Your Neighborhood Pages Suck

I’ve been building a bunch of Real Estate Websites lately and this question comes up quite often.

“What should I put on each of the ‘Community’ pages on my website?”

Seems simple enough – right?

Let me start out by defining ‘Community’. My local ‘Community’ is going to be different from yours. Some people will break up a single town into various different neighborhoods – giving each neighborhood their own ‘Community’ Page. At the opposite end of that would be where each ‘Community’ is a town or a city and that’s as refined as it gets. What’s right? All of the above. It’s whatever works for you. I think it’s a lot like the question, “How many Facebook Pages should you have?” The answer might best be, “As many as you can properly handle”. Does that make sense?

Ok, so what should go on a ‘Community’ Page? The obvious answer would be “Give the visitor what they want”.

But that’s the rub. Different visitors will want different content. You could pile EVERYTHING into the page and hope they scroll down to find what they want but you know how that’ll work – right? Remember we should always assume we’re dealing with a short attention span.

Here’s my opinion / suggestion of what a ‘Community’ Page should be…

Start at the top of the page with a video, a picture or a slideshow of that ‘Community’. Don’t take a short cut and make ONE video that covers all of your ‘Communities’. Take the time to do it right. I asked a Facebook Group for examples and here’s what they suggested:

NEXT: While most people are graphically inclined there are some that want the text. How about a paragraph or two about the ‘Community’? This is a good thing in that it will also get picked up by Google (if your site was built properly).

HONESTLY… From here down it’s a crap shoot as to IF they’ll see anything below the fold. Are they looking for school information? Blog posts about this ‘Community’? Current Listings in this ‘Community’? The truth is that we just don’t know. So, while we want to include everything, we need to tease them finding what they want in the smallest area we can.

Here’s my suggestion. Use a Tabbed Post. I did that with my Page on Web Hosting Ideas. So right below the video and paragraph, start a tabbed section like this:

[tab name=”START”]There’s a variety of information here.

Click on the Tabs that interest you to find the information for just this Community.

I used this tab for an instructional area. You could dive right into your content if you see fit.

(go ahead Mackelmore, pop some tabs!)

[/tab]

[tab name=”Articles”]If your site has an active blog aspect in it – chances are you have written a few posts about or involving this ‘Community’.
Let’s give the visitor a snippet of each of those, eh? That’s a simple hack to pull just a category archive for the Community. I don’t have communities here so I’ll use the category of “WordPress” and my last 3 posts in that category as an example. I’m including the featured image, and the post excerpt for each post below. A week, a month, a year from now, this tab will still be current. How cool is that?

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So was this a blog post with other blog posts inside it?
Yes it was! #MindBlown

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[tab name=”Schools”]This tab could list all the schools in the area with links to their scores and other vital information.

Example:

Primary Schools: Murwood, Indian Valley, Walnut Heights

Middle Schools: Walnut Creek Intermediate

High Schools: Las Lomas

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[tab name=”Life”]Like the Category Tab I have to the left for “Articles” I’d also create one for the “Lifestyle” of this particular area.

Have you written posts about the restaurants, theaters, parks, churches, playgrounds in the area? Do they warrant their own Tab? If so, they could go in this tab. I write a bunch about Facebook Pages here so pretend Facebook Pages is a category or tag for lifestyle posts in this community.

Here’s the latest 10 (title only)

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[tab name=”Homes”]I can’t replicate this one here but you could if you had an IDX Feed.

It’s easy to create and pull just the listings from a neighborhood in most IDX providers. Once you set that up, this section will automatically pull just the current listings in this area.

NOTE: A lot of Agents will do just this, and only this for their ‘Community’ Pages. If I didn’t know about this ‘Community’ to begin with – what good would listings do me? #justsayin

[/tab]

[tab name=”Contact”]While your contact information might be a few clicks away on your website I’ve come to the realization that a Mobile Responsive site might bury that for the smart phone user. Just in case I would include a contact tab here or somewhere on the post itself.

BTW: If you want to contact me about getting a site like this… Mike@AreWeConnected.com or
I need a Responsive Designed Website(or whatever that means)

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Mike Mueller

VP of Happiness at AreWeConnected.com

A former professional hand model, Mike builds Custom WordPress Websites that rock!

He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, sometimes rides a road bike, has a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one, bought a cool orange one, rode a really slow one, and wants a really small one). If that isn't enough, he makes cheese and sourdough bread, loves strong beer and good red wine, and poorly plays the Mandolin.