Real estate websites should have a distinct purpose, otherwise it is just one of the many, cluttering up the back pages of search engine results.

Before choosing anything, here are some probing questions to answer:

• Will your site be niche based? Either geographic, lifestyle, price range, etc.
• Do you plan to link it up to your Pinterest page?
• Will you have enough time, energy and inspiration to blog about your local neighborhoods/market?
• Will your site be image heavy, fed maybe by Instagram?
• Do you plan on collecting email addresses to use for an email marketing campaign?
• Is your site going to be focused on finding buyers or are you planning to post market reports for existing sellers?

Set out your plan in writing.

Create clear goals with actionable items and time scales for completion. If your answers created more questions you can't answer, maybe you need some brainstorming sessions, or more focused help.

If you now have a clearer idea of your purpose, NOW and only now, can you plan out your site.

Let's use Instagram as an example:

You can start looking at sites and or templates (here's an example) that might have similar goals to yours.

You don't necessarily need to choose a theme that supports Instagram. There are plenty of free and premium WordPress plugins that you can add to almost any template. They will pull photos into your blogsite and display them in a gallery.

You could set up galleries by lifestyle or perhaps neighborhoods. You might even invite your visitors to upload their own photos, to create a real sense of community.

You could use a WordPress plugin named Frontend Uploader that will hold images for moderation and allows uploading multiple images.

Wouldn't it be fun to set up a photo contest? There is even an app for that, with a way to embed the contest back into your site.

The translation of these goals into your site will only be bounded by your imagination.

If you need help brainstorming or getting set up, please get in touch!

To view the original article, visit the Web Real Estate Tools blog.