Be a better property blogger

Blogs help to develop relationships with existing and future customers. They connect people to your brand, establish your business as an authority and boost organic rankings. So how do you write blogs that people will want to share? There is a type of blog article that can be put together using other peoples’ content. We call it the ‘content aggregator’, and it routinely produces top-performing, shareable content.

The ‘content aggregator’ blog type routinely produces top performing shareable content!

The content aggregator involves finding content which is already popular and aggregating it to create an article that is almost guaranteed to please your audience (social sharing) and the search engines (traffic from Google search.)

Despite what you may know about penalties for duplicate content and ‘leaking link juice’, the content aggregator is a proved winner when it comes to Google search.

So how do we put together this type of blog article?

STEP 1 – CHOOSE A TOPIC

Choose a topic for your article that is popular with your audience. To find popular topics you can:

• Mine your own data
• Mine a competitor’s data

To mine your own data, open your Google Analytics and run the Social Landing Pages report over (at least) a 90-day period. The report will show the most socially-shared content over the time period you have selected. Look for trends in the topics which are shared most, and choose one of these topics for your content aggregator post.

To mine a competitor’s data, you can use a tool that tallies the social shares of content across the web, such as BuzzSumo. Type a competitor’s URL into BuzzSumo, note the trends, and choose a topic for your article.

For example, by putting Rightmove’s blog in the search, we can see what their readers are sharing. In analysing the most popular content on http://www.rightmove.co.uk/ news, two of the top six topics relate to celebrities. So, let’s select the topic ‘celebrity homes’ and create a blog post about ‘celebrity homes for sale in 2017’.

We can then find the most viral content about ‘celebrity homes for sale’ to aggregate in our post.

STEP 2 – FIND POPULAR CONTENT

To find popular (likely to be shared) content, look to BuzzSumo. Type the keyword and its variations into BuzzSumo, and find the most viral content about that topic.

Put your keyword(s) into quotation marks to make sure BuzzSumo only returns exact matches and the most relevant results. Then try your keywords without quotation marks to broaden the results. By typing ‘celebrity homes for sale’ into BuzzSumo and entering ‘UK’ in the country filter, four results pop up. By playing with the keywords, several more spring up. Then we can create a list of the most relevant articles which include the keyword ‘celebrity homes for sale’.

STEP 3 – WRITE THE HEADLINE

The content aggregator is a list post. Any headline that uses a list post formula will work for this article. Here are some headline formulas you can use on your own content aggregator posts:

• X Ways to [DESIRED END RESULT] in [TIME PERIOD] Example: 5 Ways To Improve Your Home’s Curb Appeal in 30 Minutes
• X [TOPIC] Ideas That Will [DESIRED END RESULT] Example: 22 DIY Projects That Will Increase the Value Of Your Home
• X [THINGS] That Will [DESIRED END RESULT] Example: 5 Garden Ideas To Attract Buyers
• X Ways to Rid Yourself of [UNDESIRED RESULT] Example: 9 Ways to Rid Yourself of High Mortgage Payments

For most content aggregators we use headlines like:

• 5 of the Best Garden Playhouses
• 7 Interior Design Trends for Autumn

Remember: a strong headline will affect the number of clicks and shares you receive.

STEP 4 – LAY OUT THE POST

Create an introduction. Get the reader to the list as quickly as possible with a short, punchy introduction which tells the reader what the post is about and why it’s important. Each list has four components:

• 1. Subheading – In the subheading explain what the original post is about.
• 2. Description – Summarise what the original post is about and what the reader can expect from it.
• 3. Image(s) – Place one or more images under each list. You can use an image from the original post, create your own, or buy stock images.
• 4. Link – Create a link to the original post under the image.

Now repeat by placing a sub-headline, description, image(s) and link for each list item. At the end of the article, include a call to action. You could ask the reader to ‘like’ it on Facebook, pin it to Pinterest, or add something in the comments section.

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