The Real Estate Agent Website Checklist: 31 Things Your Site Needs

You would never list a house without walking it first. Yet most agents have never walked their own website with a critical eye. The site was built once, by a brokerage, a nephew, or a template, and it has been quietly not working ever since. Here is the walkthrough. Grade each item yes or no. Anything under twenty five yeses is costing you calls.

Trust: does a stranger believe you in five seconds?

1. Your real name and a recent professional photo above the fold. Not a stock couple on a porch.
2. Your license number and brokerage name visible on every page, usually in the footer. Most states require it and every seller looks for it.
3. Your phone number and email as tap to call and tap to email links, not images.
4. A short, specific statement of who you help and where. "Helping families sell in North Park and University Heights" beats "Your trusted real estate professional".
5. Recent, real client reviews with first names, ideally pulled from Google so they can be verified. If you have not asked for reviews yet, that is item one on your to do list.
6. A physical service area, described in words. Google and sellers both need to know where you work.

Pages: do you have a home for every search you want to win?

1. A page for each neighborhood you serve, with real local detail, not a paragraph and a map. Our neighborhood guide explains what belongs on one.
2. A sellers page written for your city: how pricing works here, what to fix first, what the timeline usually looks like.
3. A buyers page that acknowledges buyers start on portals and explains what you add.
4. An About page that sounds like a person. Where you live, how long you have been licensed, why you do this.
5. A contact page with a form, a phone number, and your hours.
6. A blog with at least one new local article per week. Not because a blog is fashionable, but because every local post is a new door into your site.

Local SEO: can Google tell where you are and what you do?

1. A unique title tag on every page that includes the page topic and your city or neighborhood.
2. A unique meta description on every page, written for a human deciding whether to click.
3. One H1 per page that matches the search you want that page to win.
4. Clean URLs: yoursite.com/north-park-realtor, not yoursite.com/page?id=47.
5. RealEstateAgent or Organization structured data with your name, license, brokerage, phone, and service area.
6. An XML sitemap submitted in Google Search Console, checked monthly.
7. Your name, address, and phone matching your Google Business Profile exactly. Same format, same punctuation.
8. Internal links from every blog post to the neighborhood page it belongs to.

Lead capture: when someone is ready, is it easy?

1. A single clear call to action on every page. One. "Get a home value estimate" or "Schedule a call", not six competing buttons.
2. A short form. Name, email, phone, message. Every extra field costs you a percentage of submissions.
3. A consent line under the form. If you or your tools may text the lead, the form should say so plainly, since you are the one who will be calling them. See the note on TCPA below.
4. Instant notification to you when a form is submitted, with the lead stored somewhere you will actually look. A leads dashboard or your CRM, not a Gmail folder.
5. A thank you page or message that sets expectations: "I will call you within a few hours."

Compliance: will this get you or your broker in trouble?

1. A privacy policy. If you work in California, it should address CCPA and include a do not sell or share link.
2. Fair housing language and the equal housing logo where your brokerage requires it, and no neighborhood copy that steers. Describing a neighborhood as "great for families" or by the makeup of the people who live there is a fair housing problem. Describe the housing stock, the parks, the commute, and the history instead.
3. Texting consent. Prior express written consent is required for marketing texts and calls, and the statutory damages under TCPA are $500 to $1,500 per message (summary). If your site collects phone numbers for texting, collect consent on the form and log it.
4. Accurate testimonials only. The FTC's Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule bans fake or AI fabricated reviews and requires disclosure for reviews from insiders.

Speed and mobile: does it work on a phone in a parking lot?

1. Loads in under three seconds on a mobile connection. Test it on your own phone with wifi off.
2. Readable without zooming. Buttons big enough for a thumb.
3. Images compressed. A twelve megabyte hero photo is the most common reason an agent site is slow.

Ownership: is this actually your site?

1. You own the domain, registered in your name, not your brokerage's or your vendor's. Domain ownership disputes are a known complaint with some platforms (example).
2. You can export your content and your leads if you leave.
3. You are not locked into a contract that outlives your patience. Several major platforms require twelve month agreements plus setup fees (Sierra Interactive, Real Geeks). Know your terms before you sign.

How to use this list

Do not try to fix everything in a weekend. Fix trust first, because nothing else matters if a visitor does not believe you. Then lead capture, because you want the calls from the traffic you already have. Then pages and local SEO, which build over months. Compliance is a one time review with your broker. Speed is usually a single afternoon of compressing images.

If your current platform cannot do most of this list without an upsell, the platform is the problem. A site you cannot edit, cannot add pages to, and cannot export from is a brochure you are renting. Read What a Realtor Website Should Cost in 2026 before you renew.