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Editor’s Note - Given that Trulians don’t have a monopoly on quality blog content, we’ve decided to periodically post contributions from our friends and colleagues. We are equal opportunity - if you want to be a guest contributor, just let us know.

Guest Blogger: Rory Siems

What is the main way a good restaurant keeps their customers coming back? By serving tasty stuff to their customers, your real estate website should do this as well.

Take a pizza for example, there are literally thousands of places that make them, but some are better than others. They all have similar ingredients, but it is how they blend the ingredients that keeps you loyal, and craving those slices.

Now websites are getting to be just like foods. Some have great flavor, some are not so great. They are all made of the same or similar ingredients, html, graphics, information.

This is where the mashup literally resembles not only potatoes, but foods of every kind. Think of the main ingredient in a website mashup, hint: that would be RSS.

RSS has completely revolutionized the whole concept of web content. Just as you may plan a meal by first going to the store and collecting the various ingredients, you must do the same to make a successful mashup website.

So here are some simple steps to whipping up something good for your site:

1. Begin with RSS. Research different feeds that apply to the content that you want your clients to be informed with. You may have to make some long lists of which RSS feeds seem valuable. The Trulia Map, and search results feeds are great examples of some really flavorful ingredients that are actually meaningful to your audience.
2. Group your ingredients logically. Don’t overload your site visitors with incongruent information keep the like items on pages together.
3. Integrate the RSS, use something like Feedburner, or the RSS to HTML converter of your choice to get the elements to actually “live” on your site.
4. Limit and focus your content & engage your visitors. Just because you can find 50 RSS feeds that provide similar information, doesn’t mean that you have to display them all on the same page. For neighborhood websites that I have designed, I limited the content to the Trulia Map widget, and a text RSS feed with similar information in a different format. This provides contrast. My Laguna Beach Real Estate Listings page is a great example of this.
5. Don’t fear the outbound links. Links going from your site to a bunch of different sites are more likely the thing that is going to signal to your users “This page is important, and I’d better bookmark it, because all of these great links are in one place.”
6. Push yourself to innovate. If you can’t evaluate your website objectively, ask someone else to. It’s just like asking someone to try the pizza to see if they like it.
7. Study your metrics. You should be examining your website traffic, but you should also pay attention to which parts of your site your users and potential clients are spending most of their time. Chances are, they want you to give them more of whatever that is.

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