Why you need HTTPS security on your real estate website

We've found many real estate service providers still not offering this critical website feature. Here is why it is important to your estate agency.

 Almost 6 years ago Google indicated HTTPS is a ranking signal for SEO. This prompted service providers like Entegral to offer this as standard feature on it's latest generation Flex real estate websites, and optional on older websites.

In 2018 Google made more 'visual' changes and started showing a 'Not Secure' in its Chrome browser (most popular browser out there) as shown below:




Now this doesn't look particularly good if you are a buyer visiting your agency website right? 
There are various drawbacks for not having an SSL certificate on your agency website:
  • Any information captured by your user (e.g. their contact details on an enquiry form) are transmitted insecurely to your service provider's servers. This data can easily be intercepted and stolen on public WiFi networks.
  • It's a Google Ranking factor as we've indicated, you are doing your website and all your marketing efforts a disservice. With SEO, every little bit helps to your overall page ranking.
  • It affects your website's credibility with users and ultimately search engine rankings, as users favour secure sites. As estate agent, there is nothing more important than building trust.

If your service provider installed an SSL certificate your visitors will notice a 'Connection is secure' message with HTTPS in front of your domain (and not just HTTP):



In 2018 Entegral took this a step further and offered CloudFront technology as standard feature for all new websites. This essentially replicates your website over 100 locations worldwide for faster access and better failover.  In fact, since 2018 we had no downtime on the Flex platform.

Google is rolling out more HTTPS/SSL updates so make sure your real estate website has the basics in place, or check out our Flex websites for your agency and make a switch. 

Google has many ranking factors (with responsive websites another great ranking indicator) and our task at Entegral is to make sure that we continuously optimize for this and keep your agency on the latest technology. 




Popular posts from this blog

Easily link Base with external CRM systems

Image
What is the Base Zapier integration? The Entegral Base system was recently improved with a native Zapier app integration . This allows estate agents to exchange data and create automated workflows with over 2000+ popular apps, including all the leading CRM specific apps.  Why even link a CRM system? Although Base has contact management, contact categories, automatic lead import, and other great CRM features , users sometimes require very specific CRM functions that we don't (yet) cater to. With our Zapier integration , we allow agents to link any popular app with Base. Once linked with your app, you can for instance automatically synchronise your contacts from Base to the external app or vice versa.  The added benefit is that you can create automated workflows and link more apps (e.g. insert contact details into a Mailchimp drip email campaign  and ZOHO CRM at the same time). This makes the Zapier fee irreverent compared to the derived benefits.  Automated portal lead import from
Read more

Property24 acquires Private Property, what do estate agents think?

Image
Property24.com, South Africa’s largest property portal owned by Naspers, has bought rival Private Property . The deal is likely to come under the close scrutiny of competition authorities as it involves the two biggest property portals in the country. Due to the impact of such an acquisition on the industry, Entegral was interested to find out what the perceived advantages and disadvantages of such a deal would be, both through the eyes of the consumer and the estate agent.   Here are the results from around 250 responses received on a survey done over a 2 day period , mostly from agents and agency owners. While the survey presents a small portion of the market (a ccording to the EAAB's latest annual report there are 19,424 registered agents and agency owners, excluding intern estate agents, in South Africa) , f eedback has been received from well-respected agency owners and agents, and we believe this gives a good indication of the current view of agents. The fear from estate
Read more

Listing view insights comes to Base

Image
Entegral clients can now get early access to our new Base listing view stats functionality. It consolidates listing views per day per portal on all your mandates. There is also a rollup feature for the office to track overall views across all listings on participating portals. Once activated, we will start tracking listing views on all your mandates and keep a permanent history of views on all active and inactive listings. Portals supported We're launching with initial support for the following portals: Property24 South Africa and Namibia MyProperty South Africa and Namibia Gumtree South Africa Your own Flex website (any country) Your external website built through the Base API (based on certain requirements) We can support any other portal if they can make your listing view stats available to us Listing statistics forms part of an exciting new and bigger product that we will launch soon and the functionality will be expanded over time. Sign up process Your office administrator
Read more