You sign up for a real estate website on the SiteStakes pricing page. Once you complete signup, site provisioning kicks off automatically and you get a welcome email everything you need to sign in.
The email contains:
Your website goes live instantly.
Once you log in for the first time, the Setup Checklist stays as your default landing page until your site is fully launched, then your dashboard takes over. You can also reach it from the sidebar under Admin → Setup Checklist, or by clicking the Setup: X% badge that appears in the top right bar whenever setup is incomplete.
Whenever you complete a task, it automatically checks it as done. If you change something in another tab, click Recheck or pop back to the checklist — it catches up right away.
The 9 steps to launch your real estate website simplify your journey to make it easier. You can work through them in any order — the sequence below is what most users find easiest.
This is the foundation everything else builds on. Without it, your AI-generated content has nowhere to anchor itself and it guides your local SEO.
Five sub-tasks under Admin → Service Area and Branding:
First impressions start at the bottom. Open Branding → Customize Footer and fill in your business name, phone, address, email, company description, and social links.
Your footer carries your NAP — Name, Address, Phone Number. Google compares your NAP across your website and online directories like Google Business, Yelp, and BBB.
When Name, Address, Phone Number match across every listing, Google ranks you higher in local search.
This is the fun section where you can customize your design to look and feel uniquely yours. Go to Design → Designs / Styles.
From here you can choose a design (style pack) and also customize colors:
The default Style Pack works fine, but switching to one that matches your brand is the difference between "looks like a template" and "this person knows what they're doing."
Next Configure SEO Settings to connect the services that track and measure your performance. This keeps any guesswork out — you'll know exactly where your visitors come from, which pages they read, and which marketing efforts are paying off.
Go to SEO → Configure Settings. The page has two tabs. On the Connections tab, fill in each card:
Once connected, tracking scripts load on every page automatically. The Performance tab on the same page shows your Google Search Console data — clicks, impressions, top keywords.
SEO → AI Traffic is a similar dashboard for AI search engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. When AI engines crawl or cite your site, you'll see it here.
A homepage targets one city. Google can only index a city that is mentioned by name. Each location page is a new door into your site from Google for "we buy houses in [city]" searches your homepage can't reach.
From your back office, open SEO → Location Pages. Add the cities you serve, one per row. For each city, click Generate Page — AI writes a unique page, then you review and publish.
SMS, or text notifications, ensure you never miss a lead. When you get a text alert the moment someone submits a form means you can call back within minutes — often the difference between booking the appointment and losing the lead to a competitor who responded faster.
Open Squeeze Forms & SMS → SMS. Add the phone number(s) that should receive a text on each new lead, set quiet hours if you don't want middle-of-the-night pings, and review the message template.
Faster sites rank higher and convert better. Property photos are heavy — a typical real estate image is 3MB. Load ten of them and you've blown past Google's speed targets, hurting rankings and bouncing visitors.
SiteStakes automatically optimizes images but Cloudflare image boost takes image speed to the next level.
Open Integrations → Image Settings and click Activate next to Image Boost. Every image on your site routes through Cloudflare's CDN, dropping file sizes by up to 97% without any visible quality loss. It also serves images from the location closest to the visitor.
Save time, automate workflows, and connect the tools your business already relies on — all from one centralized dashboard. This allows you to scale infinitely with no limitations.
Go to Integrations → All Integrations and connect:
Click Test Connection on each one after pasting credentials.
Your website is delivered with SEO-optimized content, but it isn't 100% unique. Other customers in other cities started from the same templates.
Personalize key sections so your site doesn't sound like every other one on the internet — while keeping the SEO benefits intact.
Even though AI can re-write a full page, to keep things accurate, it's best to customize section by section. With AI, this takes a few clicks per page and a little editing here and there.
Go to Design → Page Builder. Pick a page from the dropdown. The builder loads with three tabs: Edit, SEO, and AI. To rewrite a section:
Start with the homepage hero and About section — those are the highest-leverage rewrites.
Every post is a new page Google can index and rank. When you sign up, we've given you some bonus blog and IA credits to get you started.
Target to schedule 2-3 posts a week and watch leads flow in naturally. Every post is a new door into your site from Google.
You don't have to complete all 9 steps before your site goes live — your site went live the moment you complete signup. The 9 steps make it fully yours.
In most cases, setting up your real estate website and fully personalizing it can take 2-3 hours.
Most people split it across two or three sessions in their first week.
From your back office sidebar, click Admin > Setup Checklist. You'll see your site URL.
Yes.
However, start with configuring your website settings. This personalizes your website. Most other features depend on the information you provide here.
The checklist watches your site, not your browser. Whatever you've saved is saved. Log back in and the checklist picks up exactly where it left off.