How to Compete with the Big Real Estate Sites
Real estate website optimization is not always what every agent completely understands. They know they want to be found but they may not know how. Many agents are just frustrated and tired of the big guys Zillow, Trulia, homes.com and realtor.com coming up for every real estate search known to man. How is the little guy supposed to compete?
While we may not all have the branding that these big guys have we can offer our clients and our customers something that they don’t; customize, indexable searches, and real content marketing.
Content marketing is the wave of the future. Or, at least it is right now. Google works is at such a fast pace that what worked last week may not work this week and so forth. Real estate agents practically have to keep up a full-time job of marketing and advertising in optimizing their websites which is not their main focus of business. Most real estate agents want to be selling real estate not trying to figure out how to game the system or get more hits on their website. While this is the goal, many agents just don’t know how to get there.
We work this several different real estate agents and sometimes their websites just need a little bit of tweaking and updating to really make them shine on the search engines. Peggy Wester is a real estate agent in Port Washington Wisconsin and covers the entire North Shore area from Ozaukee and Washington County. Her focus is mainly on listings. We do individualize blog posts for her listings as well as current events, real estate information, and valuable details on neighborhoods and communities. This sets her apart from even the typical blogs that you find on Trulia.
A lot of real estate agents actually blog on these big sites which, in my opinion, really only benefits the site. These big guys sit back and watch all the agents market the website for them by providing great, unique content. But why not do that on your own website?
Dave Grbich is a real estate agent in San Juan Capistrano California. He focuses primarily on neighborhoods, subdivisions and communities. When you get really detailed you find yourself at the top of the search engine list for unique content. And don’t worry about writing what someone else is already written about; it’s going to be different from your perspective and in your words. This provides a unique spin on how you would find the neighborhood or the benefits and pros and cons to a particular subdivision.
Larger brokerages may not have the time to individually blog or even write articles for their website but they can’t have agents that specifically right on their website boosting the company site as a whole. Rich and Beth Witt our real estate agents on Long Island and employee dozens of real estate agents, some with their own sites, some simply benefit from the brokerage real estate site. Many of them can guest blog on the brokerage website in turn benefiting themselves as the agent and also the website as a whole. Google is looking for fresh content, unique information, and a pleasant user experience.
Maureen Fukumoto has a slightly different real estate business located in Oahu. She runs a Help-U-Sell brokerage which assists buyers and sellers list their own Oahu property for a fraction of the cost of what a lot of real estate agents charge. She provides excellent service and this is a great niche that a lot of the big real estate sites just can’t cover. Because of this, she can set yourself apart and Google will find value in her website. She currently maintains two different websites; a personal one for local information and blogging and her Mililani Help-U-Sell website for real estate buyers and listing information.
Real estate agents that are going to tackle the search engines need to be prepared and need a plan of attack. If you just start blogging you may not have a clue what you’re doing and waste a lot of time and energy. Blogging correctly and with the right terms does take skill and practice. But the more you do it the better you’ll get. We blog, optimize, and market for a lot of different real estate agents that just simply do not have the time nor the energy to put forth in research and constant maintenance of their website. Let us see how we can start working harder for you.
More information:
The 2 Most Important SEO Factors to Remember
Keeping Things Unique