And we should chat again soon — I think most sites that have data do a poor job of integration and implementation.

-rsh

The majority of my traffic is longtail searches-my site competes head to head with the agreggators for longtail traffic.

The navigation of my site is very simplistic (my choice) so it’s not really obvious if someone lands on my home page that there are a ton of searches available. However, if someone is looking for something specific, Wild Wings real estate (a subdivision) Daivs open houses – they tend to land on the correct page – or at least that is the intent.

I actually have a lot of neighborhood searches for Davis – homes broken down by areas the way Davis buyers look at the area – I will concede the map search does not have anything but the homes for sale – but that really is my choice – in looking at my analytics- I don’t have a lot of users looking at that data – most want to look at inventory – is it something I could add on – maybe – I have another site in development (regional for Sacramento vs. local Davis) and might be something to consider.
Yes I’m not a programmer so not my design – the site is by Real Estate Webmasters – a great company in Canada – this is one of their basic sites – they do semi-custom and custom sites as well -but they are really only limited by the client’s ideas and budget.

Conceding search to the big players is just not going to happen-that’s the lead generation piece. I’m not a blogger – I’m a lead generator.

Creating community on a real estate site for the community and not agents looks to be a challenge – but one I’m willing to explore. I’ll take a look at the posts you listed – this is a very interesting topic and really one I’ve been thinking about for a while.

Honestly, a great post. Really love your take on it, which takes on greater weight because you operate the #2 SERPS site on Google for “Davis CA real estate”.

At the same time, I don’t think it’s as simple as you paint it.

For one thing, I’d love to know what you mean by “long tail search”. Because if there’s one thing that’s sort of been settled about the Long Tail, it is that only the aggregators win in Long Tail marketing.

For another, you mention that a local agent with local expertise could create neighborhood searches based on how buyers actually look at neighborhoods. Yet, I note that your own website (designed by an outside firm, because I imagine that like most agents, you’re not a web programmer or web designer) doesn’t offer a search like that. It offers the rather standard zip/bed/bath/price search circa 1996.

Your map-based search offers no search by neighborhood, nor offers any information about a neighborhood, any idea of where the restaurants are, where the dry cleaners might be, where the schools are, how good those schools are, and so on and so forth.

And that’s not a knock on your website, because as I said, those kinds of search features are expensive and time-consuming to build. Trulia and Zillow and big brokers (e.g., Coldwell Banker) do offer that kind of search.

As for creating compelling local content… I address that here and here in greater depth. My position is that realtors are singularly ill-placed to create compelling local content for a variety of reasons, and will not actually create a substantial “local community” when blogging as a realtor.

But even if blogs are a goldmine for realtors, it does not then follow that realtors should have a SEARCH-based website. In other words, why not just farm out the SEARCH to guys like TruZilloGain, and focus your time and energy on the blogging, the answering of questions, and the like. (I’m not suggesting folks do this — I’m just wondering what the pros & cons are of this.)

Very stimulating post all around — kudos to you, and thanks again for engaging with me!

-rsh

One of the smartest things some agents could do right now is to create numerous hyperlocal websites with photos and videos, and put a search for real estate just in that area on there. That will get users.

But I have to say one thing, (Hopefully Rob Hahn ’s research will back me up here) but from us paying attention to users, when they get to a real estate website, unless they are from out of town, all they really care about is search. Get them there with content, but search, search, search.

But the big reasons brokers should have websites….if they aren’t the dominant player in the market, then Trulia is not going to help them since those sites only send people back to the listing agent. Technology is the great equalizer, it can make the smallest broker big if they play their cards right.