Create Real Estate Community Pages that Convert – The Ultimate Edition

Building a successful real estate website in 2024 is more than just showcasing listings and contact information. it’s about strategically marketing marketing your brand and ensuring you are easily discoverable in search.

One of the best ways to do this is through real estate community pages.

A community page can help establish your brand as the local market expert and set you apart from the competition.

To enhance your site’s appeal, focus on mobile optimization. With many users browsing on smartphones and tablets, a mobile-friendly site is essential for engaging potential clients.

Additionally, incorporating AI like ChatGPT can make your website more interactive and responsive, offering quick, intelligent answers to visitor inquiries.

This modern approach to web design demonstrates your commitment to innovation and enhances the user experience.

You’ll Establish Yourself as the Local Authority

Real Estate Community pages give you, the local expert, an opportunity to show potential customers that you are an authority on the area you serve. It’s a great way to establish your local brand.

• Buyers will be looking for your insider knowledge of the area. A practical guide showcasing your knowledge the local market, schools, attractions, restaurants, and other small details will set you apart from your competition.
• Sellers will look to your site for information on current home prices and market conditions. They will also be able to use the details you provide about the community to create selling points when it’s time to market their house.

A popular expression in real estate is ‘location, location, location’. So, show them you know the location.

You’ll Have a New Marketing Tool

A well designed community page can be a great marketing tool to share across social media, landing pages, email marketing campaigns and print.

You’ll Be Found Where it Matters Most, Online

If establishing yourself as a local expert isn’t enough of an incentive think about your biggest customer online, Google. When someone decides to buy a home they’ll usually start with Zillow, Redfin, Trulia, or Realtor.com. If they don’t already have a realtor the first place they will go is Google.

To find someone local they’ll use a search term that includes the neighborhood, city, or area. If you don’t have any unique content to be indexed you may have trouble showing up in Google search. Sure you may show up a few pages down the list if you include some keywords and meta data in your website but that won’t do you any good.

Why is Google so important?

Let me put it this way, about 91% of browsing experiences still start with a search engine, and *Google holds around 92.47% of the global search engine market share as of 2024. There’s a reason ‘Google it’ has become part of our everyday language.

The first page of results gets nearly 92% of the traffic, meaning you need to be found early. Since most customers search for services or businesses based on location, it’s crucial to have content on your site that reflects your area of operation. In fact, *46% of all Google searches are local, making it essential for businesses to focus on local SEO.

Community pages are especially effective for local rankings. These pages create on-page signals like NAP (Name, Address, Phone), which are closely tied to your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business). These signals help Google see that your site is authentic and relevant to the local community.

On-page signals contribute to about 24% of ranking factors, making them a significant element in local SEO. These include optimizing meta descriptions, title tags, alt tags, and keywords in headers. Focusing on these elements is crucial for improving your site’s visibility.

Alongside on-page signals, Google Business Profile signals, link signals, and review signals are other major factors that influence your local SEO ranking. Together, these optimizations help improve your chances of appearing on Google’s front page.

*Source:  Worldmetrics.org

You’ll probably have several real estate community pages on your website so deciding on a format will help with the planning.

Here are a few simple ideas to help you plan it out your real estate community pages:

• Start by writing down all of the things you think home buyers will care about.

A few suggestions:

• • • Communities marketed to families might include school information, activities for kids, parks, and crime statistics.

• • • An urban setting may focus more on restaurants, attractions, WalkScore and transportation.

• • • Coastal communities may want to focus more on weather, beaches, and recreation.

• Determine which communities you want to create pages for. Small cities may be their own page while larger cities may require you break pages up into neighborhoods or areas.

There are three basic types of community pages:

• • • Community pages created for an entire county won’t be as hyper-local as a neighborhood but is useful for larger teams and brokerages.

• • • City, town, and municipality. These are particularly useful in detailing the lesser-known suburban neighborhoods as larger cities have likely been covered elsewhere.

• • • Neighborhoods and districts. This is where an agent can really stand out. The big sites have all covered the larger areas in great detail and competing with their SEO is an expensive uphill battle. Going hyper-local will reduce the competition and give you an opportunity to show new information that Google hasn’t seen before.

• Check out your local competition to see what they are writing about their communities.

• Take your list and break it down into sections. A page design will be easier to scan if it’s broken into sections.

• Figure out what search criteria you want to use if you plan to include IDX listings.

• Find an existing design you like or sketch one out.

Emphasizing Mobile Optimization in Community Pages

When kicking off your real estate community page project, don’t overlook one crucial aspect – mobile optimization. In today’s world, where everyone’s glued to their smartphones, ensuring your pages look fantastic on a smaller screen isn’t just a bonus; it’s a must.

Why Mobile Matters

First things first, mobile traffic is huge these days. More and more potential buyers and sellers are likely to first check you out on their phones. So, if your community pages aren’t up to scratch on mobile devices, you’re missing out big time.

Making It Work on Mobile

Here’s how you can make your community pages shine on mobile devices:

• Responsive Design: This is non-negotiable. Your pages need to look good and function well, whether someone’s browsing on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone.
• Speed It Up: We all know how annoying a slow website can be. Make sure your pages load quickly on mobile. This means optimizing images and keeping things lean and mean.
• Simplify Navigation: Ever tried clicking a tiny link on a phone screen? Frustrating, right? Make sure your buttons and links are thumb-friendly.
• Testing Across Devices: Just because it looks good on your phone doesn’t mean it’ll work on everyone else’s. Test your pages across different devices to make sure they’re always looking their best.
• Prioritize Key Info: On a smaller screen, space is at a premium. Make sure the really important stuff is front and center so visitors don’t have to hunt around.

The Payoff

Get mobile optimization right, and you’ll not only give your visitors a better experience, but you’ll also likely see better engagement and longer visits. Plus, Google loves mobile-friendly sites, so it could give you a leg up in search rankings. It’s a win-win!

A few suggestions to include in your community profile:

• Start with a few paragraphs giving a high level overview of the community, its demographics, market type, employment, attractions, etc.

• An up to date, relevant market overview with a few charts to illustrate a few key statistics like ‘average days on market’, and ‘average sales price’. Need market data? Try Showingtime.

• Prominent Architectural styles buyers will find in the area.

• Types of property available. Residential, commercial, land, investment, etc.

• A description of schools in the area. Highlighting the top performers can be a great selling point for potential shoppers. For a list of schools in the area with a breakdown of their ratings check out Great Schools.

• A list of Things to do. Local historic sites, parks, movie theaters, restaurants, beaches, etc. To attract families be sure to include ‘kid friendly’ activities.
• Highlight access to local urban centers and proximity to popular local attractions, airports, hospitals, etc.

• An IDX feed. Be sure to include a selection of hot new listings for your community page and there is no better tool for the job than IDX Broker.

• Social follow and share links, a call to action, and contact form.

To keep potential clients from leaving your site consider video, images, and internal links.

Bounce rate is a measurement of a websites ability to retain users interest beyond the pages they came in at. In other words, when someone comes to your site you want them to stay and look around.

In addition to compelling content there are a few simple tricks that can reduce your sites bounce rate:

• If you have a video putting it at the top of the page is a great way to reduce the bounce rate by as much as 34%. Since people are wired to perceive videos as entertainment rather than work they are more inclined to stick around and engage with your content. Another advantage of video is the link-back potential for SEO. If you host your video on YouTube be sure to include a link to you site below.

• Seems obvious but a gallery of high quality images can get a potential clients attention and help sell a community. Images, like videos also help reduce a pages bounce rate.

• Internal links further reduce bounce rate by engaging to user to further investigate other areas of your site. Community pages should have links to links to similar and neighboring communities.

IDX Broker is a great tool but good SEO requires more than just listings

IDX Broker allows you to display your MLS data on your real estate website.

Creating lots of neighborhood pages stuffed full of IDX listings and nothing else won’t cut it with search. Google knows this trick and may even penalize you for it. It’s referred to as ‘thin’, or ‘duplicate’ content.

When using IDX Broker there are two basic approaches that can be used, both have pros and cons:

• Create an IDX page that have a map at the top and some listings below.
  • Pros: Easy to set up. Good looking pages with map and pin features. Externally hosted.
  • Cons: Pages are hosted on an IDX subdomain, not your primary domain. No significant SEO value.

• Create a WordPress page and add IDX widgets.
  • Pros: Pages are hosted on your primary domain. Unique custom content can easily be added to WordPress pages. Great SEO potential.
  • Cons: A little more work to set up. You will need the Platinum IDX Broker subscription if you want to add the map feature using a widget.

Other items to include on your real estate community page:

 Highlights. I like to include a few key bullet points promoting some of the communities best features as well as general information. A few examples:

• Rated #1 in Best places to live
• Top rated schools
• Tourist attractions
• Farmers markets
• Shopping
• Dining
• Miles of beaches
• Hiking trails nearby
• WalkScore

Real Estate Resources:

• Mortgage Lender
• Home Inspector

Home Resources. Give your readers a list of well-reviewed resources. They are thinking about moving here so connect them with their new neighbors. This is also a great way to promote people in the area who will appreciate it and may end up being your client one day. A few examples:

• Electrician
• Painter
• Handyman
• Landscaper
• Movers

Helpful links for resources in the area. 

• Parks
• Restaurant guide
• City website
• Police
• Fire
• Transportation
• Events calendar
• Jobs
• School District

Livability Score. AreaVibes will give you a list of all the statistics you need from amenities, cost of living, crime, employment, housing, schools and demographics.

Transportation. An overview of traffic in the region along with commuting options like bus, rail, bike lanes, and a WalkScore can influence a potential buyers decision. Proximity to airports can also be useful.

Weather. If weather a relevant selling point in your area consider including a chart of monthly temperature and precipitation averages.

• Events calendar – create and manage your own community event calendar.
• Great Schools – A national non-profit providing information about PK-12 schools in communities all over the U.S.
• Walkscore – Add the local Walk Score using a simple shortcode widget that can be put anywhere on the page.
• Weather – Add shortcode widgets from free services like WeatherWidget.io and Booked.net.
• Google Maps – Google’s popular mapping service offers a lot of ways to display maps on your website. You can even add customized pins to show favorite locations.  There are several WordPress plugins available including the popular WP GoogleMaps, and Maps Widget for Google Maps.

Good content takes time, fortunately there are some tools to help.

Writing your own content about the areas you know and love will reflect in the details. However, it is time consuming and you may need some help.

Artificial Intelligence

This one seems like a no-brainer. However, while there are several great tools there are a few things you should know if you want to peruse this option.

• Content Sources: The information AI uses to create new content comes from all over the Internet. It’s then rewritten as new content for you to use. In short, it’s nothing new. It doesn’t add any new value.
• Manual Editing: Does this mean you shouldn’t use it? Of course not. You can still use it to write content for your community page but you’ll need to edit it manually and add your own perspective.
• Learning Curve: It takes longer than you think. While it does the writing for you it takes a bit of work to learn how to use the tools and to use them well.
• Prompt Crafting: You can just ask a tool like ChatGPT to write content on a community but it will probably sound like AI wrote it. You’ll need to learn how to write prompts and tones.
• AI Hallucinations: AI has a weird habit of hallucinating. It may spit out some great sounding content but often when you read it through there’s information that’s not relevant to the topic you’re writing about

One place AI really shines is in writing outlines. A good outline can guide the entire page. If you are using ChatGPT try using the following prompt:

‘Generate a comprehensive outline for a real estate community page about [City Name], covering key aspects such as history, geography, economy, real estate, education, healthcare, culture, transportation, safety, and community events.’

You may need to run the prompt a few times to get your perfect outline but it will certainly give you a ton of ideas to work with.

AI Recommendations for 2024:

• Research the Latest AI Features: New AI features in tools like ChatGPT like real-time data integration and contextual memory are becoming more common. These features allow AI to have access to up-to-date information or remember details from previous conversations to create more accurate and personalized content.
• Use AI for SEO: AI tools now have advanced SEO features like content optimization for voice search and predictive search analysis. Use these to make sure your content is not only relevant but also optimized for how users are searching in 2024.
• Use AI for Personalization: Consider using AI to personalize your community page. AI can analyze user behavior and suggest content, increase engagement and make your site more user friendly.
• Combine AI with Human Touch: While AI can generate drafts, human input is still needed to add authenticity, address local nuances and make sure the content resonates with your community. Use AI for efficiency but keep the human touch for connection.

Content Writing Services

If you prefer a more human touch there are plenty of content writers available online. The problem with this, besides trying to find a quality content writer, is it may not sound authentic. A good writer may deliver well-structured content full of relevant information from online sources like Wikipedia and your local city website but they won’t sound like a local.

However, human writers do have some key advantages:

• Authenticity and Originality: A human voice and perspective makes the content more interesting and real.
• Emotional Connection: They can tone and style to connect with readers better, a more personal experience.
• Contextual Understanding: Humans are better at getting cultural, social and regional nuances, which is key for community content.
• Critical Thinking: They can fact check and ensure content is accurate to brand values.
• Creativity and Innovation: Humans can come up with new ideas and narratives that AI might miss, making the content more interesting.

One of the best content writing services we’ve personally used is WriterAccess. Their platform connects you with thousand of freelancers all over the world. You can select writers who specialize in just about every topic you can imagine. Better yet, you can find writers who are familiar with your communities.

WriterAccess has a team to help you get started and provides a managed services if you don’t have the time to do it yourself. They even have a free trial if you want to check them out. Of the freelance writing services we’ve tried they are our favorite. They are more expensive than AI but less work and better results.

Let YouTube help

Writing about a subject can sometimes be a laborious task, which can make it difficult for the writer to sound genuine. The content may come across as overly crafted or canned. If you want to create content that feels authentic and true to your voice, one effective trick is to use video.

Creating YouTube content is a great option for any website and it has SEO value. Plus, it can help with your writing.

Wait! Did you just suggest using video to help with my writing?

You heard right. All you need to do is create a video of you talking about the community, it’s characteristics, the local real estate market, and some of your favorite places.

YouTube has a transcription option that you can use to get a written copy of the video. You’ll need to clean it up a bit, take out the ums and ahs, add some punctuation, a few headers and images and you are all set. I’ve seen entire web pages created this way.

You can of course use AI to clean up the transcription. The best AI assisted tool we’ve found for converting audio to text is Transkriptor. There’s a fee but it’s really reasonable, especially when you consider the amount of time it saves you. They will also let you try it for free just to be sure.

Side note: We are not affiliated with, nor do we receive any compensation from WriterAccess or Transkriptor. We just think they are awesome tools.

Finally, in case you were wondering, this blog post was not written by AI. It was entirely manual, as is evidenced by the typos and grammatical errors.

No matter how you build your real estate community pages, make sure you put your own spin on it.

A good community page doesn’t just inform—it engages the visitor, builds trust, and gets them excited about living in their new neighborhood.

By showing that you are the expert and truly know the area, you position yourself as the go-to person in the community.

When users feel that you understand them and the community, they are much more likely to reach out and trust you with their real estate journey.