I am sure a lot of designers have stories on how they created the ideal real estate websites. Well, I am going to share my story on how my client's website became successful.
Every realtor wants to be at the top of the search results for their particular key phrases. Unfortunately, only one in a few thousand get there. If you think that a SEO consultant can get you there in a few weeks, you better think again. It is a long struggle to reach the top of the SERPs that will take many months to a year.
I started my struggle by creating a database. For my client's website, I selected a MS SQL Server 2005 database. I created a relational schema that organized the database and shows relationships between tables. I talked with my client about possible features he would like. This process took several weeks to complete.
The next phase was to create a website template. Many web designers say that templates are not good for SEO, and there is some truth to that. However, search engines also love content and templates allow designers to create content much faster. Do not expect the perfect design after one shot. You can expect your designer to give you multiple options on the ideal template. You may want to get some second opinions on popular forums. In the end, make sure you like the website. That is the most important thing.
So you have a design you like? Great! If not, you better hire a different designer. There is no sense in having this designer create a website if the design is not good. It has to be appealing or visitors are going to leave once they reach your home page.
For SEO purposes, I would stay away from flash navigation menus. Use flash only to enhance your site. If your traffic has to have flash player installed to use your site, then you have a problem. Crawlers can not crawl flash that easily - if at all. Some AJAX may be alright. Crawlers do not respond to javascript, so if you use any javaScript to enhance your site, try using your website without javaScript and see what happens.
Make sure you have meta tags. Some crawlers do not care about meta tags anymore. However, you should still have them there. Do not be lazy. Make sure you include a good title tag and keyword meta tag. You should only have about 10 keywords - do not over do this.
Another thing, make sure your website is W3C compliant. If you do not know what that is, do a google search for W3C validator. It will help make your browser compatible across different browsers.
Make sure your designer is creating your website with CSS. Make sure your designer does not use tables for the main design. Tables can be in the CSS, but do not rely on them for design purposes.
While you are building your website, create a robots.txt file and block access to your website. This will prevent it from being crawled during developmental stages. You should not release your website until it is 100% ready. If you do not do this, you will be playing catch up with the crawlers for a long time. Trust me.
For a quality website, expect a programmer to take at least 3 months creating it. For real estate websites, there needs to be a dynamic scripting language such as Coldfusion, PHP, or ASP. This makes your website dynamic. Crawlers love dynamic websites - they crawl them much more often. I chose Coldfusion for my client's website.
While your programmer is designing and create pages, start doing some SEO work. Read forums and learn how to efficiently post backlinks to your website. It is never too early to start doing this. The more quality backlinks you can get, the better.
Real estate websites should have a lot of different sections including a blog, news section, events, mortgage calculator, rss feeds, search facilities, details pages, video galleries, photo galleries, city information, etc.
When your website is close to completion, you need to get the word out about your site. Submit your RSS feeds to RSS directories. Submit your website to directories in general. Post in forums and blogs. Do some press releases. Do whatever it takes to get traffic.
Be careful you do not post too many backlinks at once. Crawlers are smart. Your links have to be natural. They know the rate at which you get backlinks. This means you need to gradually increase your rate. If it is too fast, your website will end up back in the sandbox.
When your website is complete, it really is not complete. Real estate websites are never ending. This is true for most websites. You should always add content. Keep everything fresh.
It is going to take a lot of hard work to get your real estate website togather. The last thing I am going to do in this article is share my latest real estate website: http://www.lukebouman.com/
I realize this article is really intense in the number of things you have to do. Believe me when I said there are hundreds of things I missed. However, this is the general path you need to take to get a quality real estate website up on the internet.
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