At Web-Op, we’ve been doing sites for local real estate agents for years. In many ways, it’s still a market which is fairly weak in the SEO space. Many firms rely on cheap ‘iframe’ display of listings, so they end up with a site that Google sees as having no real content.

However, even innovations in data import technology, like TransparentRETS and dsIDXPress, allowing you to import MLS data in bulk onto a familiar, easy-to-install backend, are not a cure-all for top rankings. It’s all about the brains on top of local data.

Realistically, if someone wants to just see or search the MLS, odds are, they’ll do it somewhere else. However, a savvy agent can help ‘steer’ a customer by providing pre-made landing pages and searches which provide real value. If you can promote foreclosed properties less than five years old as suitable for those who don’t want the full renovation hassle, it moves from a simple canned search to a start for customer interest. Or add useful resource guides. Surely, it’s not a crime to tell out-of-towners if the utility on the east side of town is 10 percent more expensive, or the month to move to saddle the current owner with the property taxes.

Building your site on processed and analyzed content also helps you hedge your bets. While the real estate industry has done a good job monopolizing property listings, there’s a danger at hand. Their costly, complex data license rules have left the door open for other firms able to offer a better deal for non-agency firms interested in the data. Why wouldn’t, say, Google like to add a ‘homes for sale near…’ box to their Maps service?

One of the most likely changes I see in the future is a truly national service. It’s an obvious road to entry for a new alternative data source– No more patchworks of local MLS boards, and websites that abruptly cut off at an arbitrary boundary. There are also likely to be means for ‘for sale by owner’ vendors to get their properties in the system and cut a listing agency out entirely, and add non-conventional homes– manufactured homes sans land, timeshare rentals, and such.

In such an environment, your local knowledge and customized content becomes even more important– after all, who’s likely to have a better listing interface, you or a firm like Google with an endless development budget? The listings alone are a commodity– only the value-add matters.

It’s a bit of doom-saying, I admit, but having to treat listings as a commodity can only be good news for real estate agents who play the SEO game smart– depending on becoming a resource with real content. It will cause the ‘I posted listings, it’s enough’ competition to sink.