How to ADD Your Real Estate Blog Feed to MAPQUEST

If you want information you search Google. If you want driving directions you search Mapquest.  Did you know you can also add your Real Estate Blog feed (or any blog feed) to Mapquest?
It would be easy not to even know this feature was there.  From the homepage click on the link “Local” (see screenshots) and you will be routed to a page with your local news and happenings  (it reads your IP address and pulls up local info accordingly).  You can change what “Local” information is presented to you by simply clicking “Change Location”.

Now you see various moveable widgets (hover over widget and drag and drop to suit your viewing pleasure) of information from missing children, jobs, gas prices, blogs and many others.  If you reading the BLOG widget you see there is an option to “Add Your Blog”.  Click it!

Now you are routed to a “Getting Started” page.  What comes next is a bit tricky so follow along carefully! You have to FIRST GEO TAG your blog (content).  Basically add code that will publish to your RSS Feed so that Mapquest can aggregate it.  Click on the “Register Your Blog” button.  Its rather simple to do (depending on your comfort level). There are numerous options of how to do this depending on which platform your blog is built upon.  You can choose from Blogger.com, Blogsmith, Brightkite, Drupal, LiveJournal, MovableType & Vox.com, MySpace, WordPress.com and Others.

Since we use WordPress that is what we will cover here. They give easy to follow directions and several choices to GEO Tag your content.  Choose whatever fits your technical prowess or lack there of.  We chose option #3 (see screenshot below).  We went that #3 because it gets the job done and hides the code so that our readers (like you) don’t see what’s happening in the background.

An alternative method is to hide your tag in your HTML code so that your readers can not see tag in your content. To do so, you would enter a tag like the following:

Now that you GEO Tagged your content go back to the “GETTING STARTED” page and click the “Register Your Blog” button.

You will be asked to sign up for an account – its FREE – so don’t worry. You can create an account or sign in with your existing AOL account (they own Mapquest).  Once logged in you will see a tab for your “Profile” and “My Blogs”.  Click the “My Blogs” tab and then click “Add a Blog”.

We are almost done so hang in there.  Now type in your web address (i.e. www.realtypress.us) and click “Find My RSS Feed URL” button.  Once you do then it will (or should) find your Blog RSS Feed.  Select the appropriate categories for your blog.  The next part is important so pay attention!  You have to put in your city and state in the box titled “Blogs in” and click “Change Location”.  After you have done the steps above (in the order we covered them) then click “Update Preview” and you should see your content!  Lastly click “Publish Blog” (very bottom) button and voila!  Your Blog feed will pull up to anyone looking at the local blog for your area!

And Now the moment of truth! If you followed the directions above then you should see your feed listed for your “Local Blog”!