The more Google relies on authority and trust to rank websites, the more we’re going to see large, well financed sites dominating the SERPs (search engine results pages). Even a brokerage site with solid SEO isn’t going to be able to compete across the entire spectrum of keywords for its market with a site like Trulia, Zillow, Yahoo! Real Estate…or even Google for that matter. Take a look at this search in Google for “Los Angeles real estate”, and this is what we see in the natural results:

la_google_search

It isn’t until the 7th result that the first agent website pops up, and this site is only 1 of 2 agent/broker sites included on the first 2 pages of these SERPs! Unfortunately, it’s only going to get worse, and authority real estate websites will continue to push agent/broker sites further down the search results. So what are Realtors supposed to do to compete with this type of domination?

Well, if you viewed the video, “I’ll pass on syndicating MY Listings” in Drew’s recent post, you know that seller’s agents can and should be syndicating their listings to these larger, trusted sites. You’ll also want to make sure you DON’T select the checkbox to “not include your listing” on other websites when entering your property information with your local MLS (can you believe this is even an option in some states). Allowing your listing to appear on sites displaying MLS data feeds (like the LA Times real estate section ranking #2 in the image above) can only help you sell your inventory. I would also create individual Google Base ads for each of your properties to ensure your listings appear as one of the results in Google’s real estate section (see the search box above the first result in the image above). Your listings can be syndicated to Google Base through other free services, but creating the ads yourself ensures you get credit and a link back to your website. Unfortunately Google Base ads expire after 14 days, but you can provide an xml data feed to automate the renewal process.

For buyer’s agents, there are plenty of options. For instance Zillow, which also ranks on the first page of Google’s Los Angeles real estate search, offers showcase ads as well as the ability to answer buyer’s questions in their real estate question and discussion guide. Yahoo! Real Estate, Realtor.com and Trulia offer similar services – all on the first page of the example search.

Without a large budget dedicated to constantly improving your website’s features and content, and top level SEO, the future looks bleak for individual agent/broker websites. But that doesn’t mean there’s no place for Realtors on the web. I would even say that these large, trusted sites provide more opportunity than individual agent sites—if you learn to use them to your advantage. As the old saying goes, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Even when you’re having a stressful day, it’s worth remembering that leveraging these established platforms can still offer valuable opportunities. For some stress relief, you might want to try Indacloud sour apple funta.