For my upcoming “most Internet-advertised” listing, I — naturally — want a website for the property. There are lots of opinions out there about the efficacy of single-property websites (see, for instance, what Mary McKnight, Greg Swann, and Joel Burslem have said).
Here’s my take: they provide
-
Great property marketing — If done well, a website provides a convenient place to get out your marketing message. The property I reviewed yesterday, for instance, has its own web site — www.655-14thAvenue.com — which is very easy to remember.
- Terrible SEO — No matter how well done, a single property web site is not going to have good SEO since it’ll be competing with sites like Movoto and Trulia for searches like, “Menlo Park Fair Oaks real estate” and “Homes in Fair Oaks neighborhood” and “655 14th Ave Menlo Park.” Remember: Real estate professionals and experienced home buyers and sellers may well know where the local MLS site is, but many people go to the same place they always do to get information: Google or Yahoo.
As an example, consider the property I reviewed yesterday. A search on Google for 655 14th Ave Menlo Park lists
- Movoto.com
- ListingProducer.com (the company hosting www.655-14thAvenue.com, but clicking on the link gives you all recently created ListingProducer sites, and the property in question quickly gets buried)
- My write-up from yesterday
The actual web site itself is nowhere to be found!
So how do you combine the marketing cachet of a single-property web site with the SEO benefits of an established blog?
Matt Dunlap from Realivent recommended purchasing an appropriately-named domain, and then redirecting that domain to a subdomain under an existing well-established site, and that’s what I’ll be doing for this project. PropertyAddress.com will be redirected to 3OceansRealestate.com/PropertyAddress.
I’m looking forward to building this site, using some of Matt’s expertise, widgets and plugins.
Stay tuned!
Update: Matt gives more of his thoughts on his blog.
Tags: Industry, Movoto, Online advertising, Real estate, Realivent, Trulia
Possibly related posts
- Interacting With Customers Online vs. Offline
- April 26, 2007 — Using A Blog To Market A Property
- How To Find A Good Stager
11 responses so far ↓
1 matt // Apr 11, 2007 at 9:03 pm
I edited my post. I shouldn’t say there are no benefits…there are and trailing folders can be very good.
I’ll talk about that later, but Page rank is king…you know that. Once you get to a high PR, your blog dominates and the only way to get high PR is lots of links back to your site.
2 FBS Blog » Blog Archive » RETS Meeting Next Week // Apr 12, 2007 at 3:29 am
[...] A great example of this what forward-thinking brokers and agents like Greg Swann, Kevin Boer and others are doing with single-property web sites. These sites have the potential to offer an intense amount of detail critical to the value of that property. What if that information was collected in a standard way and made available for valuation models or search tools? The long tail may never have been longer. Can this kind of detail be captured accurately by home owners themselves? Not likely. A great example of this is the description Dan Green’s agent wrote for Dan’s house. The detail provided in the remarks has all the key facts. This is the data that’s most valuable. The other stuff is important, too, but it’s not what sells the house. [...]
3 Austin Realtor's Wife // Apr 18, 2007 at 9:26 pm
You make a great arguement regarding SEO for single property websites, and it’s becoming quite trendy. Like y’all said, rank is king- so you’re probably right about linking it to your website. Let us know how that goes!
We saw on the MLS a listing that noted the “unique domain [as] negotiable”- very funny! Umm… I’ll take the home, but only if the DOMAIN is at a discount!
4 Dominique // Apr 21, 2007 at 12:37 pm
“PropertyAddress.com will be redirected to 3OceansRealestate.com/PropertyAddress.”
Makes perfect sense.
Brought to you by Kevin “ObviousMan” Boer.
5 Bonnie Erickson // Apr 21, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Nothing like stating the obvious. For some reason, it never occurred to me that the property address would come up as a result of my blog. It’s listed there. I wrote about it. Maybe I should be including the address in the title and keywords? Duh!
6 Jonathan Dalton // Apr 23, 2007 at 6:37 am
Why not simply build the single-property website within the blog? Granted, there’s more I can do with the few that I’ve created but the SEO is nearly instant. Pick a property and Google it - more often than not, the created blog site is at the top of the list.
It’s not much of a stretch to think someone may Google the address vs. looking for a www site for it.
7 Kevin Boone // Apr 30, 2007 at 6:34 am
While it would be wonderful to have a listing come up on page one during a search, I think it would take an enormous amount of SEO to get it there. Of course it could happen using some uniques terms, but using more general terms, as the general public does, would take a lot of time and effort. Maybe I’m missing something in my thought process?
Nonetheless, I love single property websites.
8 Erin // May 9, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Single-property sites might have bad SEO, but are creating good search rankings their main function? I would argue that a single-property site is more of a marketing add-on for potential buyers than a lead generator. You can still put the property on major property sites to up its profile online, but also include the site address for those interested in learning more.
Or to spread the word, just do like you did, and write about it in a blog post.
9 Richard // May 15, 2007 at 2:04 am
Some really nice innovations. Thank you very much for this post! Blogs like this one which string comments out in the open are much more proactive about sparking dialogue.
http://www.Johnbeckssuccessstories.com/
10 Single Property Sites - Dispelling the Myths and Embracing the Benefits! // Aug 23, 2007 at 9:31 pm
[...] your property to get maximum exposure to drive-by traffic in the neighborhood! Kevin Boer of 3 Oceans Real Estate comments, after Tackling the Single-Property Website Conundrum: If done well, a website provides a [...]
11 Jacob Rose // Mar 13, 2008 at 10:59 pm
I am a bit late on this post but I wanted to share what I do with my single listing sites.
I usually try and get creative with the names by using the neighborhood/area name (WapatoRemodel.com and HistoricHilltop.com)
I use the web addy on the top and bottom of all of the flyers for the home.
I have my local sign company make rider sized signs with the web address and I nail them to the sign posts.
I submit the site as virtual media on the MLS system and on own website.
Submit the site to all of search engines.
Link all of the single property sites together on each listing website.
ListingProducer is now allowing Google Analytical to be embeded so you can keep track where your hits are coming from.
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