Optimizing for up and coming neighborhoods.

I was just reading through a post I put up a couple of days ago (Set up, get in or loose out) which dealt with the importance of setting up real estate websites sooner then later in order to start the process of building history. The main point of the article, as the title implies, is that the sooner you get in and get your site going, the better. Moreover, the longer you wait, the bigger the hill to climb becomes. In this post, I would like to take this idea a step further.

Real estate professionals, it seems, have a gene that causes a predisposition to searching for the up and coming neighborhoods or areas. All across the land, real estate professionals go about their daily lives - criss crossing cities, dealing with clients, running errands and taking the kids to soccer practice - all the while scanning for signs of an impending boom. Finding the next ‘it’ area is the holy grail of real estate. Get in on the ground floor, buy cheap and let the skyrocketing market multiply your returns.

I am sure there is many a real estate professional out there nodding in full agreement, but wondering why stating the obvious is so important to your humble blogger. There is a tie into real estate websites, I promise. Cities represent a micro market, complete with major and supporting search terms. A city like New York is a perfect example. Someone living out of state may begin a search for a condo with the key words New York condos. In terms of a major search term, you cannot get much bigger. However, once familiar with the city, it would become readily apparent that a more targeted search using supporting key words could yield more substantial and more relevant results such as Soho Condos.

So heres the tie in. Chasing established search terms (both major and supporting) is critical for the popularity of a real estate website. However, alot of the work this entails can be avoided by getting a jump on the competition by optimizing your real estate site for supporting search terms of potential boom areas. Every time your super human real estate radar goes off and you see a potential growth area, start optimizing for it. Put up some optimized pages and related content. Just like with the real world, not every area is going to explode, some will slowly fizzle and dash everyones expectations. Unlike the real world, however, speculating on real estate using optimized pages costs next to nothing, and if it does not pan out, getting rid of them is easy.