Published: 10/08/2021 By Mark Tew - Senior Website Consultant
Informative and inspiring, area guides are a fantastic addition to a property agency's website with their proven success rate of winning over customers, boosting brand awareness, and improving SEO.Packed with an array of detailed and educational information, area guides provide insights into different locations and create a more enjoyable and effective user experience. Considering this, here are five great reasons why area guides are an amazing asset to your property agency's website.
1. Provides relevant information in the property finding search
First and foremost, area guides are there to inform, educate and inspire prospective applicants about the locations they are considering moving to.
They provide an insightful glimpse into different places and are helpful for every kind of customer. For example, the latest schools’ information is of the upmost importance for a young family and the closest transport links are key for that young professional about to start their new job. Either way, area guide information is extremely valuable for all walks of life.
Not only is schools’ and transport data incredibly important, but so is information regarding local hospitals, dentists, shopping facilities, local restaurants and cafes, attractions and even fairs and events specific to that town, city, or village. They provide an even richer insight into the buzzing culture and community as well as to help buyers to envision themselves living there.
Some estate agents even create videos of areas so customers can see in real life what they’re like. These kinds of videos are a brilliant addition to a your video marketing strategy as they’re highly visual (and even entertaining) and make the property finding journey more fun and enjoyable.
Want to see a great example of an area guide video? Just click here to see our case study for our current client, Sowerbys.
2. Improves your website’s navigation
Now, what’s so fantastic about area guides is that you can place calls to actions in them linking to the properties which are in that area.
This will ensure a more enjoyable, smoother user experience for customers as they won’t be wasting their time having to click through various search engines to find properties in their desired location. All they have to do is click ‘properties for sale’ or ‘properties for rent’, and hey presto there they are!
You may want to lay them out as lists, grids, and maps too, so they can gain an overall impression of an area.
Maps are particularly helpful as customers can see exactly how close properties are to transport stations and schools. It really could make a big difference deciding between which property is right for a prospective applicant.
Want to see a fantastic example of an area guide? Just click here to see our fabulous ATOM website for our current client, Lonely Miller.
3. Demonstrates your local knowledge and expertise
By providing insightful information about local areas, your property agency is more likely to be seen as a knowledgeable, experienced leader in their industry.
The reason being is that the more meaningful information you provide, the greater the trust customers will place in you in their property marketing decision. They’ll also be more likely to pick you over your competitors as you’ll demonstrate the most expertise and familiarity with that area.
This is helped even further if you yourself feature in an area guide video. It shows that your property agency really does know their stuff and truly are at the heart of their community.
As a result, in time your agency will see a greater number of enquiries and down the line more properties sold - area guides really can do wonders for businesses!
4. Improves your SEO
Whilst area guides are brilliant at informing and educating, they’re also a great way to improve your SEO position.
How so, you may ask? The reason being is that if you provide inspiring and helpful information, customers are more likely to stay on your website. This is because after reading about their desired location, customers may want to browse more properties in that area as well as explore other areas they hadn’t thought of before. They may even examine other pages which may not be related to their property finding journey.
Either way, they’ll be staying on your site for much longer than expected!
This is great news for your business as the longer they stay on your site, the lower your bounce rate will be and the higher you’ll rank in a search engine. It’s a win, win situation!
5. Boosts your brand awareness
Not only are area guides effective from an SEO perspective, but they’re also superb for boosting your property agency’s brand awareness.
This is because if you’re listing all the latest information about an area, you’ll be ranking highly for keyword searches when people are looking for information specific for that town or city.
For example, if your agency is listing the latest school’s information in Putney, if someone searches for ‘schools in Putney’ then your website will come up in the search engine rankings. Subsequently, this will drastically boost your brand awareness as more people will now have the knowledge that your agency is operating in this area, and it could be the defining factor for when selecting a property agency - area guides are simply brilliant for business!
To conclude, area guides are a brilliant asset to a property agency’s website with their relevant and valuable information but also their ability to ensure a smoother user experience, higher search engine ranking and increased brand awareness.
Have a question about area guides? Or perhaps your property agency is looking to generate more quality inbound leads? The Webdadi team is on hand to help – just hit the link below to contact us today.
