Subdomains For Real Estate Website

[TotalMarketExposure]

I am currently working on a proposal for a clients Wordpress website development which includes ongoing SEO after the website is developed. I have looked into a number of options and the one that seems the most cost effective involves using subdomains for the individual listings pages.

What I want:

clientsdomain.com/listings/idxnumber/

What I can get for a decent price:

listings.clientsdomain.com/idxnumber/

So the majority of the website will actually exist on a subdomain because the IDX API will automatically populate pages for all of the MLS listings in the area (hundreds or thousands). Meanwhile the domain itself will have all the neighborhood pages and other optimized content, blogs and whatnot. My concern is that dividing the website like this will have negative effects on SEO. There wont be duplicate content across subdomain and main domain, but they will share a lot of links back and forth. I haven't found any recent sources on the topic. Almost everything I have found says that dividing a website in this manor is bad for SEO, but these articles are often many years old.

1. Does anyone know of a Wordpress plugin/IDX company that can provide a solution that doesn't use a subdomain and actually just lists each MLS page within a directory? I am open to using another platform, I am just most familiar with Wordpress.
2. Will using a subdomain in the ways mentioned above have a profound negative effect on SEO?

Thank you for your time in responding, I greatly appreciate it.

[BigFortune1]

I started my real estate Wordpress website about 6 months ago. I was skeptical about the subdomain of my IDX provider, but i couldn't find a better fit. I have 100's of hours into to my site now and it is doing well (thank you Moz.com!), but I am noticing that my main domain authority is higher than my subdomain authority. I am now having doubts about my IDX provider and am looking into ways to host a RETS feed on my server. I don't think there is any better way for Real Estate SEO. Unfortunately, I have not found an easy way to do this that works with my MLS. My site is greatcoloradohomes.com, if you would like to check it out. I am open to any constructive criticism to help me with it.

Like I said, I have hundreds of personal hours (many late nights) invested in this topic. If i can provide any helpful advice, I'd be glad to help. I always enjoy talking about real estate websites and the options available. This topic has a lot of evolving to do over the next few years.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Sorry I just saw this

Sorry I did not see tthis yes one dose all auto and studio press makes the best if you ask me

If you buy http://my.studiopress.com/themes/agentpress/agentpress it cost $25 more then the normal non MLS but its ggreat use a host like Zippykid it will pay for it self

While other solutions either frame in the MLS content from another domain or charge you tens-of-thousands of dollars for a website you'll never own or fully control, dsIDXpress is different. In a nutshell, dsIDXpress allows you to display search-engine-indexable content for the properties in the your MLS on your own WordPress blog / website and on your own domain name. The content for the lists of properties and property details can be accessed via URLs on your blog (ex. www.yourblog.com/idx/city/los-angeles/) or via our Live Listings℠ shortcode functionality.

With dsIDXpress, the listing data never gets stale since it's all maintained by and resides on our own servers. You'll never have to worry about showing inactive or outdated listings on your website since our system automatically takes care of all of the feed updates from each MLS. In fact, ALL of the data displayed is never more than 24 hours old and is often never more than 2 hours old (depending on MLS policies)!

The bread-n-butter of dsIDXpress resides in its ability to display dynamic content from the MLS on virtual pages within your blog. The lists of properties and property detail view content is loaded based on the URL that's loaded (just like a normal post / page), so when you link to yourblog.com/idx/city/los-angeles or yourblog.com/idx/mls-12345-, the active listings for Los Angeles or the data for MLS # 12345 is displayed on your blog and on your domain WITHOUT the use of iframes or anything else that would raise flags in search engines. The data is ALWAYS up to date, leaving you free to do things other than maintain the MLS data on your site.Our Live Listings℠ shortcodes allow you to actually embed data for either an individual listing or a group of listings into any blog post or page you create. We currently provide two shortcodes, our [idx-listing] shortcode for posting a specific property in a post / page, and our [idx-listings] shortcode for posting a group of properties into a page. The data displayed with the Live Listings℠ functionality is automatically updated every few hours on your blog, allowing you to write about properties or publish content pages containing properties without ever worrying about the data getting stale.

The [idx-listing] shortcode will display a configurable amount of data for any active listing in your MLS based on an MLS number you provide. A good time to use this shortcode would be when a seller's agent signs a new property and wants to talk about that listing on their blog. In the past, that agent would have had to create a page for each of their listings and then update the data in both the MLS and on their blog every time they wanted to change the price, fix a typo, add new information, etc. With dsIDXpress, the agent can simply place [idx-listing mlsnumber="12345" showpricehistory="true" showlocation="true"] into their blog post or page to show all of the essential details, the price history, and the location (on a map) for MLS # 12345. As pointed out before, ALL of the details for that property will stay updated for as long as that page exists and as long as the property is an active listing.

The [idx-listings] shortcode will display a group of properties matching any criteria you specify. This functionality can be used to provide content for any area pages you create. For example, if you were to create a page on the Belltown community in Seattle, you might normally end up writing a couple of paragraphs about that community and then link to the IDX / MLS search for that area. Using dsIDXpress, you can easily add [idx-listings community="Belltown" orderby="DateAdded" orderdir="DESC" count="10"] to the bottom of your blog post to show the 10 newest listings in that community. The data displayed by that shortcode will stay updated as long as that page is in your blog.

While the Live Listings℠ shortcodes are fairly easy to understand when you look at them, we realize that trying to remember all of the different options for each shortcode can be difficult. That's why we integrated the Live Listings℠ functionality into the HTML page / post editor that you're already used to. Simply click on either of the new dsIDXpress icons in the editor, and you'll be greeted with an extremely simple Live Listings℠ insertion tool that will let you insert a single listing or a group of listings with ease.

dsIDXpress provides three different widgets that can be integrated into the blog it's used on. The widgets provide an excellent starting point for getting the MLS content on your blog, in front of the eyes of your visitors, and indexed in search engines. The dsIDXpress widgets are just as easy to use as WordPress's normal widgets; simply open the widget area, drag / drop it to where you want it, and quickly configure it to do what you want it to do. Easy!

The IDX Search widget allows your visitors to quickly search for active listings in the MLS from your sidebar. This widget isn't meant to be a fully-fledged IDX as much as it's meant to be a teaser to pique your visitors interest in the data on your website.

The IDX Listings widget shows a configurable number of listings in a customizable display format based on criteria your define. Whew! This widget can be used to display your own listings on a map, your office's listings in a slideshow, the details and photos of most expensive homes in the city, or just recent listings of a certain community on a map.

[TotalMarketExposure]

Do you know if any of those themes and/or plugins automatically generate pages for each listing in the market? We don't want something that requires manual upload. While that feature as a possibility for showcasing featured listings is a plus, the goal is to populate the website with listings and neighborhood pages. Everything I have seen uses iframes, dynamic URL's or different websites/subdomains to list the properties for sale.

The more research I do on the topic the more I am finding that subdomains aren't that bad of an option. A lot of the items you have linked to function the same way that the Wolfnet plugin that I am looking at using does.

Thank you for all your help.

[BlueprintMarketing]

You may also want to look at plug-ins like this

Studio press/Genesis is my preferred framework. And they now offer some fantastic themes and have really gone above and beyond in agent press trying to make it easier for people selling homes on the web woo themes is also excellent below the studio press links here I have found some good woo themes, and some not for framework of any type and plug-ins as well as well I hope this will help you.

Try

http://wordpress.org/plugins/idx-broker-platinum/

http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-idx/

http://wordpress.org/plugins/idx-broker-wordpress-plugin/

http://www.studiopress.com/releases/realpro-theme.htm

http://my.studiopress.com/themes/agentpress/

http://wp4realestate.com/wordpress-for-real-estate/studiopress-releases-new-professional-wordpress-real-estate-theme/

http://www.studiopress.com/support/showthread.php?t=11205

http://demo.studiopress.com/agentpress/idx-integration

http://www.woothemes.com/2010/09/estate-v1-1-idx-mls-integration/

http://wordpress.org/plugins/dsidxpress/

Studiopress.com has an excellent framework of Genesis I'm sure you're aware of it. And it is able to integrate very well with woothemes and woocommerce which allows Studio press themes to use real estate plug-ins

I hope this is going to help,

Thomas

[Saijo.George]

When it comes to subdomain vs subfolder, SEO's usually prefer to go subfolder. But if it's easy and financially suitable to go that way I would say go for subfolder. In this day and age the SEO impact is minute ( if any )

Matt Cutts's view ( Oct 2012 ) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_MswMYk05tk

[BlueprintMarketing]

WordPress is an excellent platform for for real estate websites.

As far as using subdomains instead of a category or something similar. Google used to not get as much credit to subdomains now they are given equal credit.

However please do remember that anything you put in the URL that matching keyword for your contacts and what you want people searching for will help your search engine results.

I strongly recommend using a managed wordprocessed they will be a will to help you with these tips of topics as well. WP engine, ZippyKid, web synthesis & Pagely are all excellent.

I would recommend the use either one be honest as long as Google Webmaster tools knows that you have them indexed correctly. It will treat them equally. However the listings category can give you some ups and service however it can also hurt by having too many parameters along with creating duplicate content only in certain situations. Just be careful that you do not do this.

I hope that I have been help,

Thomas