If you already have a perfectly good real estate website, do you really need a separate property management website? Can you get away with just building a page to host your property management information?
Maybe you’re just getting started in property management, or your business primarily sells real estate and you’re wondering if you should spend the extra money, time, and effort creating a second website.
The short answer is: yes, you need a separate website. But it’s important that you understand why.
Having a Separate Property Management Website Avoids Confusion
You are talking to two different sets of clients. There are people who want to buy or sell a house, and people who want to rent or rent out a house. There may be a little bit of overlap in these audiences, but the majority of your customers have one thing or the other in mind. You don’t want to confuse them when they arrive at your home page.
It’s important not to mix your messages. For instance, on a real estate website, you might want to include “For Sale” listings. You don’t want a visitor to confuse those with “Vacancy” listings you might have with the property management side of your business. Each site should be pushing one specific service, whether it’s real estate sales or property management. The content that is front and center when someone hits your site should speak to one service or the other. You don’t want people to have to dig around to find what they are looking for. If they’re looking for one thing, and the front page is pushing the other, a percentage of your visitors are just going to go back to Google and look at the next company.
The real estate market and property management have a lot in common, but to a person who is not intimately involved in the industry, they are two separate things. You want to give website visitors exactly what they are looking for instead of a lot of information that won’t be valuable to them.
A Website Will Improve Your Property Management SEO
Your site needs to rank well if you want people to be able to find it. When you’re trying to rank well for sales, you’re not going to rank well for rentals. Your goal is to rank well in both areas, which is another great reason to have two separate sites. You can put a page on your real estate site that has property management services listed there, and that might help you show up for “property management,” but an entire site dedicated to property management will perform much better, and be seen by more potential customers.
If you have only one website, the front page of that site will likely push one specialty over the other, and that means you could lose a portion of your customers that you worked so hard to attract with SEO. Google is not going to rank you very high if you aren’t getting a lot of property management traffic to your real estate site.
Pro Tips for Building A Website for Your Property Management Business
Avoiding confusion and SEO are two big reasons to have separate websites, but they don’t have to both be complex, expensive sites. As you consider how you will build your property management website, keep these quick “pro tips” in mind.
Keep Your Website Simple
Many property management companies feel that the task of building an entire website from the ground up feels daunting – especially if you have a complex website for your real estate business, and you’re imagining building a property management website to match. But there’s no need to go over the top with your property management website. It might just have a few simple pages – a home page, a services page, a vacancy page, and an about page will suffice. In some cases having a simpler website will actually rank better than some property management websites with dozens of pages. Plus, keep in mind that you can always add to your website over time, as your property management business grows.
You don’t need a lot of flash, but you do need to be found. The best way to be found is to have a full website dedicated to property management.
Separate Your Businesses
Finally, if possible, think about having a separate name for your property management company. This is especially important if you’re just getting into property management as a real estate professional. Property managers tend to get bad reviews just for doing their jobs. If you are doing property management under the same name as your real estate company, those bad reviews will affect the reputation of the real estate side of your business.
You don’t want that.
Separate your websites and separate your Yelp pages. Make it obvious that there are two distinct sides to your business. Or even make it look like two businesses – it helps even more to have a completely different name so people don’t confuse one with the other.
Don’t use your real name for property management if you use it for real estate. For example, if your real estate sales company is called John Smith Real Estate, choose a more generic name for your property management company. Otherwise, you’ll be seeing a lot of reviews that say. “John Smith sucks.” This is not an exaggeration.
Should You Have Multiple Websites If Your Property Management Company Has Multiple Locations?
Another common situation that we see is a property management company with one line of business but in multiple locations. Should you have multiple websites for each location?
If services and types of clients are the same across locations, we’d recommend having just one website.
In this scenario, if your different property management websites have even a small amount of duplicate copy, it could significantly hurt your SEO. It’s much easier to just have different pages for each location and make it clear what locations you serve. As long as the property management services are consistent across locations, there’s no reason to have separate websites.
Another example would be a property management company who is licensed for real estate but only helps current investment clients buy and sell. Since it’s the same clientele, we’d recommend making it clear that you offer real estate services on the same website. Since it is not a separate real estate business that needs to bring in its own leads, keep it simple with just a property management website.
Need Help With Your Property Management Website?
If the services being provided or the clients being served are the same, have one website (with location pages, if needed).
If the services are different, have different websites.
Our last pro tip is to chat with us and ask us all your marketing questions. We’ve built many property management websites for property managers over the years and we will work with you to create a sleek, user-friendly and content-driven site that you and those that work with you will love. You can learn more about our property management websites here.
If you have any other questions about property management marketing, send us a quick message.
Fourandhalf helps property managers strategize and implement marketing plans that bring in owner leads. Click the image below to get a free marketing assessment and find out how to start getting better clients into your portfolio.