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Search & Real Estate Online: Ugh
By Julie | March 18, 2007
I’m preparing to sell my house. Everyone knows that the Interweb is playing a big role in that process these days.
But if you look closely, realty companies are clearly using the Web for brand presence, rather than search presence (save for PPC).
I did some SEO/SEM for a Major Real Estate Company(tm) about, eh, 2-3 years ago. The experience was frustrating, because the site was not built to any specification that would support strong online marketing, and a lot of the work I could do involved either PPC or rudimentary code cleanup.
Looking at other real estate sites right now, I can say them with a confidence that the issues I faced there are more universal in the vertical than client-specific.
- The Regional MLS is a train wreck of a database. Every site pulls its listings (’Search listings from every agent!’) from the Regional MLS. The way every site pulls is such a nightmare I can only assume it is a flaw inherent on the MLS side.
- Beyond that, though, the amount of insane URL structures on the average big-multi-office-agency web site? Wow. And it doesn’t even look like they’re using it for login or personalization in most cases.
- The session cookies. Ai yi yi. What with session cookies, a lot of the standard, newsletter/brochure content (much of which is pretty good once you dig down), can’t be found or easily indexed for search.
Even if we skipped over the issues surrounding the MLS, setting up pages with local offices, strong geo-targeting footers for each, agent names, and even individual pages shouldn’t be too rough to do as standard-generated pages. Yet, it doesn’t happen. The agent pages set up by most agencies use a stock content template that few agents customize. The agents who DO care set up personal sites, but they show little search savvy — again, no local search elements, geo-targeters, etc., and I see a bunch of people using frames yet. Frames!
I’m not asking real estate agencies to set up a disintermediation system — something I know they all dread. But by making offices and geotargeters indexable and findable, they could create an excellent lead-referral system.
As it is, most of them must be driving traffic on name-recognition for the agency (drive-by signs, billboards, TV/Radio ads, etc.), and via PPC. Keyword bidding for real estate PPC, by the way, is insane. Given that most of them seem to route their PPC to their home pages, I doubt it’s especially effective — and I bet conversion tracking is near-nonexistent. Expensive and unmeasurable: two adjectives I hate, used together.
It’s a pity. This whole process is giving me a headache. I just want to find someone who actually knows my neighborhood who might be able to sell my house in comparison to others in the neighborhood. Mine is one of the larger single-homes, and actually has central air, which means it’s a bit of an oddity — especially since there are no fewer than 4 repossessed homes in a 3-block radius, all on the market for cheap, and all needing twice their price in work. My house is move-in ready (or will be). So marketing this place will take some delicacy. And instead of finding some info online, I’m going to be slogging with a phone and lingering around open houses. Sigh.
Hm. I wonder if I can get an agent to take part commission, part barter on this deal. I build them a decent, locally targeted site, they cut their take focusing on the long-term benefit…
Topics: PPC, SEM, SEO, conversion tracking, databases, dumb techniques, dynamic urls, lead generation, local search, marketing |
