Do It Yourself - Web Site Construction Basics / Good Web Site Design A good real estate Web site is actually constructed like a book. It has a home page (front cover) which gives a brief but relevant introduction of your company and yourself, including detailed contact information. It also must include the main menu (index) illustrating the content of your site in short phrases or single words. This main menu leads to the individual Web pages (chapters) which deal with the various themes, content and tools of your profession. Quick Tip: Avoid Flash intros, large Flash page headers, multiple Flash applications on one page, drop down or fold out menus, poor quality graphics, photos and applications, clashing color schemes, white type on dark background, hard to read text styles, mixed, multi colored, all caps, all bold, all cursive, all underlined, blinking and scrolling text blocks, competing focal points on one page, poor grammar and spelling mistakes, duplicate and/or copied text, mirror content, links from and to link farms, and anything not related to the intent of your site. Navigation: Your real estate Web side should have a main navigation menu, with not more than 15 buttons to avoid visual overload. This main menu should contain generally the following subjects: Introduction - Featured Properties - All Area Listings - Buyer's Resources
Home Search - Seller's Resources - Home Evaluation - Community
Neighborhoods - Schools - About My Services - Client Testimonials - Contact Info This menu needs to be installed vertically along the right or left side, or horizontally along the top of every one of your web site pages. A main menu should be prominent and easy to read. It can be made up of simple text links or linked graphics with inscriptions. If you use buttons or other graphic elements for you main menu you may want to install "alt tags" for each one. Avoid multiple layer drop down or fold out menus, and especialy Flash based menus. They only confuse and annoy vistors. In addition they can be slow loading and cannot be followed by search engines since they DO NOT read Flash or graphics. Web Pages: Each one of the menu text links or menu buttons needs to be connected to a corresponding Web page on your site filled with relevant information, resources, links and tools. Keep the textual content short and to the point. Make sure the menu buttons / graphics have "alt tags" to enable the search engines to follow them. Provide only interesting and useful content in an easy to understand manner. Page Headers: Each page has a header which needs to be customized with a title relating to the page content. Search engines focus on these headers heavily and will pull your pages only if the title and content of the page relate to a specific search. Your site lives and dies with the quailty and relevance of your page headers. Key Words & Phrases: The content of each page should be unique, interesting, useful and also contain some key words and key phrases relating to the content. Key words and phrases are the words or phrases typed by people into their search engine interface when searching for your services. Don't overdo it with stuffing to many of them into any one parapraph. Search engines will penalize your site for "keyword stuffing" and site visitors may be unable to understand what you are trying to say. Meta Tags: Each page of your real estate Web site needs to be “tagged” with “meta tags”. The most important meta tags are the “key words/phrases meta tag”, “description meta tag” and “robot/spider/crawler meta tag”. The meta tags for each individual page need to contain the words, phrases and descriptions used within that specific page and it's page header. Everything has to correspond to each other. The content of these tags has to reflect what you are doing or trying to convey on that specific page. Try to optimize each page for a very specific set of key words and key phrases. Do not use identical tags for all of your pages. Content Text: Keep your type style uniform and in one color throughout your entire site, select an easy to read style such as Ariel, Verdana or Trebuchet and size it at 10pt or 12pt for easy reading. Always write in proper English, proof read and use a spell checker. Try to align all of your paragraphs so that the content appears justified, like on this page. Make sure that the textual content, other information, tools or resources of each page relates to it's meta tags and page header. Do not just use any default text that may have come with your template, but customize it right away. Emphasis Tools: Do not use all CAPS and/or mix “bold, cursive, underlines, colors or highlights” for, or into, text sections. Caps, bold, underlined, cursive, colored and highlighted text should only be used sparingly and only for important quotes, phrases, words and/or links. They are otherwise distractive to the viewer and make your text hard to read. Furthermore search engines pay only attention to bold and underlined text for outgoing links on your page. There is nothing to be gained putting an emphasis on all of your text content. Colors: Select colors for your Web pages that are complimentary and keep it subtle. Text should be one color only (dark colors are preferable), background colors should be the same on each page (very light pastel colors are preferable) and emphasis colors in text or graphics should be selected to match or compliment the rest of the page elements. And again, only use bold, underlined, cursive, colored and highlighted text very sparingly and only for important words, phrases or links. Links: Internal links (links pointing to other pages within your site) and external links (links pointing to outside sources, Web pages or sites) within your text should always be bold and underlined and a different color than the rest of the text, but all links should always be in the the same color throughout your entire site. Make sure that all of your textual and graphics links are in working order. Relevant links within your text paragraphs are important to your users and the search engines alike. Make sure they lead to high value information, resources or tools related to the intent of that specific page only. Graphics, Pictures, Photos: All graphics, pictures or photos should be of high quality and optimized for your Web site before you drop them into your pages. You can use Adobe Photo Shop or similar programs to enhance, size and otherwise manipulate your graphics, photos and pictures. Make sure that their colors do not clash with your web site color scheme. Avoid competing focal points on any one page by installing to many graphic elements all over the page. All graphics, photos and pictures should have “alt tags” displaying an alternate text in case they do not load up in someone's browser. This is especially important if they contain links. Use them sparingly throughout your site since they may slow down the loading time of your site/pages. Avoid Flash intros and very large or multiple Flash modules on your pages. Search engines CAN NOT read them. The Right Content Is King: First thing to do once your site is functional is to switch out any stock text and graphics content with your personalized unique content. Remove and replace it with your own, or at least modify it suffciently. Concentrate on content that visitors really want... and for real estate web sites they want it in this order, always freely accesible, without signing in or up for it: - Search local area listings
- Search the local MLS
- Detailed local area information
- Local government info
- Local utility information
- Maps, maps and more maps
- And at the end about you and your services
Postion youself as the local area expert by providing the information visitors are looking for and present it in an easy to find and retrieve form. You should add a blog to your site and drop at least every week new area and market information into it. Interesting and well presented new content brings people back every time, as well as the search engines. The more uniqe, interesting and easy to understand content you provide, the better your results will be! And keep in mind everyone wants the "inside scoop" on what is going on in your neighborhood market... |