Ben Edsall

Before writing this I read some other blogs on AR about single listing sites, most talked up the advantages but few told you how or when to use them. Frankly most single listing sites are hardly even seen by the major search engines and really the only advantage is to impress your clients.

Firstly and most importantly you must decide the purpose of your single listing site.

• To impress your sellers
• To attract targeted traffic
• To improve your other sites ranking (more links)
  
• To increase your presence in other markets

Impressing your sellers is important, and impressing prospective clients can be just as important in helping you obtain that listing.

Attracting targeted traffic is great but that requires niche marketing and a marketing plan.

Improving your other sites ranking is always a plus, but just building multiple sites that link back to you may not achieve that goal.

Increasing your presence in other markets is a great plan and if you wanted to target a specific neighborhood, town or type of property that can easily be achieved but search engines don't like new sites so a single listing site may be nearly useless until it has a history. You may have more luck with a site dedicated to a specific property type.

One fine example is my friend Catherine who sells horse property in Salem Oregon. By building a horse property specific website she has captured a large part of a niche market.

Another is one of my sites Raytown Real Estate , While this site is pretty basic I intend that it will eventually start to lead more traffic and leads my way for the city of Raytown, MO.

Not every property will benefit from a single listing website. Your typical neighborhood listing that looks like most of the other homes in the neighborhood is hard to market apart from the rest. If 237 Whippoorwill is very similar to all the other homes on Whippoorwill, then making it stand out from the rest is very difficult.

The best candidate for a single listing website is one that can capture niche keywords and attract traffic based on its uniqueness. While I have many properties listed most simply don't meet the level of unique qualifiers that would attract the traffic I am looking for. Furthermore building a website without the time and ability to market it is a futile effort because it will likely not get noticed by the major search engines and will capture few keywords and thus little traffic.

Far and away my most effective single listing website is one I just built for a horse farm on Clinton Lake. This property offered so many unique qualifiers that building its own website was a forgone conclusion before I even had the listing.

I am now capturing traffic for many of those unique keywords and I am gaining ranking with many others. Keywords are how people search the Internet and how links are delivered by the search engines. Keywords I captured almost immediately were due almost entirely to the uniqueness of the property and also due to the marketing plan I put in place.

• Lawrence, KS horse farm - Maybe not the most popular search, but I hold four of the top links on Google's first page.
• Clinton Lake - this is a very popular search term and I now hold two links on the front page of Google search.
• Rockhaven Park - Actually a fairly common search and very unique because it is a horse-friendly park on Clinton Lake located next to the Rockhaven Farm I am marketing.
• KU Equestrian Property - while this may not have been specifically targeted as a keyword combination it still gives me first page Google presence because of the Fact that The University of Kansas is Located in Lawrence, KS and the combination all comes together to give this website amazing Google Juice.

This property was the "Perfect Storm" of keywords, location and unique features that all came together to make it have amazing power as a single listing website. Whats more it will do all those other things I mentioned in the opening of this article.

• Impress your sellers - (I built the site before I had the listing, to quote the seller... "I'm Impressed"!)
  
• To attract targeted traffic ( Keyword traffic is increasing daily)
  
• To improve your other sites ranking (Since by law my Brokerage firm must be mentioned in all advertising I am gaining more traffic from this website being directed back to my main website.)
  
• To increase your presence in other markets ( I am now increasing my presence in the Clinton Lake and Lawrence, KS market, so that I expect to be working with other clients in the area.

While all of this is great none of these keywords would have a bit of ranking without a massive effort of improving that ranking via social networks and links from other sites, including Loopnet.com, Youtube.com and dozens of others.

By now most real estate agents have at least one website, many have more than one; that coupled with all the other social networking tools and blogs we use, we are all pretty plugged into the cyber world.

Oddly enough I still see agents out there who are still relying on a sign in the yard and an add in the local paper.

But what about individual sites for your listings, some service providers offer that as a feature for you if you use their services. Loopnet.com is one that for an additional fee you can use their site to build your own "site" for each listing. Is all that really necessary and does it really work?

Well here's how I break it down, Internet presence is all about content, links and traffic, the more traffic the more likely your site is to be found; the more sites linking to yours, the more likely you are to have a higher ranking giving you more traffic.

But the sites linking in must have relevance to be helpful to your Google Juice, having a porn site in Europe link to your real estate site in the Midwest is probably more harmful than good.

The pros and cons of individual listing sites.

The Pro's:

1. The client is impressed at the level of service you provide.
2. The site may attract buyers looking for a specific type or location of property.
3. Having another site out there pointing to yours is never a bad idea.
4. Your main site may have limitations that you can overcome by having property specific sites.
5. One site focusing on a single property provides targeted information without distractions.
6. You can better target keywords for search engines to gain property specific traffic.
7. Your main site may focus on one area or specialty, but each additional site can give you depth and a broader audiance.

The Con's:

1. A lot of work, with all the other marketing you do, do you really have time to build another website!
2. Invisible, a new site is invisible to the search engines if it doesn't get the proper marketing to gain the traffic.
3. Money, if you're not technically capable of building web sites you may have to hire it done.
4. Web sites provided by others may not give you the control and features you need.
5. Building a property specific website may take away from marketing the property on your main site, ultimately decreasing your traffic at your home site.
6. Liabilities, Most of you have corporate provided sites that include all the disclaimers and releases to protect you.
7. After you do your job and sell the property, what do you do with the site?
   

I like individual listing sites, provided I have the time to market them properly; by using the attributes of a single property I can create a site that will not only impress my client but actually attract a lot of attention from buyers. I don't build one for every listing, but if I have the opportunity to put one together for a very unique listing it can be a great asset.

For instance I list dozens of small, inner city investment properties. While each listing may help attract more visitors to my site and ultimately increase my Google juice and traffic, they are mostly not unique enough to drive much traffic to a specific site.

I have listed and sold several car wash properties in Kansas City, I did not build property specific sites for each one, I just put them on my main site and then promorted that page. By doing so, I have gained a lot of Google juice for anyone looking for a car wash for sale in Kansas City.

I also work with a lot of equestrian properties, real estate designed and built with horse lovers in mind. By listing those properties on my main site and promoting them I now corner most of the market in the Kansas City area for horse property. One horse farm in particular on my site has its own Google page rank of 3, that took a Herculean effort on my part and that page gets a lot of traffic.

My latest listing is a very unique property; because of its location, features and unique makeup it is ideal for a property specific website. Because it is located on Clinton Lake, located next to a popular equine park and riding trails (Rockhaven Park), and built specifically with the equestrian lifestyle it has many attributes that make it perfect to get traffic.

So logically I named the site ClintonLakeHorseFarm.com, but I went further than just the domain name I named the site and the meta tags after the nearby equestrian park. When you pull it up in your browser it pops up as Rockhaven Horse Farm. Because Clinton lake is a popular search term, and Rockhaven Park is well known to the horseback riding crowd the combination of the terms means that it will gain Google juice quickly for any related search.

How to get the traffic? Traffic is key, you need traffic to gain ranking and ranking to gain traffic; I've figured out many tricks to gain both. Links are essential, you need as many links pointing to your site as you can get search engines see this and they think it is important. you also need to get the traffic, just having the links is pretty much worthless if nobody clicks on them.

Social networking is important, posting you new link to your Twitter accounts and Facebook Pages will help you get a start, your friends family and colleagues will most likely want to see what you are working on and if you ask them for input they get even more interested.

Content is of huge importance, content helps the search engines know what your site is about and that you have useful information for Internet surfers. Content is best if it is original, using other people content can get you in trouble not only for copyright violations but because duplicate content is a big No-no for SEO ranking.

Because Clinton Lake is maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers the content on their site is in the public domain, you can use, reprint and copy whatever you want there. Using content from those type of sites is easy but you will be far better off if you alter it however slightly into your own words to make it unique.

Con number 7 is important; after I sell RockHaven Horse Farm, what good will the site be! Easy, although I named the site Rockhaven Horse Farm, I purchased the domain Clinton Lake Horse Farm. After I sell the property I can leave the site up and make it more about information and other properties in the area. The site will still contain all of the local information I added, and it will also point to my main real estate web site. I will likely get more traffic from it in the future from both buyers and sellers in the area looking for an awesome real estate professional who just happens to have a site they found.

My main site Turn-Key Properties LLC is hugely successful, with great Google ranking and plenty of traffic, but by building a property specific site I can capture a larger audience that may otherwise not have found the listing they were looking for.

There is much more to making that site pop, but I don't want to give away all my secrets. Thanks for reading and I hope you visit my new site. I'm still working on it, but the property will not go on the market until Spring so I have plenty of time to develop that Google juice!

ClintonLakeHorseFarm.com

A few weeks ago my granddaughter sent me a message on Facebook, she wanted to make sure I did not leave her out of our annual sled riding event. Being a true redneck sled riding at my house usually involves several sleds hooked up behind a 4-wheel drive vehicle hauling ass through the horse pastures.

For several years this has been a tradition in our family, no where else can my grand-kids and their friends risk life and limb being towed on a plastic sled behind a 1991 Geo Tracker covered in Mossy Oak Camouflage at speeds up to 30 miles an hour.

Now for the faint of heart we do allow spectators to stand back and observe, later we usually serve freshly massacred venison and some kind of potatoes covered with a lot of cheese and bacon.

Tonight I sent Aubrie a text message telling her I had purchased two new sleds for this years event. She responded "Who is this"... I sent back a text "POP"... a few minutes later I got a text the said "From Heaven"..

Wow! I was confused, after a few seconds my cell phone rang, it said Aubrie, I thought oh she's calling me about sledding this winter. The little girl on the other end said timidly, "who is this"?

I said "Pop", she answered timidly, "Who"?, I said is this Aubrie?

After a pause she said, "No, who is this".

Realizing this was not my granddaughter I apologized and said, I'm sorry I you must have my granddaughters old phone number. I'm really sorry I called the wrong number.

I felt so bad, this poor little girl thought she got a text message from her POP in Heaven. I feel lower than a snakes belly.

I wanted to call her back and console her, but I just don't know what to say.

Sorry sweetie, I'm not that POP! but I'm sure if they had cell phones in Heaven he would still be texting you! :(

Since my portion of the commission will be less than that paid to the government under the new Obamacare real estate transfer tax scam, I humbly request that you purchase this house prior to December 31, 2010.

As of today 22 September, 2010 we are reducing the list price to encourage you to make an offer, This substantial reduction from $580,000 to $485,000 is in direct response to our desperate need to sell this house before the Obama real estate transfer tax is imposed, because we understand that the value of the house will automatically decrease by 3.5% on January 1, 2011.

But since Missouri law forbids the payment of any percentage of the sale of real estate to anyone who is not licensed in the state of Missouri, I am considering filing a complaint with the Missouri Real Estate Commission.

MO Revised Statutes; MO.339.020. "It shall be unlawful for any person, partnership, association, or corporation, foreign or domestic, to act as a real estate broker or real estate salesperson, or to advertise or assume to act as such without a license first procured from the commission".

Further on as you read the statutes the law forbids anyone who is not licensed in the state to receive any portion of a commission for services related to real estate transactions.

By confiscating 3.5% of the real estate transaction, Obama is effectively taking a commission from the sale of real estate in all 57 oops, 50 States. In fact just the 3.5% seems very close to what is frequently charged in a 50/50 split of a 7% commission. So is Obama now in violation of the FTC's antitrust laws, by establishing a "standard" commission!

Hope for Tiffany

Please take a moment to help a the family of a firefighter and a fellow Realtor!

You can help! Even if you can not spare a dime, please blog, tweet, share and visit the website, just bringing our traffic up will likely help us raise some money, from the ads on the site and from those who find it and are able to help.

Hope for Tiffany

Tiffany Null an agent with Turn-Key Properties LLC has been ill for nearly two years. Married only a few short years her illness has taken its toll on the family finances. Able to work only short periods of time between long stays in the hospital the family is struggling.

We have built a website to help Tiffany and Dave's family make it through these trying times.

The medical bills are piling up and even though her husband is a firefighter, the insurance is not paying enough.

A benefit auction is planned for Saturday June 19, 2010 in Blue Springs at theVFW Hall.

Items for the auction are coming in but we could use all we can get! At this point, we're not even sure we have an auctioneer so if need be it will be hosted by yours truly.

I figure if nothing else I will play John Michael Montgomery's Sold and holler out some dollar figures.

After nearly two years of hospital and emergency room visits the doctors still don't know what is causing Tiffany's illness.

Please help our friends to make it through this, the next step may be the Mayo Clinic and even a firefighters insurance won't cover that!

Our thought is that allthough yet undiagnosed the problem may be Lyme's Disease. To get her to a specialist is very expensive and the waiting period is nearly six months. Bills are piling up and the medications are expensive.

please visit, blog, share, tweet, promote and donate if you can!

We still believe there is Hope For Tiffany !