Why Real Estate Community Pages add Value and “Pull” to
Your Real Estate Website
No matter how you look at it, adding one or more comprehensive real estate community pages to your website is a wise idea.
Here’s why:
You have a website for one reason – to bring you business. That means you want the search engines to find you. And yet, the search engines favor the “big kids” on the block – Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, and the big franchises with huge “authority” websites. You can’t compete with them based on keywords like “Homes for sale in Mytown.”
You can use social media and a number of off-line methods such as magazine ads, brochures, direct mail, and even your business cards to drive visitors to your site – and you should. You can also spend money on ads on Google or Facebook. (And probably others places I don’t know about.)
Why not make the effort to get your website ranked for organic search?
If you want Google and the other search engines to send you visitors, you’ll have to give them a reason.
Canned articles from your franchise won’t do it – everyone has the same content. Even original buyer and seller advice articles aren’t likely to give you a big push.
Blog posts about specific kinds of property in your city will help more, as long as you use the correct keywords. So will posts about events, festivals, recreational opportunities, specialized services, and even restaurants.
Why? Because people in your community and people thinking of relocating to your community want that information. Meanwhile, the “big guys” don’t know about those things, so they aren’t writing about them.
In this arena, they can’t compete with you.
For example: How many people thinking of relocating to your city might be traveling with a canine companion? Your well-written, informative post about dog parks in your community could draw them in.
At the same time that those posts are prompting the search engines to find you, they’re pleasing the people who come to your site. After all, they aren’t visiting you merely to find a search function – they can find those all over the Internet.
They want good information – so give it to them.
Take it one step farther with a winning combination…
A static real estate community page plus supporting blog posts
In my opinion, the very best combination to help you be indexed
by the search engines and appreciated by visitors is a comprehensive community page, accompanied/ followed by posts about everything from specific neighborhoods, to specific kinds of properties, to those events, festivals, etc. that I mentioned before.
Post on your own website blog, AND post on Active Rain. Then promote those posts on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. Of course each post should link back to the community page on your site and to other similar posts.
Taken together, these pages and posts will do more than inform your readers and help you rank in the search engines. They’ll show you as the expert in your territory or your niche.
Add links within your community page to the schools, city services, service organizations, local non-profit groups, etc. and your site will be even more valuable to visitors. (Do be sure to set them to open in a new window – you don’t want people to go away.)
What information goes into a comprehensive real estate community page?
When I write real estate community pages, I use a loose outline, moving things around depending upon how the topics flow together and what seems most interesting. In general, here’s how I organize the content:
- Location
- Notable aspect (ie: affluence; greening; golfing; school sports; waterfront)
- Real Estate market
- History
- Today – what the community is known for, events that changed the community
- Recreation and activities – places to go, things to see and do
- Annual events
- Night life
- Jobs – major employers – commute time
- Education, including colleges, universities, and trade schools within 100 miles.
- Shopping
- Dining
- Lodging
- Transportation – airports, both commercial and private
Where does all that content come from?
Research and more research. I start with Wikipedia for a general overview, history, and hints about what to look for as I move on. Then I visit sites such as City Data to get demographics and information such as population, most common occupations, major employers, etc. I also visit the Chamber of Commerce, historical societies, and the city pages.
After that I just keep searching under the name of the city. Sometimes I find interesting tidbits that the other sites don’t mention. For instance, some neighborhood groups have their own web pages or blogs. These offer insight into small, local events that Chamber of Commerce sites don’t mention.
Sometimes I also find agent sites that contain the Wikipedia information – copied word for word. (Not useful for search engine optimization or interesting to visitors.)
I either make notes or copy and paste from all these sources, putting the information into one or more word documents to organize later.
Click here to arrange for Copy by Marte to write your next real estate community page.
When it’s time to begin writing…
I look at what I have, decide on the order in which to present it, open a new page, and create some headers.
As I proceed, I cut information from my notes and paste it under the appropriate headers, to be re-written in my own words. At that point I either delete it from the “notes” document or highlight it in color so I’ll know I’ve already used that information.
For instance, I always have a header that says “real estate” and has bits of information from various sources. Some of it overlaps, but I pull it all over as the first step. Then I read and re-read before re-writing it.
Since that information comes from various sources, I often have to contact my client to get to the truth. City Data might say the median home price is $250,000 while Zillow or Trulia says it’s $280,000.
The final step in writing real estate community pages…
When I’ve finished writing, the final step rests with my client. I ask him or her to review the entire document, checking for inaccuracies.
After all, I’ve gathered information from the Internet, and some of it may have either been inaccurate in the first place or have changed since my source was written.
Click here to arrange for Copy by Marte to write your next real estate community page.
Do you need more than one community page?
It all depends on the community or communities you serve. If you serve an area with several small, distinctive communities or a large city with small distinctive neighborhoods, then the answer is yes.
Your individual real estate community pages will assist incoming buyers in deciding which of those communities or neighborhoods suits them best.
That, of course, will help you as you strive to find the right house for your buyers. You won’t have to spend time searching for answers about those communities, or take them on an extensive tour of each community.
Remember the photos…
Whether you write your own community pages or enlist my help, do use photos. Let your visitors get a visual idea of the community in addition to your written description.
~~~
About your blog…
Once your real estate community page is in place, supplement its information with blog posts.
Start with your listings, using plenty of photos and descriptions that make your web visitors eager to visit in person.
Then go on to community events, either before or after the fact. Before the fact you can talk about the fun people will have or the organization that will benefit from the event. If you attend, then post photos and narratives after the fact.
Blog about your restaurants, your sports venues, your school sports teams, or the variety of stores in your local shopping mall. In short, write about everything that could be of interest to someone who lives there or who is thinking of living there.
Be sure to use good keywords to assure that those who are searching the web will find both your community pages and your community posts.
Town image Image courtesy of rosezombie at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
SEO button courtesy of Stuart Miles at freedigitalphotos.net
Blank diagram Image courtesy of olovedog at FreeDigitalPhotos.net