Real Estate Web Sites Boom Despite Market
Posted on
07/24/2007
by
Natalie
2 Comments
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!
Comments
Posted by Cody on August 31, 2007
Your right. Now that high-speed internet is easier to access than it was 5 years ago it's really become a competitive advantage to have a website.
Having a website in this day and age is almost a necessity if your looking to promote,sell, or market anything, and as high speed internet becomes more affordable and easier to access you will almost be left out in the dark if you do not have a site. (Even if it's about your dog,cat or garden.)
While I'm here I'd like to say Plexus does a great job handling they're clients who are in the real estate business. You guys do a good job of implementing CSS/XHTML, The lightbox effect and google maps very well. :)
Post a Comment
Space Highlight

Stephanie and I recently returned from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) training at High Rankings, an SEO firm headed up by guru Jill Whalen. We picked up some great tips and strengthened our knowledge in this area and are fired up to help our clients cli
Favorite Links
- Georgia Dogs
- Athens Banner-Herald
- The Drudge Report
- SEC Football
- Dictionary
- Wikipedia
- Coach
- Digg
- Flickr
- Google Calendar
- Time Magazine
- moo
- Kaboodle
- Google Docs
- Room Service Home
- Ann Taylor Loft
- Tiffany & Co
- The Weather Channel
- Women's Health Magazine
- The Dawg Depot
- Shutterfly
- Namemaker
Please wait…
Loading recent Flickr images...


Posted by Michelle DeRepentigny on August 01, 2007
Organic blogs and websites help to level the playing field between large companies which typically have static sites and niche real estate companies. SEO and YEO is definitely the wave of the future for agents in all markets.