Forget SEO as part of the strategy unless Google Caffeine makes them rank faster, which I doubt. SEO takes too long & after a few weeks if the website doesn’t appear on Google then you’ll have some explaining to do.

The home is probably sold by then & the number of referrals you’d get from people finding them on Google, it’s almost insignificant.

The place where the websites make a difference is when the agent is in the home at a listing presentation. Winning the listing over their competitor.

Call it a gimmick, a listing tool, whatever you like, but that’s the number 1 place where they count for an agent.

Our sites allow agents to create a Free Demo Website for the client right before their eyes. This provides a great opportunity to ask involvement questions. I’d even suggest that the owner be involved, because once they’ve built the website then they’d want to show it off to their friends (viral marketing), especially if they’ve never built a website before.

But to be able to show the website off to their friends they’d basically have to do a couple of things first – sign up with the agent & order the site.

While they are sharing the website with their friends, chances are that their friends might be selling too & want a website as well.

The share functionality within the websites also allows the sites to be posted on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, My Space, LinkedIn, Digg, etc & bookmarked on sites like Delicious & StumbleUpon, etc ( There are over 100 sharing sites available).

Having the ability to share the Individual Property Websites over the web is a really important feature not only for linking & spreading your message broader over the web, but also because the fastest way people can get to a website while they are on the internet is via the click of a mouse. So having links scattered about the web helps to drive traffic to your site.

Now the 2nd place where the Individual Property Websites work for an agent is that they compliment an agents offline marketing campaign by providing one of the fastest ways that a person can find out more about an agent’s listing online from an agent’s offline media ( signboards, brochures, print media, window display, leaflets, etc ).

Unfortunately, because people have become familiar with navigating sites like realestate.com.au & domain.com.au you’ll find that most people looking at an agents print media or signs, will have a tendency to go to the major portals to find out more about the property. When in reality, trying to find out more about a property from a standing start via the usual suburb search on the major portals is only the 6th fastest way that someone can view an agents listing online from an offline media campaign.

( This also means an agent’s offline media campaign is actually sending a lot of people across to the major portals & past their competitors listings.)

Some agents will be thinking that the fastest way for someone to find out more about one of their listings from their print media is via their company website. Unfortunately not. A similar search on the agents company website comes in at number 5 & if it’s any consolation the Individual Property Websites actually come in at number 2.

For others type Site: (your URL without the www) to see how many pages Google has scraped for your respective business – then you will see if you are on the right track.

It might be first for “8/22 May Road, Toorak” but not so good for “22 May Road Toorak” or “May Road Toorak”

That shows it has certainly been indexed but its SEO value is not really that high just yet. The fact it is coming up is because nothing else has the term 8/22 May Road, Toorak”.

You can certainly use it for the example you suggest, but I don’t think that the SEO features of that site has kicked in just yet. That really takes a bit more time for new domains. The pages that are ranked higher might be new pages but they are on established domains….. such as realestate.com.au, domain.com.au and myhome.com.au, homehound.com.au, homepriceguide.com.au etc etc..

A new domain just can’t compete that quickly and thankfully so or the spammers of this world would churn out websites to flood the indexes like they do email spam.

There is one important factor about these individual property websites that I believe agents should be made aware of & that is viral marketing.

I’ve had agents ask me why they’ve had 30 or more visits to their clients individual property website before they’ve even done any marketing at all. It turns out the vendor emailed their friends about the website.

Vendors & buyers also share them with their friends on facebook & Twitter.

Another thing that I have experienced with these websites, buyers of the property will often contact me directly to see if they can keep the website live after they’ve moved in & extend the website hosting & domain name.

Because we do not sell direct to the public, the purchaser gave the agent their credit card details & the renewal was paid via the agent’s user account.

To give you an idea of what’s happened to one of the sites during this renewal period… one site was renewed back in February & it’s had 44 unique visits last month & 40 unique visits so far this month. (Overall since Feb there’s been a Total of 474 visits – 294 unique visits).

That’s without any marketing at all on the agent’s behalf. All this time the agent’s company is being promoted on the web for another 12 months for free & the buyer is really happy.

PS: There are a number of things that agents can do to get better results from these websites, but I’ll need to check with Peter before commenting any further on this topic.

The advantage is when talking to clients about the property you can tell them to simply type in the full property address into google and goto the site.

Great for phone enquiries when the agents are on the road or when the clients drive past a property and complete a Google search. NO http: or .com required.

This has been working extremely well for Hodges Real Estate.

Ranking number 1 in google is possible for these sites within the campaign period, ranking above the portals on the same address..

Again I stress, there are a couple of key processes required to assist in achieving this outcome for every individual property web site. Not hard to achieve.

If you have 10 listings with their own individual websites those 10 properties should also be listed on your primary site. This means your main website has lost absolutley nothing in terms of page numbers or content.

But you should contstruct a linking strategy with these sites but it should be totally one way. Your primary site should not link back to the individual sites but all those individual sites should link to any and all other websites you have. This will actually benefit the SEO on your primary site rather than harm it. It wont be major as the individual sites have not earnt enough “link juice” themselves to pass on but every little bit helps.

When they will start appearing in the rankings and be of benefit as an inlink to yoru main site will generally be after the prime selling period.. ie.. after 60 days..

Generally these websites work on the basis that they are up for 12 months so once the property is sold you can convert the site to be a testimonial site promoting the agency or rather than the property. You could upload sold pictures and happy vendor snaps and replace the marketing text with a tesimonial from the owners. Too many agents just leave them sitting idle.

You should only think of these sites as additional marketing rather than replacing your primary site. Because they will not attract much SEO effect in their own right for several months their primary traffic sources would primarily be through signs, window cards and other print advertising.

One tip with these sites though is that they generally only ever use .com domains rather than .com.au. This means to get the most out of them from an SEO perspective you need to get these validated in Google Webmaster and then the Geographic Target to be set to Australia.

They certainly do work as a listing and marketing tool. Initially they have very little SEO value, but in time they can be of benefit if you manage them right.