Frameless IDX Integration Services

If you are a real estate agent, you need to get MLS listings on your website. But how do you do that? It's easier said than done.

Most companies that host MLS search tools for Realtors use frames, Flash, or third party subdomains. This either places your MLS listings on someone else's website (the company hosting the database), or makes your listings completely invisible to search engine traffic.

These approaches are horrible for search engine optimization for several reasons:

All the traffic goes to the domain of your MLS hosting company. For maximum search engine visibility, you want as much traffic as possible to go to your own real estate website domain.
Frame navigation can be ugly and awkward. Not every browser supports frames, and they don't all support them equally. They might look fine in one browser, and ugly in another.
Search engines have trouble indexing framed sites because they are actually several pages blended together.
Search engines don't follow Javascript links at all, making them useless for gaining search engine visibility.
They also cannot index Flash sites, because Flash presentations are more like a movie than a collection of targeted pages.
Needless to say, if Realtor websites can't be indexed easily, they will not rank well.

Frameless IDX/MLS Listings

Frameless IDX listings hosted on your own domain is the ultimate in search engine friendly IDX. I specialize in designing search engine friendly MLS websites for real estate agents and brokerages using this technology. With this approach, your visitors can search the entire MLS right on your site using your own domain. Your content website will be www.yoursite.com, while your MLS search will be www.yoursite.com/idx/... No frames, no redirects, no Flash, no subdomains.

Visitors will never again have to leave your domain to go to your MLS hosting company website to search for real estate. This means all the real estate content of your MLS shows up on your own domain.

MLS Map Search Specialist

Have you ever seen those fancy MLS map searches where you can see the search results on a map? This is an amazingly effective marketing tool. Consumers love it, especially if they are unfamiliar with an area. Most of those map search solutions are not search engine friendly. The technology is most frequently hosted in framed IDX or third level subdomain hosted accounts.

I can actually get MLS map search technology set up on your own domain, so visitors don't have to navigate away from your actual site or through clunky frames.

MLS Lead Generation

What's the value of an MLS website if you don't get leads from it? Let me give you a hint...ZERO. Most agents simply waste their money on boilerplate sites that never produce leads. With my system, you'll get leads because your tools are top of the line. Searchers will find your site and stay there because they will like your real estate search tools.

Then you'll have multiple ways to market to them. There is your built in MLS lead management system, which automatically sends users new properties based on their requested search criteria. No more laboriously entering that data yourself! You can see exactly what properties these users are looking for, so you if you see a new property that looks like a good match and warrants a phone call, you can do that easily.

Hosting your own real estate listings

A lower cost property listing solution for real estate websites is to host only your own listings or only those from your brokerage office. This is beyond the scope of many web providers, but I can provide highly customized solutions for you, including For Sale By Owner sites, etc. I can set up a listing system for property and land on your own website, so you or your agents can log in, create a profile complete with photos and logos, and start adding your best real estate marketing copy to it. You could even charge for owners to list their own properties if you wanted to. It's up to you.

This is excellent for keeping home buyers on your own site looking at your own company's listings. Leads can be set up to come to your main office, or to other agents in your office. And the best part is that it's completely search engine friendly. You have complete control over the listings and how they fit into the look and feel of your site without sacrificing search engine visibility.

I recommend joining my Real Estate Marketing Tips newsletter, or you can request a proposal for a new MLS website.

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites