Ok, I am going to go ahead and do it! …I am going to bring up and discuss one of the hottest debated topics amongst industry insiders for years. Yes the debate has long been decided, but I want to add a new spin, a new perspective, in hopes of explaining my own choice of tactics in the matter.
Long Decided Industry-Insider Debate
The debate I am talking about is the primary purpose of Real Estate office and agent websites. The long decided answer is, “The primary purpose of any real estate website should be to generate leads.”
I am perfectly on-board with this more than correct answer, after all we are running a business. However, the larger and still on-going debate is about the best tactics to deploy in accomplishing this goal and especially when it comes to Buyer Oriented Content such as property search and listing detail content.
There are a number of different lead generation tactics deployed on property search content:
Require Registration to Search
Require Registration to View Listings
Require Registration to View Some Details
Don’t Require Registration to View Details
Yes buyer registration and when to deploy it is an issue that every Real Estate website owner is and has wrestled with to this day.
Home Sellers is Your Agent’s Website Buyer-Friendly?
Given that Listing Syndication has virtually evened the playing field amongst real estate agents in distributing your listing details across the Internet; the local web presence, buyer traffic statistics, search engine placements, and hyper-local web content of your local agent’s website is now one distinguishing factor you should consider when selecting a listing agent.
Home sellers, when interviewing prospective listing agents ask them for information on their website traffic, search engine placements, and buyer content and how their website will increase exposure of your home to buyers. Visit the respective local websites of your short list candidates and do so, emulating a Buyer’s perspective and generate some buyer based Google searches for your town, popular neighborhoods, and home addresses of nearby homes for sale, etc.
If every time you search for properties, click for additional listing detail, home values, market statistics, etc. and are you confronted with the inevitable FORM to fill out: You know as well as I do; that most buyers are then gone and likely never to return.
Buyers won’t make an offer on your home because of who the listing agent is, heck they don’t even search for Re/Max, Keller Williams, Century 21, or any franchise office for that matter, these are seller search keywords not buyers, they Search For Homes, specifically their home!
The Best of Both Worlds – Is it Even Possible?
The ideal situation for any Realtor® would be to have a killer buyer-friendly website that generates plentiful amounts of buyer traffic and leads, while ranking so high in search engine results across thousands of buyer keywords, that your buyer-friendly website turns into a marketing machine for your selling clients.
However I will be the first to admit that, this is an IDEAL situation and a lofty goal for any agent at a minimum. Moreover depending on your local market, website budget, and internal office/team technical skills, may not even be achievable for many.
OMG, I can’t tell you how many times local colleagues and friends have told me, “I like your website but its too buyer focused and your missing a lot of listing business”. What do I say, “You’re right I have been missing a lot of listing business”.
However, all the while for the past 2 1/2 years we have been working very hard to get to the ideal situation described above. If you are reading this page, then you are now on our, recently launched, website totally dedicated to real estate sellers. It’s optimized around seller keywords and its local content totally dedicated to seller interests. This was the plan all along and while it is still a work in progress we are getting close, very close, and you now know the rest of the story.
- Elizabeth
