HomeQuest

Jeff on Monday, June 28, 2010

We’ve been told over and over that Real Estate is local. Think local. Pick a niche. Farm specific neighborhoods. Etc.

There’s no better way to support this activity than to build a killer landing page for the neighborhood you’ve chosen. This landing page can become a great resource for clients searching for neighborhood information online, and a perfect place to direct visitors to land with your supporting marketing materials if you choose to do so. Plus, there are several other benefits that come along with doing this that may not be apparent right from the beginning. By actually doing the research to build the landing page, you’ll get to know the neighborhood better. Depending on the type of information you choose to include on the page, you may also want to get out and meet members of the community (ie: restaurant and store owners) which can possibly lead to creating a working business relationship and in some cases, great friendships.

For the purposes of this post, we’ll be looking at an example page that we created which focuses on Portland’s “Alberta Arts District”. So, let’s dive into the 5 tips that you can use to create a killer landing page for the neighborhood you’re focusing on.

Tip #1 – Keep your eyes on the prize.
When creating a static page like this, there should always be a goal in mind for when the visitor hits this page. It’s probably safe to assume that in most cases, you want the visitor to eventually register in your IDX lead capture system. So, it’s good to always keep that in mind and basically sculpt your content around accomplishing that goal.

Tip #2 – Include relevant pictures and video.
Don’t just tell your visitors about all the cool things to do in your neighborhood, show them. Photo and video galleries are a great way to display the true look and feel of the neighborhood. Focus on things that visitors to the neighborhood may find interesting, odd, or unique. In our example page, we’ve used a couple WordPress plugins that allow us to include a photo gallery and a gallery of related videos. This avoids having to embed all the photos and videos separately, which can turn you page into lengthy display, that would most likely be very ineffective. This leads directly into the next tip…

Tip #3 – Keep it short and sweet.
A good neighborhood page should also contain info on schools, shopping, restaurants, and other fun things about the neighborhood. That means you’re going to have A TON of info to try to squeeze into this page. Not to mention fitting any photos and videos you want to include. You definitely don’t want visitors to have to scroll through all this info. So, how do you solve this problem? Well, we use another WordPress plugin called TabsSlides (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-tabs-slides/). This plugin allows you to create a set of tabs, each of which behaves almost like a whole new page with it’s own content. You can see this in action on the example page.

Tip #4 – Include some sort of lead capture device (preferably HomeQuest’s WordPress IDX plugin).
You’ll notice on our example page, that there are several ways we’ve done this. We’ve linked to the interactive map (which can include your neighborhood specific blog posts) using both a text link for SEO purposes and a graphic image. Once users are on the map and clicking around through the listings, they will be asked to register after viewing a certain number of listings (based on a number you choose). We’ve also included the neighborhood’s active listings at the bottom of the page, in list format. These listings are automatically updated so your page will always show the most recent listings available in that neighborhood.

Tip #5 – Link back to this page in future blog posts.
This is similar to tip #1 above but more for the overall strategy of your website. Using blog content to drive traffic back to your neighborhood pages can be a great strategy for converting visitors into leads, and eventually into clients. There are also some benefits in doing this when it comes to search engine optimization, but that could be a whole post in itself. We’ll save that for a later date. For now, just know that linking back to your content in this way is a good thing.

So, there you have the 5 tips that we think should help you create a great looking neighborhood landing page that actually performs well when it comes to converting traffic. If you have any other tips that have been working for you that you’d like to share, we’d love to hear them. Feel free to leave tips and ideas in the comments below.