Publishing Your Content On Other Real Estate Websites
By Paul Esajian on June 19, 2015
Should real estate companies and independent pros be publishing their content on third party websites and platforms? If so; what are the dangerous pitfalls to avoid?
Pushing out content to other sites, blogs, news platforms, and social networks has been a common practice for real estate professionals and businesses over the last few years. Sometimes it has been an on again, off again love affair. This real estate marketing tactic has produced some of the best results for investors, agents, brokerages, and other industry firms. However, it has often ended up being one of the most counterproductive. So how can CEOs, independent experts, and real estate marketing managers safely and profitably navigate this quirky channel going forward?
The Pros & Profits of Publishing Content Off-Site
There are two major needs for every real estate business and pro that drive the need for publishing content on other people’s sites:
- Enhanced visibility
- SEO juice
The truth is that sometimes it really doesn’t matter how awesome your product or service is if no one ever finds out about it. The reverse is also true. Even if you aren’t the best in every area, visibility can make all the difference. For example; many would argue that Zillow is the worst thing to ever happen to US real estate, and was launched on the back of a product that is barely right half of the time. Yet it has become one of the most dominate players online. Even though it keeps losing money, it keeps attracting money and visitors. On the flip side; PayPal co-founder Peter Theil explains that a single off-site article resulted in a $500 million valuation, a $100 million in fundraising, and helped it get through the dot com crash to being a major finance player.
So you’ve got to be seen. You’ve got to be visible online. And quality back links to your real estate website can make a huge difference in Google rankings, real estate lead flow, growth, and capital raising.
In addition to the above the right sites and platforms can also deliver enhanced branding, credibility, and influence on the local market and opinion. Who’s the best real estate experts in your local area or niche? The first answers are normally the most visible that have been in the news. Not because they are better; but because they are seen.
The Perils & Pitfalls of Publishing Content Off-Site
Unfortunately as good as this real estate marketing strategy has been in the past, it has often been the most counterproductive and costly of moves as well.
Being cheap, and syndicating junk content to junk sites can do more harm than good for SEO and Google rankings. It can even get some banned from Google altogether. In other cases like Facebook it has bitten real estate pros and brands back and winded up being supporting the competition to put them out of business.
So avoiding the pitfalls of off-site publishing comes down to 3 things:
- Be careful not to support the competition in defeating yourself
- Maintain a focus on quality
- Maintain a balance in investing in your own online assets
Maintaining Balance & Investing in Yourself
Off-site content is clearly valuable and important for success. But it must be balanced with investing in your own online business and branding assets. Otherwise you’ll always be held ransom by those that control your content and that you give power to set marketing prices.
Achieve this by:
- Regularly expanding your own web pages
- Consistently publishing your own on-site real estate blog
- Promoting your content to third parties and have them quote you, and link to you
How to Choose Where and What to Publish
The two golden rules of real estate content publishing are:
- Quality
- Relevance
Focus on publishing relevant, unique, interesting, high quality content, consistently and you’ll do just fine in real estate.
However, there is a fine line between relevance and competition. Many are feeling pressured to post content and feed certain ‘big 3’ real estate portals, and one certain online platform that might be dubbed ‘the Zillow of real estate forums’. But giving into this pressure is clearly directly counterproductive with each word. If you feel you must; keep it in check. Remember winning in this domain is really about high quality mentions (and links), and tapping into existing databases and flows of your target audience. So there may be good opportunities for collaborating with similar smaller businesses that already have connections with your target market, as well as publishers in different verticals which share your same audience. For example; investors working with Realtors. Realtors working with lenders. Lenders working with title companies. Vacation home landlords working with tourism agencies.
Content formats can also be a channel for diversifying. Perhaps you stick to text and images on your own real estate blog to maximize ROI and operational efficiency. But then consider expanding occasionally with slide shows, podcasts, videos, press releases, other business citations, and more.