Your personal real estate website, when written well, can attract the clients you want most. It’s all a matter of filling it with information that reveals your expertise, your personality, and of course your location.
Every page should reference your location and the area you serve, just so visitors know they’re in the right place. Amazingly, a good number of personal real estate websites omit that important detail, even on the home page.
Let’s begin with the bio, because research shows that the “about” page is the 3rd most often read page on a service provider’s website.
The bio on your personal real estate website summarizes your expertise and reveals your personality – or at least it should.
It tells readers where you are and who you serve. If you have a niche, it reveals why you were drawn to that 
niche and perhaps how you gained your expertise. It reassures people about your commitment to their success.
After that, the personal information you share gives potential clients reasons to see you as being like them in some way. That connection can make them begin to trust you even before you meet in person. This page explains why that personal connection is so important.
Then your informational pages serve to reinforce whatever you’ve said about your expertise. Your blog posts do the same, and can also go a bit farther in letting your personality shine through.
Your listings, as displayed on your website, give sellers important information.
They show whether you either are an expert or hire an expert to photograph your listings. Then they show your skill in writing compelling property descriptions. They also demonstrate your attention to detail.
In short, they reveal how much effort you make to present your listings to the marketplace.
Informational pages can/should be more than just buyer and seller advice.
Buyer and seller advice pages are good, but don’t stop with generic advice. And even for generic advice, please don’t use the canned advice that everyone else in your franchise uses. Add your own thoughts to the mix. If you have a niche, your personal real estate website should also include advice that is specific to that niche.
For instance, if you serve a niche such as probate, divorce, or short sales, you can include pages that outline pitfalls to avoid and steps to be taken in the proper order. Your blog posts can reinforce that with stories about people who got into difficulties for not following those steps – or for whom things went smoothly because they did. (No names or places, of course.)Even if your specialty is selling expired listings or FSBO’s, you can include related advice pages.
Those pages can include much of the same information that you’re mailing if you use my pre-written prospecting letters.
Community pages on your personal real estate website show visitors that you know your territory.
When you offer information about your community, your neighborhoods, and your subdivisions, you show visitors that you know your market. Additionally, you demonstrate to out-of-area buyers that you’re the best person to help them choose the location that’s right for them.
I think community pages are important, so when I write them for clients, I spend a good deal of time on research. If you write your own I urge you to do the same. Please don’t just use what you find on Wikipedia. It’s a good place to start, but the text is boring and using it won’t help your search results at all.
I only mention that because in my research, I often come across personal real estate websites with community pages taken dry word for dry word from Wikipedia.
When you make the effort, you can often find all sorts of interesting tidbits that don’t show up on Wikipedia or on the Chamber of Commerce site. Find them and use them. You might even learn something about your own community that you didn’t know.
Your blog posts add that extra something…
Your blog posts, both on your personal real estate website and on sites such as Active Rain, can allow your visitors to see more of both who you are and what you know.
Yes, you can and should use your blog posts to showcase new listings, just sold information, etc., and it’s good to share advice and information about your territory or niche. But don’t stop with real estate related information. Even posting a picture of a flower, a beautiful sunset, or the family dog, reveals more of who you are.
When you write about personal experiences, your readers become better acquainted with you. It doesn’t matter if you write about your work with a local non-profit, the fun you had at a local event, or the bounty from your garden. These posts let the real you shine through and give your visitors confidence in you as the kind of person they want to associate with.
After you write those posts, use social media to invite more people to come and read. That will not only increase your search rankings, but could directly bring you new clients.
Your personal real estate website should be the hub of your marketing efforts.
Everything else you do can and should lead prospects back to learn more about you and how you serve clients.
If you’re a new agent, or if you’ve just decided to build a website, don’t panic because you can’t get it all done at once. Just make it a work in progress and keep adding as you go along. Then invite your social media friends over to see the new pages.
Niche graphic courtesy of stuart miles @ freedigitalphotos.net
