Commercial real estate market pages can help prospects compare locations when your content answers local questions with evidence they can check.
A list of cities does not tell you whether we can service a particular type of building or not and whether we have updated the information for that location recently.
So settle on the source material and the update process before you even choose a page design to launch with.
A pretty launch of your new listings page can be worth nothing if several claims are left to nobody.
This six-check workflow serves as a shared framework for your writer, broker and website designer to develop useful location pages based on the same framework for building said pages.
Use this to develop out the structure for one market, then replicate for subsequent markets.
If you are planning market content for a new website, get my website design price list and bring your first market brief to the scope discussion.
Deciding who supplies and maintains the content will help you ask better questions about the website work.
Each market page needs a specific reader.
Begin with the reader to the page and the decision that reader must make.
A small industrial tenant with loading requirements needs a different set of information to understand the merits of different representation services than an owner comparing options.
Before you collect local information of value to anyone, choose a primary reader to establish the audience for your work.
This would be a reader such as a business owner looking at different locations within an employment corridor for their small industrial unit.
Useful questions for a design brief around this information would be: What types of buildings exist in the area?
What issues would need to be researched?
Who would one contact for local leasing?
Write these questions into the brief before the whole team starts work on creating the introductory blurb for the hypothetical industrial leasing page.
The geographic boundary should be explicit.
A city, a postal area and a brokerage submarket do not automatically equal each other.
Explain the boundary (and keep supporting claims within the boundary of that definition).
If your team refers to a custom corridor name, outline the boundaries of the area in question (e.g. by referencing specific roads or landmarks).
Do not assume others are familiar with the given name.
You cannot treat a corridor as if it were the entire city and cite a citywide population estimate as “fact” about the corridor.
The source must match the page.
The brief should set limits on coverage.
A list of services your team offers in that area.
Do not add nearby cities of the same template name.
If you cannot explain the differences between two proposed pages then combine the useful information from both of them.
If there is no useful information then do not keep the second draft.
I would rather set up one clear page than create lots of similar pages.
This is a scope decision that you can make prior to paying for more layouts, photos, etc. and ongoing edits.
Every claim needs a traceable source.
Create a source record for each of the factual assertions on the page that you are going to write about.
This record should contain the proposed wording as well as the original publisher of the wording, plus a link to the full source, coverage, time period covered, date retrieved, and reviewer.
For those references that are approved to be included as internal references, save a copy of the short reference to pass on to the editor to review in conjunction with the approved wording.
A link by itself is not a useful handoff unless someone has documented which particular sentence or wording that link supported.
Keep the evidence separate from the short reference notes used to create the readable content for visitors to your site.
Official sources still need context.
The Census Bureau’s ACS estimates guidance distinguishes one-year and five-year estimates, which represent different collection periods.
A five-year estimate is not a count that you pull on the day your article goes live.
Record the time period covered by your data and the geographic area(s) covered before deciding whether a demographic statement about a particular group will add value to your readers.
If the best evidence available does not support a very specific geographic description then go with a broader statement and honestly label it as such or leave it out altogether.
Don’t make up a neighborhood number by dividing the citywide total.
An overview of a department is intended to lead to relevant records, not to prove if a certain tenant use is permitted on a certain plot of land.
Verify the actual document(s) and status prior to summarizing a proposal or approval.
I continue to keep proposed projects marked as “proposed” until their status is confirmed by the relevant authority’s records.
Caveats from the original source should be carried forward where they affect the conclusion of the reader.
Resolves the conflicting dates and definitions before choosing the ‘better’ number.
Local evidence should answer real questions.
Now gather all the material needed to make this page useful in its own right.
This could include authorized local photography of the area, dated examples of local property and the broker’s explanation of common local queries.
Rather than rephrase a large paragraph describing the thriving business community of an area, ask the broker to verify certain concrete observations.
For example, would loading be available across the entire park or just in certain buildings?
The page should explain the difference between the two, not make up a specification for the area as a whole.
Local observations need labels and permission.
Record who provided the information for each observation and the date it was collected.
Distinguish between an attributed professional opinion and a measured market statistic.
A broker’s view of what tenants are commonly looking for with respect to parking does not necessarily translate into a claim about a shortage of parking in a district which is entirely supplied by that broker.
Please obtain permission to name a client, display a completed transaction, or quote a conversation with the client.
I would also like to know if the brokerage will continue to use the examples after the completion of the assignment.
Your website brief should not depend on permission that nobody can locate later.
Record the original file, the photographer or rights holder, the permission to use the image, the location and date that the image was taken for each photograph.
Caption images showing the property and clearly state whether the property is currently for sale and whether it is available.
A photo of a business park does not necessarily mean all buildings on that park have the same level of access to amenities.
Do not include recognizable people or other identifying characteristics in a photo where their use is not authorized.
If using a conceptual illustration ensure that you label it appropriately and do not represent it as a local photograph.
This local evidence makes the page specific but clearly sets out the limits of each example.
The content handoff should be complete.
Send the designer a complete sample page before asking for a whole library of market layouts.
As the creator of commercial real estate websites, I work to ensure that a clear content handoff is made to support the information you have.
The content handoff includes approved copy, evidence links, image permits, contact information and the primary action a visitor should complete on the web site.
Make sure to title each file and clearly identify the “approved” version so you don’t accidentally reinsert an old paragraph while laying out the content.
Separate internal reviewer notes from the public copy.
Each page component should have a purpose.
State who you are servicing and what local area the page is covering in the opening section of the page.
The local overview answers the questions of the audience with the evidence collected.
Instead of showing examples of properties for sale, explain the relevance of each image and whether they are currently for sale or not.
Contact area – clearly state who the reader can contact with regards to the local market covered by the page.
If no suitable listings are available then a relevant conversation should be offered instead of an empty results panel that looks broken.
List out the desired components (heading, image, caption, link, update owner) for the local overview page.
Indicate to designer which fields can be edited and which require approval before changed.
See how you can avoid an empty card by omitting an unreliable statistic.
Don’t force an owner to put a number into a decorative field if they have no way of keeping it up to date with a reliable source.
A flexible page can be just as useful in quiet times as in busy times.
For ideas to support the material around your market page, explore my Free Marketing Resources.
Choose a resource that fits your reader’s next question instead of adding a download just to fill a section.
Updates need an owner and a trigger.
Treat maintenance of the page as part of the page brief, not as something that the designer will vaguely remember to do after the page has launched.
Name the Content Owner, Fact Checker, Publisher and Backup for each of the roles listed above.
Just because one person does fill several roles in a small brokerage does not mean that all responsibilities can be obscure.
My recommendation is to list the next review date for every changeable claim in the internal record.
Visible review date on page should reflect real review, not automatic calendar update.
Different facts need different review triggers.
An immediate routing and copy check must be triggered by a contact change.
The status of a property changes, check example, photo caption for property and any related links.
Also check statistics for new public reports for changes based on previous releases.
Schedule a review of planning information when a material change is recorded by the relevant authority.
Set a scheduled review as a backstop in case no direct notification is triggered.
The frequency of the link check and the content review could be set as a starting point and then be adapted to the respective market.
Write down the fallback steps for evidence expiration or lack of response from the owner.
The fallback to not having notified could be to remove the particular statistic from the statistics section whilst leaving the rest of the location information intact.
It might mean marking an old report as historical and linking to the original source.
Avoid leaving stale information on the site about past availability as updating the whole page to reflect current information is a big task.
These small updates are generally easier to make than the vague statement to update the whole page.
Record changes in a log with old and new text, source, approval and publication date.
This helps the next person to update the page to understand the reasoning behind the change.
This also prevents someone from reinstating a lovely statement that has been removed for lack of evidence.
The final review should test usefulness.
Read the draft as a visitor to a website before reading it as a checklist to mark against the brief.
Can the person reading the review identify the area(s) that need to be addressed, understand the role of the brokerage and know what action to take next?
Can the reviewer trace a material fact back to the exact source record?
More words of promotional blurb will not solve the problem if the answers to these questions are unclear.
Go back to the brief and fix the missing answer first.
The page should work without a city-name swap.
Read the draft with the place name covered.
Look for local evidence, defined boundaries, and explanations that would stop the page from fitting any other city unchanged.
This is an editorial exercise rather than a formula for search rankings.
Google’s spam policies describe doorway abuse and scaled content abuse, including patterns where pages primarily serve search manipulation rather than users.
Please don’t turn this into a quota for near-identical location pages.
A source-backed page is worth having only if it actually helps to serve some real reader.
Test all hyperlinks, contact page destinations, image captions and mobile formatting before approval.
Check that the market inquiry is sent to the right people and that you receive a confirmation with details of the next steps.
Keep confidential client details out of test messages.
Make sure the person responsible for future edits can amend the source note and preview the change without having to guess at the way it will look.
Can the editing team complete one sample edit before handing over to your team?
If your market pages need a clearer structure and a manageable editing process, get my website design price list before setting the project scope.
For more website and marketing ideas, browse my helpful video walkthroughs and tools and choose the topics that fit your project.
Market page questions need clear answers.
What should commercial real estate market pages include?
Commercial real estate market pages should define the area, explain the brokerage’s relevant services, answer local property questions, identify supporting sources, and offer a clear contact route.
How much source material is enough for a location page?
Collect enough verified material to answer the page’s specific reader questions without filling gaps with generic claims or unsupported numbers.
How often should market content be updated?
Set review dates around how quickly each fact changes, and trigger earlier checks when contacts, property status, public reports, or planning records change.
Can the same layout serve several markets?
A shared layout can support consistent editing, but each page still needs evidence and explanations that apply to its own area and audience.
What should happen when a source is no longer current?
Review the claim, replace it with supported wording or remove it, and keep a record of the decision instead of changing the review date alone.
