Are you running a real estate website on WordPress? Are you looking to make use of an IDX WordPress plugin? If that’s the case, you’re in the right place.
At a high-level, IDX is a necessary infrastructure component that allows users to browse through your approved MLS properties. Without this plugin, you won’t be able to reference your real estate data.
In this article, we will cover some IDX design tips, and how to get the most out of the plugin.
So if you’d like to ensure you optimize your website to the best of your ability, keep reading.
What Is An IDX WordPress Plugin?
IDX refers to Internet Data Exchange. This is an integrated service that allows you to embed your Multiple Listing Service properties on your website for real estate.
Just like Redfin, Trulia, and Zillow, IDX allows you to integrate your real estate data on the front-end of your website to ensure that your most current property listings are visible.
An IDX WordPress plugin gives you access to a multi-million software-as-a-service (SAAS) platform behind the scenes. If you want to geek out and learn more about the deep details, watch this video of my talk at one of the RESO (Real Estate Standards Organization conferences) discussing the changing of real estate technology and the whitepaper RESO issued on Showcase IDX, or read this article on what is IDX integration.
General Principles for Your IDX Website
When setting up your IDX WordPress Plugin on your real estate website, you’ll want to know what your plugin can do for you and your site visitors. Here are some ways your IDX-integrated website can supercharge your real estate business and make you the community’s go-to local expert.
Define and Achieve Website Goals
Whether you are looking to provide resources, provide your visitors with real estate tools, or attract new customers, certain IDX and MLS design elements are necessary.
However, some of them can actually distract the users from the initial message. Once you understand the value you can provide to the clients, you can have a proper gauge of the information your listings are offering.
Address the Needs Of the Audience
When you understand who your audience is, as well as the problems they need to resolve, it’s much easier to create target content.
If your main audience is millennials, you’d most likely want the rentals right on the front of your website, whether to rent or use as a lead into the affordability of buying. If you serve seniors, you might want retirement communities and condos as they focus your design to your target niche.
Reinforce Your Brand
It’s also very important to understand your personal brand, such as tagline, logo, colors, and fonts which must be clearly defined before changes are made. If you have this defined in writing in a simple document (e.g. Google Docs), web designers will have something to refer to when changes have to be made.
Provide Custom Community Pages With Dynamic IDX Listings and Local Content
IDX-powered community pages can be one of the most powerful lead magnets on your website. Once you create the pages in WordPress, you should think about how you will set the listings up.
Dynamic IDX-powered community pages can be built with certain filters and parameters that allow you to focus upon specific property types and highlight them.
How to Get the Most Out Of Your IDX WordPress Plugin
When integrating your real estate IDX, SEO plays a very big role in allowing your pages to be indexed properly, which is needed for getting leads and organic traffic.
To assist you in getting the most out of the plugin, here are some strategies that you can start to implement today.
Keyword Targeting
Keywords play a very important role in optimizing your website for the search engine. Implementing keywords and local content on your pages allows crawlers to detect relevant content and highlight your information to the public.
For real estate, local targeting is even more crucial. Most consumers will start their search with a local term, such as “City”, Realtor, or real estate agent in “City”. It would be a good idea to implement these location phrases in your tags and descriptions so that your website comes up when people search for it.
Internal Linking
If you want SEO to bring value to a certain page, you need to link to it as much as possible from other websites and pages.
Search engines find pages to be more relevant if a lot of users are pointing to it, and internal linking is one of the best ways to direct search engines to your intended focus of each page on your site. This improves the overall experience, giving the customers the ability to click on items they are curious about.
Unique Content
When it comes to real estate SEO, you need to supply as much unique content as possible on-page and towards the user experience. You can list elements, such as advantages and facts of certain properties, photos, or videos – all of which showcase the property, or present testimonials that build a reputation.
Read my Real Estate SEO Case Study: The Ultimate Guide to Creating Hot Sheets and Community Pages that Rank on Google for a detailed walkthrough of exactly how to do this. The guide also includes a 10 minute video of me showing you exactly how to gather content to create content for a specific community page. The technique is easy to replicate for your individual website.
Smart Search
Real estate customers want to search for specific criteria, find specific results, and be alerted when new properties become available meeting their wants. These are must-have functions for an effective website. Your IDX Plugin should allow you to have a smart search option, which should be available on the front-end.
This will give the users what they want, increasing time on your website and boost your metrics.
Mobile Response
Real estate websites that are mobile responsive are credibly better in almost all regards. Since more people are accessing the internet via their phone, ensuring mobile responsibility is ensuring the livelihood of your website.
Also, Google now ranks your website based on the mobile experience it delivers.
IDX for You
Now that you understand the value of an IDX WordPress plugin, as well as how to maintain it towards optimal outcomes, you are well on your way to get your real estate business off the ground.
You don’t need to be technical or super-savvy to make use of an IDX plugin. However, the plugin you choose will determine the results that you will get. That’s why it’s important to make use of a plugin that is quality-oriented, simple-to-use, and very extensible.If you’d like to make use of the best plugin, get in touch with us and we will happily accommodate your needs.
