Words: Ashley Rigg
Published: 7th January 2008
Our top 10 overseas property portals
FindaProperty.com is top of our in-depth study into the best-optimised overseas property portals on Google (UK).
Research by the Globaledge.co.uk team undertaken in December 2007 examines the natural search positions of 46 property portals on Google (UK) for property-related search phrases in over 200 overseas buying destinations.
FindaProperty.com appears in the Top 20 in 68% of all searches, beating
Primelocation.com in second place with 65%.
Chris Boorman, Commercial Development Manager for
FindaProperty.com, says SEO is something they take extremely seriously: “We employ two people in-house focused entirely on SEO. We get greater control this way and we can develop our own ideas.”
Dan Johnson, Director of
The Move Channel, which comes third in our analysis and is the highest placed pay-per-performance portal, appearing in 50% of all searches, says: “We invest heavily in this area. Some of the work is done externally but I personally take control of the ideas and strategies that drive our success in natural search.”
The Move Channel is one of three performance-based portals in the list, which also includes
Lead Galaxy in fourth and
Sunshine Estates in fifth.
A word of caution
The best performers on this list may or may not be right for your business. The key to choosing the best partners is to find portals that your customers are likely to use. Which portals come up when you search Google in the countries and regions where you sell property? How strong is the portal’s brand?
The importance of brand in driving traffic is particularly evident when looking at the UK domestic market.
Rightmove.co.uk is not the best-optimised property portal, yet figures compiled by
Estate Agency News show that they receive nearly five times the number of user sessions of their nearest rival,
FindaProperty.com.
These numbers suggest that many UK domestic users either bypass search engines altogether or search for brand names when using them. A portal’s search engine positions are certainly important, but when looking for partners you should
consider a number of factors.
You can also read our
independent portal profiles.
Have your say
Have you tried any of the portals in this list? Did they work for you? Which ones do you think produce the best leads? Please let us know your thoughts? Make a
comment below or email us at
editor@globaledge.co.uk.
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User Comments
There seems to be new portals starting up every day and it is going to be very hard for them to break in to what is an already very saturated market. Globrix.com for example has all the weight of News International behind it, but even with regular full page press adverts they are still to make any money. Findaproperty and Rightmove are without doubt the most popular despite not utilising the latest technology like portals such as zoopla.com do...
RentinLondon,
Residential Land
www.europeanproperty.com An excellent service, our properties were listed within the day.
JOHN TREAGUST,
www.CostaBlanaLive.co.uk / .es
