Taking a Different Approach

For awhile now I wanted to get away from the "links directory" cliché and was trying to make improvements in the quality of the information provided by the directory. About 2 years ago I started gathering more personal and business data from the individuals and businesses that wanted to have their web sites listed here. Doing so greatly improved the quality of the content, and the web site's traffic overall. Some members repeatedly told me that they're getting the best referral traffic from this site compared to any other site or directory they are listed in.

Personally I oversee Google Analytics accounts for multiple real estate sites that are listed in this directory, and I can track leads generated from the referral visitors. This information motivated me to go further in my redesign and the requirements for submissions. My goals is for the IBS Team Real Estate Directory wants to be a true Real Estate Business Directory, and not a "links" directory. I want it to provide good information and most importantly - I want it to be beneficial to the visitors that are looking for help, and the advertisers that can provide that help, and are seeking for a new clients.

Re-design and New Features

First of all, the whole site has been re-designed and re-programmed based on the web developers framework Drupal, with the exception of the Forums, which is running on vBulletin (and which I think is an excellent application btw).

You may have noticed that I moved some sections around - the directory's home page is not longer in wsnlinks sub-folder, and it's actually on the home page of the site. In the old setup the blog was the home page, but the sub-folder for the directory was taking the top search results and was the main traffic generator. Since I couldn't find enough time to pursue my blogging, I decided to move the blog into its respective sub-folder and make the directory as home page, which makes more sense for the site's structure.

Real Estate Directory Section

I tried to implement the same functionality that I had in the old directory, but improved in quality. From now on, it should be much easier to manage your own business listings, edit and update information. Here are the options:

• Business Listings - a detailed company profile with contact infromation, location, business description, business email address, web site, links to MLS Search and Agent Property Listings*, company logo and representative's photo, contact name, and custom content option. Each business listing has its own details/profile page where all the information appears in a nice clean layout. In addition, there is an email contact form link that customers can use to contact businesses.
• Free Real Estate Leads - I added a lead generation form* for real estate buyers or sellers. All leads are free of charge and being immediately sent to their respective businesses. (In the first week of this implementation the directory generated over 40 real estate leads for their members. I'm sure the trend will only grow.)
• Sponsorships - Right now I have the same sponsorship options as I had in the older version of the site: Top and Bottom Category Sponsorships, and Hot Markets (former Featured Areas). The category sponsorships are self explanatory - you sponsor your business listing placement within the category respectively - at the top or at the bottom. The Hot Markets - you can sponsor a city or a specific area that you serve. A Hot Market listing is very much similar to a business listing - it has all the usual business information and the lead generation form. In addition to that, instead of the business description, it has one large custom content area where you can place your content to describe the sponsored area and anything else that can be helpful to your potential customers. Hot Markets are listed at the top of your category and on the home page of the directory.

* This option only available in the Real Estate USA category.

Real Estate News Section

Real Estate News section became more prominent and, hopefully, will be a very nice addition to the site overall. This is not a new section though. On the old site I had one page with 10 recent headlines aggregated from 4 or 5 top real estate news sources. Now, Realtors and real estate industry related businesses can submit their own blog feeds to the Real Estate News section, and their recent posts will appear in it. All blogs are categorized by the states they belong to. This allows me to aggregate recent headlines from different states and show them in their respective real estate categories (read - in the directory - not just the news section), which dramatically increases exposure of aggregated blogs. Right now all real estate news headlines are linking to their posts within this site, which (currently) are not being indexed nor followed to their original sources. This is temporarily, until I figure out how exactly authors can benefit from syndicating their blog posts to this site. Meanwhile I would like to avoid any duplicate content issues. Therefore, only the www.ibsteam.net/news page is currently indexed with the short excerpts from the aggregated blog posts. I already have a few ideas on how to organize this and hopefully new changes will be made within the next week.

Q&A (Questions and Answers) Section

This section is completely new, and the reason I decided to implement it, because I, personally, was receiving numerous emails from consumers regarding their real estate needs. So, please feel free to participate.