Why WordPress is a Great Option for Real Estate Websites

What Google is to search engines WordPress is to websites – it has literally taken over the Internet. If you’re just starting out in real estate or you’re an established agent looking to beef up your web presence, consider WordPress for your agent website.

What is WordPress?

It’s surprising, but not everyone is familiar with WordPress. So, for the newbie, WordPress is an Internet-gobbling content management system, that powers more than 26 percent of all websites totaling more than 70 million worldwide. To get an idea of how huge this is, every person in France could have a WordPress site and there would still be 7.6 million sites leftover.

If that’s still too technical, think of WP as a blogging-platform-website-builder-E commerce platform. A one-stop shop, if you will.

Its popularity stems from the fact that it’s open source, so modifications and improvements occur frequently and fixes happen rapidly, unlike closed-source software such as Microsoft Office or Adobe Acrobat.

Why WordPress is worth considering for agent websites

WordPress is easy.

The number one reason to consider WordPress for your agent website is that it’s so easy to use. It offers not only one-click installation, but functionality options that allows for easy updates to your site – even if you’re completely unfamiliar with blog publishing, RSS feeds and IDX capability. No more running to your developer or webmaster for every little tweak you want to make.

WordPress is customizable.

You won’t need to take coding classes to customize your WordPress site. Just think “widgets,” which are simple to use and give you design control over the WP theme. There are widgets for just about any use, from advertising open houses and just-sold listings to user registration and social integration.

Google loves WordPress.

Getting your website to rank higher in search engines is important to your real estate business and WordPress helps you do just that. When you use WordPress’ built-in features, such as tags and categories, Google know what your pages are all about and that’s good for SEO. Then, there are the SEO plugins that can help your site rank quickly. Best of all, they’re easy to install, even for the novice.

Of course, you’ll still need to walk the walk and talk the talk by ensuring that your site has relevant content.

It’s easy to add content.

Yes, content is still king when it comes to generating traffic to your website. In fact, Google’s “Quality Rater Guidelines” insist that a website’s content should be “maintained and updated regularly” to receive the highest ranking. Furthermore, raters are instructed to rate a site “low quality” if the content is “created without adequate time, effort, expertise, or talent/skill.” In other words, Google wants to see quality content added regularly.

And, how should agents accomplish this? By blogging, and fortunately, WordPress includes a built-in blogging platform that is a snap to use.

It’s all about IDX

At the end of the day, the main reason someone visits your website is to search for homes for sale in your market and they can’t do that without IDX (Internet Data Exchange) and its seamless integration into your WordPress site. But, it doesn’t stop there. You can include interactive maps and other search features as well. These include:

  • Sharing property data on social media
  • Allowing visitors to create a list of favorite listings and share them via email or social media
  • Enabling users to subscribe to new listing alerts
  • Integration with your CRM

Harnessing the power of WordPress and IDX for your real estate website is the best thing you can do for your business. We’re happy to help. >> LEARN MORE