When it came time for us at Ticor to get the word out that we are well equipped to facilitate short sale transactions, we decided that creating a micro web site was going to be the 'destination point' for our short sale conversation online.  We chose this for a few reasons:

We facilitate short sale transactions, but how does Google know that?  People doing searches for short sale information are probably not thinking to themselves, "I should google ticor".  Although we would like this, It's quite a long shot.  They're more likely to be looking for resources on the short sale process or lender requirements, or short sale benefits.  And as you can see from the links, we've provided useful information about those things on our site...

Secondly, from a basic search optimization perspective, having a micro site that is focused on one topic creates congruency between our domain name "ticorshortsale.com", our page names ('the short sale process', etc..), and our content. They all discuss various aspects of short sales.  Our goal with this is of course to be recognized as a specific resource and local authority on the subject in the eyes of our clients, the public at large, and last but not least our favorite search engines. 

Thirdly, when our sales reps are having conversations with clients about the ever changing market and the greater frequency of short sales, they now have an easy place to direct clients for more information.  There's no  hunting through our corporate hosted site for the info.  If you find yourself on ticorshortsale.com there's no question as to what type of content you'll find. 

On a technical note, we used wordpress as our platform and I'm very happy about it.  More and more people are moving to the blog/site model these days and for good reason.  It allowed us a rapid deployment and I think of it as the best of both worlds.  The blog content is obiously intended to be fresh, specific and interactive and the 'static' site pages are perfect for content that we want to be persistent and easily found. 

There you have it.  Two years ago we would have printed out a thousand fliers and passed them out one by one and that would have been totally fine.  Now we're printing less and facilitating a venue for education and conversation.  I feel good about that!

cheers!

Matt Sweet

Ticor Title