Why You Should Add Neighborhood Pages to Your Site (and What to Include)

What’s on your real estate website? In most cases, agents or brokers will have listings, contact information, testimonials, and maybe some blog articles about how the process of buying a home or selling a home will work and what they can expect from you. Content marketing, of course, comes to some real estate professionals easier than others. But, building the right, important pages on your website can not only help your potential clients learn more about the homebuying experience, but they can also help you bring in more leads in general.

One way to do this is by adding neighborhood pages to your website. Here’s how!

What is a Neighborhood Page?

A neighborhood page may be something you already have on your website or that you’ve seen other agents do. In some markets, it may not be super important to structure your website this way, but in other markets – and, in certain times – neighborhood pages can go a long way. 

A neighborhood page is simply a page that talks about a specific neighborhood that you’re displaying relevant listings in. It’s a great option for buyers who are moving to the area, but are not familiar with the various neighborhoods and where they should buy. This gives them a bit more insight and details about various neighborhoods within your market, so that these buyers can start to narrow down what might be a rather broad search. 

Why Neighborhood Pages for Your Real Estate Site?

Neighborhood pages are important for your real estate website because they inform buyers and can bring in leads. Imagine someone is searching for a home in a specific neighborhood – their search can potentially lead right to your site. And, for clients who hired an agent before knowing exactly where they want to live, they can browse these neighborhood pages to give you some direction as to where they’d like to start looking at homes.  

What to Include on Neighborhood Pages

What you decide to include in your neighborhood pages will depend on several factors, but in every case, you’ll need to get in the minds of your potential clients. If you’ve been working in this market for years – maybe you even grew up here – then what you know about the neighborhood may be different than someone who is new to the area or perhaps has only traveled there once or twice. Therefore, you should include things like:

• Some fun facts about the neighborhood, like the history.
• Places to visit, parks, etc.
• Commuter and/or public transportation information
• Where to shop, buy groceries, restaurants, entertainment options, etc.
• What the most recent house sold for. 
• Listings in that neighborhood, as well as some filters if people visiting your site want to narrow down their search by price, bedrooms, square footage, etc.

REMEMBER: Due to the Fair Housing Act, real estate agents can not speak to the demographics whatsoever of a neighborhood, nor can they give you any information that would deter you or push you to not buying or buying in a certain neighborhood. They can’t answer if a neighborhood is “good” or “bad”. 

Therefore, any facts they give you should be information that one could get with a simple Google Maps search or by visiting the neighborhood’s/town website. You can provide links to these sources, too. You could also add a separate blog page to offer tips on how buyers can decide whether or not a neighborhood is right for them, in general.

What Not to Include on Neighborhood Pages

To extend on the Fair Housing Act, there are certain things that should never be included in your neighborhood pages, like:

• Demographics of the neighborhood.
• Safety or crime rates.
• The political party that the neighborhood associates with most.
• Anything that may allude to any of the above.

You should also be careful not to include too much “fluff” on your neighborhood pages. It should be a clear summary and each page should follow more or less the same template, so that clients can compare these side-by-side if they’d like.

How to Optimize a Neighborhood Page

As mentioned earlier, neighborhood pages are not only great resources for your buyers, they’re also an excellent lead generation tool. You’ll have to do some research and look over some analytics, but by optimizing your neighborhood pages with SEO techniques, you could be seeing a lot more traffic. For instance, using a phrase like “buying a home in the Bay Area” may be too broad, but if you use a similar phrase with the name of your neighborhood along with other key phrases, you could be seeing many more potential clients. 

Do you have neighborhood pages on your website? Let us know in the comments below!