15.5 Real Estate Blog Ideas Ranking on Google in 2021

Real estate blog ideas are easy. There is no excuse to not have something to write about.

In fact, when making my website, I identified 10 categories of blogs in which I had at least one article ranking not just on the first page of Google, but #1 on Google. With these categories, there are literally 1000s of ideas that should keep your blog mill churning:

• Neighborhood pages (100s of articles)
• Contract explainers (50-100 articles)
• Local Property Categories (30-50 articles)
• Builder pages (50-100 articles)
• Market Stats (20-50 articles)
• Loan Types (5-10 articles)
• Local Places and Events (100-1000 articles)
• Steps of the Transaction (20-50 articles)
• Niche Real Estate Buyers and Sellers (20-30 articles)
• Local Vendors (30-50 articles)

But I thought I’d look around to see a few more ideas from other website than my own with the best ranking pages from many of the top real estate sites and blogs.

I don’t have to guess, either. Using tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush, I am able to spy on the competition and see which of their pages are earning the most organic traffic.

Real Estate Blog Idea Examples

Local Attractions

I love The Denver Ear, and it’s a great example of turning your blog into a publication that you can monetize all on its own (Look at the site – they’re selling advertising space!)

Psst…14 Most Swimmable Lakes in Colorado is their number 1 performing article, ranks on page 1 for “lakes in colorado” and accounts for an estimated 4.1% of the website traffic. The commercial intent may be low; the Venn diagram for people looking for lakes and people looking for homes probably only has a slight overlap. But what a great way to get your brand, face, and business out there!

Home and Moving Related Posts

Bill Gassett is one of the most well known and prolific real estate bloggers. So of course I would check his site out!

Curious what his best performing article is? It’s a list of self-storage options

It accounts for an estimated 20% of his traffic and 27,000 visitors every month to his site for the keyword “storage units near me”.

Most amazingly, though: he doesn’t even rank on page 1 of Google, but is in the middle of page 2. “Modular homes” is searched 555,000 times a month on Google, so even being on page 2 can send traffic your way!

Ranking Local Businesses

Dustin Brohm published this caffeinated article in 2017 that ranks #8 on google for “coffee shops sale lake city” and accounts for almost 5% of his website traffic!

Local Holiday Guides

This is no surprise. My own Christmas article is one of my best performing articles come wintertime. Local events make great blog material for any local business.

The Rochester Real Estate Blog’s third most prolific blog post is this one about Christmas lights. Obviously, posts like these are very seasonal

But don’t ignore opportunities like his #1 and #2 most search terms, either! He ranks #6 on Google for “buying a condo”, and #5 on Google for “final walk through”.

Housing Types

Eh, so I don’t know if this counts as a blog post or not.

But this page ranks #11 on Google for “new development homes near me”. Presumably, it shows up when your browser location is identified as being near Tallahassee. This page accounts for an estimated 87 visitors to Joe Manausa’s blog every month.

He also ranks #49 – the 5th page of Google – for “homes for sale”, which still accounts for an estimated 200 monthly visitors for a keyword with 673,000 monthly searches.

International Buyer Guide

The BREL Team has a page that ranks #2 on Google for “Can Americans Buy Property in Canada”. That’s gotta be good for business! They get an estimated 63 visitors per month on this page searching for this keyword.

If you are in the luxury or international niche, these are some keywords you should be targeting!

Zip Code Pages

So again, not really a blog post, but something I thought was curious! One of Realty Austin’s top-performing keywords is “Austin Zip Code”

Not only are they on page #1 for the keyword, but this simple zip code map accounts for about 800 visitors every month!

They’re not alone. “Nashville zip code” is the #1 performing keyword for Gary Ashton’s company.

I looked up “Killeen Zip Code” in my own market and don’t see many real estate websites ranking. Maybe that is some low hanging fruit I should have a page on….

City Comparison

I’m not from Florida and haven’t been there since 1993. I didn’t know Sarasota v Naples was a thing. But this page, published in 2013, earns about 100 monthly visitors.

The keywords appear to be folks looking for directions, though? “Sarasota to Naples” and “Naples to Sarasota” the ranking keywords. I don’t know what that’s about, but that is over 880 estimated visitors a month.

If you have a market with multiple cities, doing a comparison article could work great. Dallas vs Fort Worth. St. Paul vs Minneapolis. Anaheim vs LA. etc.

Local and State Information

Well that was unexpected. The 3rd most visited page for the Unity Home Group is about the state flower! It accounts for 5.7% of their visitors, or 220 visits a month. They rank #6 on Google for that search. I’m not sure how many potential clients this page might pick up, but it is another example of what you can do with local or area topics.

Their number 1 most visited page features pest control tips regarding silverfish.

Transaction Steps

This is a super simple, all text article that simply answers a common question. And it accounts for 9% of Josh Deshong’s website traffic, ranking #1 on Google for “what happens after I accept an offer on my house”.

This would be a pretty easy long tail keyword to rank for, actually, if you’re looking for ideas. The only problem is it is not very market specific, and probably a question sellers are asking after they’ve already selected an agent.

All branding is good branding, though!

Insider Baseball

Sometimes it’s not just your consumer-facing stuff that can rank.

Whether this kind of content is valuable to your and your business is up to you, but there are lots of examples of agents producing content more geared toward the real estate agent and industry that can rank well, like Bubbleinfo.com or Andrew Fortune’s post on IDX Broker that seemed like it was on the first page for “IDX Broker” forever.

Mark Z’s post about changing real estate companies is his 6th most productive page, ranking for the keyword “why I left EXP realty” which apparently is searched approximately 1300 times a month. It accounts for 9% of his traffic.

Moving Guides

This is the perfect commercial article! Catch buyers before they even get to the home buying stage and are still in the “I’m moving” stage. This is a great opportunity to pick up a new real estate lead.

This page ranks on page 1 for Knox Realtors for the keyword “moving to Dallas”.

Their best page, however, is a post about farmhouses.

Helpful Local Information

This surprised me. No offense Elizabeth, but the website is an older-looking site and I had low expectations. But not only does this site get an estimated 2000+ views a month, it kills it with a surprising blog post about local Craigslist scams.

This kind of article is useful not only for earning traffic but establishing yourself as a real estate professional.

It’s an older article from 2016 that is still bringing in 11% of her traffic, good for over 200 visitors a month. She ranks on the third page for “Craigslist Sacramento” and still gets all that traffic! That keyword has 823,000 visits a month, so even page 3 gets you something!

I don’t know if Craigslist is still a thing, but think about Airbnb or other local housing-related issues your community may be craving information about.

Neighborhood Guides

This is an awesome site I hadn’t encountered before with 25k monthly visitors! Their top ranking page is for the keyword “echo park”, where they rank just #10 on Google but get 1485 visitors a month!

I didn’t know what Echo Park was before this. Apparently, it’s both a location in LA and a used car resource? So maybe some of the traffic is looking for cars, not homes?

If that disqualifies this one for you, the site also ranks #10 for “mansions for sale” with this simple Beverly Hills neighborhood page. Or an “active under contract” article on the first page. The number one performer is this article for the keywords “how do realtors get paid“.

More Local Attractions!

This is the #1 most visited article for Welcome to San Diego Real Estate, ranking for “kate sessions park” and driving 900 visitors every month.

Example #15.5: Don’t Forget to Cheat

You don’t have to constantly spew fresh, new content and blog posts. If you max out at 100 ideas, or 200, or 1000, you don’t need 100, 200, or 1000 more.

Instead, if you have a nice stable of existing content, it can pay off to update your old posts and content.

Updating content is easier than rewriting an article from scratch, saves your old article’s Google love, can improve that page’s performance, and improves the information and usefulness of that article to your readers.

My goal when I started blogging was to have about 200 basic articles published which I would then just update and improve at least once a year. I haven’t been totally successful with that schedule, but don’t feel the need to reinvent everything when you don’t have to!

How I Found Ideas in SEM Rush

If you’re serious about your website, you may want to consider a website analytics tool. There are two main ones in the industry that are Swiss Army knives of website analytics: Ahrefs and SEM Rush.

I had Ahrefs when I originally started my website but didn’t know what to do with it. After a year I canceled it.

A year or two later as I learned more about websites, I learned more about what I had been missing. I ended up getting SEM Rush, but that’s no diss on Ahrefs about which I only hear good things. It’s a shame I didn’t use it to its potential earlier.

Here’s the SEM Rush overview page for one of my favorite real estate brokers, Andrew Fortune at Great Colorado Homes. He gets a decent amount of organic traffic with his Real Estate Webmasters website!

If you go to the Organic Research section, you can see where SEM Rush estimates that traffic is coming from. His top keywords are zip code searches. And his #3 best keyword is “homes for sale in colorado springs”. Sure enough, when I google the keyword, his site is showing up number 4 just below Trulia, Zillow, and Realtor.com!

Is that the kind of traffic you think you could turn into customers?

But that is not a blog post. Looking deeper and you can find lots of articles that drive traffic, a few hundred there, a couple hundred there.

His top ranking blog post is about the transaction process.

That’s how I did this research on well-performing blog posts that are actually driving traffic.

Conclusion

Hopefully, you’ve found a few real estate blog topics that have inspired you. Rejigger it to fit your lead generation style. Publish it, featuring your own market area, share it to social media, and earn the eyeballs of local home buyers and sellers.

Any other sites I should be watching or blogs I should be following? Please let me know in the comments!

Updated December 28, 2020; Originally published June 25, 2019.