Getting Your Real Estate Website
Off to a Good Start
These are the Top 5 - the most important things you need to do to get your new website off to a good start:
- It’s critical that you offer your visitors a way to search your local MLS listings. This is an absolute necessity. Visitors to real estate websites want to see the homes that are for sale in their area. Depending on your MLS, you may get access to an IDX MLS search capability for free, or it may come with a monthly fee attached.
You might also want to research third-party IDX MLS vendors who can provide a number of capabilities that will make a big difference in how effectively your MLS search supports your marketing efforts.
- Your website must be optimized for the search engines. We call that Basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization). At some point, you may choose to engage a dedicated SEO firm. We suggest that you start by making sure that your site is optimized for effective target keywords. Depending on your market, that may be all you need to do, in addition to adding content (#3), and obtaining incoming links (#4).
- Add custom copy, or content. First, offer your visitors a reason to work with you as opposed to any other agent in your market. Establishing a Brand is an important part of being successful in a very competitive environment. For real estate professionals. branding can also be thought of as clearly communicating a unique selling proposition (USP). Whatever you call it, it's a critical component for turning Internet visitors into leads.
Second, offer your visitors a reason to extend their stay on your site, and to return often. Add information to your website that your visitors will find useful. This information could include: neighborhood descriptions, school information, local lifestyle tips, etc.
If you offer information about buying and selling real estate, make sure that information is more valuable than the standard reports that are available everywhere. If you use a template website, make sure you change the standard content so that your visitors (and the search engines!) view your site as unique.
- There's a lot of discussion about relevant links. For the moment, keep in mind that you need a well-designed strategy for obtaining incoming links.
- Once you have traffic coming to the site, you need to “convert” that traffic. In other words, you want some of your visitors to convert into leads by contacting you via telephone or e-mail, or by registering for information on your site. Make sure it is easy for visitors to find your contact information. And, set up “calls to action” that motivate your visitors to contact you.
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