Real Estate Agent, Brokerage and Mortgage Blogs

With so many companies offering website development/hosting for Realtors® and Brokers, its a wonder that there are so many really bad Real Estate sites out there.  Youd think that with enough competition in a small marketplace, these companies would have valuable offerings brimming with web 2.0 technologies.   Sadly, that just isnt the case.  So, even if you decide not to use one of our blog site systems for your next Realtor® or Broker site, here is a list of important things to know and questions to ask your developer before embarking on a real estate website.
 
Templated Websites- Common Problems:
Stale design: Because I am a big old geek that is on the Internet day in and day out- I see a lot of beautiful websites.  When I look at these Real Estate template sites- they look pretty bad to me- kind of stuck in the mid 90s.  To see what is "hot" on the Internet go to CSS Beauty and CSS Elite.  CSS is a technology that allows you to easily switch the look and feel of a website in minutes rather than days with straight HTML.  Sometimes these template houses will tell you- you can customize the site with different colors and add your logo.  Woopdie Doo!  With CSS you can change everything from where your menus are positioned to how they display.  You definitely want a site that uses CSS.  You should look for a web company that has CSS driven templates and uses professional designers to customize your site so you get a "hot" web 2.0 look to draw in customers.  To understand the flexibvility of CSS, visit CSS Zen Garden.  Each one of those templates uses the same HTML- just a different CSS.  Menaing- a simple switch of one file completely changes the look and feel of a single website.

Read also: Exclusive Pre-Launch Offer: RSS Pieces Introduces SEOed Semi-Custom Template Real Estate Blogs

The Dreaded Pre-loaded (AKA Plagiarized) content: Most companies using cookie cutter templates and pre-loaded content that you share with all their other clients, arent doing you any favors.  You are essentially throwing your money down the toilet.   From an SEO standpoint, a site with content that replicated across multiple sites is not just useless but also detrimental to your search engine positioning.  That means when someone searches for you on Google or Yahoo! they are not very likely to find you.  If you need to use content building strategies- use RSS feeds from local news or real estate related sources that update daily.  But for the most part, write your own unique content.  See if you are copying someone elses content on your site visit: www.copyscape.com.  To understand the severity of using the same content on multiple sites read this article.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO is constantly developing and most designers havent paid a lick of attention to it until recently. So, there is no shortage of badly indexed Realtor® sites out there with poor page ranks. Common mistakes seen on Realtor® websites related to SEO:

•    Repeating keyword and description meta data across multiple pages of a site.
Many times, web designers place the same keywords and descriptions on each page.  Want to see how your website rates on this one?   Visit Widexl.  Enter your website address into the URL area and the keycode and see where you rate.  You always want to run this one on your web developer website.  Clearly, if their own website cant pass a simple SEO test, you need to find another developer.

•    Only placing keyword and description meta data on the home page.
This is a deadly mistake that leads to bad indexing and really bad search results positioning.  To see if your site is guilty of this charge.  Run the same Widexl test as above on your home page and an inner page. 

•    Generating keywords that they want to be searched by instead of from the content.
This decreases keyword relevancy. Always generate Yahoo! 100% relevancy keywords.  Your Widexl results include a keyword relevancy check.

•    Writing content without having keywords in mind.
This usually results in the bi-polar website where an author becomes Longfellow and writes a novel that includes everything from character arcs to sub plots instead of writing a brief, specific, topic-centered entry that repeats themes and keywords for valuable keyword density and content relevancy. Now, I have to be fair, most web designers dont write the content. But, they should tell a client when their content is off the mark and how to correct it. Not to say that all clients will be receptive- Ive had my fair share of prolific clients that think their site dont stink, but it is worth a shot.

•    Not tagging content appropriately.
Many web developers use HTML to generate styles within the body text instead of properly using CSS. What ends up happening, is that by using all kinds of HTML formatting tags they neglect the heading tags for content. Search engines like heading tags. They direct them to which content should be given greater weight. Heading tags help search engines index the content on your pages so be sure to use them wisely. Tip: Use CSS for heading tag formatting and tag all content with the appropriate heading tags. CSS can also eliminate the excessive use of tables for formatting which only slows a site down, can introduce dozens of validation errors and is just bad form all around. While youre at it- lose the frames too! CSS- use it for a clean, easily transformable, validated site!

•    Not ensuring their HTML is validated.
This is by far and away my pet peeve. In some cases, you have to accept a few validation warnings (I am talking low single digits here) but I run across sites all the time with upwards of 100 validation warnings and errors. They may look beautiful, its unlikely that they display properly across common browsers and most importantly, validation problems thoroughly confuse search engines. WC3 standards are in place for a reason. Live them, learn them, love them- but most of all FOLLOW THEM!  To see if your site is reasonably validated or check to see if your developer adheres to reasonable W3C standards- test the site at: W3C

•    Bells and Whistles.
If it blinks, rings, flashes, slides, lights up and buzzes, ... get rid of it. Homey dont play that! Search engines cant see Flash, JavaScript, Frames, Audio, images of all types etc. The deal is unless you can do it in HTML, XHTML or DHTML a search engine cant index the content. Never use graphics or Flash for menus- it is very bad for SEO. If you need to use Flash make sure it is simply a visual element and does not display real textual content that should be searchable by an engine. If you use images on your site be sure to tag them properly so an engine can index them. FYI: Flash is not supported by the W3C, so when possible avoid it! And search engines truly hate it.

What to ask a web developer when having your website built.
1.    Will I be able to easily add and edit content on my site? (CMS/Blog)
2.    Will my site be SEOed?
3.    Can you develop the site using CSS so I can easily change the look and feel of my website from time to time at a minimum cost?
4.    Do you help market my site with SEO, ping services and/or directory entries in Google and Yahoo!?
5.    Do you use Flash? (You do not want a developer that uses a lot of Flash- search engines cannot read Flash)
6.    Will my website be validated to W3C.org standards?  (this ensures that all search engines can read the HTML and index the pages properly)

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