Statistics: The Content That Keeps On Giving

This post comes to us from the WebsiteBox blog:

How many ways can you explain title insurance, real estate negotiations, repair negotiations, surveys, or appraisals? It's all great content for your real estate website, and you can write it with enough originality to get SEO credit for it. "Original" for the search engines and "original" for the site visitor can be very different.

What can you put on your website that is different from 90+ percent of your competitors' sites? What do you have to offer that your competitors do not? Actually, it's not much except personal information. However, there's something few of them are offering, or they're doing it in a lame and ineffective way.

It doesn't matter if your site visitor is a buyer, seller, investor or appraiser. They're all very interested in market statistics. Which homes are selling and for how much? How many homes are selling each month, quarter, or year? What's the absorption rate? This type of data, or most of it, is available from most computerized MLS systems as market reports. In most cases, you simply click on the report link and give the system a date range, and you get an on-screen formatted data report.

Once you've created the report, it's simply a "print to PDF" routine using any one of a number of very inexpensive PDF creation software tools. Over 99 percent of computers can open a file in the PDF format, so it's the way you want to produce it. Of course, you can also do these reports as blog posts or website articles. Here's how one successful website lead generation program does it.

• First, a monthly data summary report without a lot of detail is run as a website article or blog post, with appropriate keywords and phrases such as "yourtown real estate statistics," and "yourtown real estate sold property reports."
• The more detailed PDF report from the MLS is offered as a "Special Statistical Report," usually as quarterly data. Leads are generated when this report is requested with lead forms on the site.
• These quarterly reports are further compiled into a single PDF file as an "Annual Yourtown Real Estate Statistical Report." Sometimes it's called an eBook for more credibility or to add perceived value. This report/eBook is also offered as premium content for lead generation.

Many MLS systems will provide these statistical reports for properties sold with average price, median price, days-on-market, and other information fields. Once someone is on your email list by requesting one of these reports, you send out quarterly updates and another annually as a link to the report you've uploaded to your site. It's available as a file for download. This is easily accomplished with the File system available with a WebsiteBox website.

Spending a half hour each month and each quarter, and an hour each year to compile these reports is just about nine hours for the whole year. The value you will realize in lead generation and perceived local market "expert" status is incalculable. You're creating a single set of data and using it multiple times by repackaging it for different reports and purposes.

Depending on the policies of your MLS provider, there is usually a time limit on how far back data for sold properties is maintained. In one example, the MLS provider only maintains five years of past sold data. A local real estate professional is in an enviable position in offering the "only" available ten year history of sold properties. Competitors can create an on-demand report, but only for five years in the past.

Demonstrate your professionalism and your market expertise by offering these statistical reports. It's easy to do, but it doesn't look easy.

To view the original article, visit the WebsiteBox blog.