Takeaways:
- The main purpose of your real estate website should be to help potential buyers and sellers.
- You should pack your website with community pages filled with information and data that gives your clients a good idea of what the community is like.
- Most homebuyers who are relocating will search online to learn more about their new community; your website will lead potential buyers and sellers to you as the local expert.
Contrary to popular belief, the primary objective of your real estate website is not to be about you. The main purpose should be to help potential buyers and sellers.
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Helping potential clients starts with having quality, helpful content on your website. You have your property search — that’s a necessity. But do you have useful community content?
The best real estate agents know their communities inside and out. Are you positioning yourself as an expert on your communities? Your website needs pages on every community in which you do business.
You should pack your community pages with information and data that give your clients a good idea of what the community is like, and those pages help them decide whether they want to live in that community.
Most homebuyers who are relocating will search online to learn more about their new community. If they find your website, they’ll see you are knowledgeable about the community and likely contact you for more information or assistance in purchasing a new home — but only if you provide quality, useful content.
Although community pages require additional work on your part, they will help you stand out to potential clients and position you as a local real estate expert.
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Here are five tips to build your business through quality community content:
1. Include useful and consistent information on every page
Include at least the following information on each page:
- Schools and ratings
- Accessibility to amenities
- Demographics
- Crime rate
- Current median home values
- Access to public transportation
- Parks and other attractions
- Anything special about the community or its history
Community pages don’t just tell your clients about a community. They also say a lot about you, how you do business and whether you are familiar with the community.
2. Research the community well
Gather information from online sources such as the city’s website, Wikipedia, city data (City-Data.com), NeighborhoodScout, Foursquare, Yelp, the community’s Facebook pages and even TripAdvisor forums.
These online resources offer a wealth of information including cost of living, average home prices, local attractions, parks, demographics, culture, community forums, history, etc.
Also, contact the local Chamber of Commerce to get the inside scoop. And it never hurts to explore the community yourself to experience it firsthand.
3. Use community widgets on your website
Graphiq (formerly known as FindTheBest) provides community-specific widgets with community data that you can easily place on your website. Using these widgets could save you a lot of research time and allow you to focus on selling homes.
To see an example of the Graphiq community widgets, click here.
4. Include calls to action on each page
Now that you know how to write useful community pages, do your website visitors know what to do with that information? You need prominent calls to action placed throughout the community profile.
Use your community information pages to promote your expertise. Use phrases such as “Contact the No. 1 resource for (insert community name here) to help you find your dream home today.”
5. Promote your community pages
One of the best ways to promote any Web page, article or blog post is through social media. Some of the most popular social media channels are: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest.
A large percentage of the population will visit at least one of these sites each day. Every real estate professional should be using these social media platforms to promote their business.
Include relevant photos to enhance the visual aspect of your community pages. Also include social sharing buttons and widgets to help others share your content.
You can also promote your community pages by improving your search engine optimization (SEO). Effective SEO is necessary so your community pages can be found through an online search.
Search engines such as Google require that your website be useful and informative if you want to appear high in the search engine results. SEO is determined based on complicated algorithms.
However, the more valuable and helpful your information is, the higher your website will appear on search engine results. If your pages are shared with others or linked to or visited often, your SEO rank and online visibility will increase. The more people are able to find your community pages online, the more leads you’ll generate.
This should go without saying, but do not plagiarize your content. If you pull community data or information from another source, remember to cite your source. Search engines notice duplicate content and penalize for it, so keep yours original.
If your community content is informative and interesting and you spend time organizing it and promoting it, you will position yourself as a local expert.
Web traffic will be directed to your websites when questions or searches about the community come up, which will create more and more visitors as more people frequent your site.
Your online visitors will be more likely to do business with you when you have strong, quality community content that shows you are the local expert.
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Jarad Hull is the CEO at Blueroof360.
