If you’ve started reading any of the blogs here or at RealEstateSEO1.com or BostonLogic.com, then you know that for a successful SEO campaign, unique high quality (and keyword-rich) content is king! But how do you add that type of valuable content to your real estate website?
LEVERAGE WHAT YOUR ALREADY KNOW:
One of the easiest ways to leverage your expertise in the real estate industry – and provide your real estate agent website design with keyword-rich content that is useful to search engines and visitors alike – is by adding Town Pages. Town Pages are pages with a paragraph or so you create with helpful information about an area, and dynamic search results you control by setting criteria when building the page. If your offices’ websites for realtors currently does not include town pages, you can upgrade your website to include town pages for only $20 per month!
The information on these pages can be what you would tell someone looking for a new home in the area in question; you can talk about the demographics of the area, the great amenities, the architecture, the public transportation, etc. Basically anything you think clients would find useful or interesting. In addition, information on properties in the area such as average price, number of properties on market, and more is automatically added to the page.
HOW TO CREATE A TOWN PAGE IN THE SEQUOIA SYSTEM:
1. Log into your website. Click on the ‘CMS’ (Content Management System) Tab.
2. Select the ‘Pages’ text link from the sub-navigation menu.
3. From the ‘Pages’ menu, click on the ‘Create New’ button with the green plus sign icon. Then fill out the form in the ‘Create Page’ pop-up window that appears.
4. Fill in the Town Page information:
a. Name: This is your internal reference for the page- visitors won’t see it. We recommend including the words ‘Town Page’ at the end so they are easy to find in the Pages Menu.
b. Path: This is the URL your clients will see in their navigation bar and it is also used by Search Engines to help rank your site. Make sure you use a keyword you want to rank for (‘Fenway Apartments’, in the example above).
c. Redirect URL: Leave this blank for your Town Pages unless you want to redirect your visitors to a different page on your site.
5. Page Content:
a. Page Header: This is the headline of your page that visitors will see when they land on this page. Make sure it is relevant, and utilizes one or more of your keywords.
b. Body Content: This is where you enter that paragraph of useful text you created. If you are pasting your text from a Word Document or Text Pad/ Notebook program, make sure to use the appropriate pasting option from the tool bar. You can edit the text within this box much like a Word Document, changing text with Bold or italic styles, adding hyperlinks, etc. using the icons in the tool bar.
6. Meta Data: This section is where you enter your SEO Title, Description, and Keywords as covered in our earlier email about Optimizing Your Pages. Remember to make sure your Title and Description are readable to a viewer and not a rambling list of Keywords.
7. Don’t worry about the ‘Footer Content’ or ‘Who Can See This Page’ for this lesson. The default settings are fine.
8. Hit the ‘Create’ Button when you are finished!
9. Your new Town Page will now appear on your ‘Pages’ list. Ta-Da! Congrats! You’ve just created your first Town Page!
You can now link to this page, using the URL you created, from blog posts or other pages that mention the neighborhood. The more relevant internal links your site has, the better for SEO and user experience. For example, if you mention something about Fenway Condos for Sale in your Fenway Apartments Town Page, make the words ‘Fenway Condos’ a hyperlink to a Town Page about Fenway Condos for Sale. If you talk about the Fenway’s proximity to another neighborhood, link to that Town Page, too! Your potential client might not be sold on the Fenway area and you can keep them looking on your site longer by providing them with helpful links to other information they might find useful. To automatically boost SEO for your site, be sure to ink each of your Town Pages to dynamic (c0nstantly updating) Property Search results!
LINKING YOUR TOWN PAGE TO DYNAMIC CONTENT:
By linking your Town Pages to a Sales or Rental Property Search for that area, you will create a page with not only great text for visitors and search engines, but also a page with constantly updating information, which is great for SEO! We recommend making a Town Page for every area you want to increase your Sales or Rental activity in, to help improve your real estate online marketing campaign.
1. From the ‘CMS’ Tab, select the ‘Town Pages’ link from the sub-navigation bar.
2. Click the blue link for a ‘New Town Page‘ from within the Town SEO Pages Menu.
3. The ‘New Town Page’ popup window will appear. Select the Town Page you just created from the ‘CMS Page’ dropdown menu.
4. Select the ‘Search Type’ you want associated with this page (Sales or Rentals).
5. Then select the search parameters for the listings you wish to show to visitors on this page, such as price range and the location (Fenway in this example). Be sure not to leave the price range blank or it will cause errors on your page or lead visitors to believe there are no listings available in this area.
6. Click the ‘Create Page’ button at the bottom of the screen once you’ve entered all your information.
Your new Town Page now appears in your Town Pages menu under the ‘CMS’ Tab and is linked to a relevant search to keep your page constantly refreshed with new information and no more effort on your part!
You’re ALMOST DONE! Now you just have to make it so visitors can find your new page without knowing the URL through real estate website marketing. The best way to optimize your new Town Pages is to create a link to it that can be clicked on from any page of your website. This will ensure that users and search engines can find it!
MAKING YOUR TOWN PAGE EASY TO FIND:
Did you know that search engines cannot see information in forms, such as the drop down menus used in your property searches? In fact, search engines often only ‘crawl’ within 3 clicks of your website’s Home Page. Search engines and users alike will find it easier to navigate to your Town Page if it is prominently displayed.
The ‘Town Page Footer Navigation Menu’ feature of the Sequoia system offers a great solution to this SEO dilemma, allowing you to create a text link (which search engines DO see) on the bottom of every page of your site (including your Home Page) using the keywords you chose when creating your Town Page. Adding each Town Page to this menu will increase real estate internet marketing presence, SEO, and promote ease of use for your customers.
1. From your ‘CMS’ Tab, select the ‘Menus’ link from the Sub Navigation Bar.
2. Select the link ‘Menu Items’ from the ‘Town Pages’ row on the Menus List.
3. In the ‘Menu Items for Town Pages’ drop down that appears, click the ‘Create New’ button.
4. Creating Your Footer Link:
a. Menu Text: This is the text that will appear at the bottom of your pages as a hyperlink to your new Town Page. Make sure the Menu Text you create is one of your keywords, so, in our example, the Footer link would say ‘Fenway Apartments’.
b. Page: This is where you select the page you want this link to go to. This is why we find it helpful to include the words ‘Town Page’ in the name of the Town Pages you create.
c. External Link: Only use this if you want to create a Footer Navigation Link to a page outside of your website, such as to an affiliated site, instead of an internal link.
d. Click the ‘Create’ button.
You’re DONE! Your new Town Page now appears in the ‘Town Page Footer Navigation’ Menu, and in the footer of your website.
Once you create multiple Town Pages, you can change the order in which they appear in the footer navigation by click and dragging the menu item up or down by the green arrows icon to the right on this screen. Below is an example of what a hyperlink for your new Town Page will look like in your Home Page footer.
Now all the valuable content your wrote for your users and search engines is just 1 click from your Home Page, helping you begin to rank higher in organic search engine results for the keywords you are targeting!
Boston Logic offers various SEO and Social Media Services if you’d rather focus on your clients instead of your website! Feel free to contact me with any questions or for more information about our services!
characters you have entered- for example, typing B-O-S will give you Boston and all Boston neighborhoods. Keep typing to make the list smaller until you see what you want, or just scroll the list and click on the choice you want to make. If you make a mistake while making a page, or want to remove a town or neighborhood, just click the “x” to the upper right of the place name.
Drive more traffic to your website with your Blog!
Why Blog?
Blogging is an important aspect of establishing a web presence for you and your website. Not only does it pump your real estate website design with keyword rich content that allows leads to find you through search engines, but it also helps you establish your brand identity and can color your business with a personal touch.
You’ll now be writing for potential clients and people interested in real estate, so think about topics that you think they could find useful, or what you’d like to read about. For real estate SEO purposes, it is also helpful to center most of your blog posts around some of your keywords that you’ve identified with your real estate website.
Lastly, blogging is about being active. Read other blogs within your industry, have guest bloggers, and comment frequently. You’ll be surprised how these things can increase your website traffic, and how you will become part of an online community!
Outlined below are some of the basics of your blog’s toolbar. Feel free to experiment and explore other tools and capabilities that your blog has!
If you don’t already have a blog integrated with your website, contact us and we can set you up with one for only $20 per month!
1. Log in to your website, this will give you the ability to create, edit and delete blogs.
2. Go to Settings > Bloggers in the backend to add the users you would like to have blogging capability
3. To blog, stay logged into your system and go to your blog (www.yourdomain.com/posts)
4. As a blogger, a link will be available at the top of your blog to “Create Post”
6. In the large white section, you will type your blog text.
7. To insert a link into the text of your post, simply highlight the selected text you’d like the link to be. Next, click the globe with the chain (i.e., “link”) icon in the toolbar, and a window will pop up and prompt you to enter the URL for link. You can type this out or copy and paste it.
8. To insert an image, click on the yellow icon with the mountain in the foreground. From here, an “Image Properties” window will pop up.
b. Click “Browse”, then select the image you’d like to insert into your blog post.
c. Your image is now uploaded to the server. Locate the file name in the list of images, click it, and hit “Upload”.
d. Your image is uploaded into the “Image Properties” window. Click “OK”, and your image is now inserted into your blog post!
9. You can also adjust the size of the image by double clicking it, and then clicking on any of the corners (which should have a white square) to drag your image to the desired size.
10. To change the image’s alignment, (centering an image is recommended) click the image, then click any of the 3 alignment options on the toolbar.
These are the basics of your blog’s toolbar. Feel free to experiment and explore other tools and capabilities that your blog has!
Okay, so you have a blog and are ready to start writing: now what do you write about? Or maybe you have been blogging for a while but now you are stumped? Here are some suggestions to get you started!
· Featured property listings. This is a great way to hand-select and talk more about certain apartments that you have, and potential leads love reading additional info on a listing.
· Attend a real estate conference or networking event and write about your experience
· Write a book review that can provide relevant insight to the real estate industry
· Browse through real estate blogs that you find interesting, and think about how you can take the aspects that you like and make them your own.
You can also visit our real estate SEO blog to read more about real estate blog post suggestions. And browse through real estate blogs that you find interesting, and think about how you can take the aspects that you like and make them your own.