We're continuing a holiday tradition of revisiting classic articles from the past year. This article was originally published back in May. Enjoy!

Is your website losing traffic to third party sites like Zillow and Trulia? If you're like many brokers, the answer is probably "Yes." Since 2011, traffic to broker websites has gone flat, while activity on third party sites has flourished.

This doesn't have to be the fate of your real estate website, however. By discovering what real estate consumers want and how they behave online, you can craft an effective website strategy.

Find Out What Consumers Want

Broker websites have traditionally been developed around the business needs of the broker. However, it's consumers that drive success--not brokers, MLSs, or even agents. If you don't understand what the consumer looks for in a real estate website, you have no foundation on which to build a successful online presence.

So what do consumers want? Let's take a look:

• Education - Consumers often feel lost during the homebuying process. They want to know what to expect during the homebuying process, what can go wrong, and what decisions they'll face.
• Service and quick response - During their research process, homebuyers want service--they don't want to be converted. They want you to respond quickly, and they want support services throughout their property search.
• Clarity - Many brokerage websites are messes of unorganized information. By including everything under the sun, brokers may think they're being thorough, but they're only confusing visitors--and driving them away.
• Local content - 73% of all web searches are for local content. Ideas for local content include landing pages, ebooks, and dynamic information on area markets, trends, and demographics.

Learn How Consumers Think

Once you know what consumers want, learn why they want it. Understanding the mindset of today's online consumer is the first step in creating a competitive broker website.

• Consumer Attitude - "Don't waste my time; Give me what I want how I want it; Give it to me now." Not understanding this outlook of "now-ism" will prevent you from reaching the consumer. Don't make your users look hard to find what they want. Clean, organized design--including easy-to-understand navigation and clear calls to action--is the first step to creating an effective website.
• Consumer Behavior - Users exhibit similar behaviors across all real estate websites. This includes searching for listings; saving searches and listings; and consuming content on home values, market trends, and demographics. Only after building functionality into your website that meets these basic needs can you begin to create a higher level of engagement.

Now that you've ascertained what your visitors want and why, you next need to understand how they use your website. Use analytics tools to follow their search experience, see how they navigate through your site, and evaluate their search keywords. Be sure to also measure key performance indicators, like time on site and bounce rates, as these demonstrate your visitor's level of engagement.

To increase engagement levels, it's critical to evaluate your website. Of particular importance is the listing detail page. Tons of time and traffic are spent here. Be sure to evaluate your URL structures, as well as your calls to action. (Are they measurable? Positioned correctly?)

Build a Website Strategy

You've learned what users want, why they want it, and how they behave on your site. Now, it's to formulate a strategy. Gone are the days of keyword stuffing and buying links. Today, search is all about meeting the user's intent. Search engines like Google try to determine intent by weighing where the user is searching from, the content of their query, and their previous search history.

It follows, then, that effective search engine optimization is all about connecting your site's content with the user's intent. You can accomplish this by:

• Creating relevance - This can be achieved with focused onsite content that satisfies homebuyer's search intent. As mentioned earlier, searchers crave local content. Demonstrate your local expertise by creating content that satisfies this hunger and connects with their intent.
• Building authority - This is all about creating social visibility by becoming a "legitimate topic expert." You can do this by deploying off-site assets that create brand and topic associations, citations, affiliations, connections and mentions within social media, blogs, publishers, and other relevant authority venues.
• Engagement - Measure onsite user experience and interaction by reviewing analytics for poor engagement. Metrics like high bounce rates indicate that user intent may not be satisfied. Be sure that all content is shareable.

Effective broker websites require a constant evaluation of usability. This is not just a singular event, but an ongoing process that's driven by understanding the needs and behaviors of online real estate consumers. The big portal sites already know this. With this understanding combined with local content that the portals can't compete with, your brokerage's website can easily dominate search results in your area.