After a whirlwind tour of the Northeast, my final stop on the conference circuit had me visiting Maine for the very first time. While each conference had it’s own personality and hot topics, Maine was a great chance to get back to basics. We met with a number of our clients and other REALTORS® who were already utilizing an integrated IDX feed on their websites, but most folks we spoke with were still stuck with old-school IDX options.  Many are either framing in listings from the MREIS site or manually adding listings to their sites, both of which have serious drawbacks for users and search engines.

Given the amount of Maine real estate websites using these older technologies, it was a great opportunity for us to explain how Union Street Media sites are built with a fully integrated MLS feed.  We’ve covered the intricacies of integrated MLS feeds before, but here are the basics: with an integrated feed, all listing information across the MLS “lives” on each client’s site instead of pulling in listing information and search tools from an outside source. This integration offers clients an opportunity to enhance their listing information on their individual sites for greater SEO value and offer their potential leads more seamless, comprehensive property search tools. Also, because all information that is added to the MLS is being pulled into each individual site, there’s no need to do twice the work by adding listing information to two platforms or worry that information will be outdated.  We’re happy to note that our clients in Maine already get the benefit of an integrated MLS feed, thus keeping them ahead of the curve, and look forward to helping fill this technology gap for other Maine REALTORS® in the future. In other conference news, John Merse and Dan Kompass will round out the Fall with the Century 21 Fall Fest at Mohegan Sun next week, but the rest of the team is now back in the office full-time now and looking forward to connecting with current clients and new contacts as we head into the winter season. Special thanks to the following clients who stopped by our booth in Rockport: Don Plourde, Pam Natole, Betty Mills, and Rachel Anderson of Coldwell Banker Plourde Real Estate, Mike Baribeau of Century 21 Baribeau Agency, and Sandy Cox of Windjammer Realty.