"Real Estate Internet Marketing and Website design to promote your listings better online."
Real estate agents marketing their agency and listings online understand how much value there is in being found in the search engines. No other industry is more competitive online than the real estate industry. This does not mean real estate agents/agencies are optimizing their exposure in the best possible ways, and there are still many holes to be filled.
As I write this article my intention is not to make any promises of success in the search engines but rather a guide of how to increase targeted traffic for your real estate listings.
Content and Search Engines
The biggest issue with real estate listing websites is that most of them all provide on page content dynamically. Dynamic means that all home listings for example are retrieved from a database and inserted into template web pages. Sounds great right?
Consider this fact: Search engines crawl websites for their existing on page content. If your content is dynamic then it is often cued by the website user and inserted onto a viewed webpage. Search engine spiders on the other hand do not understand how to interact with dynamically managed websites and therefore can’t crawl content. This makes ranking in the search engines most difficult.
How are your home and property listings going to ever get indexed in the search engines?
Strategic Web Ventures uses a software technology called PowerSeek SQL that has been developed to both manage websites dynamically but also take content from your database and convert it to static HTML pages automatically. Converting your real estate listings to static HTML pages, allows search engine spiders to crawl your property listings perfectly.
Organizing your property listings so that it makes sense to the consumer and the search engines is one other way to achieve better positioning in the search engines. Consider organizing your real estate in a directory format.
This example demonstrates how users can focus their search for property and navigate your content logically. When you build out a directory style website for real estate you build authority for each region which will help increase your exposure in the search engines.
We have demonstrated that this method of directory style website do much better than those standard designed dynamically driven websites.
Consumers shopping for real estate online use the web differently when trying to gather information about property of interest. They already have to do a lot of thinking when it comes purchasing real estate - You don't want them to have to think their way through your content. We use the method of Attention. Interest. Desire. Action.
Your real estate directory style website should be content rich and contain useful information applicable to each region. All regions will then rank better in the search engines and act like their own website coming up for all terms related to that topical area.
Optimizing your real estate content for premium exposure Real estate websites need to focus on providing their audience with quality content and presentation so consumers don’t have to guess their way through the website. User friendly. Content Rich.
While doing my own shopping for property online I was surprised to see too many websites that lack authority. What I mean by authority is that too many real estate websites look like they have been put together over a weekend. To position your business well in the search engines, and drive targeted website traffic... There is one phrase you need to know “Content is King”.
Write your own content!
There is no better way to gain authority than writing your own content. Granted this takes a lot of time and energy, but the end result for the long term is a return on your investment. Too many real estate companies rely on websites that provide free content to fill their websites.
Regurgitating your Competitors copy is only hurting your business. A perfect example is Google does not rank websites that provide duplicate website content. Google will rank the website that published content first over the website that regurgitates content.
If you are in real estate and you are an authority on what it is you do, then you want to demonstrate this by writing your own content. You get in the end only what you invest in your business.
Writing for your audience
If you where shopping for property online what would you like to see on a real estate website?
Provide your consumers with well-rounded real estate information and resources and you gain their confidence and authority.
Strategic Web Ventures provides consultation, marketing, design, hosting and development services for real estate businesses. Please feel free to contact us about any questions regarding this article or inquire to learn more about our services, we would be happy to speak with you.
Copyright 2003-2005 Strategic Web Ventures, LLC