New concept (for me) - building a site for a community

[saboy1]

I've been toying with the idea of building a site that is solely focused on one community. I try to get as much information about the community to be of interest to the people living there, and more importantly, to give info to people that may want to live there. Tested a site that worked very well, then redid it with more information and just launched it. It has been up for a week now and I am getting a lot of searches on my IDX interface.

Only had one call so far though. Anybody have an opinion about user reaction on visiting the homepage? Have a look at www.LakeArrowheadWaleska.com

John Visser
RE/MAX Communities

[lasvegasrealestate]

Its a good start. I would add a blog to it (Point2 does have that know I think) and use it for market updates, new pictures, etc. Throw in a post about a local business that's unique, give people a real feel for the town and its residents. Do that, and I think it will be a big traffic puller for you. IMHO

[naplesrealestate]

A good strategy because you are getting highly focused visitors and probably the SE g-ds will like a highly focused site. Do it the right way and you will become an authority site for the community. You might also be hitting the niche searches which will result in better quality of site visitors.

[Andrea Messenger]

Hi John-
I think you have an excellent idea. Jim and I have always encouraged agents to focus on one or more specific communities for their websites. It really captures peoples' attention about an area and is more likely to capture serious buyers.

It's great that you've used photos and tailored the content to Lake Arrowhead - I would add some more content and a blog as well. Also, try to vary the size and placement of photos.

Another benefit you'll see from targeting specific communities is that it helps you rank quicker and higher for the "long tail search." This is a search for more specific, less known terms. In your case, John... folks might search for "Lake Arrowhead Georgia real estate" as opposed to a much more competitive term such as "Georgia real estate."

[naplesrealestate]

Originally Posted by Andrea Messenger Also, try to vary the size and placement of photos.

Andrea - are you making this recommendation so that the site does not have the appearance of being a template site?

[lasvegasrealestate]

I'm curious as well. I try to keep photos the same size for each of my community pages. Do you think people like a little more non-conformity throughout a site?

[naplesrealestate]

Charles - as you are aware, I am working on a new FA site, so I had the pleasure of speaking with Andrea last night...she thoughts are that people do like a little non-conformity between the pages. With the short attention span of web site visitors, seeing the same format again and again, may have the result of them losing interest. Your site is full of great content and even though your pictures are the same size you have them surrounded (above and bottom) with content, so it may not have a negative impact on visitor stickiness.

[lasvegasrealestate]

For the new site I'm making a few different page "styles" so that even though there will be uniformity, the page layouts will be different for some pages. I'm about half way done...didn't realize how much content I had.

[naplesrealestate]

Making new page styles must be very time consuming. Can we get an update as to how you are doing with the new site?

[lasvegasrealestate]

I've transferred 256 pages of content so far (already sick of it) and added 17 new pages. I still have 68 more pages to transfer then I get to go back and put in the rest of my internal links, fix whatever I messed up in the transfer, make sure it read right, etc. The good thing about this is that I've been updating the information as I go. Some things were out of date. I'll be VERY happy once its finally finished.