I'm going to take a slight detour from my usual topics (while still coming back to the same drum to beat on it some more!). This month's ActiveRain challenge asks to list our favorite three tech tools. And while I am attached to my phone, laptop and email as anyone, they're not what gives me the biggest business bang for my buck.
Instead, it's the triple threat of Wordpress, IDX Broker Platinum and my hosting/IDX/Web Design support company YourSiteNeedsMe SEO Team.
Wordpress gives me two key things: ownership, and flexibility.
While we also have a template site, it's become a bit of a dinosaur in our tech toolbox. Our real powerhouse is our Wordpress site. While it's time to trade it in for a newer model (discussing details Wednesday with Charra), it gives us freedom that a brokerage website doesn't (we've had those too, and IMO just another templated website that you lose in its entirety when you decide another brokerage offers greener pastures). Wordpress comes with a wide range of themes, and if you decide to change brokerages? In less than an hour you can remodel with new colors, brokerage logos, contact info changes, etc. IT IS YOUR SITE TO DO AS YOU WISH.
The second part is IDX Broker Platinum. I've taken many of our old blog posts (subdivisions, new construction, etc.) and turned them into custom IDX search pages. Mix in pages with long tail search terms for our market, lots of pages to fit our low maintenance living niche, and we've got evergreen posts with the dynamic updates of the latest homes for sale that fit that page. Google sees fresh content without us having to lift another finger to update our pages. And the SEO is such that we get calls about homes for sale that have NO custom searches that would give that home a match.
Add in the last part of the trio, YourSiteNeedsMe and I can wear one less hat. I don't want to be a FSBO type when it comes to my main website. While I can tinker some (and do on occasion), I'm looking for the people with the expertise to handle the nitty gritty, keep me informed of what is needed, and answer my questions. And bonus, they're my designated IDX Broker support team, so I can go straight to them when I need with anything IDX related.
The net cost is about $150/month, and while I can't always tell if a call is due to an evergreen ActiveRain post or our IDX post, the more time passes, the more likely it's our Wordpress/IDX combo doing the job for us. And with retirement from my engineering job coming up fast, I'll have time to create new pages to bulk up our site even further. And there's no small satisfaction in being able to cut all those "sell you leads" phone calls short because we have the tools to generate our own leads.
Until next Tuesday, just Ask An Ambassador if you need help,
Bill & Liz aka BLiz
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