For real estate agents who are looking to stand out and attract clients online, content marketing is a necessary investment.

But some of the content strategies that work for businesses in other industries may not work for you. What you really need to be focused on is local content marketing.

When you need to find the nearest ATM, what do you do? You run a quick Google search of “ATMs near me.”

When you’re in need of a new accountant, what’s the easiest way to find one? You head over to your favorite search engine and type in something like, “best accountants in Nashville.”

Millions of people use search engines on a daily basis to find resources in their local vicinity.

You should be utilizing local content marketing as a method for driving traffic to your real estate pages and identifying potential clients. There’s value in writing neighborhood and city guides that focus on an isolated location that your clients find valuable.

Here are some tips for developing high-returning neighborhood and city guides.

1. Focus on quality over quantity

The biggest mistake people make when developing location guides is assuming they should stuff them with keywords: They use the name of the city 100 times throughout the course of a 3,000-word guide.

That’s simply misguided; keyword stuffing will get you nowhere.

You need to focus on producing quality content; and, in the midst of creating quality content, you’ll naturally find yourself using long-tail keywords that satisfy the search engine’s ranking algorithms.

2. Move beyond real estate

Make room for real estate-specific content in your location guides, but don’t make everything about housing trends and valuations.

These guides should touch on a wide array of topics and give readers a full picture of what it’s like to live, work and play in their respective city.

This North Dallas guide from agent Roxanne DeBerry is a good example of a location page that covers a variety of topics, including shopping and sports. It reels people in and is used as a lead generation tool that will eventually produce more real estate-specific discussions.

3. Close the deal

Although a location guide is intended to provide the reader with tangible value, it’s ultimately designed to benefit you — the agent. To maximize the value of your location guides, be sure to close the deal. In other words, you need to get the readers’ contact information so you can reach out to them.

There are a number of different ways you can get contact information. The simplest method is to include some sort of opt-in form in the guide where you ask for a name and email address and promise to provide updated MLS listings on a weekly basis.

If you want more information and prefer to work with more qualified leads, you can get a little more in-depth and promise some sort of premium content or service in return for the details they provide. 

Content marketing is something that you should be using to build your brand and connect with clients.

If you really want to generate the highest return on your investment, local content is the way to go. Give it a shot, and see how it impacts your marketing efforts over the coming months.

Anna Johansson is a freelance writer, researcher and business consultant specializing in entrepreneurship, technology and social media trends. Follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Email Anna Johansson

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