RealBird Inc., a technology company that integrates Google Maps with MLS data on agent websites, issued a press release today naming Keith Bird's website, as generating the most MLS searches of all the company's subscribers...

RealBird, Inc., a leading supplier of MLS search solutions and single property websites for real estate, announced today that Keith Byrd, a Century 21 REALTOR® in San Luis Obispo County, California, generated more MLS searches through his website than any of their other agent subscribers nationwide. Keith's interactive MLS Search Map was accessed by over 225,000 unique visitors in the first 11 months of 2007 resulting in over 625,000 MLS searches.

That translates to about 681 unique visitors per day.

So, I decided to do some investigating on Keith's website, "slocountyhomes.com" to see where all the traffic is coming from.

1. Keith's website does fairly well at optimizing on Google for the "san luis obispo homes" phrase, showing up at #5. It also shows up #10 for "san luis obispo real estate". Not stellar, but good.

2. Better yet, he's getting #1 for the "slo" variations. He's #1 for "slo homes" and "slo real estate". San Luis Obispo happens to one of those communities (like Los Angeles), that people often refer to by their initials.

3. His blog is awesome. First of all, he's been writing it since 2004. Second, he's writes it everyday. This translates into hundreds, perhaps a thousand, unique URLs (permalink pages) that he's seeding into Google. Each one of those pages will rank #1 for something. Therefore, the more pages he creates, the more visitors he captures from Google.

4. His blog links to his MLS searches. On the side bar, he has several community links, and each one points to a page on his own website.

5. Backlinks. Actually, Keith doesn't have that many. Which shows that backlinks aren't everything. Though he just picked up a new backlink from me!

I credit his website success first to his domain name, "slocountyhomes.com". It contains two of his most important keywords, "slo" and "homes".

The domain name is the reason why his blog works so well (http://www.slocountyhomes.com/real_estate_weblog.htm). With "slo" and "homes" in the domain, each article adds several unique keywords to it's URL, creating hundreds or thousands of keyword variations on SLO homes. The effect is that anyone searching for ANY variation of SLO homes, will find one of Keith's pages.

Keith is hosting his blog on his agent website (on the same domain name). This is a great way to host a blog. In my previous article "Hosting a Real Estate Blog", I said to host it on its own unique domain name, so that you can also get the backlink benefits. While Keith won't get that, he seems to be doing great with it by virtue of the "slo" and "homes" keywords in his agent website domain.

It goes on to show the power of the blog. It worked for Keith because he's been writing it for years, and still blogs everyday. As I have stated before, Google loves blogs. So blog often, everyday, and keep on doing it, just like Keith.

Labels: Website Review