Neighborhood Pages
Let’s face it; creating engaging content on a consistent basis for your blog or your website is hard enough, without adding in the element of search engine optimization. It’s easy to get wrapped up into SEO aspect by being so focused on picking keywords, keyword placement and saturation that we forget about the other elements, like making it readable for the end-user, or creating a resources that will bring readers back, or the other way around. There is a delicate between the demands of SEO and the needs of the reader but one that can be achieved with a little planning.
Here are the basics regarding SEO: in the world of search engine optimization little spiders are out online searching for websites to crawl (read) and what they are looking for is content. Not just any content, they are looking for content that is relevant to what your site is about. A website about real estate in Portland Oregon should have content that is relevant to either real estate or Portland Oregon or both.
The needs of the reader that make the “what to write about” part easy – Real estate is local. Agents work a particular area or city(s) which means that information about that area or city is great fodder for their website- blog or individual pages. The potential home buyers are online for information; information about listings, their homes value and to learn more about the places that they are considering moving too. They are just as curious about things like the job growth rate vs. unemployment, how good are the schools, what is the weather like and where to shop, or eat or what type of entertainment is in the area.
Distilling all of that information into SEO friendly content that people want to read can seem like one tall order but remember that there is no one right way to create neighborhood pages; it can be achieved in any number of ways.
One way to do incorporate neighborhood pages into your website would to be to create a main neighborhood page that can be incorporated to your navigation. That first level page could be a summary of the area: Portland Oregon, with a summary paragraph on individual neighborhoods like St. Johns, Mt Tabor, West Hills etc. Under each neighborhood have a link to more information, a separate page specifically for that neighborhood.
This page can be constructed to contain all of the hyper-local information a potential home-buyer could want. Including maps, videos and pictures of neighborhood landmarks or parks are a great way to add a visual component to the page. Talk about the local schools, elementary, middle, high school and higher education if you have a college in the neighborhood – add links to the school district for parents to explore. Add links to local businesses; restaurants, merchants and entertainment. Another great addition to neighborhood pages is pre-defined searches set through your IDX provider, just waiting for the reader to click!
There are no hard and fast rules about what to include in neighborhood pages; just remember that you have two over-arching goals – engage readers and bring more readers to your site!
Tags: marketing, neighborhood pages, seo
You know if you truly want to be a neighborhood specialist, you should have a website that has content specific to the nighborhood you service. The problem with real estate these days and the way agents are working the business is they are neighborhood generalist and follow the client where ever the client wants to go. When I was a rookie, I tried to cover 4 different counties with at least 25 towns each. I was over-extended. I had to learn how to refer the business to the appropriate people.
The same thing is happening with websites. They are trying to cater themselves to a larger audience, which in my opinion is not the future SEO. We are going to see a new trend (it’s already in progress) with long tail keywords. The more specific your site, the better.
I’ve been thinking about using Squidoo more and more as they are what your pages on your websites should be: Specific and focused, fun and informative, or whatever else you might be trying to accomplish.