A few years ago I was invited to be part of the Internet Mastermind in Austin Texas hosted by Gary Keller and Keller Williams International as well as subsequently being one of the three agent members of the Agent Technology Council providing input to Keller Williams on the technology initiatives being rolled out under the eAgency initiatives. One of the big debates that was going on at the time was relating to providing an infrastructure whereby agents would be able to generate a reasonable amount of business via their KW provided template websites. Essentially as a company Keller Williams is mandated through their consortium fees ($10 / month / agent) to provide websites and other tech services to agents. During my tenure on the ATC, KW decided it needed to provide a rapidly deployable web presence for agents as well as an IDX solution to agents as the basics for their business.
This is obviously a great first start for agents, however ultimately ambitious agents will need to look beyond what they receive for the $10/month and look at where else they can invest their monies to generate business online.
One of the ongoing debates which continues to take place is, "Template vs. Semi-Custom vs. Custom" website as it relates to a site that will be found via the search engine.
Ironically it's not a cut and dry debate. Most SEO experts in the real estate space will agree that a Homes.com site is not a great site to do SEO on, however if you do a search for "Southern California Real Estate" you will find a site franandrowena.com which ranks close to the top of the listings with a Homes.com site. In fact a few years ago they were #1 and I suspect that if they did a bit of work even with a Homes.com site that they could move it back to number 1.
Advanced Access tends to get a bad wrap as well however if you do a search for "Phoenix Real Estate" in Google you'll find a site of Eileen Roberson ranking #1 for that search term. That being said for Advanced Access and Homes.com both of these templates have significant limitations partially because the balance of their site is database driven and the customizability with regard to look, feel and the adding of widgets to the site is rather limited.
Of course with a template site your costs relatively limited and if worked properly with a lot of work you can in fact make it competitive with other real estate websites in your market however you are also to some extent locked in on a long term basis to the template. Not that you can't move, it's just that the indexing of the URIs in the search engines are of a unique nature that ultimately your traffic will likely drop significantly when you move from your template website to a custom website.
My preference is for a custom website. It may cost a bit more to develop a custom website, however your ability to create relevant pages, add content, add things like Blogs, YouTube Videos, Chat and other functionality is limited only by ones imagination. Young web designers are relatively inexpensive in terms of actual dollars spent for site generation however in many cases you'll need to write the copy and of course critique how the site is put together.
The real magic though is the SEO indexing of the additional pages on your website and your ability to redesign any page without losing the indexing of those pages as you would if you ever changed template providers. If designed properly these pages will be rapidly indexed in the search engines and if relevant to your real estate market with the proper content and functionality should result in decent traffic and lead acquisition even on these sub pages. Since it is likely that your site won't be database driven as far as the content part of your site is concerned the pages will tend to index better in the different search engines. Check our my Working the Magic Real Estate SEO Blog for more tips and insights on Website Design and SEO Strategies.
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