Words: Ashley Rigg
Published: 28th February 2008
Major publisher to shake up portal market
If you are looking for an example of a property website that gets everything right, you should look no further than this one. It’s not often that we would tip a portal that is barely a year old, but this one is clearly a winner.
Archant Life, owner of FRANCE magazine, Living France magazine and French Property News did not have a portal website in June 2007. Today, their portal
France Property Shop stands on the brink of becoming the "
Kyero of France".
It’s a bold prediction, but they have achieved a great deal in a short period of time, have established routes to market and their re-launched site has well-presented, unique and newsworthy content that will get them links and PR.
A unique content strategy
According to Web Content Manager James Parfitt, they are preparing to launch a new service called New Property Trends, detailing trends in asking prices over time by French region. Kyero provides this service for Spain and
Rightmove.co.uk does this for the UK. There is a gap in the market for an authority on French property prices and Archant, with their portfolio of respected media titles, are perfectly placed to take advantage.
The France Property Shop re-launch includes some other innovative new content ideas. They have a “Top 10 Searches” function which drills down to a local level which provides interesting information to consumers and lots of opportunities for PR and link building.
Search engine optimisation
Getting a new website to rank for competitive search phrases is always difficult. Although still behind some of their older competitors for many phrases, France Property Shop now ranks number three on Google (UK) for “Property in France”. Their search agency
furtheronline.co.uk has done a great job building over
2000 links in a short period of time. Its new content strategy will give it a further boost as blogs and media websites pick up on their house price data.
Interactive Mapping & Slick Design
Although many portals, such as Rightmove.co.uk and Kyero have interactive mapping, France Property Shop has the most useful of all the French specialist portals. Users can map properties and points of interest, for example airports, on Google Maps. Its design is also slicker and the site easier to navigate. Its competitors will catch up, but it has an advantage for now.
Routes to Market
FRANCE magazine, French Property News and Living France magazine do not currently publish ABC figures, but Archant Life claim they have a combined readership of nearly 200,000 a month. This seems a little high but whatever the exact audience, their print readership together with their exhibition audience give them an important advantage over some of their more
visible competitors.
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