Tagging Listings Online – New Ways To Have Your Properties Found By Prospective Customers

One of the features of the ForSaleByLocals(tm) web engine that we plan to have ready for launch on May 20 is "tagging" or the use of online search tags. 

Tags are already quite popular on social networking sites as a way to categorize information that people put on the web. In fact, the categories that you see listed after each post on this site are actually tags that can be read on search sites such as technorati. Some sites tightly define their tags and others (such as photo sharing sites) allow the users of the site to define custom tags for information such as posts and photos.

Tags also can help to drive new business for real estate professionals. How? By increasing the ways that people can find your listings. If you have a site, there are a few choices to drive traffic to your site: free search engine listings, paid search engine listings, and traditional online & offline advertising. Now with tagging, people can find the specific listing that they want through alternative search tools. It seems as though new tools that are able to read tags are being released every week. You can be ready for these technologies by having tagging implemented on your site or letting the ForSaleByLocals(tm) web engine handle the tagging details for you.

The implementation plan for forsalebylocals.com and all of its affiliated websites is to allow members to allow their choice of predefined tagging by them and user defined tags for all of the property listings. Basic tags will be implemented by the system in every language that we support so at least the most basic tags will be searchable internationally. We may implement a feature after launch to let the member choose some translated tags about their property as well but this would be implemented post-launch in our next version. At launch, we'll also provide the option of using search tags for both individual listings and any photos that you provide. To summarize, you'll be able to have the following options as a member for your listings at launch:

Option #1:Tags Galore
– System defined tagging enabled for individual listings
– Member defined tagging enabled for individual listings
– User defined tagging enabled for individual listings
– Member defined tagging enabled for individual photos

Option #2:Controlled Tagging
– System defined tagging enabled for individual listings
– Member defined tagging enabled for individual listings
– User defined tagging DISABLED for individual listings
– Member defined tagging enabled for individual photos

Option #3: No Tags
– ALL TAGGING DISABLED

What does this mean for you? Regardless of whether your real estate listings are tagged on your site or not, you can take advantage of tags and have your listings tagged for you through our web engine. Tagged listings on our site include a link back to your web site with any premium membership so you wont need to pay a web developer to implement tagging on your current site if you should choose to use our system. Hopefully, you'll find that tagging helps to drive business to your site by allowing alternative and more granular means of searching listings by your customers.