How many websites does the average agent have? Do you need more than one?

Every realtor I've dealt with had at least 2 websites - One being their personal website and the other being an external blog like at ActiveRain.

I personally have three plus a couple blogs. It can be challenging to stay on top of, but worth the effort!

I have 1 personal and 1 blog and maybe adding one more soon.

I am starting up a new niche site and I think it is number 16. If I could get some decent help I've got 3 or 4 more I'd like to get going.

I think I'm up to about a dozen. 1 or 2 "ego" sites, a condo site, a first time buyer site, and a number of area specific sites. Some have done very well, some are in the middle and some are a flop, but I just work on them when I'm not that busy.

It does help if you can do a lot of the work yourself. I can't imagine paying a local company to build, optimize and promote 12 sites.

I currently have 3 sites and may develop more in the future.

I have a static site and a blog, a regional blog is in the works as well. I think focus can be lost if spread too thin. Instead of having 5 sites with low authority, I'd rather focus on a site and build organic authority which (although not optimized for every little niche) can have a good conversion rate. Not trying to be a jack of all trades, just a master in one. Best of luck.

I have two main websites and about 6 lead capture pages focusing on a couple of different niches. Plus 3 blogs. Only one of which I really post to.

Currently have 1 static site and 1 blog. In the planning stages to launch several targeted blogs that will look like websites. Expecting the number to be around 5.

You do not need more than one website! It is the type of website that is important not the amount. Get a Wordpress blog! It is the best website and google loves it. A wordpress blog will allow you to have all of the information you need. YOu can give your buyers and sellers excellent content, post you listings, videos, pictues, and news. You can have difference pages for different neighborhoods if you like.

The key to capturing leads is to provide quality valuable information to the leads. You can put a squeeze page right on your blog so it will show up on every page of your blog. YOu can also connect your blog to your social media (Twitter/Facebook) and everytime you make a post or add a new listing it will automatically post to your social media as well.

Trust me I have been online since 2004 and I teach Real Estate Agents everyday how to have maximum online exposure with the least amount of work.

I would like to find out how to connect the blogs (3) to my social media.

Quality over quantity. Don't use multiple websites to try to get your brand out there - focus on increasing awareness to your brand. 1 great website marketed well will beat 4 or 5 crappy websites every time.

Hey there,

I made a video for you that shows you how to do this...you can also get all my free video trainings just click the LeadSqueezer link below this post and you'll get tons of lead generation training.

Here's the videos on how to syndicate your content across the web and social media.

http://www.leadsqueezer.com/day5training.html

Hope that helps you out.

I currently have two.

I think you should focus on qaulity not qauntity of your website.

First I am Excited to see Anthony Aries in here, This guy knows his stuff. I have been following him for about a Year and a half (he has no idea who I am) and I have learned and grown so much from watching him and implementing what he has shared.
Now for how many sites I have, I have about 300 sites in the metro Phoenix area. these are all niche sites and I would never do it this way again, over the past few months all of my focus has went on to 1 site and I am now all over page 1 of the big G and the leads convert much better. I also have multiple blogs and they are syndicated to so I only post on 1.

I would have to agree. Content is very important. Sometimes it's hard to write blogs on a regular basis but the more you do the more pages you have and the more relevant you become in the eyes of search engines and most importantly, buyers or sellers!

Just because I have 16 websites apparently everyone thinks they are crappy sites.

9 of them rank #1 on google for the niche they were designed for. The rest are in some stage of development.

9 of them have page 1 rankings for multiple keywords.

9 of them generate me leads.

9 of them compete with my main site and for some searches I dominate the first page with multiple sites and various pages from those sites.

And for the guy who is bragging about working on the Internet since 2004, my main site went live in 1995. What were you doing in 1995?

There is hardly a search for a real estate related term for my area that I don't have at least one page from one of my websites sitting there on the first page of the serps.

All of this was done with the pros telling me not to waste my time with multiple sites. Why? Because it diminishes their value as designers/developers.

For those of you open to new ideas and willing to try to get ahead of the pack try this one on.

Content is not king. Buyers are not looking for content and search engines are not looking for content.

Buyers are looking for listings. Search engines are looking for optimisation. It is possible to optimise a site, frame an IDX page and have very little content and still make money off the site.

Now, if anybody wants to tell me I'm wrong please make sure you show me some facts. All I keep hearing is theories and what others have read somewhere. I have 15 years experience working with websites and I know what I say from that experience and can back it up with results.

Well Said!

Your site has over 3,950 pages indexed. Do you think that the amount of content on your site has no correlation with ranking on the first page of Google?

look at these

corollamls.com
duckmls.com
nagsheadmls.com
kittyhawkmls.com

they all took very little time to create, they all have very little content and they all rank for their intended key words and phrases plus more I never dreamed of. ie.
city mls
search city mls
search city mls listings
search city mls listings for sale

and before i go i guess you are going to correct me again by pointing out these sites don't rank for the holy grail phrase of "city real estate". Well, if anyone focuses solely on that phrase for their websites then they don't know what they are missing.

Sorry, but no. I give you credit, you have done extremely well for yourself and have obviously made right decisions (i.e. picking domains rich with the keywords for which you want to rank, good internal linking). We can learn from your success, but perhaps there is a different way about trying to impart your knowledge. Nevertheless, I agree, long-tail keyphrases brings in very well-targeted traffic which will convert much better than the 'holy grail phrase' (it has certainly been the case for me).



Sure, we all have different backgrounds and levels of experience and can have valuable input to bring to the table, even if we weren't doing it in 1995. Surely we all know people who have been in any given profession for a long period of time, yet their level of expertise is questionable. By the way, Matt Cutts joined Google in 2000 (maybe I'm just being naive, but I'll take his SEO word/opinion over anybody else, even if they happen to be the first webmaster in the history of the internet).



Not sure what this is in reference to. Who is 'everyone'? If you feel that the quality level of your site(s) is representative of your professionalism and what you offer your clients, then perhaps it's time to stop worrying about what 'everyone' thinks. I know I have been impressed thus far with your sites.



As in my previous question, do you think that there is no correlation between the amount of content on your main website (over 3,9000 pages indexed by Google) and its placement on the SERPs? Clearly it's not the only factor that SE's take into account, but do you summarily state that it's not taken into consideration at all? Any factual evidence would be much appreciated.

I am not a jack of all trades. I sell real estate.

Some people are willing to learn while others already know it all.

ps. for those willing to learn please be careful when listening to cutts. he is the king of fud and rightfully so. that is what they pay him for.

I wrote a blog post about this misconception a couple of years ...

Question: Will adding content to my Realtor website increase my rank in Google?

Answer: No… and yes.

You know how a story changes a bit with every person that passes it along until it bears little resemblance to the original? That is what has happened with the concept that adding content to a website helps that website to rank better in Google. This concept has morphed into a belief that adding content to a website helps that website rank better for the main competitive keywords being targeted. In the case of a Realtor’s website, the belief has become that “adding content will help my site rank better for “my city real estate”. Not really true I am sorry to say.

Much like how template site providers encouraged the misconception about frequently updating a website causes it to rank better, those that help provide content to websites are encouraging misunderstanding about the idea that “content is king” because it helps their bottom line.

Back to basics…

Google ranks pages – not sites. A one page site has the same ability to rank well for a single competitive keyword as a 10,0000 page site has. Often though, a 10,000 page site has tons of unique content. The unique content itself does not cause the main entry page of the site to rank higher. The extra 9,999 pages of unique content may cause people to link to the site though because the content is helpful and can’t be found anywhere else – and it is those links that were attracted to the main entry page that give a 10,000 page site the advantage over a one page site.

The reason the main entry page of a website usually ranks higher than the other pages of the site is only because it has more links pointing at it than the other pages. The main entry page of a website has “Page Rank” because of these links and passes some of the PR on to the subpages that it links to and in turn those subpages pass on PR to the pages they link to. If those 9,999 extra pages are about things people search for then those pages may rank in Google and bring extra traffic. Where those pages appear in the search engine results will depend on the page optimization for the keywords, the competitivness of the keywords, and how many good links are pointing at that particular page that contains the actual content.

Any content that you add will only help you to rank for the keywords that the new content is targeting on the particular page. Such keywords are usually called “long tail” keywords as the combinations are usually several words and only searched for once or twice a month. So, If you add 10 pages of new content you may get 10 or 20 more visitors a month – unless the keywords are quite popular – then the pages could get more traffic as long as you develop links to those new pages that contain the keywords in the link text.

The extra pages themselves offer zero help for the main entry page to rank for the keywords the main entry page is targeting (except for the link bait aspect I mentioned previously). There is one little thing that those pages can do to help – sometimes – and that is if they link back to the main entry page using the keywords the main entry page is targeting as the link text it can give a bit of a boost to the main entry page. More often than not though Google looks at this as “overoptimization” and gives the site a penalty were the site ranks at the very end of the search results. (Often called the -950 penalty)

The “link bait” aspect of those extra 9,999 pages does not really work with typical real estate sites though – who do you suppose would link to those pages? The content is rarely unique and of enough interest that good links would be attracted.

More often than not, what is being sold to Realtors today as a way to add extra content to help their search engine ranking – is custom designed search-engine-friendly IDX systems. The idea is that each listing would be unique content because the system is custom designed for each site and a Realtor would have a site with tens of thousands of pages listed in search engines.

This seems attractive on paper but it does not really work that way. These listings are not considered unique content and are soon dropped by Google as duplicate content. The idea of having tens of thousands of new links to the site’s home page from these listings is touted as good for SEO – but in fact may be inviting the -950 penalty.

Adding new content does not generally help your Realtor website rank for the primary keywords being targeted by your main entry page. Content is indeed king for attracting visitors searching for those “long tail” keywords – and the best way to add that new content is by using a blog.

Once the blog is established, those new pages are usually picked up by Google and already ranking within hours of being published. This is because Google considers blogs (and forums) to be “news” and wants the “news” to be as fresh as possible. If you upload the same new content to a regular website it can take weeks or months before the new page starts to rank.

So, to recap…

- adding new unique content to a website may help with ranking – but for the “long tail” keywords and not for the primary keywords being targeted by the main entry page of the website.

- a custom designed search-engine-friendly IDX system is not necessarily considered unique content – so think long and hard about this before committing the thousands of dollars this costs. (for more on this subject – check out the discussion about $20,000 Realtor websites)

- the best place to add new content to target the “long tail” keywords is in a blog.

Thanks for that great post. Good stuff!

Doug, thanks for chiming in. Very insightful/informative post.

You're right, I can see how some might have a skeptic view of Matt. Like everything else in life, take everything with a grain of salt. Any thoughts about Rand Fishkin (co-founder of SEOMoz)? Btw, in 1995, he was in high school. As many members of this forum (myself include) are always willing/looking to learn, specially about SEO, would you mind sharing more insight as to where/how you learn your SEO? Much appreciated.

I setup two domain names that point to the same web page. I am in the process of launching the site. I am think a single web site which has nice content that users can find anything without having to go somewhere else will beat bunch of small web sites.

Quality over Quantity. I also think the layout has to be in a way that users should be able to find information easily. I think if you have quality content with quality layout, it should be enough.

By the way here is web site I am about the launch www.AgentNadia.com.

I got professional help as far as the design but I will have to fill it with quality content.

AgentNadia, just make sure that one domain forwards to the other using a 301 permanent redirect otherwise you will have duplication issues that will have a negative effect of your search engine ranking.

Thank you so much. I went and changed the settings to 301 forward.

I have 6 at the moment. One main website and several blogs to feed it and drive traffic. It's important to feed the pig!

It all depends on how many you need. If you are asking for SEO purposes, then it depends on how much SEO resources you have to dedicate for different websites. Having a website sitting online does not help you much..

Most of our clients have 1 website. Our clients who are more serious about their web presents and receive a good amount of traffic from online have 2 or 3 websites. From what we can see, having 2 or 3 websites is starting to become common.

Thaank you Anthony! Keep the videos up - they're teaching me a lot of information.