And the Tomato produces some of the most visually stunning blogs on the planet. They also provide extensive training to their clients. I’ve never taken the training, so Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fair warning — opinionated rant ahead. Yesterday someone I’m working with on a real estate blog sent me a link, and asked me: Is this kind of writing – a blog stuffed full of key words – a good thing? The blog post in question contained 19 references to “YourCity Realtor” or “YourCity State real […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2469","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-blogging","7":"category-weblogging-101","9":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2963,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2963\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-26\/","url_meta":{"origin":2469,"position":0},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 13, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"We have 17 entries on the short list this week, out of a long long list of 60 posts. This week I'm showing nothing but Black Pearls, practical hard-headed ideas for working better, faster and more profitably. Vote for the People's Choice Award here. 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Laurie Manny, host of Long Beach Real Estate Home, has signed on to discuss how to build a locally-focused real estate weblog. In one short year, Laurie has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the search engines for the competitive keyword\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":233,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/233\/tomatillos-seven-steps-to-a-realtor-20-salsa-of-success\/","url_meta":{"origin":2469,"position":3},"title":"Tomatillos: Seven steps to a Realtor 2.0 salsa of success . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 22, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"With a solemn nod to Dustin, the First Man of real estate weblogs, I wanted to cite posts of merit that have been bouncing around in my brain. I'm not as ambitious as Dustin, though, so I want to go to one place only for now: The Real Estate Tomato.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2644,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2644\/living-up-to-the-bloodhoundblog-mission-statement-were-everything-you-wish-were-in-realtor-magazine\/","url_meta":{"origin":2469,"position":4},"title":"Living up to the BloodhoundBlog mission statement: We’re everything you wish were in Realtor magazine","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 23, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This is our mission statement:BloodhoundBlog is everything you wish were in Realtor magazine \u2014 but isn\u2019t.Damned if it ain't the gospel truth! Realtor Magazine does a cover story on real estate weblogging -- and none of the Bloodhounds are there. 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They give me 350 words -- might you have guessed that I can go on at greater length? --\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}