7 Real Estate WordPress Blog Essentials
by Naomi Trower on April 5, 2010
in Blogging
Last week’s Social Media Marketing Camp’s blogging webinar was such a 
success that I decided to write a follow-up post on 7 Real Estate WordPress Blog Essentials.
I will share a tip that has been bringing more traffic to my site as well as a list of wordpress plugins that you will get your blog off and running to a great start.
I’ve noticed that I have been receiving additional traffic to my site just by making sure to do 1 simple thing:
Label All Pictures With Keywords In Your Blog
Images are great for your blog but it is so easy as you upload them to shorten the actual name of the file to wp.jpg for example using the above image. There are more internet searches for wordpress plugins so labeling it wordpress-plugins.jpg or real-estate-wordpress-plugins.jpg is even better.
However, you want to use the words for your particular specialty whether it may be open house, tax credit, forensic loan audit or commercial cost segregation. Be sure to start implementing this right away as well as add this plugin to work simultaneously with this strategy:
SEO Friendly Images
SEO Friendly Images is a WordPress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. This plugin improves traffic from search results.
Platinum SEO Pack
Platinum SEO Plugin is the ultimate wordpress SEO solution. Platinum SEO Plugin offers all the features of All in One SEO plugin plus more. Here are a few key features:
Google XML Sitemaps
Google XML Sitemaps plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog. Additionally it notifies all major search engines every time you create a post with new content.
Great Real Estate
Great Real Estate Plugin – enables real estate agents, brokers, and REALTORS to display and manage information about their listings. Widgets and custom page templates permit display of only available homes, only sold homes, a random “featured” home, and a detailed property page for a listing.
Mortgage Center
Mortgage Center Plugin – provides
- Real-time mortgage rates from Zillow’s GetRateSummary API
- A monthly payment calculator utilizing Zillow’s GetMonthlyPayments API
- Closing cost estimates (courtesy of Closing.com)
- A few educational mortgage articles (courtesy of Zillow.com Help Center)
- Links to the latest blog posts from Mortgages Unzipped, Blown Mortgage, and Mortgage Reports.
Real Estate Chart Of The Day
Real Estate Chart of the Day is a widget-based plugin. It displays relevant real estate and mortgage-related charts to your blog. 
Data includes:
- Existing Home Sales
- New Home Sales
- Mortgage Rate Trends
- Fed Funds Rate
- Retail Sales Data
- Consumer Confidence
- Home Price Index
- Case-Shiller Index
- Pending Home Sales
BONUS:
Mortgage Loan Calculator
Mortgage Loan Calculator plugin is a great value-add for any loan officer or real estate agent looking to provide good-looking, functional, valuable content to readers.
The screenshot below displays The Calculation Summary and Chart, as it appears when a visitor clicks the Calculate button.
Have you installed your FREE copy of wordpress to your website yet? Be sure to get in the game that will help you to dominate your local market and let us know in the comments any questions that you may have on this topic.
Naomi Trower
Real Estate Broker
Social Media Strategist
Social Media Real Estate Marketing
“Teaching Professionals Social Media”
Naomi,
Great post. I would also recommend, “Yet Another Related Post.” and a contact form. I presently use most of these. Tried the Chart of the day, but can’t get it to work with my theme.
Hi Jeremiah! I love the Contact Form plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-contact-form/ as well! I hear you about certain plugins not working well with your theme. Chart of the Day works well with my theme but Yet Another Related Post doesn’t.
I will have to check to see if the updated version has made any difference.
Thank you Naomi for another excellent post. I will be implementing your ideas into my blog
Hi Judy! No problem! Happy to share the wordpress love..
I forgot to add that the Disqus commenting system is an awesome addition that allows to have a better flow of comments on your blog. I finally was able to get Yet Another Related Post Plugin to work on my blog! Yay!
Naomi – this is a great compilation. Thanks for posting all this.
I’ve played around with all kinds of widgets and in the end am never sure whether I’m doing the right thing or now. Even for what should be simple twitter-related plugins, there are so many widgets which do similar things, yet don’t always work as expected.
On the page describing the Great Real Estate plugin, it mentions quite a few other things that should be installed with it too. Do you also recommend these?
I’d be interested in leveraging this or other things like it in order to put up property pictures. I’d like to figure out how to do a good investor website (e.g. selling properties, but because I own them, or are marketing them, not because I am the listing agent for it) but somehow a lot of the realtor-targeted WP themes have a different flavor than what I”m going for. Do you have experience with other plugins similar to great real estate, and can you provide some comparison?
Thanks in Advance!
Wow… Very informative blog..
I has great stuff… Anyways thanks for sharing..
Thanks for the hints. I’ll be updating to the Platinum SEO !