The Thanet Star

Buy a Home in Thanet?

Written by Matt B · first published 10/05/2008

Today we are talking about Real Estate in Thanet. Specifically Real Estate Websites serving us in Thanet. Are they any good in your opinion and what could they be doing better?

For an example I did a search in Thanet Finder (our local search engine) for the phrase "homes for sale in Margate" which I figure might be something that anyone might type into a search engine when looking to buy a home in the area.

I was a bit surprised by the result!

I discovered that local estate agencies failed to rank anywhere near the top. Given that these searches have been filtered and enhanced to focus on Thanet this means that our local house selling agencies (realtors) are not getting much love from the prime source of most website traffic - the search engines.

The sites that showed up were (in order)

findaproperty.com
primelocation.com
email4property.co.uk
nestoria.co.uk
miles-barr.co.uk

So well done to Miles and Barr for showing up but surely there is more that can be done?

That's what I would like to talk to the site readers about. Before I suggest any cures I'd like to know what the Thanet web using community thinks of Thanet's real estate websites (if you can find them) and if there is anything you would like to see on such sites.

Let's improve our collective common knowledge and in doing so improve the economic outlook of some local businesses. Of course the local realtors will need to act on this information to benefit but then there is an adage about horses and water that probably applies.

Have you used the Internet to look for properties in Thanet? What was your experience like? Was it easy to find what you needed? Did the sites you found appear professional? Where the sites you used easy to find?

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Public Comments

omegared wrote:

Hi,

I've been doing SEO for 5 years, some of it in the Property vertical. Unfortunately there are so many factors influencing the rank of these local sites:
-links pointing at them and having the right words on the links i.e. 'thanet property'
-the age of their sites (the older the wiser in the engine's eyes!)
-the percieved authority of those sites:yes, they may be thanet-based but how many links are pointing at their sites telling the engines they're thanet based not just 'click here' or 'estate agent'.
- Can their websites even be crawled by search engines? Are they using Java and Flash- if so, those elements can't be read by the engines.

Links are big, age is big.

Unfortunately local businesses are not national/international link magnets. The engines need to be refered to these little sites by big authority sites in order to help them do better in the engines. Big sites cost money to buy links from (although that's a bad thing to do nowadays) big property sites won't give them links cos they're in competition.

Basically, they don't have a chance to get a look-in a the top spot unless they invest in some SEO which either is cheap and useless or very expensive (�200/hour). The main factor is the links which take AGES to secure so you're looking at a good �2000 for a serious attempt at building links. Then you need to redesign the websites to channel the engines to the right pages and give them what they want.

Not a good outlook for the little agent on the corner of the high street - that's why they mostly advertise on the big property portals.
Sorry to be a bearer of bad news
:(

13/05/2008 17:05:59

Matt B wrote:

I don't consider you to be the barer of bad news omegared. You hof the things I felt were going on. These are not insumountable problems for any locality. Admitedly no small scale SME is going to have the resources to combate these issues but as a group things can be different.

Links are probably the biggest issue primarily because conversation is not a concept that business website makers are prone to consider. This is where concepts from the homebrew media (blogs, wikis, social networks etc) are an ideal solution starting point.

I'm sure it can be done.

14/05/2008 13:29:26

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