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’

1. What is the tactic? Maybe it’s consistent blogging or social networking … or both.
2. 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.
3. What differentiates you and/ or your firm? Maybe you’re a luxury or distressed homes expert. Maybe you focus on buyers only.
4. What is the target market? Maybe you’re in only interested in luxury listings. Maybe distressed. Maybe buyers only. Maybe all of the above.
5. 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?

1. 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!
2. Managed and Optimized Hosting for WordPress. You rarely hear about it, but managed hosting for WordPress exists and it matters.
3. 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?
4. 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.
5. 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!
6. 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.  
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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?’

Some useful Business Blogging tips, ideas & information from our sister blog over at Kinetic Knowledge:

• Should you Real Estate Blog more for search engines or for humans?
• Why your Real Estate Blog is a form of media
• Search Engine Advantage: Real Estate Blog content or Real Estate Blog technology?
• The skinny on content and blog platform ownership
• Information about a new form of comment spam
• An impressive Real Estate Blogging success story in Los Angeles CA
• and over at CyberStars Blog… Allen F. Hainge interviews Kinetic Knowledge about why Real Estate Blogs are effective Business Marketing Tools!

Real Estate Blogsites/ Kinetic Blogs: There are many free blog solutions; however, not one is completely prepared to meet the exact brand, design, feature, security, content control and search optimization needs of a serious business. With our service you see leading-edge business blog solutions, branded design, ongoing education, various content creation options [custom or automated ghost blogging] and highly accountable customer support. Our intention is to serve client business requirements, while maximizing their marketing, advertising and public relations advantage, for a painless cost.

For Standard Real Estate Blogsite Build, Services and Feature Add-On Pricing Click Here

At Kinetic Knowledge LLC / Real Estate Blogsites^TM we believe in adding tremendous value. Clients come first – we can’t succeed unless you do!