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Reliance helps South Dakota’s oldest brokerage embrace the new

Craig C. Rowe; Canva

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Real estate software and marketing services firm Reliance built a new website for Hegg Realtors, South Dakota’s most tenured brokerage, an April 16 press release shared. The website rests on the domain www.hegg.com and features Reliance’s proprietary home search experience, which the company describes as “cutting-edge” and “hyperlocal.”

Hegg is an affiliate of Berkshire Hathaway and owned by Edina Realty. It was founded in 1945 when it specialized in farmland brokerage, later expanding into home sales and commercial realty. It also has a luxury division. Hegg has 170 agents in 10 offices throughout the Mount Rushmore State.

“Our number one goal is to help agents sell more homes,” said Sean McRae, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Reliance, in a statement. “That requires an innovative approach to online marketing for our clients. We were so happy to be able to work side by side with the Hegg team to build a website platform that embraced their unique brand and business model, creating a true market destination for their customers and agents across South Dakota.”

Reliance offers a range of business services to real estate companies on top of website development. Like its peers Luxury Presence, Elm Street Technologies, MoxiWorks and others, the company leads with creative services that integrate with more sophisticated business needs, such as a CRM, localized, SEO-driven home search and other marketing.

The company also offers direct integrations with a wide array of recognized technology providers, including companies such as Adwerx, HomeSpotter, Maxa, ActivePipe and Spacio.

The company’s search functionality rests on the concept of “property-centric” not “listing-centric,” which centers on a single registered URL for every property in perpetuity, each with its own unique content and set of deep, SEO-friendly data. This also helps the brokerage alleviate downstream spends on superfluous SEO upkeep or the arduous task of renovating a website to catch up with competitors.

Reliance said that its search model has been area of focus of late, primarily over the last two years. The emphasis has been on developing SEO as a lead-gen tool first, as opposed to its traditional role as a website traffic driver.

While Reliance has always been a client-centric company operating behind the scenes, over the past two years the firm has concentrated its efforts heavily on developing proptech’s newest search engine with an emphasis on improving search engine optimization (SEO) to drive more traffic and generate more leads and referrals for its clients.

Reliance offers its own customer relationship management system (CRM), complete with agent performance metrics, marketing automations, website content management functionality, multi-source lead routing, print marketing resources, lead analysis and other features critical to agent success. It can back a customer website to create a top-down business management system, easily funneling web traffic into lead nurture efforts.

“Our company and our agents are proud to be supported by a technology company whose focus is making real estate companies better,” said Gregg Gohl, CEO of Hegg in a statement. “We have been extremely happy with the professional services and support that we have received from Reliance during our recent transition.”

Email Craig Rowe