Using Wordpress to sell Real Estate
The guys at Realivent have been doing some really interesting things lately, most recently creating a real estate specific Wordpress theme.
This is an idea that’s been floating around for a while (see Do Single Property Websites Sell Homes?) but it’s nice to see someone stepping up to bat and creating some templates specifically designed to show a property. (And releasing them to the community as well).
If that’s not enough, they’ve also developed a number of widgets and plugins for Wordpress blogs; including featured listing plugin, home search plugin and property watch form, and they’re also using WordPress MU to power a network of individual property blogs.
The idea behind all of these initiatives is to take advantage of Wordpress’ inherent SEO advantages and get the best search engine placement for your listings.
This is a smart idea. Wordpress is by far my favorite blog platform, partly due to its Google friendliness but mainly because of the sheer amount of customization you can do very easily to the software.
Much of the development of these projects is still very early stages, but I definitely think Realivent is on to a winning idea.
P.S. Looking for more Wordpress themes? Check out 83 Beautiful Wordpress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen from Smashing Magazine
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20 Comment(s)
3 Trackback(s)
- From Using Wordpress to sell Real Estate | Mar 3, 2007
- From Davidnewcondos - MyBlogLog | Mar 13, 2007
- From Small Business Blogging | Aug 13, 2007
matt | Mar 3, 2007 | Reply
Thanks Joel, for the kind words…
Our goal is to make a full real estate websites in less then 5 minutes, using plugins and widgets. No other platform, besides wordpress, would let me extend it this easily and quickly. I love it.
housereview | Mar 3, 2007 | Reply
What a nice use of WP! Well done.
Hope you’re not using the version recent 2.0.11, as it has a security hole.
Ben | Mar 3, 2007 | Reply
FINALLY! Wordpress is awesome and this is great looking stuff. Thanks Joel for posting and thanks to Realivent for working on this. Can’t wait to use the plugins.
Kevin Boer | Mar 3, 2007 | Reply
These guys are on to something, that’s for sure. There are a ton of Wordpress widgets out there, but not a lot of real-estate specific ones.
John Schroeder | Mar 3, 2007 | Reply
What a cool idea. I have been going back and forth in my head over the benefit of single listing sites…this just made up my mind. Creating the entire site in a matter of minutes!!! It’s all about the eyeballs that these sites generate. I bet GoDaddy loves the whole blog thing. Domain Sales and all.
Now if I can just get Typepad to come out with some useful Real Estate tools.
matt | Mar 3, 2007 | Reply
Wow,
didn’t know you guys got so excited about wordpress…I would have made a bigger deal about this sooner. I would guess that most Realtors have some really cool ideas for widgets but think it is too hard to make. Most widgets can be made in less then a day…and I’m always willing to help.
Thanks Joel, for all the traffic
Ahmed Anies | Mar 4, 2007 | Reply
I’m as a real estate agent is very interested in the future of real estate,we must follw everything about real estate…
So I found your article as a window to look at the future of real estate.
Ahmed Anies
( Egyptian Real estate Agent )
( Egyptian Real Estate BLOGGER )
Phone: (002)+ 016 1334420
Email: info@egypt-realestate-agent.com
site: http://www.egypt-realestate-agent.com
REBlogGirl | Mar 4, 2007 | Reply
I love it. They did a great job and really used a stable platform to do it on. Very impressed and glad to see them giving back with quality plugins and a great theme. Thanks for the other links, Joel. Very cool.
Incredible Agent | Mar 4, 2007 | Reply
I’ve often thought wordpress is far more powerful as a content management system than simply a blogging platform. As it gets developed further there could be some useful WP extensions just for real estate. I can think of a few just off the top of my head.
In regards to SEO, I agree WP is very SEO friendly, but I don’t find that “Realivent” in this case for several reasons:
1.It takes far too long time to actually show up in Google once you launch your new domain. (This is not the case if you posted the home on an already established domain like propblogs.com)
2. Home Searchers don’t search for “123 E. Main St., Anytown, USA”. The majority search for “Anytown Real Estate” or “Anytown Homes”, etc.
3. You really don’t have any time to develop any Pagerank to a site like this. It takes years to develop a good Pagerank, so it’s best to establish links to one site with all your home listings on it.
4. Depending on market conditions, the home may already be sold by the time home buyers actually get to the site. This is my argument against all one property websites in general.
I will say this is a good tool in your arsenal to help you land more listings.
Andrew | Mar 4, 2007 | Reply
I like wp and have been using it since it was launched years ago. However, I wouldn’t say the “platform” is google friendly. Google is attracted to content. If you write a lot of content on your site Google will find you. I understand what you are saying but blogs are seo friendly because content is king. Google doesn’t care what the platform is. Google wants text to index.
Black Tie Todd | Mar 6, 2007 | Reply
The discussion about the Google friendliness of WP has more to do with content and context of a given blog than it does time on the web. Certainly, as time goes forward the chances of gaining a higher page rank do go up, but it is the content and context that catapults a site. My own blog has only been live for 12 months, yet receives a 5/10 by Google’s pagerank. Search for SE Michigan real estate and my blog pops on the first page, usually the first slot. Of course, it doesn’t pop high for a bunch of other search terms, but I haven’t paid a dime in SEO and paid attention to key phrases, topics and articles relating to SE Michigan real estate.
Campbell Computer Services | Aug 13, 2007 | Reply
This is a great example of the power of blogging to transform small business. I am sending my friend a link to this. She is in real estate sales. I have been trying to explain to her the social networking power that blogs can deliver. It’s amazing how hard it can be to get that point across to people who think the internet is Internet Explorer.
Thanks for the links to the real estate plugins. They are just what I needed for her site.
Abbotsford Real Estate | Sep 22, 2007 | Reply
I am still using blogger for my realty blog. I am going to make the switch ASAP. There real estate theme idea is pretty cool. Thanks for sharing..
fastrealestate | Nov 19, 2007 | Reply
We’ve recently setup the wordpressMU system for our agents to use. In effect they can claim their domain prefix as a subdomain and then leverage off the age and trust of fastrealestate to rank quite quickly in the search results. Our test blogs have shown outstanding results in the search engines after a very short time span. I think agents should use the bog as a tool in conjunction with their normal site, keep the content unique and use the blog to showcase feature properties and articles. It’s a fact that most agents are way behind when it come to using this type of technology.
Jonathan | Dec 13, 2007 | Reply
WP is a great platform for blogging. While leveraging off of an existing domain via a subdomain is a great tool, I suggest that every capable agent have their own blog at their own domain or subdomain, e.g. blog.mydomain.com. But besides hosting a blog with great content, blogging often at various content relevent blogs and linking back to your blog is essential. Black Tie Todd, for example, as racked up hundreds of such links to build his PR 5. This isn’t rocket science, but you need to have a true passion for it or hire someone who does. . .
Sharon | Dec 14, 2007 | Reply
WP is by far the best blogging platform. I need to switch to that myself.
Rob @ Real Estate Chocolate - Ridgefield, CT Real Estate | Apr 10, 2008 | Reply
I’ve been doing the single property sites for years and they are awesome.
Great for helping buyers decide to visit. Great for providing value to sellers.
Well worth the cost.
Zachary Katz | Apr 22, 2008 | Reply
I just wrote article #1 of a series on how to turn your WordPress website into a real estate CMS — it’s really quite simple once you’ve got the right plugins and categories set up.
Building a Real Estate Website in Wordpress - Part 1
huntsville | May 19, 2008 | Reply
I am looking for word press real estate templates. Any info on that?
Chris Brake | Aug 4, 2008 | Reply
We think wordpress is awesome. All of our websites are wordpress sites. We love how much control you have over them. I tell everyone I know that they should be using wordpress sites. Check out http://www.homequestgroup.com and see what we have done with wordpress. Great post joel, keep them coming.