How to Build Your Initial Real Estate Website

It can feel overwhelming to build a website from the ground up, but an elegant and informative real estate website goes a long way in making a name for yourself and putting yourself out there. A well-designed website will attract more clients, help you sell more homes, and build your online presence. Take it one step at a time, and your new website will be central to your online marketing efforts in the real estate industry. The following is a quick overview of what you can do to build a powerful website.

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To get started, your real estate website should include an aesthetically appealing logo — either for your company or for yourself as an independent agent — next to your company name or personal name in large font. Next to this, you will need navigation tabs along the top of your website. You can deviate from these standards, but make sure your website is still easy to navigate for new visitors.

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You’ll design and publish a variety of landing pages to promote your real estate services to potential clients. For example, you may publish multiple landing pages that are each optimized for different segments of your target market. Some real estate agents choose to optimize landing pages for different neighborhoods and cities, or they create landing pages specifically for an email newsletter sign up form.

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Navigation tabs on a real estate website typically include contact information, social media buttons, about page, services, blog, and FAQ. You may also want to include a navigation tab for your local listings; easy access to your listings is a fantastic way to generate leads. On the about page, feel free to include information about yourself and/or your team, which is especially helpful for agents who are just starting out and would like to introduce themselves to potential clients.

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Best practices for real estate websites dictate that you should also do the following for your new website:

- From the start, optimize your website for mobile. People are always on the go nowadays and multitasking, so they need to be able to easily and conveniently browse your website from their mobile devices.

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- Visual content, especially videos, are proven to be more effective and engaging than textual content. The best option is a website on which you can upload videos for your potential clients to watch and learn about your services and listings.

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- Start off on the right foot and save yourself a headache by setting up your website analytics and prioritizing Search Engine Optimization when you build your real estate website. When set up properly, analytics will help you understand what is working and what isn’t working for lead generation, including which pages are effective and which are not. Proper SEO practices will make your website easier to find for potential clients when they run a web search to find a real estate agent. Be sure to optimize for location, so clients seeking you in the area will be sure to find you and contact you.

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- In business, looking professional is important if you want to be taken seriously. The same concept applies to your website. Your website design should be engaging and visually impressive, because it is your online representation of yourself and your work. A top-notch website design will be worth its weight in gold when your engagement and credibility with website visitors and readers begins to grow.

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- Post a blog on your website to showcase your expertise in the real estate industry. Always update your blog posts on a regular basis. A successful blog has the potential to double your website readership! You can hire a content writer to produce your blogs, or you can write them. Writing your own blog shows potential clients that you know what you’re talking about and that you’re passionate about the business. Additionally, offering evergreen content on your blog is an excellent way to generate leads; post your own e-book, publish tips for buying and selling homes, provide white papers, and submit other evergreen content for your target audience to download.

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- Your website footer should include a copyright statement and your contact information. Include your address, phone number, email, logo or company image, and site map. There should also be easy-to-find links to your website pages, like the homepage, about page, services, blog, and contact page. Don’t forget the social media buttons as well, so your audience can navigate to your Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

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While hiring a professional website designer may cost more than creating a website yourself with a free template, you will see a return on your investment if you have it professionally done. Let someone else manage and design it while you focus on your career and your clients. Look at samples/portfolios, pricing, and details on services offered by website designers and programmers. An expertly crafted website will also stand out as unique and compelling and will have a foot up on websites that are built from plain, over-used templates. If you do use a template, just be sure to focus your attention on making it look professional and one-of-a-kind if possible.

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That being said, there’s nothing wrong with using a template to build a website, especially if you don’t have the budget when starting out to hire a professional website designer. There are inexpensive options on the market that allow you to customize templates and add features that are relevant for real estate agents to use. Choose a domain name that is short and easy to remember. If you can, use your company name as the domain name. You can still craft and run a successful and effective website for your real estate business.

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Before launching your real estate website, be sure to check the entire website for any bugs or inconsistencies. You want to work on fixing these before launching the website. Otherwise, potential clients may become frustrated; you wouldn’t want to accidentally seem unprofessional.

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We wish you the best with creating your new real estate website. Exercise your creativity, and have fun while creating an online presence for yourself. Now get out and market your new website!

This is a guest post contribution from Valerie Kriss, Executive Assistant at Square 1 Group.

Feel free to contact Square 1 Group for your real estate website.