WordPress and IDXbroker for Real Estate Agents & Brokers :: 7 Great Benefits
Real Estate is the perfect vehicle to use the text, photo, and video capabilites of WordPress. WordPress’s SEO benefits, ease of use, and an unbelievable community of users (and corresponding online documentation) have allowed it to become the world’s most popular content management system… And real estate agents all over the world are using WordPress every day as the foundation of their entire online web marketing efforts.
But… there seems to be a relative low number of Brokers using wordpress to build web sites at the company or office level. Most real estate brokers or office managers should consider changing their current site in favor of something WordPress based.
The 7 reasons why every real estate brokerage should use WordPress as a blog site.
1. Save Money on Hosting
Some real estate brokers are being charged $300 a month to have their sites hosted. With WordPress, hosting is relatively inexpensive. We have a sweet plan with all the goodies and premium themes like Thesis or Genesis, hosting, domain registration and the works for just $19 per month.
2. Save Money on Website Maintenance Fees
Some brokers who are paying $300 a month for hosting fees are also being charged $100 an hour for any edit done on the site. With WordPress, we set you up so that you have easy and quick access to your site. YOU or someone in your real estate office can make the changes quickly and easily. There are definitely some modifications out there that most real estate brokers won't feel at ease doing, but you can find help for free or inexpensively.
3. WordPress Plugins for Realtors and Real Estate!
There is a plugin for almost anything real estate brokers could possibly need. There are plugins for YouTube videos, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, IDXbroker, Virtual Tours and more. One of my favorites is the IDX integration which shows all of the property on the MLS. There are forms for lead capture and area stats from Zillow. There are tons of yummy stuff you can add to your WordPress for Real Estate Site.
4. Inexpensive Design
There are tons of WordPress themes and templates available. Some of these themes work better for real estate than others. We really like Thesis , and Genesis which we also use to setup sites for real estate brokers. The images on this post are examples of sites we can setup for you. You don't have to pay thousands of dollars for a cool design.
Click here to see what we include in our ultimate real estate websites.
5. Search Engine Optimization
WordPress is designed to be search engine friendly right out of the box. You won't have to hire some search engine guru or pay tons of money every month to "get your real estate site on the first page of Google", like the phone calls we have all gotten! There are some sweet plugins and other tricks that will make your WordPress site even more search engine friendly. We will help you get the page ranking you need through posts and videos.
6. Wordpress is perfect for creating a niche, neighborhood, agent, or "special offer" sections.
What is this? Well if you need to do something like setup a special "foreclosure" site. We can actually go in and setup a special page with customized headers, sidebars, navigation, and the works on your same domain and install and make it so that "it just works". We have help agents setup sites for specific cities and certain neighborhoods.
7. Gain dominance in your market by leveraging agent created content.
One of my favorite parts about using a WordPress site is the fact that all of the agents in your brokerage or office can participate in one place that helps all of you get more real estate leads from buyers and sellers. As everyone posts to WordPress about their real estate activities, there is always something fresh for Google to find... and you to get Google Juice with!
Click here to read all about our sweet RealtyCandy sites for just $19 per month.