A funny thing happened on my way to a listing. I wasn't familiar with the street the home was on and I wanted to get directions to the property. I Googled the home's address, "421 Sundance Trail, Webster, NY 14580" (With the Google Tool bar, I don't use AOL's MapQuest anymore).
Does your Website offer directions? Or do you "walk"/"click" your buyers away to Google, MapQuest, etc.
Google provided a map with a push-pin for the property. I could adjust the map appropriately. It had a printer friendly version. And next to the map was the box for Google's Directions (also printer friendly).
Just below the address was the first natural or organic Google placement. The link was to Trulia's Web-page for the address. The full street address is contained in the Trulia page for the property:
www.trulia.com/property/
The second placement was an indented link to Trulia's Web-page for "Homes for Sale" and "Real Estate" in the "State/Town/ZipCode": www.trulia.com/NY/Webster/14580/p_8/
The Broker's Web-page for 421 Sundance Trail (you can Google that too), ERA/Columbus, doesn't appear on the first 3 pages, where most searchers look. The third placement was for our local Coldwell Banker Broker, whose Website pushes out listings to Google Base (and ? to Trulia). Another reason to push your listing data out to the Search Engines.
My ad revenue start-up for the Rochester (NY) Area, WebHomeUSA.com, also optimizes for the street address. We get 3 placements on Google's first page:
- Street Address Page (4): 421-sundance-trl-webster-ny-14580.webhomeusa.com/
- Town Page (6): webster-town-ny.webhomeusa.com/
- Zip Code Page (7): 14580.webhomeusa.com/
Since Trulia is primarily a Real Estate mapping Website, I had no need to go back my Google Address Search for directions.
Trulia, with tons of traffic, street-address optimized domain names, great information and links, and Google mapping and directions, takes the top 2 spots on most of my Google Address Searches.
Since mapping never was a core Realtor service (like valuations or CMAs), Trulia has never run into the hail storm of criticism from Realtors Zillow did. Trulia uses Google Maps, like most other Agent/Broker Websites I've looked at.
Being optimized for the street address, also optimizes your Website/Web-pages for the Zip Code and the City or Town (any part of the address). Trulia also appears high up on the searches for "Homes for Sale" and "Real Estate" in Zip Codes, Cities and Towns.
Zillow has added the street address to its URLs for properties. Since Zillow.com is primarily a dynamic Website, with pages only created when you search, it's not as favorably optimized for Google Searches.
Is anyone still worried where our data goes after we open it up to the Internet?
Happy Searching.
Posted by: Cliff Jacobson
Adapt Or Die!
WebHomeUSAblog: The Blog of Online Real Estate Marketing
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