Add value to your localized posts with local area widgets. I believe too many widgets in a blog are not a good thing but a widget that relates to your blog post will indeed add to your visitor’s experience. For example, if you are blogging about mortgages or mortgage rates why not add a loan calculator? Or if you are blogging about a county or a city, a local area widget will compliment your post and give your visitors a more dynamic experience. Many times people forget the user experience and only blog for search engines. It’s always great to get ranked at the top of search engines but it’s not worth as much if you are not able to capture the visitors that come to your blog from the search engines. Quality content complimented with dynamic tools that are useful to your visitors will help them remember your blog and come back for more. There are a ton of free widgets out there you can use to enhance your blog posts and visitors experience. Widgetbox is a great site that will allow you to grab some pretty good widgets for your blog. Search Widgetbox for "Real Estate Widgets" or go to this link http://www.widgetbox.com/search?q=real+estate+widgets to find some. Housingwidgets.com is another great place to get some Real Estate widgets and ClassifiedFlyerAds.com also offers Free Real Estate widgets. Again - too many widgets or widgets that are not relevant to your blog posts can have a negative affect. But a widget added to your post that is relevant to the content and can provide your visitors with valuable information will add value to your posts. |
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Other Localized Blogging Tips
- Add Google Maps to your blog - Tip #1
- Add interactivity to your local posts while capturing leads - Tip #2
- Enhance your visitors experience with relevant widgets - Tip #3
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Go Smart Solutions, LLC |
Hi Misty
Always a great post! How long did it take you to build the local area information box? It's certainly a wonderful tool for clients.
Rich
Hi Rich- you can get your own local area box (widget) for free from ClassifiedFlyerAds.com. Click Here for more information. It takes less than 30 seconds to create from ClassifiedFlyerAds.com and you can choose from different colors and choose which info boxes you would like displayed.
Great idea, Misty! I'm certainly going to bookmark this one!
Misty, Widgets are helpful and I agree with you that too many are a very bad idea. But what is more effective than widgets is writing hyper-local content. Write about the restaurant, entertainment, dining, and community issues. Unless I am missing the point, the widget will take your reader to another site?
Even if the widget does not take your reader somewhere else it is a great strategy to use your local knowledge in posts. The culmulative effect is that people Googling anything about your community have a good chance of running into your blog.
dean
Thanks for the tip, I love going out to widgetbox.com and can spend hours there, lol.
Hi Misty. Great post.... I"m always looking for new toys.. and you've just given me a few more... Thank You!
Hello Dean - agree 100% that hyper-local, quality content is most important, which is why I have this sentence in the 1st paragraph "Quality content complimented with dynamic tools that are useful to your visitors will help them remember your blog and come back for more".
A good, relevant widget will compliment your quality content not substitute it. Not all widgets take you to another site and many others I have seen open another window leaving your page underneath. Like the local area widget I pasted above. It opens another window to Googles map search results for the local link you clicked but leaves your page open. This way when the visitor is done searching Google maps and closes that window they are left with your page still open.
Misty,
Great info, everytime I get on I learn something new and appreciate folks like you pointing out some of the better ideas in a fairly large crowd possibilities!
Thanks - Russell
Misty you are right on the money. Being able to be found easily is great but keeping a visitor and converting them to a client is even better!
That is a nice widget and would be very helpful to folks. I like how you have it set up, inside the post. I have book marked it and will check it out more later
Misty: THank you for sharing this series wiith everyone. Always great to recieve tips of what is working for others
Misty, I agree with your idea of high quality, which is why I have issues with so much incorrect information being offered on localism. Towns in the wrong counties, for instance. They post it. I have been asking for corrections for months. Oh well, now that folks can pay for the lead spot, nstead of posting points, it really becomes irrelevant.
Hi Frances- I understand your concerns. These tips (posts) are not specific to localism but more so for localized blogs. I don't feel comfortable writing tips that are specific for Localism just yet because there are still so many uncertainties with their new platform. Have you thought about starting your own Local blog using Wordpress? Wordpress does amazing in search engines and is fairly simple to setup. You can even attach it to your own domain name which I recommend.
Oooh la, la. I think I like this one. Thanks so much for the freebies. I could use all the help I can get.
Good ideas - I need to add the mortgage calculator to all of my posts about listings. Thanks for the advise.
Thank you for sharing this, I am fiddling with the mortgage calculator currently!!
Thanks a bunch for the tip. I just signed up with classified flyerads for the widgets.
Hi Misty, thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
I have been waiting for tip #3--and -- it was worth the wait! Great tips to help boost my confidence as this newbie tries to blog for the better!
Misty - I didn't know about these widgets. It looks pretty cool! Thanks for sharing! :)
Misty, help! What did I do wrong? I tried for over an hour list night and this morning to post a blog with the local info widget about my town. I got the widget in the post okay, but when I tried to write an intro to it, it disappeared. I had saved it in draft in html, and it came up fine, but then when I added a few words above the coding and tried to post it to AR and Localism, it dropped the widget. After struggling with it for awhile, I simply deleted it. Can you or anyone tell me what I did wrong?
Hello Susan - its hard to say without being able to see the html you constructed along with the widget. Do you still have a copy of the HTML with the widget you constructed?
Misty, I tried again doing everything the same way (in fact I had saved the code, so I just copied it into the post again today) so I could have you look at it, and so far, it seems to have worked. It is on my blog right now. Of course it was on there last night too until I tried modifying the post by adding something. I will leave this one alone and see if it stays. Thank you!