I am also interested in learning what companies you are using for your SPS? I see above several have them integrated into their own site…can anyone elaborate on that?

Good stuff!

Erion,

I agree – Trulia and Zillow do a superior job of presenting data to consumers. And, since they do a great job of presenting listings, I do what I can to make sure my listings look good there. Anything to help my clients sell their home.

My gripe with them is different. The *quality* of the data they present is really, really bad. Here’s one analysis of their data that I completed a few months ago – bit.ly/6SYIw8

These companies present themselves as a consumer advocates, yet they knowingly mislead consumers by presenting listing data that isn’t close to being accurate. They knowingly do this so they can sell ads and products to Realtors. It’s dishonest and I don’t think much of them as a result.

But – back to the purpose of your topic – I’m a big fan of single property websites am working to maximize the mileage of these for my clients and for me to attract leads. I look forward to your ideas. Here’s my latest iteration – www dot CoralGablesWay.com. I welcome any/all feedback.

The success of Zillow and Trulia in and of itself is proof that it’s not just about raw data but what is done with the data that matters. Instead of complaining that aggregators are enriching themselves through our listings, we should ask ourselves “why are they winning the traffic in the first place?”. If it’s all about the sheer data, local MLS(s) and their data feeds should win every time. The answer lies in the comparison between the way Zillow and Trulia render the data and “feed” it to the consumer and the way local MLSs do. It all comes back to the user interface. And when it comes to that there’s just no comparison right now (with few exceptions).

As an SEO for (non-real estate) companies that compete with local based websites, I can tell you that small, local sites are a huge problem for national sites. Google loves local sites, and wants to show local sites in the search results…you just have to provide relevant content (MLS listings) to index and point a few links there so Googlebot can find it.

That said, if you have the time and money, there’s no reason not to syndicate the content to the national sites and, as Erion discusses above, create single property sites. It’s a pretty big kick to see that you control the top 2, 3 or even 5 results in Google for one of your listings.

I think they all have a very dishonest business model since they proclaim to be consumer advocates. If they were truly out for the consumer, they would do a much better job of keeping their data current (which is impossible since it’s not MLS sourced), and put disclaimers on their sites saying “consumer beware – our listing data is incomplete, inaccurate and not a great place to find a home”.

Still – it’s a disservice to your clients to hold back your listings since consumers still go there. And as far as SEO, individual agent websites are like grains of sand on a huge beach. We can’t possibly compete with these guys for SEO. We must accept that fact.

I think that the best we can do is to incorporate listing information into our sites to make the best use of the content, get links from these sites when possible, and understand that others (many others) will look to profit from our clients listing data as well.

@Michael
I don’t see syndication to Zillow or Trulia as feeding the competition at all. I just think they’re highly ineffective – Most of the time, listings on these sites get negligible “clickbacks to the source site” which is the whole purpose of syndication after all. That said, (a little) more exposure is always better than less for our clients in the end.