Natalie Rittle

Yahoo! News reported this week that although the real estate market is experiencing a slump, industry Web sites are on an upswing.

With house shopping happening more and more online instead of door to door, real estate Web sites have spruced up their curb appeal. With features such as online mapping capabilities, photo galleries and virtual tours as well as detailed pricing searches, consumers have access to homes right at their fingertips.

The article reports quotes Pete Flint, CEO of www.trulia.com who says the housing market's downturn has played to the strengths of real estate Web sites.

"Although it's unfortunate what's going on in the housing market, it's really the online sites that are benefiting because consumers are spending a little bit more time before they make decisions and traditional real estate brokers are rethinking the way they're marketing themselves," Flint said.

In addition to the large sites like trulia.com and other listing services, individual agents are beefing up their efforts to provide better service to customers and potential customers online.

Just among the local agents and real estate companies who have become clients of Plexus over the past few years, a similar trend is occurring.

Agents want all the necessary features on their personal sites including listing capabilities, mapping, photo galleries, document uploads and more. And perhaps the biggest trend is that of optimizing a real estate site so that it is appearing near the top of the search engines.

In our experience, real estate SEO - especially in the Athens market is perhaps the most competitive around. Agents are busy vying for the coveted top spots ranking for "Athens Georgia real estate," "Athens homes," "Athens Georgia neighborhoods," "Athens Georgia real estate agent," and more.

So, according to the trends, if you have a real estate Web site lacking in the abilities to:

• immediately post and update listings with multiple photos and accompanying information
• have potential clients contact you directly from your site instantaneously
• regularly communicate with clients and interested parties with up to date listings and information
• improve your search engine ranking

Then, watch out for your competition because they are certainly stepping it up!