With A Little Help From My Friends
By HHI Golf Guy | January 20, 2009
I’m not afraid to say that I don’t know everything and I don’t have all of the answers. That’s why I’m grateful that there are a few in the web development community that are willing to lend a hand.
A few weeks ago I was asked to come up with a script for our 360 Network sites that would automatically email an agent every time their listing was viewed. Unlike a normal piece of code you drop into a web site, these sites use a modified version of Open Realty to power the listings engine. That means a separate Add On program needed to be created to run with the OR program.
The problem was, I wasn’t sure how to do that. I reviewed the addon sample program, read the documentation, looked at other addon programs, but I still did not have the complete picture.
So I wrote the beginnings of the code, then got stumped. So I asked one of the Open Realty guru’s, Paul Bouchard (aka pbflash). Now I know that Paul works during the day and at night works on his own OR projects, works on developing the CMS Realty bridge for Joomla 1.5 and OR, answers questions in the OR support forum, and somehow tries to have a normal life. And he probably gets a hundred or so emails a week from guys like me looking for some help.
Thankfully, Paul took the time to review my code and make some wholesale changes. He also took the time to explain in greater detail how the addon process worked. So I took the code he gave me, tweaked an item or two, then added more code to make the final version work the way I needed it to work. Needless to say, without Paul’s help I probably wouldn’t have been able to complete that project.
It’s nice to know that in this crazy, hectic world that we live in that there are still some people out there who will give a bit of themselves to help others. For that I’m thankful. It’s also why I participate as a moderator in a number of real estate and SEO forums. It’s good to give back what you can.
Paul has a nice array of ready made Open Realty addons, both for sale and for free. He also does a lot of custom work (last year he even helped us convert a huge real estate database to a new format). So if you need something for OR, he’s your man!
Thanks again, Paul. I’m sure we’ll do business again in the future.
Topics: Web Design | No Comments »
Building A Better Real Estate Web Site For Buyers
By HHI Golf Guy | November 6, 2007
The most common mistake of real estate web sites is that they are designed as billboards for the agent rather than focusing on the buyer client
If you have ever shopped for real estate on the internet or checked out your competitor’s web sites you will find that most have one thing in common - they focus on the real estate agent instead of on the buyer client. The fact is, most people just don’t trust real estate agents (maybe that’s why some agents promote themselves so heavily instead of concentratinbg on buyers).
Realtor web sites have improved over the past few years, adding items such as video, virtual tours, and maps. They help to give a better visual representation of each property and the surrounding area, but they still fall short of letting the buyer know what it’s like to live, work, and play in each community.
To combat this problem, some agents do provide community descriptions for their visitors, but most fall short of painting a complete picture. And when there are dozens of towns and residential communities in the service area, most people don’t have the patience to read page after page of community information, demographics, and school reports. When you combine all of that information with thousands of MLS listings, it can lead to information overload.
That’s where technology and the web can help users quickly find locations that suit their needs and lifestyle. For example, this Austin real estate web site features an advisor section called “Ask Julie”. The concept is quite simple, ask the user a dozen questions about their preferences including commute time, schools, and recreation and then display the resulting areas that most closely meet their criteria.
The above example is a simplified version of what can be accomplished. The next step is to provide a more in depth survey, or better yet offer two versions of the survey. One version is quick and easy like the one above, while the second asks for more details. This information can be used not only to pinpoint specific towns, but it can also be used to pinpoint specific residential communities or neighborhoods within those towns. With a little more coding, this feature could also display a list of available properties within those communities and plot them on a map for visual reference.
Actually, the programming for this application is not that extensive. It’s nothing more than a complex database query. However, the difficult part is setting up all of the criteria, especially if you are looking for comprehensive results. Web developers will need to work closely with their clients to ensure that the data is both comprehensive and accurate. But once it is complete, it is an ultimate sticky for a real estate web site.
The Kosloff Group will be adding this feature option to their web design packages beginning in 2008 in conjunction with the realease of their new CMS web suite.
Topics: Real Estate Marketing, Web Design | No Comments »
Why Site Structure Is An Important Part of SEO
By HHI Golf Guy | October 24, 2007
We recently took over the SEO services for an Austin Real Estate web site. One of the first items that I look at is the overall indexing of the web site. Specifically, I look at the site titles and descriptions picked up by the search engines as well as the total pages indexed and the cached results of each page.
What I found on this site was typical of most web site designs. The site had a decent amount of information, and thousands of real estate listings. But almost every page had the same title tag (HomeCity). That’s a big no-no in the world of SEO.
Another problem occured with the page descriptions being picked up by Google. For the thousands of listing pages, the descriptions were almost identical. To combat these problems I had their programmer go back and create dynamic title and description tags based on the page content pulled from the database. To date, they are still working on this feature, although it should be completed within a week or so.
The problem with this site is that the when the search engines see the same title tag on all pages (and oull the same basic info for descriptions) is that the search engines no longer consider these pages to be unique. When that happens, they lose their relevance and importance and no longer provide a good foundation for the overall keyword themes of your web site. It also means that a search engine like Google will place less crawling importance on these pages. For example, I was seeing cache dates that were more than a few months old.
One the programming changes are complete, the next step will be to upload a robots.txt and create an XML sitemap. Right now the site is enough of a mess where implementing these items won’t really help. There’s a lot more to do with this site, but improving some basic on page SEO will help with crawling, indexing, and rankings.
Topics: General SEO | No Comments »