Discovery
Todd approached us in 2019 to discuss his website, which he had encountered several shortcomings for 5+ years. Initially, he thought his site just need the time to be noticed, since the cost of running his site was close to $200 per month, plus the initial design fee, the provider must be doing something with that money. After 5 something years, he realized his site wasn’t doing anything for him. He received almost no visitors and has never gotten a call from his website. Zero. None. He found us and gave these guidelines for his new site:
- Website redesign and redevelopment with SEO in mind
- Relocate server
- Relocate domain
- Real Estate listing real-time display
- Categorize real estate search results to farm his target areas
- SEO plan
As usual, we conducted a thorough examination of his existing website to figure out what went wrong. As expected, sites like this (general real estate agent’s site) were built 100% with a duplicating template. There is nothing wrong with using a template, the problem is that nothing was changed. So his site is exactly the same as many other sites besides his name and Bio, everything else was copy-and-paste. SEO wise, nothing was set up. At this point he realized more than he wanted to, so a changeover was immediate.
Consultation
A realtor’s website shall be very straightforward. It involves genuine content, a modern clean layout, SEO-focused design, and integration of MLS listing protocol. To be quite frank, the entire website needs to be SEO specific. That means no duplicating contents, or as less as possible. We made the following recommendations for the new website:
- Customizable MLS listing
- Modified template design to save cost
- Increase site response time by domain management
- Make contents that are easier for the visitor to browser
- Generate leads with content, not by force
- Increase search engine awareness with unique listing parameters
- Connect the website with social media platforms, as part of the ongoing SEO plan
- Reduce unnecessary costs by coaching him on the how-tos, as part of the SEO plan
- We host the site so he does not have to do anything
Solution
Since one of the requests from Todd was to reduce initial costs, we went with the modified template route to save on the development time. We also moved the hosting to our server so he did not have to deal with a hosting provider. Everything is more streamlined.
The site contents were carefully arranged in a way that search engines would not mistake his site with some other sites. Every real estate agent fetches listing information from the board’s server, so everyone has the exact same info. We were able to implement the codes to avoid duplicating content. This is a big one for SEO value.
We dropped his “newsletter” service which was offered by his last provider – it did nothing but incur a cost. The newsletter was posted without any SEO strategy so it means nothing to the search engines. Since Todd did not want to engage in a blog himself, we decided to use his listings as posts for social media. With our SEO plans, these posts are not generating valuable SEO traffic, pointing the source back to his website.
After a few months of going live with his new site, we tracked a very substantial increase in visitor traffic. This traffic is all organic, meaning it wasn’t gained by paying for ads or pay-per-click services. Todd is now getting phone calls and emails from leads generated from the website that he never had with another provider.
The monthly cost for the website was decreased, and our SEO plans are designed to be flexible so that he does not need to always have the higher plan running. The website is able to maintain constant traffic with minimal costs.
The web development time was 3 weeks including drafts and revisions. SEO plan is ongoing with seasonal changes.
Major Takeaway
We have actually built several real estate agent websites over the years, and we have seen the same patterns over and over about what really didn’t work for our clients. Here is some food for thought:
- Real estate website providers do not do SEO for you. You need to find out if they even do an initial setup at all. You could waste all your efforts by posting on your website but the search engines simply do not recognize them.
- Avoid using discount DIY real estate website offerings. They will look exactly the same as everyone else. Although Todd’s website was not a DIY, he still got a DIY-like website but paid like how a custom site would cost him. There are only a few (less than what you can count with one hand) full-fledged DIY sites. They cost somewhere in the $10k range to start. Are you really doing a DIY project paying 10k plus?? I wouldn’t.
- Unique content is very important for sites like this one. There are over 8,000 agent’s websites out there for Greater Vancouver alone and almost everyone has the same information.
- Decide what you really want your agent’s website to do for you. If you want leads, you have to make the site suitable for lead generation. You either manually do it by putting in time and effort constantly, or have a plan to make it happen. Nothing comes from thin air.
- Make sure your content can be seen by both humans and machines.