Free Blog Review: A Phoenix Real Estate Guy

Jay Thompson today is on the free blog review stage with his blog Phoenix Real Estate Guy. As usual I’ll be reviewing three basic things: Design, Content, and Web Presence.

Design

The design of Jay’s Phoenix Real Estate Blog is one of my favorite WordPress themes – Chris Pearson’s Thesis theme. It’s professional, clean and simple to navigate. Jay’s got three places that are noticeable to click to search for homes, which makes it nice and simple for anyone to find. One of these ways is a creative blinking corner that says “Look Here” and when you hover over it shows where to start to search for homes. While I like the 125 ad blocks he has for his information, I would probably make them horizontal banners (for example 468×60) instead to make them look more like integrated pages of the blog instead of advertisements. It is possible though that’s probably just the neurotic designer in me! Another thing I might consider is a header with a small more “punch” to it – a darker background color for example, though it is already a honestly excellent header.

One fascinating thing I noticed about the Phoenix Real Estate Guy’s blog is that it is also tastefully monetized with advertisements from related services – a junk removal company and a mortgage site for example. This not only potentially helps readers, but can help him cover some of the expenses of having a blog.

Content
The best thing about Jay’s blog is the content, hands down. Posts are written in an informal yet informative tone and cover frequently questioned real estate issues and current events. Even his “statistical” posts aren’t dull – they’re written in regular language for someone who might not know all of the usual real estate and mortgage jargon and are full of nicely sized graphics to keep your attention. I especially liked his post on open houses and bone idle agents.

Web Presence
One of the things I also take a look at on my free blog reviews is the web presence of a blog – how well it competes in Google, and what other bloggers in the area are looking at. He’s at the bottom of the first page on Google for the term “Phoenix Real Estate” – which is really excellent considering there are 2,000,000 competing listings, but sneaking up a few notches would probably help. The Phoenix real estate market seems to be ahead of the curve when it comes to web-savvy agents, so there’s a lot more sites to compete and compare to. Overall though, I reckon the Phoenix Real Estate Guy’s blog does nicely.

Thanks to Jay again for letting me nitpick your real estate blog – if you’re looking for a excellent site to read, I highly recommend his site on Phoenix Real Estate. If you have a blog you’d like reviewed, feel free to use my contact page to let me know!