Building a New Real Estate Home Page
Brokers, so how are you going to deal with Google’s Universal Search?
How are people going to find your site? If you didn’t already realize it, you’re already scrapping it out for increasingly limited screen space.
Google has already dropped local search results into its organic search results (see Google Implements Local Search Results). Take a search for “realtor san francisco“, for example. Zephyr Real Estate is the highest ranked naturally occurring search result on the front page, but it’s been squeezed out at the top of the fold by Saxe Real Estate and Herth Real Estate.
Individual Realtor’s blogs are already nipping at your heels; Portland Real Estate Blog is now the #3 result returned for search on “portland real estate” – other markets will be similar I presume. It they’re not there now, they should be soon. Now you’ll likely get squeezed out by video in other key search words.
If you’re really going drive search engine traffic to your site, forget about your homepage. Marketing a single destination is going to be an expensive and frustrating process with very little in terms of guaranteed results.
Instead, focus on your listing pages. The listing page is the new landing page.
How should you do this?
Make sure your listing pages fully indexable by search engine spiders. Dump the obscure database calls in your URLs – take a page from the blogs and fill your URLs with keyword rich permalinks.
Work with the search engines, not against them. Whether it be Google or Trulia – ultimately, it doesn’t matter how your listings are found. Your goal should be to keep people there once they’ve arrived. Focusing on avoiding the dreaded “bounce”.
Speak like a human being. I don’t know what sec-lit, inst-hw or bi-rang means. Don’t just spew out every field in the MLS, show me what I want and arrange it such a way it makes sense to the average Joe
Learn from Amazon.com. Build some intelligence into your listing pages and cross sell me some similar properties if the one I’ve arrived at doesn’t meet my expectations.
Give me a rich experience. Listing pages are almost universally boring. Like this one from RE/MAX or this one from Coldwell Banker. Build in new media. Let your Realtors add video or audio descriptions of the property.
Seth Godin says it best. Blow up your home page. Your listings will literally become your new “home” pages.
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19 Comment(s)
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Joe French | May 24, 2007 | Reply
Since this is my first post I would like to say hello all!
Joel, this is a great subject. Concentration on the listings pg as the new landing page is a smart move. One draw back is that it may create a fragmentation of the marketing focus. Not to say this is a bad thing, perhaps it can be viewed as a more stable dissemination of content.
Thing is though it will have an impact on the ‘offline’ way in which consumers converse about a site, which is basically always by name. Losing the welcome mat (not WellcomeMat which I think everyone should keep..
, may reduce the top of mind awareness in the consumer. I saw a post by Tony from Forsalebylocals about Inline video search results, a really good and though provoking piece.
I do see more investment being put into getting the listings pg out into the open(as it should be for the consumer), but this will be coupled with additional ‘brand’ compensation into offline mediums so as to make up for loss of the traditional index gateway. At VideoHomes we see the home pg as being the best connection between the ‘offline’ world and the ‘online’ one, for it leverages what we like to call “water cooler conversationsâ€?. As the web continues to mashup and convulse the resulting chaos results in an inevitable heightened importance of the one stable variable in the equation, that of human interaction rather than the almighty algorithm. The importance of the home pg will always be held up by the consumer’s ‘offline’ conversation. Trick is to bring the home pg allot closer to the most relevant item, this is in essence the core philosophy of http://www.VideoHomes.com
Joe French
Terry Van Horne AKA Wemaster T | May 24, 2007 | Reply
Excellent blog! I would like to point out that I did not receive the same results as you and your users should know that with Google’s personalization of results increasing in scope and magnitude people should be very careful about assuming that what they see is what everyone sees. Personalization IMO, is being tracked not only by cookies but they could also be keeping track of IP’s (mine hardly ever changes because my machines are never turned off), if you are logged into a Google account etc. There are many ways to implement personalization, cookies aren’t the only way!
Bottom line is the days of reporting “I saw this in the results” will almost certainly need a disclaimer as personalization could get to the point where results are totally personal with no one receiving the exact same results.
John Schroeder | May 24, 2007 | Reply
“Make sure your listing pages fully indexable by search engine spiders. Dump the obscure database calls in your URLs – take a page from the blogs and fill your URLs with keyword rich permalinks.”
I have to confess that even after having a blog(s) for just over a year now I don’t understand how to make the above statement work. How do I do this to this listing for example-
http://www.madisonpreferred.com/listings/detail.php?lid=15306863&limit=0&offset=0&aid=012300103&oid=012300003&temp=1021&aname=John+%26+Vicky+Schroeder&aimg=1&agent_hasfeat=8&&posc=1&post=8&cfq=feat%3D1%26aid%3D012300103%26temp%3D1021%26aname%3DJohn%2B%2526%2BVicky%2BSchroeder%26aimg%3D1%26agent_hasfeat%3D8%26SRSearchDate%3D1180016171%26SRRecordCount%3D8%26SRPage%3D1%26SRPageCount%3D1%26SRPageLinks%3D6
Hawaii Life | May 24, 2007 | Reply
Great post. I really like what you said about cross selling other properties. I have actually been working on that on my own site for the past week. I let you know how it goes when I launch that feature.
Another good point is not just spitting out all the MLS info you have. But you should also think about not limiting the information either. Originally, we had limited information on our website, trying to get visitors to contact us for more info like taxes, assessed property value, previously listed price, etc. Once we opened up all the info to the users, our conversion rates went way up. Why I don’t know. But we went from getting a few leads a week to a few leads a day.
You can see an example of our detail page with the additional info at:
http://www.hawaiilife.com/property190992.html
Incredible Agent | May 25, 2007 | Reply
Joel, Another great post. I agree completely. We all have to remember there are only 10 spots on the front page of a search result. You have to ask the question whether you think you can beat out all the large companies paying big bucks to get above you in the search results or the bloggers who are working everyday to create fresh content that Google loves. Let’s face it…it’s an uphill battle for everyone including the big companies. Especially with all the junk that Google keeps throwing in above the real search results.
When will the brokers and agents realize it’s in their best interest to let the search engines use their home listings to drive traffic back to their site? They have a lot of unique information that many websites would love to have. In return for that information they will get targeted traffic back to their site. Why is this so hard for so many to grasp?
Someday it will be more important for brokers and agents to post their listings on the web than it will be for them to post it in the MLS. That day is not very far off. In fact it may have come already and we just don’t know it.
John – Your ridiculously long url makes me laugh. The only way to accomplish a shorter URL is to have your programmer change the URL to something smaller & with the “title” of your home. (ie: http://www.madisonpreferred.com/homes/great-home-in-bristol-wisconsin.php) That’s how we do it at Incredible Agent. (shameless plug) It tends to work better for the Search Engines.
Louisville Real Estate | May 25, 2007 | Reply
Blogging is such an important tool for Realtors now, every realtor who wants to keep up with the game should really get involved. The best part is, it’s so easy there’s no reason not to!
Justin Smith | May 25, 2007 | Reply
Hi Joel,
I think this is a really important subject that needs to be discussed amongst real estate agents. Instead of wasting so much time and energy on optimizing a home page for “your city real estate”, you could be creating hundreds of different landing pages with blog posts or by traditional means… I’m noticing now more than ever people coming to our site through subpages rather than home pages. It ties into the long tail concept.
Thanks for pointing this out. The link for Seth Godin is great.
Robert Melton | May 26, 2007 | Reply
Cross-selling of properties? I’m not sure that is a wise idea. Most listing pages are pretty cluttered and don’t adequately display the pictures of the home that the person has already expressed an interest in.
Jonathan Dalton | May 27, 2007 | Reply
I’ve been using blog pages as single-property sites for a while now. Much better SERP that way. But I’ve not leveraged them nearly to the degree that I could or should … I like your idea of the cross-sale. I’ve got individual city searches on my primary site (which I’d rather have on the blog but I’m fighting a coding battle) … adding even those links to the Homes for Sale page would be a boost.
shaun mclane | May 29, 2007 | Reply
Love the idea of cross-marketing listings like Amazon. Never really thought of that.
John Schroeder | May 30, 2007 | Reply
RE:
John – Your ridiculously long url makes me laugh. The only way to accomplish a shorter URL is to have your programmer change the URL to something smaller & with the “titleâ€? of your home. (ie: http://www.madisonpreferred.com/homes/great-home-in-bristol-wisconsin.php) That’s how we do it at Incredible Agent. (shameless plug) It tends to work better for the Search Engines.
Thanks Incredible Agent…I have received some great advice outside of the comments as well.
Charles Turner | May 30, 2007 | Reply
So many (expensive and time consuming) tools… Which brings the best return? Let me know when you figure it out. The Portland Real Estate Blog has bounced around the top Google’s rank for “Portland Real Estate” for months now. Often getting to number two but never getting above RMLS.com for the number 1 spot (number two on Yahoo right now too). The financial cost of blogging is low but it time consuming.
We’ve started using http://www.singlepropertysites.com for our listings. Each listing is its own website: http://www.1907SWCarolina.com (buy this listing). We could do the same from within our main real estate website (TurnerRealtors.com) but the ease and professionalism of the SinglePropertySites hasn’t convinced us to do it internally.
Robert Melton | Jun 2, 2007 | Reply
I heard there was a new look to KW.com . Can’t say I paid enough attention to the old look to notice a difference but I figured I would let you know since this post is still pretty fresh.
Roanoke Virginia Agent | Jun 20, 2007 | Reply
My real estate blog already outperforms most, if not all, of the big brokers and high dollar agents in Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Power to the little people!
Looking forward to reading Seth’s post…looking for some new ideas.
Peter Toner | Mar 23, 2009 | Reply
Blogs, WordPress blogs in particular are relatively easy to set up and are already search engine friendly right out of the box.
At http://www.webrealestatetools.com (shameless plug for a new service) we show real estate agents step by step, how to set one up and get high ranking on Google, Yahoo etc
Overland Park Real Estate | Mar 30, 2009 | Reply
Joel,
Thanks for linking to this post again, a great refresher.
Mike
Hawaii Real Estate Reporter | Apr 7, 2009 | Reply
Title of this post should be “SEO”ing your real estate homepage. Anyways, good write up Joel, very on point.
Riera Rossello | May 8, 2009 | Reply
Hi, from the island of Menorca (Spain).
It is a fascinating article, very interesting. We will certainly look at some of your hints very closely about listing pages in google for our own real estate in Menorca.
As an estate agent specialised in holiday rentals, it is very important to have a good position in Google. We depend very much, as an island based company, in clients overseas.
Estate Taxes | Nov 12, 2009 | Reply
Great topic. A helpful guideline for everyone. It is a great opporunity to share something about this. This will surely help everyone who plans to put up a business.