Why Agents Should Stop Using Single Page Property Websites for Their Real Estate Listings
At first glance, having a single page property website to market your listing seems like a good idea. A standalone website with all of the information about the property, on a customized domain based on the address, feels like a professional way to market a listing, and it’s usually easy to set up.
But there are a lot of drawbacks to this approach, and in most cases, the value it creates for the seller doesn’t outweigh the cost it creates for your overall marketing strategy.
Many companies push single page property websites as a way of adding value to their services, mainly photography and virtual tour companies, and even some brokerages. But as an agent with a well-developed digital strategy, there actually isn’t much value in sending traffic away from your main website.
All of Your Traffic Should Go to Your Website
As part of your marketing plan, one of your main focuses should be pushing traffic to your website, always. If you’re sending people interested in your listing to a website that’s outside of your main website, you’re not doing yourself or your marketing strategy any favors.
You want people to get information about your listing, but just as important, you want them to get more information about you, what you offer, and why you’re different. They’ll have far more opportunity to do that on your main website than on a generic single property page that offers nothing beyond the listing itself.
On your main website, a visitor who came for the listing might explore your other content, read your blog, look at your other properties, or learn about your services. That kind of engagement builds trust, improves your website’s overall metrics, and creates opportunities to get them into your marketing database through a newsletter signup, a contact form, or another entry point. On a single property website, they look at the listing and close the browser.
★ Want to learn more about driving traffic to your website and building engagement? Have a look at these posts:
- Why Your Website and Your Marketing Strategy Go Hand-in-Hand
- Creating a Returning Visitors Marketing Strategy
- Building a Conversion Strategy That Targets Your Silent Traffic
The Domain Can Still Be Yours
One of the main reasons agents and their clients like single property websites is the personalized domain. Telling a seller that if they go to 123FakeStreet.com, they’ll see their property on its own website sounds impressive.
But it’s just as easy to purchase that domain and forward it to the listing on your main website. From a consumer’s perspective, there’s actually more value in telling them that their property will have its own domain for marketing purposes, but the listing will live on your main website, where it will get more traffic, rank better in search results, and have a chance to be seen by a lot more people.
By using a domain that forwards to the listing on your main website and then using that domain in your marketing efforts, you also get the benefit of tracking all of the referral traffic from that domain in your analytics. Every visit, every click, and every engagement is captured within your main website’s data, giving you a complete picture of how the listing is performing.
Single Property Websites Don’t Rank
One of the biggest practical problems with single property websites is that they will almost never rank in a search result. A brand new website with a single page, no content history, no backlinks, and no authority has no chance of competing in search results against your main website or the large listing portals.
For example, if someone searches the listing address on Google, they’re going to find the property on the large listing databases and on agent websites that already have strong authority. A standalone single property website with no search history is going to be buried, which means the only traffic it will ever get is direct traffic from people who type in the domain or click a link you’ve shared.
If a single property website can’t rank in search results and can only receive direct traffic, the domain forward strategy accomplishes the same thing while keeping all of the traffic on your main website where it actually benefits your digital strategy.
That also applies to how AI platforms evaluate your online presence. AI platforms look at your main website, your content, your brand mentions, and your overall digital footprint when deciding whether to recommend you. Traffic and content that live on a separate single property website don’t contribute to any of that. They exist in isolation, disconnected from the rest of your online presence.
★ Want to learn more about building your online presence and listings strategy? Have a look at these posts:
- Strategies to Get Your Listings to the Top of the Search Results
- Buying Domains as Part of Your Real Estate Marketing Strategy
- Getting More Traffic to, and Exposure for, Your Listings Online
Watch Out for Subdomain Solutions
Some companies, mostly photography companies, skip the custom domain altogether and put your listing on a subdomain of their domain, like yourlisting.photographycompany.com. This is even worse than a standalone single property website, because in this case, all of the traffic you’re driving is building the photography company’s website authority, not yours.
Every visit to that subdomain benefits their analytics, their search rankings, and their digital footprint. None of it comes back to your website, and none of it contributes to your own online presence or your authority in the eyes of search engines and AI platforms.
Keep Your Listings on Your Website
At the end of the day, as part of a cohesive marketing strategy, all of your traffic should be going to your main website. Every listing page, every piece of content, every visitor, and every engagement should be strengthening your website’s authority and your overall digital strategy.
A well-built, comprehensive listing page on your own website, with detailed descriptions, professional photos, video, and a clear way to reach out, will always outperform a generic single property page that sits outside of your ecosystem. It takes more effort than the easy solution, but in real estate marketing, the work that’s harder to do is usually the work that produces the best results.
Want to drive traffic, build your brand, and engage your target audience? Download our eBook: ‘The Ultimate Guide to Real Estate Marketing’. It’s a collection of some of our best marketing articles, tips, and tricks that we’ve collected over the years.
