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17 kB · 118 lines · Created 5mo ago
123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990919293949596979899100101102103104105106107108109110111112113114115116117118※ recap: building dad (Mike Nowack, Broadway Real Estate, Menominee MI) a SEO-tuned static listings site on wisp.place to compete with Zillow; v1 is deployed at sites.wisp.place/zzstoatzz.io/listings with all 17 active listings. Next: claim mike.wisp.place subdomain and redeploy so canonical URLs are clean. (disable recaps in /config)
❯ Excellent. That works. I just shared this with my dad, and he was amazed. And it's exactly what he wants. But the question now becomes, how do you put... We can change the domain, we can buy a domain for him, etc. we're not going to get a subdomain of Wisp we would just buy our own domain and use our own domain that's fine, we could do that that's not, we're not ready for that sort of like polish work the hard part the structural problem is that how do you get this link in front of the people who want to buy one of the houses that he has a listing for it becomes a problem with SEO, right? It's like Zillow. Apparently what he was saying is that Zillow has like a bidding system whereby agents sort of pay Zillow for the rights to be the one that people call when they find a property listed on Zillow. So you could try to sneak a personal website link like this one into Zillow. By saying, well, I'm the original owner of a listing. And maybe Zillow lets you sneak it in there. But that would undercut their whole paradigm of bidding, right? Because if you can just go directly to the listing owner, why wouldn't you as a user who's looking or as a buyer, right? So Zillow is probably not going to allow that. So do you take your listings off of MLS and try to say, well, I'm the original owner of a listing. And maybe Zillow lets you sneak it in there. But that would undercut their whole paradigm of bidding, right? Because if you can just go directly to the listing owner, why wouldn't you as a user who's looking or as a buyer, right? So Zillow is probably not going to allow that. So do you take your listings off of MLS and try to say, well, you buy a billboard and you say like if you want to buy a house, go to this website that I own. But then it seems like maybe you run a risk of like people just not finding the properties that are surfaced because Zillow does good SEO. I don't know. So basically, there's still this structural problem here. So I'm not really sure what to do about that.
⏺ honest answer: you've named the right problem, and a personal site cannot beat Zillow at generic SEO in any reasonable timeframe. their domain authority is 20 years deep, their backlink graph is enormous, and "homes for sale menominee mi" is theirs forever. but that's the wrong frame. the site's job is different from what you're imagining.
let me work through the options actually on the table:
--- 1. "take it off MLS" — non-starter.
three reasons: - Clear Cooperation Policy (NAR rule, 2020). once a listing is publicly marketed, it has to be in the MLS within 1 business day. publicly listing it on dad's site while keeping it off MLS is a violation that can get him sanctioned by the local board. - the seller doesn't want this. ~90% of buyers find homes through MLS-fed channels (portals + buyer's agents). pulling a listing off MLS in a small market shrinks the buyer pool to whoever stumbles onto dad's site. a fiduciary won't do that to a seller; sellers wouldn't sign with him if he proposed it. - Zillow scrapes from MLS. dad doesn't control whether Zillow shows his listings. as long as the seller wants them on MLS (they always do), they'll be on Zillow.
2. "sneak the link onto Zillow" — also dead.
Zillow's entire moat is selling the phone number on the listing page. they scrub agent URLs, contact info, anything that bypasses their lead routing. they have a 100-person team whose job is exactly that.
3. beat them at SEO — partial yes, partial no. - generic queries ("homes for sale menominee MI") → impossible. - address-specific queries ("1506 39th Avenue Menominee") → actually achievable for the first 2-6 weeks of a fresh listing, before Zillow's authority compounds. our schema.org markup helps Google render dad's price/photo in the SERP, but ranking still needs backlinks + age. we'd want broadwayrealestate.com → link to mikenowack.com from his agent page, plus local chamber, local newspaper, Facebook page, etc. - long-tail intent ("riverfront land menominee county under 100k") → very achievable with content. portals are bad at filtered intent.
so SEO is a partial win, mostly on long-tail and brand queries. not a substitute for the portals on head queries.
--- so what is the site actually for?
it's the destination for channels dad already controls. SEO is one channel; it's not the highest-leverage one.
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ channel │ dad controls? │ leverage │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ yard signs with QR codes → mikenowack.com/{address} │ 100% │ huge — every active listing becomes a free physical billboard pointing at his domain, not Zillow's. │ │ │ │ drive-by traffic in small towns is real. │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ business cards / brochures with URL │ 100% │ high. existing relationship → URL → site → call him │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Google Business Profile for "Mike Nowack, REALTOR" │ 100% │ high for local/branded queries. free. │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ email list of past clients + interested buyers │ 100% │ huge. send new listings the day they go live, before they're scattered across portals. │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ referral network (his existing 30+ year book) │ 100% │ already his strongest channel; the site reinforces it ("here, look at my page") │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Facebook business page linking to mikenowack.com │ 100% │ local social = small markets are facebook markets │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Broadway brokerage site → his agent page → │ 80% (asks │ moderate — domain authority transfer + branded SEO │ │ mikenowack.com link │ broker) │ │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ paid Facebook ads targeted Menominee/Marinette ZIPs │ 100% │ cheap in a small market; direct-response model │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ local sponsorships / chamber listings │ 100% │ backlinks + local trust signals │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ trying to outrank Zillow on generic queries │ 0% │ basically zero — don't fight here │ └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
the realization: Zillow charges agents ~$1k-$5k/month per zip code to be the one who answers calls (Premier Agent). that's advertising. dad's site doesn't compete with Zillow's organic traffic — it competes with Zillow's ad inventory, by giving dad a destination for the channels Zillow can't touch (yard signs, in-person, email, social, brand search).
zillow only wins the strangers searching "homes menominee" cold. dad's site wins: - everyone who already knows him - everyone who drives by his yard sign - everyone who gets his email - everyone who searches his name or his brokerage - and a chunk of address-specific queries when listings are fresh
--- concrete next experiments (cheapest first):
1. buy mikenowack.com (or nowackrealestate.com). $12/yr. instantly more legitimate than the wisp.place URL and survives any platform changes. 2. print yard-sign rider stickers with a QR code → mikenowack.com/{address-slug}. test on his next 2-3 listings. count scans (we can add a tiny tracking pixel without inline JS — just unique image URLs). 3. Google Business Profile claim + photos + hours. 1 hour of work. branded-query SEO unlock. 4. ask broker at Broadway to add a mikenowack.com link to his bio on broadwayrealestate.com. one email; massive backlink-quality boost. 5. email list: add a "get new listings before they hit Zillow" form to the site. Broadway probably has past-client emails dad could legitimately import.
then in 6 months, evaluate: what % of his calls came via the site? if it's 10%+ of leads, double down. if 1%, the lesson is real estate is a relationship business and the site is just a credential.
--- the atproto angle (long horizon):
the structural problem you're identifying — agents losing leads to portals that didn't generate the data — is the same structural problem MLS itself was supposed to solve. the reason Zillow won is that MLS gave away the data without controlling distribution. an atproto-native real-estate lexicon (com.zzstoatzz.realestate.listing) is interesting because:
- listings live on the agent's PDS — they own the canonical data, full stop. - a relay + AppView aggregates all of them — like MLS, but the agents own the records. - any frontend can build on it — competitors to Zillow show up, with the listing-agent's contact info as an enforced part of the schema, not a scrubbable field. - backlinks compose in the network — slingshot/constellation give you free distribution to anyone building on it.
this is a 5-agent / one-frontend problem, not a one-agent problem. won't help dad this quarter. but it's the right shape of the longer answer to "why does Zillow get to monetize my data."
--- so: the structural problem is real, but it's not "the site can't beat Zillow." it's "real estate lead generation is mostly relationships + direct response, and the site is the destination for those channels — not a Zillow killer." the highest-leverage thing dad can do this week is put a QR code on a yard sign.
want me to add per-listing QR codes to the build (printable PDF for sign riders) as the next change?