Having an "areas served" list on home page

[judyo]

I'm sure most agents are like me where their office is located in one town but they work in several or many other cities. I work in Chicago, my town of Oak Lawn & preferably within a 30 minute travel radius. That includes a lot of different cities.

I've seen some sites (my own as well) that list the cities they serve on their home page. Some sites have links (internal or external) from these towns listed.

Does anyone have an opinion on whether this is simply helpful to potential clients or is there any other value in doing this? I would assume that if internal pages are made for these towns that might have a benefit.

I already have a links page for all of these cities so should I also link these (externally) from my current website (the list of cities from the home page). I'm working on a brand new site where I'll be able to create internal pages as I'm limited on my current template site.

[Las Vegas Homes]

Listing the cities you work in is good for your consumers. This will also drive specific customers to you, as they will know you work those areas. It also IMHO shows a certain level of expertise to your consumers to have those listed on your real estate site. It also says to the consumer that you are not a jack of all trades and that you only work certain areas within your real estate market and those areas are what you have a knowledge of.

[ResaleBroker]

Does anyone have an opinion on whether this is simply helpful to potential clients or is there any other value in doing this? I would assume that if internal pages are made for these towns that might have a benefit.IMO, this is a great idea for consumers and the search engines.

[Real Estate Forum]

Absolutely - I believe that generally what works best for the consumer, does work best with the search engines as well ... or at least will do so long term speaking.
I personally would list the areas on the home page as links and possibly embedded in some surrounding text ( more of an seo thing ).
You can also feature them on your site map of course and will be more likely than not rank for those specific areas as well.
people who type in those small areas are often the ones who know exactly what they want and are more likely to become clients :)

That's just MO ... correct me if I'm wrong.


Mike