The two main goals of blogging for your home building business is to increase traffic to your site and to boost your authority. The more articles you have, the more likely it is someone will find your site through the search engines. Once they find your site, they become more interested in having you be their home builder.
It’s an easy system in theory.
The truth, though, is not all blog articles are equal. A quick look at your site statistics will show you that some pieces get hundreds or thousands of site views a month, while others get none at all.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Level: Intermediate
Key Takeaways:
- Compounding blog posts see their traffic continue to grow over time and having even just a few of them can make up a large percentage of your monthly traffic
- Focus on evergreen content that your audience wants to read for the best chance at becoming a compounding post
- Compounding blog posts can help you sell more homes by boosting your search engine rankings and bringing more relevant traffic to your website
- We call the articles that really bring traffic to your site “compounding blog posts”, and the key to site success - and more home sales - is to have more of these types of posts on your site.
Understanding Compounding Blog Posts
A compounding blog post is one where the traffic compounds, or grows, over time. You see a significant amount of traffic at first (often a result of your social media and email promotion), but then in two or three months, you get twice as many visitors to that page as you did right when it was posted. In six months’ time, you may have even more.
Most blog posts are the opposite, though. They’re “decaying” posts. You get an initial burst of traffic from the post when you first upload it (again, often a result of your social media and email efforts), but then the traffic subsides. After a month or two, it’s rare for an article to get a significant amount of traffic. You put in the effort, but you’re not getting major long-term results.
Obviously, you want to have as many compounding posts as possible. But it’s not easy. HubSpot, a well-recognized thought leader in the marketing realm, states that only about 1 in 10 blog posts becomes a compounding post. Those posts often account for about 38 percent of all blog traffic. This is a huge impact.
What Makes for a Compounding Blog Post?
There’s no secret formula that will create a compounding blog post 100 percent of the time. But there are some post types we know are NOT likely to become a high-traffic blog post:
- Event announcements (e.g. “Join us for the grand opening of our latest show home.”)
- Time-limited promotions (e.g. “The first 20 customers can get $20,000 in free upgrades.”)
- Time-based posts (e.g. “The Hottest Home Design Trends of Winter 2020”)
- News-related posts (e.g. “Canadian Government Announces a Drop in Mortgage Rates”)
Does this mean that you should avoid these types of posts? Of course not! They’re topical posts that give your prospects information they need to know at that time.
However, you want to mix it up with some articles that are more likely to become compounding posts. These posts tend to be “evergreen”, meaning that they will likely be just as useful to someone reading it today as they are to someone reading it five years from now.
In general, article styles that are most likely to become compounding posts are:
- How-to posts (e.g. “How to Select a Home Builder”)
- “Best” posts (e.g. “Best Floor Plans for Multigenerational Families”)
- Comparison posts (e.g. “Should You Buy a Townhome or a Detached Home?”)
- “Warning” posts (e.g. “Watch Out for These Big Mortgage Mistakes”)
To really hit that sweet spot, though, the posts you hope will become compounding posts should be highly detailed and all-encompassing. They should offer the reader valuable information in a way that’s easy to understand. The longer a person stays on your site reading the article, the more favourable your site will be in the eyes of Google, which will help your post rank in the search engines.
As always, it’s best to focus on quality.
How Can Compounding Blog Posts Increase Home Sales?
As you know, content marketing is a long game, with a couple of different goals.
First, you want to increase the number of “pages” on your site (each article counts as a page). The more pages you have, the more likely it is for your site to show up when someone searches for a term related to home building.
But it’s important to note that the posts that end up as compounding blog posts are the ones that really stick. They’re focused on a popular keyword and they’re probably ranking as one of the top results in Google. These pages are an important source of traffic for your website, and the more people know about your business, the more likely they are to buy from you.
Blogging is a key component of content marketing. The goal is to start building a relationship with your prospects. Since compounding blog posts have a lot of value for the reader, there’s a higher chance that the reader will file your name away as an authority in the field. The next time they’re looking for more information, they’ll turn to your site first. And when it’s time to buy a home, it’s your company they’ll think of first.
Creating articles that bring in more and more site traffic is essential to your home building business’ success. While there’s no formula that’s going to create a compounding blog post every single time, the experts at Velocity23 can help put you on the right path! Schedule a free consultation today.
Originally published Oct 6, 2020
