Of the 4 computer monitors on my desk, one is monitoring breaking news via RSS feeds. I like to stay current on the news of the day and I am looking for opportunities to get Google’s attention via “breaking news” blogging or what has been referred to as “Real Time Blogging”.
Real time blogging is the act of sharing content as it happens.
I am a “what if” kind of guy as I am always thinking of ways my agents can compete online with original content that is going to get the attention of the search engines and their local consumers.
A number of years ago I said to myself, “What if I blogged about breaking news? Would Google notice my post?”
A press release came out from Mayor Bloomburg in New York stating, he was going to regulate the size of soft drink cups sold in NYC convenience stores. At the time, I was blogging for a nutritional company I was consulting for. Within 5 minutes of the story hitting the AP wire, I wrote a simple post that basically stated, “Don’t tell me what I can or cannot drink” and “If you drink that much soda per day you are harming your body”. For the next 5 months my post shared page one of Google with the Huffington Post, USA Today and the New York Times. I was the only non-news source in the search results. For the first 30 days this post was averaging around 7,000 hits per day.
I blogged about a celebrity being arrested in Las Vegas, only as an experiment. I not only wrote about it as the arrest was going down, but I beat TMZ to the punch on the mug shot. 20,000 hits per day for the first 2 weeks on average and the mugshot was in the top-ten image searches for over a year.
Within my research in various experimental blogs I was managing, I was writing about news as it was happening(Breaking) AND popular news(Trending). When I wrote about trending yet popular news, though my posts were indexed, they were really nowhere to be found. At the time my posts came out they were lost in a sea of other posts and news sites.
Blogging about breaking news ranks higher in the search engines then trending news.
So you ask, “CJ, how does writing about breaking, non-real estate related news help me sell real estate or generate leads?” I am glad you asked.
It’s is more of an indirect credibility tool for you and your blog. The search engines notice publication dates and clickthrough activity. If you get their attention enough times, they recognize your blog as a credible news source. Sometimes your blog is located on your website, hopefully in a sub directory(the the right of the .com) and not in a sub-domain(to the left of your domain name). This of course helps your overall SEO and when you write about hyper-local event or properties in your market, you will shoot straight to the top.
My research has also shown me our posts on Active Rain are getting indexed quickly with great positioning. This is because Active Rain is probably recognized by the Google algorithms as a very active and credible repository of original content. If you hyper-local blog about breaking news in your area, there is a very good chance your Activerain.com post will get hit by consumers in your area who can see your contact information.
Writing about breaking news on Active Rain will index quickly with great placement
CJ Hays – Follow me on Twitter
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