GeekBuild 2012 Site #6 – Dave Woodson
My vision, my ideas, my goals and the branding for my forthcoming real estate sites for the 5 cities that I am focusing on. The first one to be done will be for Chesterton, Indiana homes. I got the site to look just like the demo site for AgentPress. I will be working back and forth from that baseline. I look forward to hearing ideas and constructive comments.
My Market:
Chesterton Indiana, a near bedroom community that is about 50 miles outside of Chicago. While a few may disagree with me or might not want to admit it, Chesterton is a suburb of Chicago. It is a stop along the South Shore rail that runs right into downtown Chicago. This is a town that popped up around the steel mills and saw great growth in the 90’s though the mid-2000’s, but it never lost that hometown feel.
Ultimately, I am not real sure how competitive it is or will be. There are a few well known agents, but no one that leaps to my mind. I certainly know there are not many, if any tech savvy agents that utilize the many online tools that are available.
My Goal:
To make all of my sites, the go-to source for the hot keywords pertinent to each city and to completely dominate the first page that drives listing and home buying leads back to myself and my team.
Branding:
We are working to become the team that utilizes all the tools to market homes on the Internet whether it be Facebook, YouTube…I am already seeing one of my sites pop up in Google. I heard last year from the stage at Agent ReBoot that 78% of homeowners looking to list their home would list with an agent that uses video. Sadly, less that 1% of agents actually do. I can guarantee that it is even less in my area.
I want anyone that comes to the sites to know they will be working with that one team that really knows tech and what it takes to tie it all in to market their home or find them a home.
Layout & Design:
I mentioned before that it is build on AgentPress and I just had it done up to look like and work like the demo. As with any of my sites, it will always be a work in progress – a living, breathing document. I did run into some issues with the menu bar and that will be a discussion that I need to have soon to make sure it is what I want it to be for SEO while still looking like it belongs.
Conversion:
Well, since it is barely live right now, there is zero conversion. So, it can only go up from there. As I did my early research, I was glad to find that there were roughly about 20,000 searches a month all were low to medium in competition, but I am going to assume that it will all be up hill.
Another goal is to tie in some landing pages for first time home buyers as well as webinars, home buying tips, how to sell your home faster and other real estate topics all in an effort to capture leads.
Note from the Editor: Not sure what Geek Build 2012 is? It’s building a few real estate websites from scratch publicly with the help of the Geek Estate Community and overseen by an experienced steering committee. Read more about Geek Build 2012 here, or view all posts related to Geek Build 2012 here.
**Geek Build logo designed by Dominic Morrocco at M Squared Real Estate.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 21:53h, 04 MarchYou’re in luck man. Chesterton, Indiana homes for sale” seems like a winnable keyword. It’s all national players on page 1 – https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ix=sea&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=Chesterton%2C%20Indiana%20homes%20for%20sale&pbx=1&oq=&aq=&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&gs_l=&fp=93c62a2c0d3faa03&ix=sea&ion=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1191&bih=592
Ben Fisher
Posted at 07:46h, 05 MarchSeems like you have a very good opportunity to target this area that no one else is really pursuing aggressively. With some good content and a bit of SEO, it looks like you will see some really nice results out of this. Look forward to seeing it progress.
Daniel Bacon
Posted at 11:31h, 05 MarchYep, your market is wide open. Benefits of living in a smaller town outside of a primary market… Put up some solid content, nice landing pages, maybe showcase a few developments and and you’ll be well on your way.
Daniel Beer
Posted at 18:51h, 13 MarchThe one thing that comes to mind for me when I hear you say that you are working to be the team that uses “all the tools” is make sure you don’t over complicate things. People for the most part are attracted to easy home search pages with pretty pictures. A lot of the rest of it like QR codes and other fads are just noise in my opinion.