I’m cheap on spending money on real estate stuff from vendors promising all kinds of things, whether it is leads or exposure. But, I went ahead and tried out a real estate search utility that is setup for WordPress. There were three reasons I chose to do it: 1) They would program it to work with our itsy-bitsy MLS at Lake Chelan (no other vendors, IDXPro, etc. support such a tiny market). 2) Each listing in my MLS, and every saved search I did, became a page indexed to my web site. 3) They are less expensive per month than my current vendor with no setup fees.
Sure enough, I now have 4380 pages indexed to my site in little old Chelan. I’ve moved up one spot in the top 5 Google results in a week. I do have a nice real estate search for browsing properties with a photo type of interface. The vendor is Spot-on Connect.
I have saved a bit of money in that they replaced part of what my former vendor did. However, I haven’t been able to shut off my older IDX service because their searches allow more user choices to create more specific searches. Yes, there have been a few bugs, but the Spot-on people have been pretty quick in fixing them.
I’m even getting search traffic, for searches like “9607 sr 17, coulee city, wa 98851” coming to my web sites that did not arrive before.
I wouldn’t plug a vendor normally, but I’m getting fond enough of this approach to hope Spot-on connect survives and prospers.
Like many things, the service hasn’t been everything I could wish for, but it is a pretty effective way to get your SEO juice up if you use WordPress. If that and the ability to have beautiful custom neighborhood searches, like the one pictured above appeals to you, they are worth checking out. This is one of the better things I’ve done for improving my web page ranking, ever.
Eric Estate says:
I’ve been looking for a great IDX for wordpress – and it looks like Sot-on delivers. I’ll be checking them out later today for sure.
June 12, 2012 — 5:02 am
Bishop California Real Estate says:
I’d have to look at IDXPro for WordPress, may be it delivers as said here.
June 12, 2012 — 11:10 am
Al Lorenz says:
IDXPro does have some nice features. I don’t know if each listing turns into a page indexed to your site. Since they aren’t interested in serving small markets like I am in, it wasn’t an option for me.
June 12, 2012 — 11:25 am
Bianca says:
Sounds like a very good plugin and I will definitely check it out. More indexed pages means more inbound links. Win win.
June 12, 2012 — 12:04 pm
Karen says:
Can you tell us what it is lacking, in your opinion?
June 17, 2012 — 7:57 am
Al Lorenz says:
Karen, it does not allow as much flexibility to users in how they search. For instance, there is no polygon map search yet. Some of the search criteria available on the MLS isn’t available to users through the plug-in.
However, it is a beautiful way to browse properties in an area. It is much nicer than my other available options.
So, I just kept my old search that had some of those features and called it an “advanced” search.
I am a member of 3 different MLS systems. In an ideal world, I would have an IDX service that could combine search results for end users from all three! But, it looks like I would have to program that myself.
June 18, 2012 — 11:16 am
Karen says:
Thanks for getting back to me, Al. I’m thinking I’ll do the same thing, because I have 4 years links, and of people using my old IDX. And I like it, it just doesn’t add to my website, being set into an iframe… so using it as an “advanced search” is brilliant. Thanks for that.
I’ll have to see if I can customize this plug in enough to make it “fit” with my old IDX, as far as colors and look.
I was also looking at Diverse Solutions, but honestly, I’m thinking twice because they are now owned by Zillow and I just have a gag reflex when I think of Z, lol. That and the $99 set up fee. Did you compare Spot on with D.S.? They seem to be fairly similar.
June 18, 2012 — 4:09 pm
Al Lorenz says:
Karen, DS doesn’t support my local IDX. I can’t really blame them, we only have about 85 agents! So, Diverse Solutions wasn’t an option for me.
June 18, 2012 — 4:18 pm
Minerva says:
Glad that I was able to read this post. I’ll go check that Spot-On vendor now. Thanks Al.
June 19, 2012 — 7:46 am
Karen says:
I just got an email back from them, and they don’t service my area, but I can be the first for 3 months free. Gotta love that! I’m sold, so thanks for this post and the comment thread… My search is over:)
June 19, 2012 — 9:04 am