Introducing the RealBird Map-based MLS Search 2.0
It’s been a while since our last major update of the RealBird Map-based MLS Search service. I am pleased to announce that the new version is now available for real estate agents and brokers in our current MLS coverage areas. (More MLS coverage is added ongoing)
There are many, many new features and novel benefits of this new release. I am going to post tutorials on a regular basis of concepts and techniques about how to best utilize these features. At this time, let me emphasize a unique marketing concept, which enables real estate agents to reach out for home buyers beyond their website, via syndicated featured listings, viral marketing and social networks.
The problem
Your IDX solution is only as good as the level of traffic you receive on your website. Unless you have sufficient traffic coming to your site, the most advanced technology locked up on your site will not bring you business, simply because nobody knows about the value it provides. One of the most powerful real estate marketing techniques is blogging and not just because you can show off your expertise and niche while building brand and trust (the content), but for being a technology solution which reaches out for buyers and pulls them back to your online presence, your blog or website, where you can provide them with additional services (the reach). Since blogs are syndicated by default, expressed via machine readable RSS and loved by search engines, your content (and online business identity) can go a really long way to reach consumers by feed readers, aggregators, fellow bloggers sharing and tracking back your content and most importantly by search engines. In short: you “push” your information via blogs to meaningful destinations where consumers search and research and “pull” them back to your website for more. This is very powerful, no question about it.
Following this marketing concept established by real estate blogs, we decided to port the technique to single property websites:
The solution
For the first time in the industry, the RealBird Listing Publisher enables you to create Single Property Websites with Map-based MLS Search embedded for instant, live showcase of nearby for sale properties. Take the following scenario for example:
- You create a single property website with RealBird and embed the Map-based MLS Search application
- Your listing site is automatically syndicated to Google Base, Zillow, Trulia, Geebo, Oodle, Vast and more and you can easily post it to Craigslist, Kijiji and Backpage for even more traffic
- A home buyer finds your featured listing on any of those highly popular portals
- The home buyer clicks thru to visit your RealBird single property website
- If your featured listing is not a perfect match, the home buyer is provided with an instant option to see similar for sale properties without ever leaving your site. In other words, you capture a portion of the traffic of home buyers from major portals. That portion can be huge relative to your regular website traffic.
Your IDX search solution (the home buyer lead capturing tool) is pushed one click closer to high profile destinations, to portals where most of the online home buyers start their search. Similar to blogging, the RealBird Listing Publisher pushes your information to 3rd party sites with high consumer traffic (portals and search engines) and “pulls” home buyers back to your full IDX solution.
Since the RealBird Listing Publisher also allows you to manage and promote your pending and sold inventory, listings sites which are already indexed by major search engines will continue to bring cumulative traffic and leads to your IDX solutions via your single property websites even after your own listing is sold !
The Listing Publisher is available for agents and brokers in the US, nationwide. For the embedded MLS Search option, please check the coverage on RealBird .com (You can also request coverage there. We’ll do our best to implement new MLSs as soon as possible, based on user demand)
Below are a few examples of live single property websites with the Map-based Search integrated:
Stay tuned for the upcoming tutorials on other new features such the visually stunning MLS Hotlist widgets.
— Zoltan Szendro
How SEO friendly is realbird? I know blogging works well for SEO, but how does the coding perform for the search engines? Do you have any examples for us to look at where you have top search engine positioning.
Chantal, Thanks for asking. We spent a lot of time on making sure that the single property website are search engine optimized. In fact, that was one of the main design requirements when we developed the service. Our members receive traffic from Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines every day. Below are a few real-word queries which resulted in real-word consumers visit RealBird single property sites (please note that Google results are constantly changing, the positions below are valid at the time of writing this comment) :
Google 1st page, 2nd position, Query: lease option crestline, ca
http://www.google.com/search?q=lease+option+crestline%2C+ca
Google 1st page, 7th position, Query: Condos Matyland Height MO
http://www.google.com/search?q=CONDOS+MARYLAND+HEIGHT+MO
Yahoo 1st page, 2nd position, Query: realestate in warner robbins ga.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=realestate+in+warner+robbins+ga.