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How to Build an IDX Real Estate Website in One Afternoon (2023)

Yasser Khan — Sun, 13 Nov 2022 22:00:00 +0000

There are many IDX real estate website builders out there, but I still get tons of emails asking about DIY options. Fortunately, building your own IDX real estate website is pretty easy these days—easy enough for an agent with limited tech skills to build a website with IDX listings, lead capture, map search, and more in just one afternoon—without calling technical support. Trust me. It’s not as hard as you might think.

To prove it, I’ll walk you through the basics of IDX real estate websites and how to build your own. I’ll cover terminology, strategy, themes, IDX plugins, and step-by-step instructions to build your own IDX real estate website in just a few hours.

Important note: This guide covers how to build an IDX website using WordPress specifically for real estate agents from North America. If you’d rather build a real estate website for other markets (or other than WordPress), check out my detailed guide here: The Ultimate Guide to Building a Real Estate Website

What Is IDX?

IDX, short for Internet Data Exchange, is the technology that allows Realtors and brokerages to display updated real estate listings from their MLS on their websites.

Here’s how it works: Multiple times per day, third-party IDX providers take the raw listing data from your MLS and send it to the hundreds (or thousands) of real estate websites that have permission to display MLS listings. Whenever a listing is updated in your MLS, it is automatically updated on all the websites that display MLS listings through IDX. In 2023, most IDX listings are updated every 15 minutes.

What’s an IDX Website?

An IDX website is any website that receives an automatically updated feed of listings from your MLS through a third-party IDX provider. That means that an IDX website will have listings just as fresh as your MLS’ website.

Potential buyers will have a very similar experience browsing an IDX website for new listings as your MLS’ site since the listings are updated with data from the MLS automatically.

While many IDX real estate websites are focused solely on listings, others are full agent or brokerage websites with landing pages, About Us pages, agent profiles, mortgage calculators, a blog, videos, and everything else an agent, team, or brokerage might have on their website.

Do I Need to Use WordPress to Build an IDX Real Estate Website?

Absolutely not. There are many ways to build an IDX website, including coding it yourself or using another content management system (CMS) like Joomla or Drupal. Some third-party IDX providers can even send listings to Squarespace sites.

That said, WordPress is far and away the most popular CMS system on the market and has the most tutorials, support, and updates. This is why we strongly recommend that agents and brokerages use WordPress for their IDX website. Of course, if any of this starts to give you a headache or you just want help from the pros, AgentLEADS will build a full IDX real estate website for you starting at just $119 per month.

I give up, take me to AgentLEADS

How to Build an IDX Website in One Afternoon?

Now that you know the basics, let’s go through the best way to build an IDX real estate website with WordPress.

Step 1: The Planning Phase

The most important (and most often avoided) stage in building a website is sitting down and figuring out exactly what you want from your IDX real estate website. While this might seem obvious at first (leads!!), you’d be surprised at what you can forget until you’re halfway through building your site. This will also make it easier to pick the right WordPress theme (more on this later) and IDX provider (ditto).

So take 10 minutes and write out what you want from your IDX real estate website. Think of features you’ve seen on other sites, like map search, video backgrounds, blogs, sliders, lead capture, home valuation pages, pop-ups, and the general aesthetic you want for your site. What would you like to offer your site visitors that will turn them into leads?

You don’t need to go overboard here; you can (and should) update and upgrade your site many times over the next few years. So don’t feel pressured to include absolutely everything now. Just take a few minutes to outline the big stuff before you commit to anything.

Study the Websites of the REAL Trends 500 & Take Notes

(Source: Screenshot of Jade Mills’ website)

Before you dig in and invest the time and effort to build your own IDX website, take some time to research what it is you like about other real estate websites. To help speed up the process, we put together this comprehensive overview and ranking of the websites of the top 25 agents by volume for 2023 according to RealTrends (below).

What is it specifically about a top producer’s website that you like? Is it the overall look and feel, or something else? Does the site look great because they already had great branding they just plugged into a stock site, or is the overall design unique?

Navigation is another crucial element to consider. As you might imagine, most top producers’ websites have minimal navigation that leads visitors on a customer journey, so notice where and why you click on sites you like.

Step 2: Choose a Web Hosting Company & Domain Name

Before you even think about building a page for your website, you need to set up an account with a web hosting company. A web hosting company will provide a home for your website online and ensure it always loads quickly and reliably from any device.

For WordPress IDX websites, Bluehost is pretty hard to beat. Here’s why. First, at less than $3 per month, it is incredibly affordable, and second, it has a tool that lets you install WordPress with the click of a button. You also get five email addresses for you, your team, and maybe a few inside sales agents (ISAs), all for less than the price of a cup of coffee per month.

You can set up a quick account at Bluehost here and join us again later. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

Choose & Purchase Your Domain Name(s)

Luckily, choosing a great domain name is pretty straightforward. Just make sure it’s memorable, short enough to yell across a crowded restaurant, and ideally matches your name or personal brand. Unless you think you’re going to spend your entire career at your current brokerage, it’s probably best to avoid including your brokerage name in your domain name. After all, you’re an independent contractor, right? Be independent.

Generally speaking, .com is better than the alternatives, but if you have the perfect name, just can’t get the .com domain name you want, and no one else in your farm area is using it, then, by all means, go for another top-level domain (TLD) like .net, .bix, and so on.

Step 3: Install WordPress on Your New Domain

Now that you have a fresh new domain and web host, the next step to building an IDX website is to install WordPress. Since WordPress is open-source, it’s free to install and free to use. Not bad, right?

To install WordPress on your Bluehost account, log in to your Bluehost cPanel, click on the Website section, and then click on “Install WordPress.”

Next, click on “Marketplace” and find WordPress.

Then click on Install.

Next, you’ll be prompted to choose the domain name on which you want to install WordPress. Choose the domain name you purchased in the previous step, read through and accept the license and service agreements, and finally, click on “install now” to install WordPress on your site.

Congratulations! You now have your very own WordPress website ready to rock! Pretty easy, right?

Next, follow the prompts to connect to WordPress.com and create an account. Now that you have WordPress up and running on your web host, let’s move on to making your website look great and adding IDX so you can get MLS listings on your site.

Step 4: Choose Your Third-party IDX Plugin for WordPress

Before you get started building your WordPress IDX site, you’re going to want to pick out your IDX plugin—or at least research some good options. Luckily, with only a few IDX providers to choose from, your decision will come down to price, features, and compatibility.

What Is an IDX Plugin?

In WordPress, plugins are small add-ons that you can use to change how your WordPress theme looks or behaves. An IDX plugin translates the raw listing data from your MLS into code that WordPress can turn into attractive listings for your website. IDX plugins can also provide features like listings search, map search, widgets, lead capture, and more.

How Much Do IDX Plugins Cost?

IDX is a pretty inexpensive plugin for your IDX website. Generally speaking, you’ll pay between $50 and $99 per month for an IDX plugin. Most IDX providers offer much more than just a simple connection between your MLS and your website, so the cost is well worth it.

How to Choose the Right IDX Plugin

Since there is a lot of competition in this space, and only a handful of providers, take a quick run through the features each provides and then sign up for the one that suits your needs best. Here are the four most popular IDX providers for WordPress, along with some information to help you choose the best one for your needs:

IDX Provider Comparison Table 2023

IDX Provider	Pricing	Free Trial?	Setup Fee
Showcase IDX	$59.95-$99.95 per month	30-day free trial	No setup fee
iHomefinder	$49.95-$129.95 per month	30-day free trial	$99-$499
IDX Broker	$55-$140 per month	No free trial	$99
Flex MLS	$499 per year	No free trial	No setup fee

Step 5: Choose & Install an IDX-ready WordPress Theme

Now it’s time to pick a WordPress theme that looks great, provides the features you want, and can work with your chosen IDX provider.

What Is a WordPress Theme?

A WordPress theme is a template or collection of templates that control how your WordPress site looks and acts for site visitors. If you’ve ever used a Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Google Slides template, a WordPress theme is pretty similar except that it’s far more powerful. Themes also generally include many different templates for everything from pages, headers, fonts, colors, backgrounds, and even lead capture and other advanced features.

How Much Do Real Estate WordPress Themes Cost?

Unlike your IDX provider, you don’t have to pay a monthly fee for your WordPress theme. Instead, you can just buy them. Good themes can run from $20 to $99. However, since this is a one-time fee, I would highly recommend not skimping here to save a few bucks. An extra $20 or $30 spent on your theme can make a massive difference in the quality and user experience of your website.

How to Choose the Perfect WordPress Theme for Your IDX Real Estate Website

Remember that back-of-the-napkin list of features and bells and whistles you want for your website? Well, here’s where it comes into play. Use the list of features you want to help you narrow down your choices when picking out a WordPress theme.

Here are a few critical (and not so critical) criteria to keep in mind when choosing a WordPress theme for your IDX real estate website:

1. Is It Compatible With Your IDX Plugins?

While most modern themes will be compatible with your chosen IDX plugin, it’s always a good idea to check.

2. Does It Offer Enough Customization Options?

One of the coolest features WordPress themes offer is templates with multiple page layouts and styles for different parts of your website. For example, a template might have four or more unique page designs just for the homepage, three for the About Us page, and three for the Contact Us page.

3. Which Plugins Come With the Theme?

While the vast majority of the plugins you’ll end up using for your IDX real estate website will be free apart from your IDX provider, it’s nice to get a bunch of useful plugins along with your theme. Visual Composer, Yoast, Mailchimp, Contact Form 7, and Slider Revolution are standard plugins commonly bundled with real estate WordPress themes.

4. Is It a Real Estate-specific Theme?

This one is less important than many people think. While real estate themes will commonly have agent pages, listings pages, and ways to set up listings, those listings will need to be manually added and will more than likely NOT work with your IDX provider. So don’t choose a theme based on whether or not it’s an actual estate-specific theme or not.

5. Check Out Reviews & Updates on Envato

Generally speaking, a great theme will have a good number of great reviews on the Envato market. It should also have a log of recent updates to ensure your site is always up to date.

Where to Buy Real Estate WordPress Themes

Here are a few places to check out and buy real estate WordPress themes.

Envato Market

Elegant Themes

Template Monster

Once you’ve picked out a theme you like with the features you want that support your IDX plugin, buy it, and then download the ZIP files for the theme.

Step 6: Install Your New WordPress Theme

Next, you need to install your new theme into your WordPress account. Here’s how to install it:

First, log in to WordPress, and then click on “Appearance” in the left column of your WordPress dashboard. Then click on “Themes.”

You should see the default WordPress 2022 theme already installed here. This is what YKC’s “Themes” page on WordPress looks like. Note that since we have a custom-built theme installed, there are no other themes here:

To install your new theme, click on the “add new theme” button on the lower right side of the page. Then, navigate to the WordPress theme ZIP file you downloaded and install it.

Step 7: Install Your WordPress Plugins & IDX Plugin

Next, head back over to your WordPress dashboard and click on “plugins” on the left side menu, then click on “installed plugins” to check which plugins may have been installed with your new theme.

Make a note of which plugins are already installed, then click on “add new.”

Here you can search for and install any plugins that you want for your site.

A word of caution here: Since thousands of plugins are available for WordPress, it can be very tempting to load up on plugins. After all, more is better, right? Well, for WordPress, the opposite can be true. More plugins can = more problems.

Don’t worry; you’ll have plenty of time to find and experiment with plugins later on. This is half the fun of using WordPress. For now, here is a quick list of plugins you might want to consider that are useful for IDX real estate websites.

Yoast SEO (SEO Checker for Blog Articles)

With over 5 million downloads, Yoast is the most popular (and arguably the best) search engine optimization (SEO) checker for WordPress. Yoast reads the blog posts you’ve created and checks them for SEO best practices like keyword count, keyword usage, readability, and more. There is a limited free version of the plugin and a premium version for $89. Unless you’re very serious about SEO, you should be OK with the free version.

Download the Yoast Plugin (free)

Real Estate SEO: The Ultimate Guide for 2023 (10 Steps to Fast Ranking)

Akismet (Anti-spam Plugin)

Akismet is a great anti-spam plugin for WordPress that protects against brute force attacks, and more importantly, spam in your blog’s comment section.

Download Akismet Anti-Spam (Free)

Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is a simple and easy-to-use contact form plugin that lets you create and edit contact forms on your website. You can use it to create lead capture forms for landing pages or general contact forms on your website.

Download Contact Form 7 (Free)

Mailchimp (or Whatever Email Marketing Service You Use)

Email marketing plugins allow you to use certain features of your email marketing software on your website. For example, you can include an email sign-up form right on your website to enroll site visitors to receive your drip campaigns.

Download Mailchimp (free-$17 per month)

Your IDX Plugin

Depending on what IDX provider you chose, you may or may not be able to install the plugin via the WordPress plugin manager simply. You will more than likely already have instructions from your IDX provider, but if you don’t, give them a call.

Step 8: Start Customizing Your WordPress Theme

OK, now you have a pretty-looking website set up, but it’s filled with dummy copy and stock imagery. The next step to building out your IDX website is to customize how your theme looks and behaves.

Unfortunately, most of these customization options are going to vary depending on what theme you chose. Here are a few basic things you can change with any advanced WordPress theme to get you started.

Your Logo

Once you add your logo to your WordPress theme, it automatically shows up on multiple pages on your website, and at the top of any new page you create.

Your Site Navigation

Like your logo, your site navigation will show up on every page you want it to and will also show up automatically on every new page you create. Even better, since you edit your site navigation in a single place, the changes you make there also get changed on every page on your site.

Your Footer

The footer area of your site will generally have social media contact information, phone numbers, and a sitemap, which is a list of all the pages available on your site. Like your navigation, your footer is universal and will show up on every page and any new pages you create.

Widgets

Widgets are small pieces of code that let you drag-and-drop site features like search bars, listings by price range, email capture, navigation menus, recent articles, and many more onto any page of your website.

Installing Demos

Most WordPress themes will come with multiple layouts called demos. Demos are fully finished design and layout variations available for your theme. Each one will make your website look very different. For example, the popular Houzez theme has 16 various demos with 16 unique layouts for your site.

Here’s a quick rundown of how to install a demo to change how your site looks. Go to your WordPress dashboard and click on “Tools,” then “Import.” Next, click on “WordPress” and navigate to the XML of the demo you want to install.

Change Hero Images, Slider Images, Logo & Contact Information

Once you’ve chosen a demo to install, you can start customizing it. You can change all of these site elements by going to your WordPress dashboard and clicking on “Appearance,” then “Customize.” Some themes might have different ways to customize site elements, so be sure to read the instructions that came with the theme.

Step 9: Start Building the Main Pages of Your Website

Now we’re getting somewhere. At this point, you should have a site that looks like you want it to and has your logo, images, and contact information ready to go. Next, we’ll start building the pages of your site.

Before we start, you need to understand the difference between pages and posts. Pages are the main pages of your site that don’t change very often. Things like about us, contact us, for sale, for rent, blog, and so on could be pages on your site.

On the blog page, you will have posts. Posts are the individual articles that are on your blog. For the most part, once you have your pages built, you shouldn’t have to change them very often. You should be adding new blog posts as often as you can. WordPress treats pages and posts differently, and you can set different navigation, sidebars, and other features for each.

Pages Every Real Estate IDX Website Should Have

While the pages you have on your website will largely depend on your business, your farm area, and your creativity, here are a few standard pages that most IDX websites have.

About Us
Contact Us
Homes for Sale
Buyers Guide
Sell With Us
First-time Buyers
Blog
Neighborhood Pages
Guides
Open Houses
Agents
Home Valuation Landing Page

Step 10: Write Copy for Your Website

Once you have the main pages of your website set up, you should write the copy for those pages. You should already have basic copy for your about us page, but take some time to edit it to make sure it isn’t too long. For your neighborhood pages, a quick introduction to each neighborhood will work for now.

To learn more about writing great copy, check out our in-depth guide to real estate copywriting here:

Step 11: Set up Your Blog & Create a Content Runway

Even though it might take weeks or months to get to blog writing, setting it up and planning content runway now will save you headaches in the future. Most real estate WordPress themes will already have a blog page ready to go, so you just need to set it up.

Setting Up Your Blog

To start setting up your blog, from your dashboard click on “Pages,” then “Add New.” Next, click on the “Page Attributes” section on the right hand side to open up the “templates” drop-down menu. Choose “Blog” from the drop-down menu, or whatever the blog is called in your theme.

For example, in the Houzez theme, the blog is called “blog masonry template.” Once you’ve set up the template for your blog page, click “publish.”

Now you need to tell WordPress that your new blog page is where the posts you create with WordPress should be published. Head back to your homepage and click on “customize” in the top left corner.

Then click on “Homepage Settings” and select your blog page from the drop-down menu under “Posts page.” Now every time you create a blog post in WordPress, it will be published on your new blog page.

Creating a Content Runway

Even though your blog will always be a work in progress, planning out which articles to write now can be a huge help. This way, you won’t be scrambling for article ideas every week. This is called a content runway, and is the best way to create content for your site.

To get started, you will need to research the keywords you want to target with your articles, what content your competitors are writing about, and finally, what kinds of articles your audience will find useful. You can learn more about setting up a content runway as well as get blog ideas here:

Step 12: Promote Your New IDX Real Estate Website

Congratulations! You now have a fully functional WordPress IDX website that’s ready to attract and convert leads to help you close more deals! Of course, a website is pretty useless if you don’t tell people about it. So the next step is to promote your new website everywhere you can. Here’s a quick list of places to promote your new website.

Social media profiles: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest
Your business cards
Your real estate postcards
Your email signature
Your Zillow and Realtor profile
LinkedIn

How to Use Your New IDX Real Estate Website to Get & Convert More Leads

Your website is the most powerful tool in your arsenal to both attract and convert leads. Even if you promote it all over your social media profiles, that’s still not going to be enough to get a decent flow of traffic to your new site.

In reality, you’re going to have to work hard to get people to visit your site and ideally leave you their contact information or reach out and call you. While we could write a book on all the ways to drive traffic to your site, just keep in mind that you now have a miniature Zillow with all the listings in your farm area. This is something that most people want to visit, so you’re really starting on second base.

Advertise New Listings on Facebook

Once you have your website with landing pages, it opens tons of new possibilities to advertise on Facebook. For example, you might advertise new or underpriced listings on Facebook and then send them to your search page or a landing page with your lead capture form on it.

How to Create Real Estate Facebook Ads That Actually Generate Leads

Advertise Free Home Valuations on Facebook or Google

The best way to get seller leads on your own is to advertise free home valuations on Facebook or Google. You can then send the leads to your landing page with your lead capture form or sign up with a free automated home valuation service like Home Value Leads.

See How to Get Real Estate Seller Leads for Less Than $20 a Day?

Advertise Free First-time Homebuyer E-books on Social Media

First-time homebuyers, especially millennials, are always looking for great educational content to help them navigate the homebuying process. To generate buyer leads, you can write an educational e-book or private blog post and then advertise it on social media. When buyers come to your page, they will be prompted to enter their contact information to download the content.

Over to You

What did you think of our guide on IDX real estate websites? Naturally, we had to leave a ton of information out—otherwise, this would have been longer than “War and Peace.” What are the topics that we missed that you think we need more coverage of? Let us know in the comments.

Learn How To Get More Real Estate Leads, Get More Listings, Close More Sales, with Less Resistance AND still have a LIFE!

Get more exclusive real estate agent training here 👉 https://www.yasserkhan.sg/👈

YASSER KHAN

Author, Coach & Trainer

Yasser Khan earned less than $1,000 in his first year as a full time property agent. With no money for the $2 train fare to his Broker's office, he was forced to walk 25 kilometers on foot. Worse, he got evicted at midnight with his wife and baby son by the roadside. Desperate, he bought a $16 Sales book and took massive action. That single investment in himself gave him an OBSCENE ROI of $160,000 in just 11 months. Today, Yasser is on a mission to make the real estate great career again and helps ambitious agents quadruple their commission income within 90 days.

Yasser Khan is a real estate coach at YasserKhan.SG, trainer at PropertyAgentUniversity.com and the author of Property Agent Secrets Book who teaches Realtors how to make more Money, have more Time and enjoy more Freedom without all the B.S. plaguing the industry today.

Yasser Khan’s approach to coaching is highly personalised, holistic, no B.S., and for “PROS ONLY… amateurs not allowed.” He believes that true success means winning in every single area of your life (like Financial, Family, Social, Physical, Mental, Spiritual and Fun).

When Yasser isn’t coaching, he loves playing GOTY PC Games with top-of-the-line Razer products and being a kid again with his 3 naughty children (actually, boss babies...), traveling to and across scenic Pakistan, enjoying hot & spicy food, taking pictures of the Milky Way with his favourite Canon DSLR and reading up all about Dinosaurs (especially T. Rex)

LEARN MORE

The post How to Build an IDX Real Estate Website in One Afternoon (2023) appeared first on Yasser Khan's Real Estate Agent Success Coaching.

The Ultimate Guide to Building a Real Estate Website

Yasser Khan — Sun, 06 Nov 2022 22:00:00 +0000

If you don't have a website today, you're already outdated. Your real estate website has the potential to be your best brand and sales asset, but that potential won't be achieved without website optimization. This guide will help you understand which real estate website components to focus on to solidify your brand and generate more leads. Learn which pages, modules, and finishing touches you can add to your website and why they’re good for real estate.

Bonus Download

As a bonus, download a 31-page PDF that explains why running a real estate website is critical to your success and everything else you need to know.

Download The Ultimate Guide to Building a Real Estate Website

Who is This Real Estate Website Guide for?

You are:

A real estate agent, office manager, managing broker, admin, tech lead, or
anyone else who operates a real estate website, or who manages people who operate real estate websites.
Knowledgeable about the process of buying and selling real estate. You’ve worked in real estate, in a brokerage, with other agents, brokers, admins, and assistants, and you are seeking to understand why websites are important and what components you could include on yours.
Interested in learning how you can structure and maintain your website to effectively generate new business, establish your brand’s trustworthiness, and stay top-of-mind with the clients you already know. You are eager to learn more, while recognizing that there are no silver bullets.

You want:

To understand enough to build a basic real estate website and fold it into your marketing strategy.
To create a website that resonates with buyers and sellers in your area and your niche.
A website that looks professional but won’t require software engineering experience to construct.
To know how to support your wider marketing efforts through your real estate website.
To be super-effective supporting others with real estate website needs.
To leverage the power of the internet to connect with and inform your leads and your sphere of influence.
To get a sense for what elements work well (and why) on a real estate website.

By the end of reading this guide, you will:

Understand why real estate websites are critical for an agent’s business.
Know exactly which website ingredients are essential and which make the icing on the cake.
Be able to prioritize the website projects that will best support your lead generation priorities.
Know how to talk to developers, designers, content writers, and the rest of your website support team.
Understand how to integrate your SEO efforts with other marketing strategies, such as social media.
Discern what makes your competitor’s websites excellent (and how to iterate and improve on what you’ve learned).
Be able to identify the most important next steps to take to elevate your website above the competition.

Let’s learn how to build your ultimate real estate website.

Why A Real Estate Website Could Be Your Biggest Business Asset?

You not only need to ensure your website communicates your brand effectively and distinctively, you must have it serve as your 24-hours-a-day sales force. Your website holds the potential to be your business' most powerful marketing tool.

Real estate agents spend a lot of time online and most of them also understand that their clients spend a lot of time online too. Buyers are researching the home transaction process, trying to understand mortgages, and browsing listings online; sellers are brushing up on home decorating trends, determining which projects they should finish before listing (and which should wait for the new homeowners), and reviewing recent list-to-sales prices for their neighbors from the digital devices.

The National Association of Realtors’ most recent Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers showed that more than half of buyers start their home purchase journey online.

Here is the summary of first steps that buyers take, according to NAR:

44% look online for homes
17% talk to an agent
11% look online for information
7% contact a mortgage lender
6% talk to a friend
6% drive around looking at homes

The majority of consumers turn to the internet first when they’re interested in buying a house, which means that to be the first real estate agent to make a good impression on those consumers, you need an internet presence. That said, throwing up a one-page website listing your name, contact information, and “real estate in My Town” is not going to generate many (if any) leads. Or using a generic template from a property portal that you're using.

Most real estate agents are missing an opportunity to engage with their future clients before they even know that person is a lead. When a buyer or seller finds your website, it should be overflowing with value, enticing visitors into a rabbit warren of real estate information and advice.

My guides on real estate marketing, lead generation, and SEO all assume that you already have a website for your real estate business. But what exactly needs to go on that website? What should it look like? How should you build and maintain it? How can you use it to showcase your niche areas of expertise for the types of clients you specialize in serving?

I’ve researched some of the best agent, team, and brokerage websites online and have broken down the components that helped to build their success. No real estate website has every one of these features, but all of them have the basics (including IDX search), and most of them combine more than one component to deliver a satisfying visitor experience–and generate more warm and hot leads.

Let’s dive right in!

Building Your Real Estate Website with Intention

Whether you’re building a website from scratch or optimizing an existing one, approach the project with the mindset of strategy first, execution second. Your planning process should be intentional and thorough.

Five Focal Points of a Website

“A strategic website’s core purpose is to serve, support and sell,” writes author Lorrie Thomas in The McGraw-Hill 36 Hour Course: Online Marketing. Thomas presents a five-pack of components that should be the focal points of your website.

Credibility – Your website needs to establish credibility to gain the visitor’s trust. It needs to make a strong first impression and continue fostering credibility with every piece of content presented
Usability – Users must have a positive experience interacting with your website. Usability is a function of your website’s design, architecture, navigation, call to actions, and content.
Visibility – Visibility is a crucial component of your website and online marketing at large. Visibility might come from any combination of marketing channels, including advertising, search engine, social media marketing, PR, and email.
Sellability - With its pages, posts, images, videos and any content, your site must answer the question, “Why should visitors do what you want them to do right now?” Your value propositions must come through clearly.
Scalability - A healthy website is developed to accommodate ongoing content expansion. Ideally, you should be able to scale your website easily without a continuous dependence on the services of coders and IT professionals. This means building additional pages, functionality and subdomains.

Determine Your Website’s Target Audience

Let’s face it: your website isn’t just about you. After all, the main reason you even have a site is to attract visitors that you can build into a tribe and later convert into supporters, leads and customers for your business, right?

So shouldn’t you cater your website - and the experiences you provide there to those very visitors? When people land on your website, they usually ask themselves, “What’s in it for me?” And when building a brand, you need to be able to deliver an experience that makes it clear to those visitors exactly what’s in it for them, and why they should care. See How to Answer “What Makes YOU Different from Your Competitors?”

That’s why it’s so crucial to craft your website’s design, content, and experience with your audience personas in mind. WARNING: you shouldn’t skip this step (though many do).

Persona development is an important step in minimizing the risk of drinking your own kool-aid and instead creating an experience tailored for your website visitors.

Developing user personas will help you build a website that resonates with visitors, motivates content sharing, and converts better.

Check out also: 10 Real Estate Copywriting Secrets Professionals Don’t Want You to Know

Here are Some ‘Who” Questions to Help Hone in on the Right Audience:

Who are the people that will pay you? – This is your primary target, It could be your buyers or your dream sellers. It may be the agents that work in your brokerage or the agents you plan to recruit. It could also be real estate investors or developers who desperately need a good marketing and sales partner to work with.
Who are the people that Influence those that pay you? – These are the people that hold the attention of the people that pay you. Think local, respected and connected.
Who are the influencers in your market – Take a look at the most prominent businesses, business leaders, bloggers, event organizers, party planners, developers, journalists, authors, podcasters and subject matter experts in your market.
Who are your supporters? – Call them tribe, network, ambassadors or super-fans-just don’t ignore them. These people believe in you without hesitation, are willing to connect you with others and happily tell the world about the value and importance of what you do. This can be your family, friends, colleagues, co-workers, advisors and anybody that can lend a hand as you work your way to your vision.
Who’s in charge of the next step of your business growth? – Could be your clients, future clients, investors, competitors, or your boss’s boss.
Who are the people most interested in your expertise? – Who, if they heard your message, would benefit from it most.

The questions above should help get your creative juices flowing and help you start to narrow down some of the “Who” in your persona development. Remember, not everyone is your target audience. Be specific and be selective.

Next Step is to Get Personal with Some “What” Questions Relating to Your Audience:

What are their ages?
What is their gender?
What do they do for work?
What do they do for fun?
What is their family situation?–Single, married, divorced, engaged, partnered, children and pets all count.
What are their hobbies?–Minecraft or Golf, Crossfit or X-Games, each one says a lot about what excites them.
What do they read?–Digitally and physically–Books, Kindle, Newspaper, Blogs. Get as specific as possible.
What technology do they use?
What is their favorite means of communication?–Email, phone, Facebook, text or in person
What social media channels do they participate in?–Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube or Pinterest and present different ways in which you will need to communicate with your target audience.
What Conferences do they attend?
What podcasts do they listen to?
What is their motivation?–Are they struggling for survival, looking to become a better mom or searching for the meaning in their life.
What is important to them?–That you can help with
What are their biggest challenges?–Where you can provide answers or relief.

Go so far as to write down the names of 1 or 2 people that most represent the quintessential target audience. While there are many other questions you can ask to better you understand your target audience, this is a perfect start.

These user personas will serve as fictitious characters that represent the people that visit your website.

When completed, a single person represents a cluster of visitors who exhibit similar motivations, attitudes, behavioral patterns, and needs that you will use to guide your website development. You are building the site for them, your target audience.

It Pays To Plan Ahead For Your Website

Serious real estate marketers recognize a website that will deliver a bountiful return on investment needs to be created by experts.

Hire professionals making sure your team includes talent to cover the key areas of website production including:

Copywriting
Graphic design
Development
Search engine optimization
Conversion

Start With A Creative Outline

While the actual number of players on any given website development team will vary, it’s fair to say some form of collaboration will take place. Therefore, you need everyone on the same page from the get-go. Your web marketing creative brief is literally that page.

A carefully completed brief should provide insights and guidance to successfully take your project from concept to completion. It should articulate a set of objectives and summarize all the factors that will impact the website’s development.

Your Creative Brief Might Include the Following:

Background information– Document the basic who, what, when, where and why information to set the stage. Consider opportunities worthy of discussion and relevant challenges you’ll face. Round up existing research, reports and other documents that will help get the ball rolling.

Objectives–What purpose will the site serve? List the most important objectives.

Audience–Who will the site serve? What do they think? Why should they care? If you haven’t already developed personas to define your target customers, now may be the time

Competitors–Identify and analyze competitors. Establish what they do on their websites that might inform some of your content. Then, of course, establish how you’ll differentiate your site

Tone–How will you communicate? Try listing adjectives that will describe the feeling you’re going for and approach you’ll take

Message–What needs to be said? You’ll likely want to get into an expanded messaging exercise with your writer (or even writers, plural, for various parts of the website). For the brief, aim to capture the high level messaging likely to be applied on your home and about us pages.

Visuals–Describe the visual style you favor. Will you use photos, illustrations, diagrams, and videos? Will the visual style complement other marketing efforts? What assets do you have and what will you need to acquire?

Design preferences–Branding considerations go here including preferred colors, fonts and required logo marks.

The team–Who’s in charge? How will approval processes be managed? Who needs to be in the loop and how will progress be reported team-wide

Additional details–Consider all that apply to your project:

Mandatory information
Existing assets
List of deliverables
Preconceived ideas
Formats
Limitations and restrictions
Schedule
Budget

The 'Starting Point' Strategy

When working with your creative team, you’re bound to find it difficult to describe the look and feel that appeals to you. It can be a very abstract process. Perhaps you have no idea where to begin.

We propose the “starting point” strategy, which simply calls for referencing designs you like. Go web surfing in search of real estate websites that feature design ideas and elements that turn you on. Try any or all of the following:

Review the websites of 5 - 10 competitors in your field. Search for similar companies in another city.
Search for something along the lines of “great real estate (agent, broker or team) websites” You’ll discover some website inspiration quickly.
Visit website award and talent sites such as Awwwards, TheBestDesigns, Dribbble and Behance and search for real estate websites.
Build a collection of websites you like from outside of real estate.

Make notes regarding the elements and copy you feel are a fit for your website and share them with your team. Mix, match and make these strategies work to serve your purposes. It’s not stealing. It’s simply a great starting point.

Where To Build Your Real Estate Website?

You have several choices when it comes to building a real estate website. But, before you decide where to build your site, you’ll want to pick your strategy:

Use code in the form of a developer, Content Management System (e.g. WordPress) or custom designer to make your site, or
Go Codeless and use a visual-based building system that allows you to create a website without the need for specialized skills.

Code vs Codeless

Suppose you want to build a website unlike anything else online, with unique data feeds and complex integrations. In that case, it’s better to hire an experienced team of developers who can create a complex yet unique website for your business.

These teams are highly skilled at building complex websites according to your specific requirements. Also, depending on your arrangement, they will execute change orders during the development process and for a set period of time after launch.

Codeless platforms specialize in letting users with no coding expertise create reliable websites and integrations easily using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface. Even non-techies can leverage these visual-based systems to build complex websites from scratch with drag-and-drop modules, pre-built integrations, and configurable widgets.

Moreover, no-code platforms provide robust templating systems to create design starting points that allow for rapid iteration and customization. You can create live prototypes and work on content, images, and copy at the same time.

Squarespace, Wix, and Weebly are a few of the most popular no-code website builders if you don’t need IDX real estate search on your site.

AgentLEADS’ Codeless platform is the first no-code website builder purpose-built for real estate. You can easily use one of these platforms without worrying about long development lead times, scalability, or design flexibility.

WordPress is another option, though it generally requires a developer’s help to make it work for real estate.

Regardless of the path you choose, shop around, and ask to take any serious contenders for a test-drive. (Note: If you have to buy before you try or are forced into a long contract, that should signal some warning bells to keep looking.)

These tools are reducing the amount of time and coding expertise required to translate an idea into something people can use. You no longer need to become a programmer to build things on the internet, empowering a new wave of makers from different backgrounds and perspectives.

– Ryan Hoover, founder of Product Hunt, in The Rise of “No Code”

Identify Your Website Marketing Team

Before you sit down and start building your website on whatever platform you’ve chosen, you’ll want to think about who is going to do what. Think about what you want to accomplish and what tasks you want to do, what to delegate and what to outsource. Consider the different ways you can configure and promote your content so that you can start experimenting.

Don’t forget about images; you’ll want to find a good source of high-quality and fair-use images (always credit your photographer). And figure out who is going to write the words. You should have somebody proofread the copy–or preferably the entire website–before it goes live so you can make sure there are no typos and that the punctuation and capitalization is consistent and looks professional.

And remember that the website isn’t going to update itself. Written or video blogs will need to be populated regularly with fresh content. Swapping out winter-driven images for springtime ones, adding new data to a market report, adding a new frequently asked question to your FAQ section: Those are all tasks someone is going to have to undertake.

‍Whether that’s you or a designated helper is entirely up to you and your business, but even if you think you want to be 100-percent hands-on right now, you should absolutely set your website up so that someone else could take over for you at some point in the future. Maybe you have all the time in the world to fiddle with pop-up settings as a fresh agent, but when your business picks up, that time will suddenly be in short supply. Consider hiring creative help on-demand to help you get things set up but make sure that help understands all of the complexities of real estate. Take a look at AgentLEADS' On-Demand Services Marketplace to get a sense of what’s possible.

Basic Marketing Needs: Landing Pages, Contact Information And More

There are some components that every real estate website should include simply because they make a ton of business sense. Why bother going to the effort and expense of creating a real estate website if you can’t capture lead information or tell them how they can contact you? Exactly.
Whatever platform you use or website you build, it should be able to do or should inherently include these things

SEO-friendly

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is how you tell the search engines (namely, Google) about your website pages and climb the search engine results positions (SERPs). You might anecdotally understand why SEO is a powerful tool to use with your website because you’ve used Google before and have clicked on results yourself. But did you know that the top result on Google gets almost a full one-third of the clicks for that search? And that every position you climb can boost your click rate by (on average) 33%? 2022 data from firstpage.com demonstrates that ranking #1 generates a typical CTR of 39.6%. That's more than double the CTR for 2nd position, 18.4%, and nearly 4x the CTR for 3rd position, 10.1%.

Google Search Feature	CTR
Ad Position 1	2.1%
Ad Position 2	1.6%
Ad Position 3	1.4%
Ad Position 4	1.2%
Search Position 1	39.6%*
Search Position 2	18.4%**
Search Position 3	10.1%
Search Position 4	7.6%
Search Position 5	5.1%
Search Position 6	4.7%
Search Position 7	3.5%
Search Position 8	2.9%
Search Position 9	2.2%
Search Position 10 (if present)	2.1%

So how do you get to the first page of SERPs, or to the very top? That’s a topic worthy of its own guide (and I wrote one here), but some of it has to do with how different parts of your website are set up, such as the URL. For example, your website should ideally encrypt requests and responses using an SSL certificate. You can see when a website does this because the URL includes an “s” in the code at the beginning: It’s the difference between http:// and https://. That’s just one thing that Google considers. Your website platform should also include the ability to edit page titles and meta descriptions, include schema markups that give Google additional information (such as the exact location of your business), and support a rich keyword targeting strategy. Al Waddell’s website targets luxury and historic homes in Columbus, Ohio.

His website dominates the search results for “columbus historic homes,” showing up at the top of both the map pack results and the organic search results.

That’s partly because the website does a good job of satisfying visitors by including several components that we’ll discuss later, but it’s also because the website is technically SEO-friendly.

Contact information

There’s almost no point at all in having a website if you don’t include your contact information on it. The best websites will allow you to embed your contact information in the footer of the page so that visitors can see it and access it across every page of your website.

On the GENS Realty website, they display all of their contact information in the footer so making a phone call or sending an email is only one click away.

GENS Realty also includes contact information and icons in the header of their website. Brokerages with more than one office, like CB&A Realtors, might include contact information in both the page header and footer, as well as provide a full page with details for each office.

Social Media Links

Depending on how active you are on social media, you might also want to include links to your social media profiles so that your leads can explore them and get a better sense of how you operate, where you work, and anything else you want to share on those platforms.

This is easy to do in most websites today. On Ebb & Flow Realty Co., you’ll find social icons beautifully displaying within their header information.

Landing Pages

A landing page can also be thought of as a “destination page”–it’s the page on your website where you want to direct visitors for a specific marketing campaign. For example, let’s say you’re running a Facebook ad campaign promoting one of your listings. The landing page would most likely be either the listing’s page on your website or a lead capture form, or some combination of the two. This Ultimate Guide to Buying a Home landing page created by YKC perfectly displays providing a free resource guide in exchange for the website visitors contact information. Once the form on this page is submitted, they’ll immediately receive their resource guide.

An interesting example of a landing page is this Careers page created by Clockhouse Realty. In an attempt to upgrade their agent recruiting efforts, Clockhouse identifies what they offer to those in the industry and they make it easy to reach out via a contact form.

Lead Capture

‍Most landing pages include some form of lead capture, but landing pages aren’t the only place you’ll want to put a lead-capture element on your website. The Buy Sell Love Chicago team uses an elegant and simple lead capture form on the home page.

Many of the best real estate websites also include static lead capture forms that appear on every page in addition to your contact information. Here’s an example from Cooper Glass Homes; an identical lead capture form is embedded on many pages across the website.

CRM Integration

Capturing a lead is only worth it if you have a plan for how to nurture that lead. Of course you have to follow up with that person. A customer relationship manager (CRM) platform is how real estate agents keep track of their leads, categorize (or segment) them into buyers and sellers, and note where the leads are in their own home purchase or sale journey.

Some agents try to do this with a spreadsheet, and that might work when you have a handful of leads, but if you hope to do any amount of steady business, a CRM is critical. Ideally, it will integrate directly into your website so that any lead information that you capture is funneled into your CRM automatically.

Once leads are in the system, you should segment them by demographic data and preferences (for example, do they have a family, what age group are they in, do they prefer a condo or a single-family home), all the way down to the lead source. This allows you to personalize and tailor your communications for every lead so that you can deliver the information that’s most timely and relevant for them proving your worth as a real estate resource.

Choosing A Design That Resonates With Prospects

Real estate is a highly visual industry. You’ll want your website to be easy-to-navigate and simple-to-use so that it satisfies visitors, and you’ll also want to consider imagery and how it all fits together.

High-quality, Local Images

Your website is a chance to demonstrate to both buyers and sellers that you understand the community where you work and the people who live there. One of the best ways to do that without saying a word is to use high-quality images that prove you’re a local.

You’ll probably find that it’s well worth it to hire a photographer to take some of those images because paying for pictures piecemeal can get expensive. If you do live in an area with enough quality fair-use images to get by, make sure you’re crediting those fair-use photographers!

Even if you decide to go with less locally focused real estate images while you’re getting your website off the ground, make sure that they are (at least) very high-quality. As smartphone, tablet, and computer screens improve, the images on them need to be better. Don’t use pixelated or grainy photos; there’s no excuse for it in this day and age. Laurie Weston Davis has an excellent handle on images that support her niche in the Village of Pinehurst and downtown Southern Pines, North Carolina.

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The photos on her home page are high-quality, clearly showing the area of Pinehurtst where Weston Davis helps people buy and sell homes. The colors in the images complement each other without being matchy-matchy, including the rotating carousel of images at the top of the page. And all of the images are tasteful and evoke affluence and a specific North Carolina lifestyle that speaks to the buyers and sellers who love Pinehurst. The carousel of hero images on the Cape House Team website is another example of high-quality, local images applied to real estate.

Like Laurie Weston Davis’ website, the photos that rotate across the top of the home page on the Cape House Team home page are also aspirational, featuring high-end homes and gorgeous views. The philosophy behind why you should include high-quality local images is the same across the real estate industry, but the execution will depend on your market and target audience.

Mobile-Responsive Design

It’s no secret that lots of people search the internet using their mobile devices, but in case you needed a reminder of just how important a mobile-responsive design really is: mobile has surpassed desktop for search engine market share, capturing 54.28% of market share since October 2021. The numbers are even higher today.

It’s critical that your website is mobile-responsive so that you can provide a good experience for the people who find you on a mobile or tablet device. Let’s revisit a couple of websites we’ve already seen on a desktop arrangement.

Both the GENS Realty and Atoka Properties websites load quickly on a mobile device, and all of the same elements are there; just rearranged and optimized for a different screen size and shape. You’ll want to make sure that your website is similarly responsive.

Search Options: Ways To Share Homes For Sale

Who’s interested in looking at homes for sale? Maybe a better question is, who isn’t interested? Buyers have an obvious stake in seeing what’s on the market because they might end up living there one day, and sellers want to check out the competition, but many existing homeowners or renters with no intention of buying can’t resist browsing through open listings and homes under contract just to see what’s out there.

Naturally, a lot of that search traffic gets swallowed up by the real estate portals, but you should still think about offering one (or several) home search components to your website.

IDX Search

An IDX (internet data exchange) search is the best way to ensure that visitors can browse listings directly from the MLS, providing the most accurate and current listings available. Your IDX is the link between your website and the MLS. Adding IDX to your website might be quite easy if you’re using a website platform that was built for real estate agents, or it might require buying a plugin or playing with code if you’re using something that’s not real-estate-specific. Some features to look for in your IDX solution include:

Full MLS coverage
Complete and accurate property data feeds
Frequently updated listing data
A mobile-friendly interface
Search-engine-optimized architecture (so buyers searching Google have a shot at seeing the listing on your website)

For more information on IDX feeds and tips on choosing a solution for your website, read our Academy post: What Is IDX? An Explanation for Beginner Real Estate Agents. Many real estate websites make IDX search a key feature near the top of the home page, such as Josh Gold.

He also has multiple area search pages a listing search page (linked in the navigation bar) where visitors can browse Metro Detroit homes for sale.

Depending on your market and niche, you can get mildly to moderately creative about how you organize and display listings on your website, too. Fort Lauderdale agent Tom Wolf also uses a hero display with IDX search displayed front-and-center, but check out the array of options that visitors have for parsing their Fort Lauderdale home search.

Wolf provides a separate IDX search experience for browsers interested in:

His active listings
Specific Fort Lauderdale communities
New construction
Waterfront homes

Or, browsers can choose from specific Fort Lauderdale communities using an area index search page.

Featured Listings

The listings you feature might be your own, or they might be noteworthy listings (for a historic home, perhaps) that belong to other agents. It’s up to you and your business goals; know that adding featured listings gives you the opportunity to drive more views or traffic to specific homes (which means that they should probably be at least a little bit special in some way). AgentLEADS allows users to create an account and save listings they like.

Recent Sales

Both buyers and sellers are interested in seeing recent sales, so including an area of your website where visitors can browse or search recent sales can be a good way to drive traffic. Buy Sell Love Chicago does exactly this on a page just for recent sales.

Photos of homes for sale are ubiquitous, but buyers who crave videos can’t always find them (especially buyers searching for specific types of homes in targeted areas). Agents can provide listing videos on their website for buyers to browse, which helps them eliminate homes that clearly won’t work, saving everybody time. Laurie Weston Davis has a vlog where she embeds YouTube listing videos, for example.

3-D Tours

Even more immersive than videos, 3-D tours are shot using a special camera and then embedded into your website or linked on a separate page for a fabulous buyer experience. (Sellers love this form of marketing, too; it feels very 21st-century.) The most popular and widely supported product for creating real estate 3-D tours is Matterport.

Again, Laurie Weston Davis and the Lifestyle Property Partners website uses the embedded-in-page option for the 3-D tour page.

About You And Your Business

Now that you’ve set up a way to capture leads on your website, and a way for visitors to browse homes for sale, it’s time to figure out what you want to tell your audience about yourself and your business.

This is a personal choice; some agents like to include a lot of details, while others prefer to stick to just the contact information in the page header, footer, or both. You’ll want to decide which components to include depending on your resources - for example, if you have several glowing reviews from buyers or sellers, then you’ll probably want to think about including reviews on your website.

About Information

Real estate agents can use the “about” section on the page to share their sales philosophy, their personal connection with homebuyers or sellers, or anything else that might resonate with a lead. Atoka Properties uses the “about” page, or “Who We Are” in the navigation bar, both to appeal to leads and also as a recruiting tool. Toward the top of the page, the brokerage’s “bio,” so to speak, explains its niche (“hunt country” and suburbs in the Virginia- and West Virginia-based D.C. metro area), then describes some of the things that set the brokerage apart from the competition.

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Further down the page, the brokerage offers more details about a prominent rebrand and what it means, plus the company’s culture and history. These extra details can be interesting to some buyers and sellers, but where they really shine is to help attract high-quality agents to the brokerage. Agents can start to get a sense of the brokerage’s specialty and whether they’d fit in without having to interview, which saves everybody time and is especially appealing to the agents who would fit in well.

Reviews

Reviews are one of those website components (and business components in general) that can be very easy to ignore in pursuit of other objectives–but we’ll be the first to tell you that in this day and age, that might be a big mistake. According to research by BrightLocal, 82% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses (that would be you), and the average consumer has to read 10 reviews online before they trust a business. Plus, only 53% of consumers would consider using a business that has less than a four-star rating. We could keep going, but hopefully you get the point: Reviews can make a big difference in how much your leads trust you before they even meet you. And when it comes to displaying them or promoting them on your website, you have options. Lowell Lofts broker John Callahan has a separate page on his website that’s populated with reviews. It includes aggregate information from RealSatisfied so that his visitors can see his average ratings.

Visitors can also read individual reviews from Callahan’s former clients, as well as see when the review was written and the overall ratings that the client gave him.

Other agents might decide to display reviews on their websites as a home page component in addition to hosting a separate reviews or testimonials page. That’s how Cooper Glass Homes has chosen to tackle it; the home page testimonials are displayed with side-scrolling functionality so that visitors can “flip” through a few top reviews on the home page before deciding whether or not to click through and read more. See 10 Tips to Get More Reviews to Attract Referrals & Repeat Clients

Pop-up Sign-up Form

A type of lead capture form, these pages are ideal for agents with ongoing assets or resources to share with buyers or sellers, such as a market newsletter, regular infographics or data dumps, mortgage news, seasonal tips–whatever you’re using to keep your leads engaged. The Sisters Sell San Diego website has a pop-up form that offers new and off-market listings, local events, market updates, and more. It’s specific about exactly what visitors will get and how often they’ll get it.

Details About How You Market Properties

Sellers can be understandably nervous about choosing a real estate agent because they want to know that you will do your best to expose their home to the largest possible pool of buyers, so that they can get the best possible offer. Marketing is a critical component of that exposure, and agents who offer details upfront about what they do to market a home can help ease a seller’s mind (and dial down the listing-appointment intensity at least a notch or two). On her website, Deb Camuso has written up a section clearly outlining how she markets listings.

Special Programs

If you go to the trouble to offer special programs or work with specific types of buyers and sellers, a good place to share more about it is on your website! You can create landing pages and campaigns to attract those buyers and sellers, specialized lead capture forms that share more details about those leads, and other targeted tactics that can answer questions and put your future clients at ease.

Coldwell Banker Success offers a military rewards program that gives eligible buyers between $350 and $7,500 as a cash-back at closing. On the page where it sketches out the program, the brokerage also invites leads to learn more and indicate whether they are active or former military, and whether they’re interested in buying or selling.

Frequently Asked Questions

Buyers and sellers (and homeowners, for that matter) all have a ton of questions about the process, commission rates, inspections, appraisals, affordability–you name it. Those questions vary by market and according to niche. Start with the most basic questions that you hear the most frequently from both buyers and sellers. Just posting a handful of frequently asked questions on your website can save you a ton of time over the years as buyers or sellers stumble across those answers before they ever have to ask you about it. Buy Sell Love Chicago shows what a real estate buying FAQ page might look like in practice.

Resources For Your Prospects And Leads

If the website basics, home search, and business information represent the skeleton and vital organs of your website organism, then the resources you provide for your prospects, leads, and current clients are the musculature that power it. In which direction will it take your business, and how quickly? That really depends on what kind of content and assets you’re offering buyers, sellers, and homeowners.

Some agents don’t bother much with resources, and that’s okay! Providing high-quality resources that will drive leads and business can be quite time-consuming, and not every agent wants to prioritize it. But remember the analogy, because strategically adding a muscle or two to your website can produce remarkable results.

High-quality Local Content

The best way to show that you understand your market, the people who live there, and the people who want to live there is to provide them with high-quality information about the area. After all, you’re immersed in the community; you probably know it better than just about anybody, so sharing some of that knowledge can help create connections.

‍It doesn’t have to be all real estate-focused, either. Understanding the lifestyles and types of people who live in your area and who are interested in buying and selling, and then catering to those lifestyles, can also take you pretty far.

Atoka Properties blog about Northern Virginia has some real estate-related posts, including market predictions, but it also offers local guides and interesting area-specific content to engage their visitors.

The Branch Out Residential Team blog also does a good job of showing that these real estate agents understand the area and what residents want (or need) to know–from traffic updates to home inspection details to a delightful post about gravity furnaces.

Community Pages/Guides

Because you work with homes and people in your area, you probably understand the differences between one neighborhood and the next (and one street and the next) better than just about anybody around, and that’s information that buyers especially crave–but sellers find it valuable, too. A community page or neighborhood guide is an attempt to share that information with your clients. This gives your leads an idea of how capable you are and how well you understand the lifestyles and attractions in different neighborhoods, and it also helps you promote areas and neighborhoods that don’t get enough attention to buyers who might otherwise remain oblivious. Katie Clancy’s community guide visually displays the 90+ distinct villages on Cape Cod! Just below that image, she makes it easy for visitors to search active listings in many of these areas.

Al Waddell shares information on his website about historic Columbus, Ohio, neighborhoods. In the Olde Towne East description, he touches on the area’s history, of course, but also shares details about an annual renovation and restoration tour.

High-Quality Niche Content

This is content that specifically pertains to the type of buyer or seller you like to target, or perhaps your niche in terms of the types of homes you generally help people buy or sell. Yes, this is a little bit different than local content, community pages, or buyer-specific or seller-specific resources.

Audience-Specific Resources

Buyers and sellers obviously want different things out of the real estate transaction, and agents who cater to investors have yet another type of client and potential audience to add to the mix. In order to deliver different resources to those different types of leads, many agents create separate pages on their websites for buyers and sellers (and investors, if applicable). That’s what CB&A Realtors does they provide a homepage breakdown of each unique offering that they make available to visitors looking for buyer, seller, and home improvement resources.

Property Management

Homeowners interested in buying a second home and renting out the first, out-of-state buyers hoping to score an Airbnb investment home, or sellers who are having a hard time getting a good offer for their house–all of those groups are candidates for learning more about property management. If this is a service that you or your brokerage offers, you should definitely tell visitors about it on your website. Most people don’t grow up wishing and hoping to be a landlord, and if they can delegate the responsibilities for a reasonable fee, they will likely be more than willing to at least discuss it. The property management page at Main Key Realty gives a solid overview of the property management services that Main Key provides.

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Calculators

Math is hard, and there is a lot of it involved in a real estate transaction. Buyers want to know how much they can afford to spend without going broke; sellers want to know how much they can reasonably expect to get for their house. Providing a home valuation for sellers (or buyers who want to price a house that looks intriguing) can be a good way for real estate agents to capture lead information. AgentLEADS can direct traffic to a home valuation landing page to accomplish this.

Overlook Brokers offers a mortgage calculator for buyers on a unique landing page embedded at the bottom of her website pages that lets them enter price, interest rate, loan term, and down payment percentage to give buyers a rough idea of what they’ll have to pay every month.

Downloadable Assets

A downloadable asset is something semi-tangible you can provide to your leads that helps to showcase how much you know about buying and selling real estate–and that is actually valuable to your lead. After all, if you’re freely giving away good information about how to buy or sell a house, your leads are going to feel like there must be a lot more where that came from. Lantern Home Group offers a staging checklist for sellers that’s linked in the navigation bar; it leads to a lead capture form where sellers can enter their information and get the checklist delivered via email.

Market Reports

If you ask any real estate agent what question they hear more than any other, the odds are they’re going to tell you it’s “What’s the market like right now?” Answering that question thoroughly and thoughtfully can get you a long way toward winning over buyers and sellers, as well as current homeowners who are curious about how their biggest financial asset is appreciating. Atoka Properties has an area for market reports on their website that gets updated with recent information from the local MLS.

Pop-up Live Chat

One nice resource to offer website visitors is pop-up live chat in case they have immediate questions. Of course, “nice” can be in the eye of the beholder–we’ve probably all spent enough time on the internet to suppress a sigh when visiting a new website and getting visually bombarded with chat requests. Atoka Properties handles this elegantly by offering (not pushing) a live chat button in the lower right-hand corner, gently inviting browsers to click if they would like to chat.

Recommendations

Your clients want to make sure they’re working with the best people, and you can help by sharing your expertise and connections. One helpful way to do this on your website is to share a recommendations page with resources for buyers, sellers, and homeowners. The Title & Lending Providers page on the Atoka Properties website includes recommendations for some of the best title or mortgage lending companies in their area. All of the recommendations on this page include a hyperlink to the company website and additional details to help make an educated decision.

Videos

Didn’t we already cover videos when we talked about listings? No! There’s a lot more that real estate agents can do with videos to educate and entertain website visitors, capture an audience, and make a connection with future clients before you ever meet them. The Cape House Team has a video series called The Cape House Show, where Katie Clancy and her team talk about current events, community news, and real estate. Not only is there a YouTube channel, there’s also a separate area for Cape House Show videos on the website.

‍

Finishing Touches That Leave A Good Impression

In other words, these are things that many people won’t notice if you don’t do them–but they make your website look pretty sharp and like you made some extra effort when you do!

Favicons

A favicon is the itty-bitty little icon that shows up in a browser tab when you’re not currently on the page; it shows you how to get back to a page easily if you have several (or several dozen) browser tabs open at once. (It’s okay; we do it, too.) A good favicon will be recognizable as your brand or business, but not overly busy or difficult to decipher. Here are three favicons that we like a lot. The GENS Realty favicon simply but clearly evokes the company’s brand. And seriously: How cute is the Cape House Team’s favicon?! A good designer can give you a favicon version of your own company logo that’s equally appropriate (and adorable).

Timely Resources

Market reports and mortgage-rate updates are timely, of course, but sometimes buyers and sellers have questions–lots of questions–about some kind of current event. If you can put together a resource or page to help answer some of those questions, it can go a long way toward satisfying visitors (and possibly provide a traffic bump to your website if enough people find it valuable). Check out this page that Shay Hata and her team put together during the coronavirus pandemic. It covers how Hata addressed safety issues in her day-to-day-real estate business. And she linked to it in the navigation bar during the pandemic so that buyers and sellers (or browsers) could easily find it.

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32 Tough Questions To Ask Your Website Vendor

Now that you have an idea of which website components are critical for your business, which are nice to have but not essential, and which ones you want to focus on, you’ll need to find a website platform to support your website. We mentioned this briefly in the Building A Real Estate Website chapter: Not all website vendors are created equal, even the ones built specifically for real estate. When you’re shopping for platforms, talk to a few different vendors about what they offer. Ask them these questions and document their responses so that you have an apples-to-apples way to compare and contrast the value of what they’re offering with the price.

Does your platform provide built-in SSL encryption?
Can I edit page titles, meta descriptions, and URLs?
Bonus: Can you walk me through the editing process?
Can I add schema markups to my pages?
Bonus: Can you walk me through the process?
Are click-to-call or click-to-email functions supported in page headers and footers?
Can I build landing pages?
Bonus: Can you walk me through the process?
What lead capture options do you offer?
What CRM integration options do I have?
Are your designs optimized for real estate websites?
Bonus: Can I get custom designs?
Are your designs mobile-responsive?
How is IDX search supported?
Bonus: Can users log in to “favorite” or save listings?
How do you support video or 3-D tour integrations?
What kind of review display functionality is available?
Can I add pop-ups to pages?
Bonus: Can you walk me through the process?
What blogging functionality or features do you support?
What tool or calculator functionality or features do you support?
Are there resources available for content writing, obtaining images, or one-off developer projects?
Can I add my own favicon?
Can you walk me through the process?
Can I add a special section or announcement?
Bonus: Can you walk me through the process?
Tell me about how pricing works.
Can I play with the platform before I commit to buying anything?
How many administrators can access a website’s back-end?
Is there a fee for adding extra administrators?
What kind of onboarding training and support do you provide?
What kind of ongoing training and support do you provide?

Asking vendors to walk you through the process is more effective than asking them how easy or difficult a process is–their response will give you a better understanding of how many steps it takes and how intuitive the software is (or isn’t). Plus, ease and difficulty can be subjective, and this way you’ll be able to assess for yourself if it will be easy to do or if you’ll struggle. Remember, you don’t need to include all of these website components! Start with the basics and make them as high-quality and high-value as possible, then start layering new components and resources onto your foundation. A vendor that understands your business and that integrates with the tools you already use effectively will make it easy for you to include as many components and pages to your site as you need… while maintaining its aesthetic, and without turning it into an unintelligible mess.

So, there you have it. Questions? Let me know in the comments.

Learn How To Get More Real Estate Leads, Get More Listings, Close More Sales, with Less Resistance AND still have a LIFE!

Get more exclusive real estate agent training here 👉 https://www.yasserkhan.sg/👈

YASSER KHAN

Author, Coach & Trainer

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The post The Ultimate Guide to Building a Real Estate Website appeared first on Yasser Khan's Real Estate Agent Success Coaching.

21 Must-read Real Estate Blogs That Will Make You a Better Agent in 2023

Yasser Khan — Sun, 11 Sep 2022 22:00:00 +0000

If you’re looking for new, must-read real estate blogs to add to your morning routine, today is your lucky day. I reached out to some of the most successful agents, brokers, and coaches that I know for their morning reading lists.

I gathered the best training, news, and entertainment in the real estate industry just for you. Whether you’re looking for content to share on social media, to level up your real estate game, or you just want to ogle mansions, you’ll find it here.

Click on a category below to get started:

Best Real Estate Agent Training Blogs

1. The Yasser Khan Coaching Blog

Who Should Read It: Incredibly good-looking and charming agents with absolutely great taste 😉

Why I Love It: Hey, you didn’t think I got to six figures a month in income from being homeless and broke just by being lucky, did you? Seriously though, I’ve been working my fingers to the bone over the past two years to bring you the best, most actionable content from the world’s best agents. I've also had a blast doing it!

Hopefully, you agree—and I hope that passion for everything I do comes through in my articles. I have an absurd quantity of exciting new content for you coming soon, so subscribe to my email list below so you never miss an article.

Bonus Download - Listing Presentation

Download my complete (but fugly) Listing Presentation that SOLD $132 Million in Real Estate in just 36.5 months!

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2. Ryan Serhant’s Blog

Who Should Read It: New agents or experienced agents who want to build a brand

Why I Love It: If you want to learn how to build a personal brand that lasts, why not learn from the best? Over the last decade, Ryan Serhant has transformed his personal brand into a household name synonymous with luxury real estate. His blog covers everything from getting licensed to marketing and branding tips from Ryan and his team.

Read Ryan Serhant’s Blog

3. Tom Ferry’s Blog

Who Should Read It: New agents and experienced agents stuck in a rut

Why I Love It: America’s premier real estate coach brings Gary Vaynerchuck-levels of hype to helping real estate agents break out of sales ruts, learn new lead gen techniques, and stay inspired. Like Gary, Ferry is best enjoyed in videos, which are featured prominently on his blog.

Read Tom Ferry’s Blog

4. Lab Coat Agents

Who Should Read It: All agents

Why I Love It: Started as a Facebook mastermind group by Tristan Ahumada and Nick Baldwin, Lab Coat Agents (LCA) has grown into an online real estate powerhouse over the past few years. We love the LCA blog because they write quick hit content that gives you just enough insight to be useful without getting bogged down in the details. For example, they’ll give you one killer script instead of 25 mediocre scripts.

Read Lab Coat Agents

5. Broke Agent Media

Who Should Read It: Agents who want to learn about social media marketing with a tongue-in-cheek attitude

Why I Love It: Launched this year, Broke Agent Media is the brainchild of Eric Simon, who you probably know better from his wildly popular Instagram account, The Broke Agent. But instead of spicy memes and skits, Broke Agent Media serves up timely and actionable advice for agents who are trying to make a splash on social media. You also get the latest podcast releases, and yes, there are still memes!

Read Broke Agent Media

Best Real Estate Blogs for Viral Content

6. Keeping Current Matters

Who Should Read It: Agents who want viral content to post on social media

Why I Love It: Keeping Current Matters creates quick-hit real estate content that is tailor-made to go viral on social media. If you follow any other agents on Facebook or Instagram, chances are you’ve already seen them share infographics and articles from Keeping Current Matters. The blog is free, but you can also pay to add your branding to their content when you share their content on social media.

Read Keeping Current Matters Blog

Best Luxury Real Estate Blogs

7. Dirt

Who Should Read It: Luxury agents or agents who enjoy reading about celebrity real estate

Why I Love It: If you’re a luxury agent who wants to keep up on the latest luxury real estate news or just someone who wants to catch a glimpse of the lifestyles of the rich and infamous, Dirt is a must-read. Dirt reports on all the latest celebrity real estate gossip, and, of course, includes all the luscious listing photos that let you daydream about achieving your #housegoals.

Read Dirt

8. Corcoran Inhabit

Who Should Read It: Luxury agents and brokers who want content inspiration

Why I Love It: Billed as a lifestyle blog, Corcoran’s Inhabit blog reads and looks more like a thick and glossy luxury lifestyle magazine like Wallpaper or Frieze than the blog for a real estate brokerage.

A word of warning: Of all the real estate blogs we’ve shared, this one will make you wish you had deeper pockets and endless vacation days. But if you’re trying to create a luxury lifestyle blog for your team or brokerage, this should be your template.

Read Corcoran Inhabit

9. Mansion Global

Who Should Read It: Luxury agents and brokers

Why I Love It: With the editorial chops and gravitas of parent company The Wall Street Journal, Mansion Global doesn’t just do pretty pictures of celebrity mansions. They offer insight into market trends, architectural history, and what it means to buy, sell, or live in a true luxury property.

Read Mansion Global

10. Elliman Insider

Who Should Read It: Luxury agents and brokers

Why I Love It: While pretty much every brokerage these days has a blog, Elliman manages to stand out from the crowd with articles that people actually want to read. Focusing primarily on their largest markets in New York City, California, Colorado, and Connecticut, Insider includes features on awe-inspiring luxury real estate, as well as well-written instructional and local color articles covering everything from renting an apartment to neighborhood playgrounds.

Read Elliman Insider

11. Sotheby’s International: Extraordinary Living

Who Should Read It: Luxury agents and brokers

Why We Love It: It’s one thing to make me desperately jealous and get me wondering how many lunches I’d need to skip to be able to justify a $10 million mansion in Buenos Aires (answer: all of them for 1,000 years). But Sotheby’s International Extraordinary Living delivers gorgeous photos and write-ups of jaw-dropping homes all over the world to agents and the luxury-obsessed.

Read Sotheby's Extraordinary Living

Best Real Estate Industry Blogs

12. Notorious R.O.B

Who Should Read It: Brokers, investors, tech leaders, and other real estate big-wigs

Why I Love It: If you want the 30,000-foot view of anything, you’re going to have to listen to people who cruise up there on the regular. You know—the iconoclasts, the firebrands, or the people who have such a wide (yet oddly specific) knowledge base that they see things most people miss. The Notorious R.O.B. ticks all those boxes and then some. Necessary reading for anyone who wants the big picture in the real estate industry.

Read Notorious ROB

13. HousingWire

Who Should Read It: Anyone who wants to actually last as a real estate agent

Why I Love It: If you want to actually have a lasting career in real estate, it’s crucial to understand that your clients and former clients will look to YOU as a market expert. That means keeping up to date with the latest news in the industry.

One way to do that, of course, is by reading real estate blogs. How can you possibly accurately predict trends for your buyers and sellers if you don’t watch the market and the dizzying number of factors that can affect it?

Read HousingWire

14. The Real Deal

Who Should Read It: Agents and brokers who need deep industry insight

Why I Love It: When it comes to inside-track real estate journalism, the Real Deal is well, the real deal. They’ll get real estate scoops before even the massive papers do. They also tend to write in a crisp and easy-to-digest style that gives CEOs around the world the information they need to make that next giant acquisition—or just have something to chat about over lunch with industry insiders.

Read The Real Deal

15. 1000Watt Blog

Who Should Read It: Agents who want to think a little more strategically about their branding and marketing

Why I Love It: Blogs from branding agencies are always a pleasure to read because they (almost) always get right to the point. After all, they spend their days trying to distill complex ideas into simple, compelling copy for brands. No easy task.

Read the 1000Watt Blog

16. Inman

Who Should Read It: Brokers, investors, tech leaders, startup founders, and ambitious agents

Why I Love It: Inman is THE place to go for industry news, National Association of Realtors (NAR) drama, and 30,000-foot insight from some of the biggest names in the business. If you work in real estate, chances are your boss probably reads Inman every morning, and your boss’ boss definitely reads Inman every morning.

Read Inman

17. Geek Estate

Who Should Read It: Agents, brokers, and real estate (RE) tech geeks

Why I Love It: Of course, if you’re going to go on a deep dive, you need to jump in head first. Geek Estate manages to parse the nitty-gritty of the real estate tech world in a way that you never thought you’d want to read.

If you need to be in the know for your job, then Geek Estate is a no-brainer. If you’re just curious, you’re going to learn a ton. They also have an invite-only mastermind group that features some of the heaviest hitters in the real estate tech space. Not for newbies!

Read Geek Estate

18. Brick Underground

Who Should Read It: Anyone interested in New York City real estate

Why I Love It: When it comes to New York City real estate blogs, lots of people tend to think the sun revolves around Curbed’s New York-centric section of their now national real estate blog empire. If you’re one of these people, you’re missing out.

Brick Underground writes articles for and about New York City’s frazzled and fabulous agents, offering tips, tricks, and best of all, empathy. They also include hot takes for buyers and sellers, jaw-dropping listings, market news, and more.

Read Brick Underground

19. Zillow Market Trends

Who Should Read It: Agents who want free market trends reports from Zillow’s economists

Why I Love It: When you’re sharing market updates with your audience, the credibility of the source you use matters more than you might think. While doom and gloom headlines generate clicks to your articles on social media, savvy readers are going to check your sources and judge you based on how qualified they are.

Zillow’s Market Trends blog has impeccable sources, including in-house economist Jeff Tucker. They also have exclusive access to the treasure trove of data they collect from their 36 MILLION monthly visitors.

Read Zillow Market Trends

Best Real Estate Investing Blogs

20. Bigger Pockets

Who Should Read It: Agents who want to work with or become investors

Why I Love It: Whether you want to learn the ropes of real estate investing or meet other investors who are already crushing it, then Bigger Pockets is for you. Bigger Pockets is the largest real estate investing blog online today and their forums are the hot spot for real estate investors from around the country.

Read Bigger Pockets

21. Fortune Builders

Who Should Read It: Agents who want to work with or become investors

Why I Love It: Founded by legendary real estate investor Than Merril, Fortune Builders’ blog is chock-full of in-depth and insightful articles written by experienced investors like co-founder Paul Esajian. While Bigger Pockets seems to focus more on community, Fortune Builders focuses on producing actionable real estate investing content.

Read Fortune Builders

Over to You

What’s your favorite real estate blog? Let me know in the comments.

Learn How To Get More Real Estate Leads, Get More Listings, Close More Sales, with Less Resistance AND still have a LIFE!

Get more exclusive real estate agent training here 👉 https://www.yasserkhan.sg/👈

YASSER KHAN

Author, Coach & Trainer

LEARN MORE

The post 21 Must-read Real Estate Blogs That Will Make You a Better Agent in 2023 appeared first on Yasser Khan's Real Estate Agent Success Coaching.

100 Viral Real Estate Blog Ideas for 2023 (+ Examples & Expert Tips)

Yasser Khan — Sun, 05 Jun 2022 22:00:00 +0000

Even in this age of social media, having a real estate blog is still one of the best ways Realtors can demonstrate their expertise to potential clients. Coming up with great real estate blog topics can be challenging, which is why I’m giving you my top 100 real estate blog ideas (with 30 live examples) that you can write about on your website. I’ll also share some crucial tips and tricks I’ve learned as a writer to ensure your audience will click on and read your blog articles.

100 Viral Real Estate Blog Ideas

1. Home Renovations That Offer the Best ROI for Resale

Example title: 10 Home Renovations That Will Get You a Good ROI at the Closing Table

Here’s a real estate blog idea that most homeowners thinking of selling will find irresistible. After all, renovating their older home will cost them tons of money, and most homeowners don’t have a clue if they will ever get any of that money back at the closing table. Address it in an epic real estate blog post and collect them as leads.

2. Before & After Renovation Examples

Example title: Before & After: This Humble Bungalow in ______ Was Transformed Into a Luxe Retreat

People love Cinderella stories, so writing about local homes transformed by tasteful renovations is a great way to get readers hooked up on your real estate blog. The more specific you can get here, the better. Check sites like Sweeten or RenoNation for examples of local renovations and see if you can get a quick comment from the homeowner, architect, or interior designer.

3. How to Fix & Flip Homes

Example title: How to Fix & Flip Homes in __________

With the popularity of real estate reality TV shows growing every day along with news coverage, writing real estate blog posts that educate your audience on investing is a great way to increase traffic and conversions. If you’re serious about working with new (or seasoned) investors, writing an epic in-depth e-book explaining the fix-and-flip process in detail would make a great lead magnet.

4. Home Staging Mistakes to Avoid

Example title: 9 Embarrassing Home Staging Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Home’s Value

Home staging mistakes is a fantastic real estate blog idea because it’s something every homeowner thinks they can do independently, by themselves. The reality, of course, is that home staging can be very difficult and extremely expensive. This is definitely something that most homeowners don’t even realize until they actually try to stage their own FSBO!

5. Highlight Successful Women in Real Estate

Example title: 5 Women Who Are Changing the Way _________ Real Estate Sells

According to one study, women make the decision of which home to purchase 91% of the time. That means celebrating women’s role in the real estate industry is not just a nice thing to do, but also a savvy marketing decision. A real estate blog post highlighting women’s achievements in your local property market is a great way to do just that.

6. Real Estate Negotiation Tips

Example title: 5 Negotiation Secrets Smart Buyers Use to Get Better Deals

Since most buyers or sellers have minimal experience in negotiating, offering them a peek inside the actual process of negotiating a deal can make for a real estate great blog post idea. If you really want to wow them with your skills, try using actual examples and real life stories from your own real estate career.

Pro Tip

If you’re really strapped for time or suffering from a case of writer’s block, consider hiring a professional marketing company like Artur’In to write your blog posts for you. You’ll end up with blogs your audience will love & you’ll have more time to do what you do best: sell houses!

Visit Artur’In

7. How to Choose a Mortgage or Hard Money Lender

Example title: 10 Tricks to Choosing the Right Mortgage Lender in ________

Since the mortgage process is still pretty intimidating for most new home buyers, a guide on choosing a mortgage lender will be a welcome topic for new buyers reading your real estate blog. If you’re targeting investors or even would-be investors, a guide to picking a suitable hard money lender can also work.

8. An Overview of Virtual Staging Software

Example title: How Virtual Staging Software Can Drive Traffic to Your Home

This one falls into the “looks easy until you actually do it” category for homeowners. Virtual staging looks like magic, but once they try to do it, they will realize that hiring a professional like you to market their home might be a far better investment.

9. Tongue-in-Cheek ‘Behind the Scenes’ Posts

Example title: 13 Common Lies Realtors Tell New Buyers in _________

Since Realtors still have a reputation for dishonesty, unfortunately, pulling back the curtain and dishing on what really goes on in the industry is a great way to disarm your real estate website visitors. Just remember to keep the rating as PG, and don’t accuse any fellow agents or brokerages by name.

10. Open House Food Ideas

Example title: 20 Open House Food Ideas to Make Your Open House a Success

Another subtle way to show off your marketing skills is writing up a short article on popular open house food ideas. This is a great way to impress homeowners.

11. A List Post or Explainer Article on Dual Agency

Example title: 5 Reasons Dual Agency Can Be a Mistake in _________

Dual agency is one of those real estate topics that seems easy to understand at first but gets more complicated as you dig in. That makes it a perfect blog post to show off your sales expertise. Just make sure to be clear about the complexities of dual agency. List the pros and cons honestly.

12. A 101-Level Crash Course in Real Estate Investing

Example title: Investing in ______ Real Estate 101

Since everyone wants to make a great investment, a crash course in real estate investing is a great idea for a real estate blog post. You can explain some common industry terms and investment strategies and then discuss which one works best in your farm area.

13. A Guide to Evaluating & Purchasing Rental Properties

Example title: 15 Tips for Buying Rental Properties in _________

Since the real estate investment niche is red-hot these days, an expert guide to purchasing a rental property in your farm area can get you clicks and conversions on your real estate blog. If you’re not an expert in rental property, work with a colleague who is, or a local investor to write this one.

14. Questions to Ask When Hiring a Real Estate Agent

Example title: 17 Questions to Ask When Interviewing a New Realtor

Wouldn’t it be great if you could tell someone which questions you want them to ask you in an interview? Well, if you write this blog post, you can! You can use this post to educate home buyers on what to look for in a Realtor, and also subtlety play up your strong suit. For example, if you have a lot of local experience, spend more time telling them why this is so important in your post.

15. Home Staging Tips & Tricks to Sell Faster

Example title: 25 Interior Paint Colors That Will Help Your Home Sell Quicker

If you’re working in a relatively upscale neighbourhood, then chances are your homeowners will look at beautifully staged local listings and might even start to get intimidated. How will their home compete with these beautiful spaces online?

The trick with this blog post idea is to make sure to interview (or research) actual experts who really know a thing or two about interior design and how it might affect their listing. Again, just be careful about making any promises here. Avoid saying things like “this paint color WILL increase your listing price” and instead say something like, “One study showed this paint color helped XX homes sell faster.”

16. In-depth Neighbourhood Guides for Relocation Buyers

Example title: An In-depth Guide to [Neighborhood] for New Homeowners

While ranking on Google for neighbourhood guides will be extremely difficult in many cities, in-depth neighborhood guides make excellent lead magnets, e-books, or social media content. The trick here is to go truly deep. Most agents will write fluffy overviews, if anything, so make sure to get into the nitty-gritty of what moving to your neighbourhood will be like.

17. Hyper-local New Homebuyer’s Guide

Example title: A New Homebuyer’s Guide to Moving to [Your Farm Area]

Are you working with new home buyers? If not, you’re missing out. Many first-time buyers these days have excellent income and credit, and all they really need is someone to walk them through the transaction. If you get it right, you could have an evangelist for life.

18. Monthly or Quarterly Aggregated Market Reports

Example title: Aggregated Market Report for [Your Farm Area, Month Year]

While most property agents post some kind of market report on their blogs, most are pretty thin and not actually useful for their readers. If you want to stand out, then take the time and effort to make your monthly or quarterly local market reports as in-depth and as nerdy as you can manage.

19. Local Listing(s) of the Week

Example title: 30 Drop-dead Gorgeous Modern Homes in [Your Farm Area]

This is a fun one and can help you build relationships with local listing agents. Try to choose three to five listings every week that might fit a specific theme your audience will like for more impact. For example, if you’re working in Punggol, waterfront listings would be fun to write about. If you’re working in Manhattan, then you can’t go wrong writing about penthouses.

20. A Property Marketing Case Study

Example title: Case Study: How 5 [Your Farm Area] Luxury Homes Sold 20% Over Asking

This real estate blog post requires a little more research and, of course, access to actual data and assets such as before-and-after images. But if you either have a few listings under your belt where marketing made the difference, or know an agent who does, then this is a great post to show off your marketing knowledge to your readers.

21. How Economic News Affects Your Farm Area

Example title: What the [Latest Economic News] Means for [Your Farm Area] Homeowners

While your wealthy clients might read the Wall Street Journal every morning, most of the economic news won’t be directly relevant to their real estate portfolio. That’s why taking that news and contextualizing it for them is another excellent way to use your blog to offer something of value for your audience.

22. A Guide to Local Architectural Styles

Example title: A Cheat Sheet to the Architectural Styles of _________

When people start thinking about buying or selling a home, they generally go into education mode. Learning about local architectural styles is a great way to get them to click on your posts on social media.

23. An Interview With a Lawyer on Common Local Legal Issues

Example title: A Lawyer Explains the Legal Issues of Foreigners Additional Buyers Stamp Duty

Real estate lawyers also want to show off their local expertise to your audience because your leads might potentially be their leads too. Are you starting to notice a trend here with interview articles? If you’re just jumping in on this real estate article idea, then here’s a quick recap: Interviewing local experts can help build relationships that lead to referrals down the road.

24. A Guide to Local HOA Covenants

Example title: 5 Common HOA Covenants & What They Really Mean

If you want to get confused (and angry), ask someone what they think about their homeowners association (HOA). For most people, HOAs are right up there with the IRS when it comes to confusing and potentially expensive adversaries. That’s why a friendly explainer piece on HOA covenants can help new homeowners or anyone who never lived under their rules feel a little more comfortable about them.

25. An Explainer on What Listing Agents Do

Example title: 20 Hidden Ways Listing Agents Help _______ Homeowners Sell Faster & for More Money

Justifying your own job might seem a little desperate, but if you focus on the positive and talk about some uncommon but essential ways you can help them, you just might end up with a popular blog post.

26. Affordable Curb Appeal Ideas for Your Local Market

Example title: 108 Affordable Curb Appeal Ideas for [Your Farm Area] Homes

Curb appeal is one of those things that most homeowners don’t quite understand. They THINK they do, but when it comes down to pulling out their credit card or rolling up their sleeves, they will inevitably head to Google. Or if you have a well-written article, your real estate blog.

27. A Guide to Up & Coming Micro-Neighbourhoods

Example title: 6 Neighborhoods in ________ Set to Take Off in 2022

While every agent in your farm area is probably writing about the hot new neighbourhood, writing about smaller micro-neighbourhoods with appealing qualities is a great way to show off your local market knowledge.

28. Common Questions Sellers Ask

Example title: 15 Common Questions Home Sellers Ask Real Estate Agents

Making a list of the ten most common questions you get asked and answering them in a detail real estate blog post is a great blog post idea.29. Common questions buyers ask

29. Common Questions Buyers Ask

Example title: 20 Most Common Home Buyer Questions Answered by an Expert

Just like the above example, making a list of the ten most common questions you get asked and answering them in a detail real estate blog post is another great blog post idea.

30. Common Questions Relocation Clients Ask

Example title: What Relocation Clients Should Know about Moving Services

Another way to do this is list down common questions moving and relocation clients face.

More Real Estate Blog Ideas… (which are pretty straightforward)

31. A guide to buying foreclosures (or bank auctions)
32. Why hiring an agent is important
33. Perils and Pitfalls of buying or selling without an agent
34. Real life horror stories of DIYers and FSBOs
35. A guide to DIY Buyers
36. Why Property Portals' Home Value Estimates are not accurate
37. The perils of for sale by owner
38. Weekly starter home wrap-up post
39. Interview a local developer
40. Interview a local mortgage broker
41. Interview a local day care owner
42. Interview a local home inspector
43. Interview a local property developer
44. Interview a local interior designer
45. Interview a local moving company
46. Interview a local school teacher
47. Monthly wrap-up of major sales
48. A guide to the best coffee shops in XX
49. A guide to your favourite restaurants in XX
50. A guide to local parks
51. A guide to local school districts
52. A guide to local dog runs
53. A guide to local child care centres
54. A guide to after school child care
55. A guide to local tuition centres
56. Renting vs buying
57. Overview of the closing process
58. Tips for getting offers accepted
59. Fun historical facts about your farm area
60. When to refinance
61. How to get prequalified for a mortgage
62. Weekly wrap up of luxury listings
63. News about new developments
64. Local politics and how it might affect your farm area
65. Best colours to paint a home to sell faster
66. What to do with pets when showing your home
67. Tips for a successful open house
68. Gardening and landscaping tips
69. How to save money on cooling bills
70. How to make a 'green' and sustainable home
71. Yearly maintenance schedule
72. Zoning laws for additions or renovations
73. Highlight local artists
74. Highlight local art galleries
75. Highlight a local photographer
76. Highlight a local interior designer
77. Highlight a local architect
78. Tips for packing for a move
79. Tips for hiring a long-distance mover
80. Tips for hiring a contractor
81. Tips for hiring painters
82. Tips for hiring a landscaper
83. Moving checklist
84. Prelisting checklist
85. Closing checklist
86. Guide to local wildlife
87. Guide to local attractions
88. Guide to local beaches
89. Guide to local boating activities
90. Guide to local amenities
91. Rank the best supermarkets
92. Rank the best bakeries
93. Rank the best schools
94. Rank the best local eateries
95. Rank the best restaurants
96. Rank the best neighbourhoods
97. Rank the best local companies to work for
98. Rank the best heritage buildings
99. Rank the best tuition centres
100. Rank the best local malls

7 Expert Real Estate Blogging Tips & Resources

Now that you’re (hopefully) inspired to start blogging, here are some insider tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years that will help you get more page views and visitors.

1. Write By Hand 3 Different Versions of Your Headline & Pick the Best One

The headline is by far the most important element of your blog post. It’s the first and sometimes only thing your audience will see before they decide to click on it and read it. So take the time to learn how to write headlines that get clicks. Here are some simple formulas you can use.

2. Use H2 Headings to Break Up Your Posts Into Bite-sized Chunks

Since your readers are busy, do them a favor and break up your blog posts into bite-sized chunks using H2 subheadings. Most people are going to skim your posts anyway. Make it easy for them. Using H2, H3, and H4 subheadings is also a best practice for real estate SEO.

3. Include Internal Links to Other Related Blog Posts

This will not only help your reader quickly get to related posts, but will help Google crawl your site and might help you rank better.

4. Do Keyword Research to Find Out What Your Audience Is Searching for on Google

If you want a chance of ranking your real estate blog posts on Google, you need to research what keywords your audience is searching for in the first place. You can start by checking out some other successful real estate blogs in your farm area. Which articles do you think are most helpful for buyers and sellers? If you want to get serious and do professional keyword research, check out our in-depth guide below.

5. Use Descriptive Language & Write Short Sentences & Paragraphs

Long paragraphs are like homework, and you have about 10 seconds to capture your reader’s attention before they click back over to Facebook. Worse, they take forever to scroll through on mobile.

6. Read Your Writing Out Loud Before Hitting Publish

Editing your own writing can be tricky, but one way to make it easier is to read your entire post out loud and see if you stumble. If you can read through it without stumbling, then chances are so will your readers.

7. Always Put the Reader First

Always put your reader first. Make sure to focus on their needs and experience rather than search engine optimization (SEO), selling, trying to sound clever, or anything else. Always remember your blog is for your readers, not to stroke your ego!

Over to You

Have a great real estate blog idea that we forgot? Let us know in the comments or join us on our Facebook Mastermind Group here.

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The post 100 Viral Real Estate Blog Ideas for 2023 (+ Examples & Expert Tips) appeared first on Yasser Khan's Real Estate Agent Success Coaching.