To build a real estate website that's beautiful, modern, and high-converting, you certainly need to have a scientific approach, like considering the search engine optimization (SEO) ramifications. Having said that, an artistic approach is equally as important.
For instance, while you need to have the ideal mix of popular, competitive, long-tail keywords that relate to your local market in your content (the science-y side of IDX website optimization), those keywords won't help you if the pages on which they reside don't feature much (or any) unique, attractive, and enriched copy and multimedia that resonates with your visitors (the artistic aspect of crafting your site).
So … what does this mean for you and your website? For starters, it means you need to have a well-thought-out plan for gradually growing your site from the ground up and consistently calibrating it so you earn more traffic to and leads from it — both of which you can learn about in our dedicated real estate marketing guide for agents.
Download our guide, "The Art of Building a Lead-Generating Real Estate Website: A 10-Step Guide for Agents" to learn how you can get more leads from your IDX site, and continue reading below to get even more expert tips and tricks for your real estate lead gen strategy.
Visuals were deemed the second-most important type of content by marketers in 2016, with 37% of them noting photos, graphics, and videos were vital components to their online success (side note: Blogging was deemed the most important content type.
It's no coincidence these professionals place a lot of their digital marketing energy on crafting highly appealing visual assets for their online strategies: Many people prefer to check out brand website pages that aren't entirely copy-intensive, but rather have a fair amount multimedia mixed throughout.
In your case, this means you ought to incorporate attractive images spotlighting listings in your area and the community in general, infographics that compile local housing market data, and plenty of videos that detail who you are, why you're the best real estate agent around, and what makes your brand the right choice for buyers and/or sellers.
Write truly original and engaging site copy (in other words, avoid producing plain, generic copy for each site page).While you should definitely place an emphasis on including incredible-looking images and videos throughout your website, don't forget the importance of writing up absorbing copy for each page that expounds upon your brand and market in detail so you can "win" the long-tail, long-term game of SEO.
The path to obtaining more visitors — and leads — is to build numerous site pages with relevant, long-tail keywords.
To generate lots of real estate leads, you need to generate lots of website traffic, and the path to obtaining more visitors is building out numerous, lengthy site pages optimized with a strong mix of relevant keywords.
For instance, your IDX pages for each different home and market segment (e.g. "Single-Family Homes for Sale in X Neighborhood"; "$500K+ Listings in Y Community") should not only feature the best properties up for sale or rent in your area, but also a wealth of search-optimized info about the residences or neighborhoods in question.
When it comes to websites for Realtors, there is no such thing as adding too many details. There are dozens of pages you can create, and each one you push live on your site needs to be filled with the aforementioned imagery as well as a significant amount of copy to accompany that collateral so you can paint the perfect picture of your market, make it easy (and even enjoyable!) for your visitors to continually browse your site, and — over time — reinforce your real estate lead gen efforts.
Make it easy for visitors to find your contact info across your website to increase the odds some of them reach out."No duh, Captain Obvious." We get it: It's pretty apparent to most agents and brokers out there they need to add their phone number, email and office addresses, social media links, and other contact details on each website page. What's maybe not so obvious, though, is just how effective it can be to affix this information to the body copy of pages and posts, not just in the header and footer of each one.
Say you're producing a real estate blog post for your IDX website on how to carefully research markets in which prospective buyers may want to purchase properties.
In the middle of your entry — in between your advice on how to peruse the particulars of a given town or city — you can include a tip that calls for contacting a real estate pro in the community in question, add a call to action to call or email you to learn more about your market right below that copy, and link to another site page with a lead capture form.
It's the attention to detail that can allow you to get your contact info in front of your website visitors practically everywhere they turn on your site … and all without seemingly plainly promotional or overly sales-y — an important objective to accomplish so as not to annoy possible leads and prevent them from converting.
Have a real estate marketing expert examine your IDX site to ensure you've optimized it as well as you possibly can.There will surely be times when you're optimizing your Realtor website and won't know what else you can do to perfect your web presence. The ideal solution in this scenario isn't to fret and throw your hands in the air — instead, contact a real estate marketing service that can give you insights as to how you can gradually improve your site over the long run.
Whether you hired a professional website designer to build the bulk of your site or use a templated real estate site provider, there are services available to help you upgrade elements big and small on your site and make sure you're able to convert your visitors into new prospects with relative ease.
Spending some of your real estate marketing spend to get a second pair of eyes to audit your website, make adjustments to it, and provide optimal next steps for you to continue to augment it on your own is certainly worth the expense. Just be sure that whomever you work with has a history of helping agents like you amplify their digital presence.
Download our "The Art of Building a Lead-Generating Website" guide today to improve your real estate lead generation.
What are some other website-building best practices you abide by with your site? Share your optimization tips with us below!
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Published on February 17, 2017
Source: The Right Way to Build a Real Estate Website: 10 Simple Optimization Steps [Ebook]
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