I really enjoyed reading Mike Farmer's discussion of the future of the individual real estate professional in garnering search engine position and the resulting business. The advantage of the deep pockets that come with the large organizations and franchises is definitely a factor.

And, over the past few weeks, I've posted here about the arguments for and against community blogging for the real estate agent. Some believe it dilutes focus, which should be on writing for those most-desired key phrases for real estate. The more you write about the local stray animal shelter, the less you're showing Google when it comes to "YourTown Real Estate."

There is also a great deal written about the "long tail" approach to the search engines. Working the less competitive and more detailed search terms is certainly an approach that brings traffic, hopefully followed by business. I wonder whether we should be thinking "big net" more than "long tail." A successful community blog will be a valuable and widely-used resource for the local residents, as well as housing a carefully crafted real estate resource segment.

I have taken this approach for my own personal real estate business, starting (January this year) a new community real estate blog with a WordPress theme that presents like a magazine, with lead and feature stories. It has already gotten me a feed from the town's PR firm and special notices from the town government. In its four month existence, I've built up almost 400 posts and pages. A great many of the posts are contributed content from local government, the PR firm, the Chamber of Commerce and businesses. The searches that bring traffic are all across the board, and few are related to real estate at this point. However, I just popped up on Google with a PR3 and thirteenth and fourteenth positions for the two most coveted "real estate" key phrases in my area.

I'll, of course, be studying how this concept flies. I expect the Google positions to improve, as well as the Page Rank. I'm adding real estate specific content on at least a weekly basis, but there is probably twice as much or more community content going up. Though I'm happy with initial results, my goal is to build a loyal repeat visitor base. Most of these visitors aren't in the real estate market right now, but they almost assuredly will be in the future. The trick for me is to get them to visit that real estate portion of the site at the right time.