I nice article on the Inman site you might like

http://www.inman.com/hstory.aspx?ID=66185

I like the idea of setting up a custom map. You’re also right on the money with the idea of agents building business directories, community directories, etc.

At any one time only a small percentage of the community is thinking about real estate and lets face it most of this traffic goes straight to the major search engines. At least with a community/neighbourhood website linked to a business directory most of the local community should have some interest in the site which should increase the agents’ online target audience. (shouldn’t it?)

Instead of setting up additional pages off the neighbourhood website I actually thought that the agents would be better seeing if they can get these directories as add on pages within their company website to help with their company website SEO.

Imagine having your community go to a business directory or community directory page within http://www.nfn.com.au. What do you think?

Do you see this as an option for the agents or perhaps the major franchises to offer, especially with the ability to track the links to finance, etc?

PS. Glenn, I hope you don’t mind but I’d really appreciate your feedback on how easy the sites are to create & if there are any recommendations you may have. Simply visit http://www.HomeWebsites.com.au and click on the Agent registration link in left toolbar. Once registered within our website creation site (W4YL) it will only take a couple of clicks to create a Free Demo Website. i hope you like it.
BTW you’ll notice we also added a lot of new template designs after your previous recommendations.

I have helped a few agents setup small community sites and they can work very well.

A few bugs on that site.. Not really issues with the site itself, but just what they are linking to. The map and sat photo links search for “Sponsored by Shields Gillman Real Estate, Woollahra, NSW, Australia 2025″. Obviously there is nothing in the maps for that!

They are better off creating custom maps in Google Maps under the My Maps feature.. and linking directly to that map. They can then show the location of their office and other local landmarks. They can embed their own photo and office details into the page as well. The other advantage is that the page may be picked up when Woollhara is searched in Google maps which can bring their office even more traffic.

I am also interested in how it goes on an SEO level. Its only a single page which will probably work against it slightly. Can you add other pages into the site say for example business directories, community directories etc etc??.. and the links to other websites where it gains credibility for being an authority on the Woollhara area are all by javascript… Generally search engines ignore links inside scripting like that and thus it may miss out on the SEO advantages on these links.

I will be interested to see how you go in the search engines, particularly Google. If this works it will be a great solution for agents who have not got the time, skill and experience to do this themselves… and lets face it.. thats most agents. With 3 recent community sites we were able to appear in Google inside a week and get number 1 rankings for the keywords targeted in around two weeks so it proves these community sites have the potential to work well.

BTW an agent has recently created a Community Website via our website by adapting the Quick Links function very cleverly. Instead of creating an individual property website they created http://www.aboutWoollahra.com for under $200.

We have since set up a sample site too at http://www.888DemoPl.com (audio tour not completely relevant at this stage but you’ll get the picture).

I thought it was a great way to communicate with the people of influence within their community. Ultimately, it should generate more business opportunities and at the same time send more online visitors to their office website/blog as it is designed to appeal to a larger target audience.

Isn’t that just a FSBO site?.. Its not really a community site as such, at least as far as I can see.

I love the auction and corporate profiles you did for Ray White Broadbeach. The other one I particularly liked that you did was the Ka-ching profile you did for someone down in Sydney…

Your property, agent and salespersons profiles are great stuff and the issues I have with this one locality profile is not with the quality or professionalism of the video work itself. That has always been impressive.