5 Reasons Why Community Pages Are a Must for Real Estate Websites

Posted on Mar 26 2015 - 3:35pm by Bill Gassett
#21

real estate website Creating your own local community pages is a great way to differentiate yourself as a real estate agent. While it can take a little work to compile something that is informative and useful, community pages that cover the areas you work in offer a number of advantages. When you want to stand out to potential clients, every little bit helps.

Advantages of Real Estate Community Pages

Being the Local Real Estate Expert
Real estate transactions are a big deal for pretty much everybody, making the help of an expert crucial. You can bet that most people that are buying or selling a home are searching for information before their transaction, and the best way to become their agent is to have that information. Creating a community page lets you be that information source.

Chances are that if you have been working for very long in a particular community, you have quite a bit of information already. You probably already are a local real estate expert, even if you haven't thought of yourself in those terms. Taking the time to put together all the information you have about an area –and doing the research needed to fill in the gaps– will make you a trusted resource for everyone searching online. A good community page will be filled with tons of useful data including information on town history, schools, demographics, local attractions, restaurants, highway access, real estate and more. Take a look at this REALTORS® guide to Mendon Real Estate as an example of what I’m talking about. If you were relocating into the area and knew nothing about Mendon, Massachusetts, a potential buyer would have a much better grasp of the area.

Helping Home Buyers
Most people looking to buy a home are planning to stick around a while. This means they want to know as much about the area as they can. Even if they are planning to flip the house, they still want to know the basics of the community they are purchasing in. You can be the agent that provides this info.

As mentioned above, you can talk about the schools in the area, the real estate market in general, the neighborhoods and what they have to offer, and even the history of the community. If there is something special about the town worth noting by all means include it!

Buyers are searching online before they do anything else. If they come upon your community page and see that you know a lot about the area, they may contact you for more information and/or help in buying a home. Here is another example of a real estate page for Franklin, Massachusetts. If you were looking for a home and knew nothing about Franklin, this would be great information to have at your fingertips. This community page has a YouTube video from the owner of a real estate company explaining the benefits of the town. Video is always a terrific addition to your real estate pages!

Even if most buyers don't actually hire you as their agent, if your information is useful, they can easily tell other friends and family about your community page.

Helping Home Sellers
Your community page can be equally useful for home sellers. Every home seller wants to know what is great about his or her home – these are the selling points, after all. Your community page can give sellers important information about the location of their home. This is information they can use when communicating to buyers.

Many of the selling points for living in a particular area will be covered by your community page, including commuting options, schools, historical significance, shopping and dining, recreation opportunities, etc. This is another place where you can generate valuable word of mouth. Maybe the seller that uses your community page decides that you are the perfect agent to help sell the home, or maybe not. Even so, every seller that visits your page has the potential to tell others about the info you have made available.

Helping You Be Found Online
The performance of your real estate business is heavily influenced by how well you do online. As stated before, this is where everyone is going now before they buy or sell a home. This means you want to stand out on the Web. Ideally, you want buyers and sellers to find your website on the first page of search results. But doing this is easier said than done. Google and other search engines demand that your website be useful and informative. How they determine this is always a bit mysterious, but there are certain facts that everyone understands. The more valuable the information you provide – specifically, how valuable Internet users find your information – the higher you will appear on the search engine listings.

A lot of this value is determined by how much your pages are shared with others and who links to them. The better your community pages, the more likely that people will share them with one another. This is good news for your search engine rankings, and therefore your visibility online. The more people that find you online, the more clients you will be able to work with. In order to get the word out there you are going to need to know how to promote your real estate community pages. Mike Alton at the Social Media Hat shares an excellent article about how to make your pages more visible through the use of social media.

Making You a Better Agent
The best agents know their communities inside and out. While you have probably learned a lot about the communities you work in, there is always more that you can learn. The process of creating a community page can provide a wonderful learning opportunity for you. Try to make your community page useful and interesting. Research the history of the community, the schools, the recreation activities, the commuting options. By the time you are done writing the community page, you will know a lot about the area. Even if you learn nothing new, you will reinforce the information you already do know. It is like having your very own real estate Wikipedia page! As you know, the more informed you are about the community, the better you will be able to perform as an agent. This information can also give you a more complete picture when you are pricing a home. This improves your sales, and will definitely impress clients.

Take the time and create a real estate community page that is a masterpiece - you will be glad you did when the phone starts ringing!

Bill Gassett is a nationally recognized real estate leader who has been helping people move in and out of the Metrowest Massachusetts area for the past 27-plus years. He has been one of the top RE/MAX REALTORS® in New England for the past decade. In 2013, he was the #1 RE/MAX agent in Massachusetts. Connect with him on Google+.

21 Comments so far. Feel free to join this conversation.

  1. Adrienne March 26, 2015 at 5:51 pm - Reply

    Love this article. Such great advice for becoming the local go to expert.

  2. Bill Gassett March 26, 2015 at 9:02 pm - Reply

    Thanks very much for the compliments Adrienne. I know from our previous discussion on that subject that you are a fan.

  3. Trisha Desai March 30, 2015 at 5:58 am - Reply

    Great insights and tips. Community page not only helps seller but also help buyer.

    Thanks for sharing..

  4. Brian April 13, 2015 at 10:46 am - Reply

    Agree that maintaining a decent online presence is paramount in long term networking and success nowadays– potential customers need to be able to quickly find all relevant info regarding you upon performing a quick Google search.

  5. Dave Mattes April 21, 2015 at 1:54 pm - Reply

    Bill, by any chance do you have some links to community pages that you are willing to share? I haven’t checked your website yet but I will.
    Let me know. Thanks!

  6. Richard Owens June 3, 2015 at 11:53 am - Reply

    Great topic for a great article! We pride ourselves in helping our clients setup community pages. Nothing showcases your local expertise quite like a community page filled with relevant local data on schools, market trends, and more.

    Our clients find that they also help to reinforce their personal branding by localizing their content for people in their area.

  7. David Barr June 4, 2015 at 9:44 am - Reply

    I don’t agree with this article at all.

    According to Google analytics, the changing buyer behavior online due to the explosion of mobile usage and search means buyers want immediacy. If they are searching for real estate in a certain area, they want real estate on a real estate website. If they want Chamber of Commerce information, they will visit that website.

    The key to online today is providing users what they want, when they want it.

  8. Bill Gasset June 7, 2015 at 10:33 am - Reply

    Davud you are missing the boat big time on this one! The information you are providing is on your website and it is exactly what consumers are looking for.

    You are not grasping the big picture which is to come up in local searches when someone is looking for a Realtor. The proof is in the pudding just Google “realtor Hopkinton Ma”.

    There is nothing more powerful than this because the searcher is looking to hire an agent!!

  9. Adrienne June 7, 2015 at 1:03 pm - Reply

    David Barr I think you have your head in the sand! People all searching for local information all the time. By providing community pages YOU are the local expert. When someone is looking for a Realtor to hire and you have a well optimizes page you will be on the first page of Google and the phone will be ringing.

  10. Bill Gassett June 8, 2015 at 8:37 pm - Reply

    David Barr – Adrienne is right you have your head in the sand! A well crafted community page showcases your expertise as a local agent. The proof is in the pudding my friend – just look for yourself and Google “Realtor Hopkinton MA”. Do this for any community page I have created and I am usually on the first page of Google. When someone does this search they are looking to hire a Realtor!

    Your comment makes no sense because the information is on YOUR website!

  11. Matt Q June 13, 2015 at 9:00 pm - Reply

    Loved the article Bill. We already get some solid Google traffic to our community pages, even though there is a ton of room for improvement. At this time, our area doesn’t really have many agents taking their online presence seriously…great opportunity to capitalize on!

    Thanks for the helpful tips!

  12. Fort Myers Real Estate July 2, 2015 at 5:06 am - Reply

    Thanks very much for the compliments Adrienne. I know from our previous discussion on that subject that you are a fan.

  13. Alex M August 12, 2015 at 3:55 pm - Reply

    Indeed! Is a grate way to bring more traffic over your website.

  14. Jim Steele October 25, 2015 at 12:35 pm - Reply

    I don’t know the first thing about building a website. Any resources you can point me towards?

  15. Anthony Kavanagh January 15, 2016 at 5:53 pm - Reply

    Great article Bill! Do you know if any of this is possible with gavamedia.com or placester.com?

  16. Marte Cliff November 21, 2016 at 6:10 pm - Reply

    Love your article Bill! I’ve written quite a few community pages for agents in different parts of the country, and always learn something fascinating.

    I do agree that it’s a valuable do-it-yourself projects for agents, since they’ll learn more than they ever knew about their own communities, but when they don’t have time or don’t write well, I enjoy doing it for them.

    Of course I agree with all your other points.

    I just read a 2012 NAR report saying that 86% of those home buyers also view the YouTube videos on communities – which means there’s always more to do!

  17. Oliver Ray August 27, 2019 at 3:39 pm - Reply

    I like how you mentioned how mentioning anything good about the community is worth mentioning to a potential buyer. If the neighborhood is nice, schools are good, and even the history of the town can be reasons a buyer might want to buy the house you are selling. Getting information about the community could help you sell your estate.

  18. Megan Dodd January 26, 2020 at 4:59 pm - Reply

    I have actually enjoyed making community pages. I visit the community, learn all about it as if I were the one wanting to move there and take pictures. Then I write about it. It takes some time but I think it works great. Great article!

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