Are You a Boilerplate Realtor?

Are you a boilerplate Realtor®? Are you a clone of all the other real estate agents out there you are competing with?

"Of course not," you say. But is your most important marketing tool, your website, a boilerplate site? I thought so.

Why do so many real estate agents get sucked into boilerplate sites that just don't perform—that just don't bring in leads, listings, or sales? It's easy to keep paying for them, month after month, year after year, with the same dismal results when it comes to search engine ranking and search engine traffic.

Chances are, you just didn't know any better. Well now you do! If you know better, you can do better, and I'll explain for you exactly why boilerplate sites are virtually (no pun intended) a complete waste of money.

You're not a clone

Repeat after me: "I am not a clone." When you pay $50/mo for a boilerplate site, you get what you pay for. You are enabling the business model of some big corporate website factory that is only interested in as many monthly checks from Realtors as they can get.

In order to keep prices low (or free) they are sacrificing the one thing that a Realtor® in this market needs most: individuality. As a real estate agent, to get a listing, you have to market yourself and your experience selling real estate first and foremost. Only then do you get entrusted with marketing the real estate itself.

So when you, a hard working real estate agent, plunk down a few bucks for a cookie cutter website that just came off the assembly line (or worse, came off the assembly line years ago), you are committing real estate suicide. You're basically saying "I'm a clone of everyone else out there who has a site that looks (and performs) exactly like everyone else's.

That's like saying "There's no reason you should hire me and not the other guy, because we're all alike."

Unless you're a cookie, your site shouldn't be a cookie cutter site if you want it to pay for itself and actually produce leads, listings, and sales for you.

Search engines don't like boilerplate content

Search engines don't like boilerplate information any more than a home buyer or seller wants a boilerplate real estate agent.

One of the keys to search engine success is so simple it's almost embarrassing for someone like me who earns a living giving web marketing advice. One of the most important keys to search engine success is uniqueness. You are unique. Make sure your site reflects that.

When search engines find cloned information out there in the vast web universe, they discount it and put it on the bargain shelf. It's not considered as relevant for search results as unique content.

In fact, if there is too much cloned content on your site, it can actually hurt you in the search engine rankings, because Google's algorithms can detect copycat content.

While that is going to make a lot of boilerplate Realtors® unhappy, it makes sense when you think about it. If there are 10,000 copies of identical boilerplate articles floating around on the web, one for each of the 10,000 customers of some big website factory, why would Google pick one over another to show in its search results?

Google's algorithms are designed to look for the most unique, the most relevant, and the most useful information that matches the search criteria of the searcher. Sorry folks, that is just not going to be that really cool set of boilerplate articles that came with your boilerplate website.

Search engines don't like clones, and (ironically enough), neither do humans.

Write unique content

It's not as hard as it might seem to become a good enough writer to produce strong search engine results. You don't have to start off as a polished writer. Don't let your fear of the blank page scare you into never giving it a shot.

If you are serious about successfully competing online for real estate clients, I would say that writing is an essential skill.

In future newsletters and podcasts (iTunes version), I'll cover more on how to develop your writing skills, overcome writer's block, and how to conquer the hardest part of writing: coming up with ideas to write about. I'll include tips on blogging, as well as some blog topic ideas for Realtors® to make the most of their website presence.

In the meantime, don't be a Boilerplate Realtor®! You're not a clone, so don't let your website look or read like one. Make your online presence unique, and you'll start seeing much better search engine results.

Kevin Harper
Custom Real Estate Websites
(208) 249-8893