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Custom WordPress: Real Estate Site(s) Consolidation And Search Indexing Retention
Goal: Affordably consolidate multiple sites into one easily managed, easily indexed site that is flexible and will grow with the business and technology.
The Primary Challenge: Use WordPress to consolidate two separate sites, one a WordPress blog hosted on a sub domain and the second a static HTML website on the primary domain, to an all encompassing WordPress blogsite hosted on the same primary domain.
Secondary Challenge: While re- establishing hundreds of pages to new permalink URLs on the consolidated site, maintain search engine indexing for all content, including any established back links.
Solution: Identify the permalink structure of the static HTML pages, properly apply 301 redirects to the new WordPress based permalink structure, all the while migrating the existing WordPress content from a subdomain into the primary domain to cohesively exist.
Result: “You guys have out done yourselves, I am kicking my self for not doing this sooner!” – Barbara S. Reeves, Mobile AL Real Estate
Similar Custom WordPress Site Consolidation Projects:
- Michael Zimmerman, Honolulu Hi Real Estate Search
- “We’re showing up on page 1 of a google search and that is way AWESOME!!! We all must be doing something right – It has been an absolute pleasure working on this re-design with you and am looking forward to our continuing partnership!!!! Thank you for all your hard work and your complete and total understanding of all our wants and needs.” Joe Stacy, Chicagoland Real Estate
More Custom WordPress:
- Custom WordPress Project: “Fees Generated Pay The Service For The Next 20 Years!” – Mike Gallo on behalf of the N.J.S.A. / VP Winston Staffing
Contributed bychris@kineticknowledge.com
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Can Agents Expect 300+ MLS To Regulate 81 Aggregators?
Can Local Real Estate Agents Expect 300+ MLS To Regulate 81 Real Estate Aggregator Sites?
Being that we do a lot of real estate listing integration into WordPress sites, this post is a relevant one for agents fighting to be visible online on a level playing field. Per ‘Geek Estate Blog’ author Justin Britt, “… my competitive nature had me checking to see if other Hawaii real estate websites were also following RETS rules and regulations. Some of them were not.”
At least this is relevant in terms of understanding the SEO benefits of publishing local addresses; understanding how those giant aggregators like Zillow & Trulia and local firms alike are competing with you when publishing addresses AND THEN ALSO understanding what compliance issues AND/ OR protections there may or may not be with your local MLS when publishing local addresses.
Give Justin Britt’s post, ‘Can MLS Companies Level The Playing Field?’ a read!
Related Posts:
What Do [Real Estate] Agents And Brokers Need From Their Site?
Contributed bychris@kineticknowledge.com
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Google Supports Crowd Sourcing, In Your Favor
Ben Rosales over at Agent Genius has a neat post on how consumers can [and are!] sourcing their answers when they search… to vet yours!
In his post titled, ‘You wondered why you should blog as a Realtor, Google is answering’ , Rosales goes on to explain how the timely nature of published content via blogsites can and will work in our favor versus those sites that never seem to move out of the top positions.
We’re always competing to be visible for various target key words & phrases, but what has changed are the varied results a person can have when they search. By narrowing a search via the many options Google offers in the left side bar when one goes looking for answers, it’s quite possible they will be able to bump those annoying sites that seem to forever hold the top positions [for their link profiles, gaming strategies or what have you] for the high value answers you may be providing on a regular basis!
I suggest giving Ben’s informative post, ‘You wondered why you should blog as a Realtor, Google is answering’ , a look 
chris@kineticknowledge.com
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You Can Still Map Real Estate Listings – See Fusion Tables!
Ever heard of Google Fusion Tables? While Google announced it was dropping their ‘real estate listings database to mapping service’, it doesn’t mean they don’t provide real estate professionals with great tools to map listings.
A FREE data management and publishing application, Fusion tables makes it easy to present any data you have, say in CSV files or spreadsheets, visually online. If you’re looking for better ways to present data in posts, Fusions Tables will enhance you ability to do it!
What can you do with Google Fusion?
- Upload your data sets from spreadsheets or CSV files
- Host your data, and then easily embed it on other sites
- Visualize your data on maps, in timelines and on charts
- Pick who can access your data; hide parts of the data if needed
- Merge data from multiple tables
- Collaborate on data with others, track changes and discussions
Three simple steps: import, display, publish.
For real estate posts a Google Fusion Map, with data applied, can display where featured real estate listings are located. It can map where you have sold homes recently, as well as charts and tables for historical sales volume and values. In addition these tables and maps can be set to be interactive, allowing both visitor commenting and also just more information for visitors who want it.
Other real estate pros have utilized market data and reports from sites like Zillow to create valuation maps. There can be specific values of homes for sale or sold, as well as locations of homes that are for sale within a certain price point. The tool is virtually limitless, allowing real estate professionals to maximize the information they want their sites to convey.
You can display school locations in an area, as well as specific information on schools, including performance, ranking and more.
You can show hospital locations, including pop ups to display in-depth information about each hospital.
Even important local businesses you endorse… and the list goes on – go check out Fusion Tables!
Contributed bychris@kineticknowledge.com
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What Do Agents And Brokers Need From Their Site?
What Do Real Estate Agents And Brokers Need From Their Sites [= brand] ?
If you’re in the real estate business and you haven’t updated your site [= your brand ] in awhile, ‘what do I really need?’ is a question you should be asking yourself!
These days, the return from a site can be much greater than many have been accustomed too with basic websites. At least a return without having to buy SEO, PPC or more traditional advertising to get traffic anywhere near it. However and no matter what you’ve seen or heard, you must start by defining a goal… everything [design, elements, search configurations, social integration & feeds, lead capture, widgets, etc.] should stem from the goal!
Questions That May Help Define ‘The Goal’
- What is the tactic? Maybe it’s consistent blogging or social networking … or both.
- What is the strategy? Maybe it’s to target home buyer and sellers with current community news or home sales data or useful education or both. Maybe it’s the best home search environment possible.
- What differentiates you and/ or your firm? Maybe you’re a luxury or distressed homes expert. Maybe you focus on buyers only.
- What is the target market? Maybe you’re in only interested in luxury listings. Maybe distressed. Maybe buyers only. Maybe all of the above.
- What is the ultimate Goal: While immediate sales are probably unrealistic in the real estate business, visibility isn’t. For some it’s straight up raw traffic, although I’d caution that when quality is within your grasp place your focus on it. With others, it’s MLS Search email subscription; others free offers to lead capture forms [i.e. 'FREE Home Appraisal', 'FREE Tax Assessment Advice', 'FREE Market Data'] and for others it’s building pipeline, maybe via driving brand engaging blog subscription. In each scenario, the answers to these questions should have everything to do with your site!
What Do You Need From A Real Estate Site?
Chances are you are not a computer programmer, but even if you’re capable the reality is that rapidly evolving software, plugin applications, security patches, core code updates, optimized hosting and the customized apps’ and design you may need makes it complicated. So, what will give you all the advantages needed with your site [ = brand] to reach your goals?
- WordPress, because it’s core code advances at the pace of the web; because it’s massive open source support makes virtually any application manageable; because it’s easily customized, added too, redesigned and day to day adjustments are mostly doable for the owner … so you’re not incurring cost each time you make a change, nor the cost of designing a site from scratch… WordPress matters for real estate!
- Managed and Optimized Hosting for WordPress. You rarely hear about it, but managed hosting for WordPress exists and it matters.
- Custom Design: Are you a differentiated, compelling brand? Is there a highly visible focus on the communities you service [Remember: it's less about you and more about useful service in communities you work in!] Are you set up to reach your goals? Does your designer have any experience with all the subtleties that go into a site that meets your goals?
- Home Search: Is there an ease for visitors to search homes. With WordPress we recommend using Diverse Solutions, which in lieu of a complete custom integration, enables you to generate search indexing for local listings. With WordPress it’s easily enclosed and managed.
- Featured Listings: Your featured listings are the money maker and your clients want visibility for their homes. Get serious about featured listings on your site!
- Search Engine Optimization: WordPress is highly spider friendly software with it’s cooperative permalink, category and tagging markup. While it doesn’t come out of the box completely ready, meticulous configuration to support as many search engine signals, including updating to remain current, is manageable.
- Blog: While it may or may not be an emphasis, and it can either be designed front and center or in the background, you should be current via use of a blog! For Brokers, we even build solutions that aggregate content into category specific channels from all the agents. It makes for a highly active current and engaging stake in local real estate news visibility for both the firm and the agents.
- Social Integration: While you never own the social network environment, it sure helps to have exposure amongst their members. And whether it’s highly visible links, automated content feeds and/ or sharing icons you need to look at how to leverage visibility for your brand in the social networks so that it supports your ultimate goal. And building a page in Facebook, for instance, that mimics your brand [= site] is also a good idea.
- Subscription: With blogs, subscription is standard via RSS; however, our experience shows people still choose to subscribe voluntarily via email. Make sure your site offers blog subscription via email. As mentioned above, most IDX offer home search email drip programs.
- Categorization & Simple Navigation: Don’t underestimate categorization’s effect for humans and for search engines. Assuming permalinks grab the category you’ve chosen into it’s URL string, it adds a spider friendly signal to the post/page’s markup … so choose your categories wisely. What’s more, you want visitors to navigate your site with ease, allowing them to drill down to the content they want. Keep categories focused and specific for them… maybe 8- 10 maximum, if possible.
- Lead Conversion: While you might deploy a series of lead capture strategies [i.e. 1) IDX driven email drip, 2) blog subscription OR 3) local offers, like 'FREE Home Appraisal', 'FREE Tax Assessment Advice', 'FREE Market Data'] the goal always includes lead conversion.
- Traffic Analysis: You cannot improve and optimize what you do not analyze – see You Simply Must Convert!!
Folks, with your site [ = your brand] we believe it all starts with the question … ‘what do I really need?’
Contributed bychris@kineticknowledge.com
What You Get With a Kinetic Sites
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