Should I Have a Real Estate Website and a Real Estate Blog?

Q: Should I have a real estate website and a real estate blog?

I had the honor of speaking with Perrie Hayes of Hayes Marketing Communications earlier today where we were discussed best practices for real estate agent marketing and real estate agent websites. The topic of separate real estate websites and real estate blogs came up so I thought I’d elaborate here.

To answer the question directly – YES, real estate agents should have real estate websites and real estate blogs, but they don’t have to be separate from each other.

Of course every real estate agent should have a website, but surprisingly few have blogs.  Real estate blogs will inevitably be deemed as crucial as a regular website.  In fact, the ideal real estate website for today’s market is a blog.  The problem with using most blogs as a primary real estate website though is that they don’t fit the mold of what most real estate agents are looking for in a website. Our websites fit the mold perfectly as they leverage the Web 2.0 benefits of blogs while maintaining a real estate website look and feel.

Whether you have one of our websites or not though, here are a few rules to keep in mind:

1. Your website should be at the center of all your marketing efforts.
   • Your consumers want to be able to find you and you should make it easy for them.  Make sure they know where to find you on the web today and 10 years from now.
   • You should own the domain name and maintain control of it.
2. There are lots of  great, free blog services out there.  Don’t think that you need to spend a lot of money to get one.

Free Blog Services

• Wordpress.com
• Blogger.com
• ActiveRain.com
• Realtor.com/blogs/

Wordpress.com and Blogger.com allow you to create multiple accounts. That means you can create one for each niche market you serve and only post content relevant to that target audience.  Since you’re creating the content, you might as well put it on your primary website too though right?

I don’t think Activerain.com and Realtor.com allow you to have multiple blogs on the same account, but they’re real estate specific and a great place to connect with other professionals.

Brief Example

Let’s say you have 7 websites:

• Your primary website which everything points back to
• 2 Wordpress blogs
  • 1 for general real estate stuff (like your primary website)
  • 1 for a specific community in your market area
• 2 Blogger blogs
  • 1 for general real estate stuff (like your primary website)
  • 1 for a specific community in your market area
• Activerain.com blog
• Realtor.com blog

Scenario 1:

You run market statistics for your target market and decide to publish them.

1. Start by putting the content on your primary website
2. Copy and paste the content into each of your 6 blogs linking back to your primary website.
3. You can put the entire article on each blog or just a portion of allowing people to click through to your primary website to read the full article.

Scenario 2:

You list a new house outside of your target market.

1. Start by adding a page/post about the listing to your primary website.
2. Copy and paste the content to your all of your blogs except the niche blogs and add links to your primary website.

Following this type of model, you’ll drastically increase your exposure to consumers and search engines.  The longer you do it, the better it gets, and that’s why it’s so important to make sure your primary website is the center of everything.  As time goes by, it will have more and more content making it more and more useful to consumers.