Technology

Who leads the pack for commercial property websites in the UK? Part 3: Site Traffic

Anthony Marshall
Anthony Marshall
4 Mar 2010
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(Part 3/5)

Read ‘Who leads the pack for commercial property websites in the UK? Part 1: Website Grader’

Read ‘Who leads the pack for commercial property websites in the UK? Part 2: Google Page Rank and Inbound Links’

In the previous parts of this blog series we looked at the marketing effectiveness ratings of UK commercial property websites according to WebsiteGrader.com and at Google Page Rank and inbound links (according to Alexa.com). Now we turn our attention to website traffic.

Traffic

Using Alexa.com (established as the most used website for traffic stats) we looked at the rank (in terms of traffic) both globally and for UK based visitors. The following table looks at the global traffic rank (e.g. google.com is ranked at number 1): Top UK Commercial Property Websites (Alexa Global Traffic Rank)

This definitely weights towards the multinational commercial property organisations such as CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, Instant Offices, Jones Laing LaSalle & Chesterton. This therefore begs an obvious next question: “What does this table look like if we looked at UK traffic figures?” (which is what we are focussing on in this analysis). Does this change the list much?

The following table outlines ranking for UK traffic only:

Top UK Commercial Property Websites (Alexa UK Traffic Rank)

The simple answer is that 75% of the companies are the same as the global list. However, you do see significant differences. For example:

Scottish Property, Eddisons, Commercial Property Database, Goadsby, and Bidwells make it onto the list despite their UK only focus. However, as an example we would like to use Paramount Investments which comes in 23rd on the list. Paramount Investments are a commercial property investment consultancy based in London whose online marketing is an example of what it takes to punch well above your weight on this list. They track and monitor their search engine positioning on keywords such as "Freehold Pubs for Sale" and publish market leading blogs with the latest news and information on their specialist commercial property investment niches. Then they collate their KPIs (traffic sources, conversions, leads, click through rates) and implement changes that impact on their top and bottom line.

It is probably those that disappear from the list that are more interesting. These are CBRE (#2), Cushman & Wakefield (#3), Jones Lang LaSalle (#6), DTZ (#12) and The Crown Estate (#20). This really demonstrates the value of localised SEO activity and how Google’s algorithm is very specific to search terms and location. Just because you have a Google Page Rank of 7, WebsiteGrader score of 98/100 and rank #3 on the global traffic list (as Cushman & Wakefield do), you are not guaranteed a first page slot on Google when searching for “Offices in Basingstoke”.

This list also shows how UK focused portals really come into their own, probably due to their targeted SEO efforts, combined with their nationally distributed, larger property portfolios. EGPropertyLink, ShopProperty and NovaLoca all appear in the top 10 sites for traffic in the UK.

Read ‘Who leads the pack for commercial property websites in the UK? Part 4: The Top 100’

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