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More and more Realtors are realizing the benefits of creating a new website for each listing they have. The goal in creating a website that is dedicated to a specific listing is to create a powerful online marketing tool, increase search engine exposure, obtain top positions in the SERPs (search engine results pages) and provide an online presence for promoting the listing’s benefits through useful and informative content and beautiful images. We are going to discuss how to build and optimize your single property website and are throwing in a new twist on where your content should be located.
Benefits of Using Single Property Listing Websites:
- They can be a powerful listing and marketing tool referenced online and offline in marketing materials to help increase listing exposure.
- They increase listing owners’ confidence in you.
- They can help you gain more listings and are one more selling point / benefit you can offer when trying to obtain listings or convert FSBO’s.
1) Choosing a Domain Name
The first decision to be made is choosing a domain name. The most common route is simply using the listing address as the domain name, for example, 123MainStreet.com. Many agents cite that they use the listing address as the domain because it provides a keyword rich URL which can be beneficial for SEO / ranking purposes. The truth is that having a keyword rich domain name for SEO purposes alone is becoming less and less important as time goes on (some would argue it is a non factor already), is only one SEO factor among many and as we will explain, there are more compelling reasons to use non-address based domain names.
Make It Easy to Remember. The primary reason you may not want to use the address as the domain name
is marketability. Buyers are much more likely to remember “TatumRanchHome.com” as opposed to “1934ViaLindaWay.com”. This holds true whether they are glancing through a magazine and see your ad, are trying to remember the domain name from a flyer they have thrown away, or even more importantly, if they are trying to remember your domain name for the listing sign they happened to glance at as they drove by the listing.
Usability Trumps SEO. The bottom line is that you may not want to sacrifice the overall marketability and utility that an easy to remember domain name provides (this is true of any domain name in any vertical) for SEO purposes (keyword rich URL).
Jay Thompson also points out another strategy for choosing domain names, using generic or neighborhood / community based names such as “TatumEstates.com” or “IrvineEsplanade.com”. He points out that these names can be recycled over and over which can save the time and money invovled with registering a new address based domain for each new listing.
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