Every search engine, be it Google, Bing, or Yahoo, has an algorithm that crawls web pages and determines which pages to show when people are searching using the relevant keywords.
The real estate industry is highly competitive and almost all of them are involved in digital marketing and have their own websites. There are also some businesses that spend a huge amount of money on Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads to reach their customers.
But, there are other ways for you to market your brand without having to spend so much money on advertising. That is by optimizing your website content so that it appears on the search results whenever a user searches using the relevant keywords.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help your websites in many ways. For real estate agents, who might have to work harder to get quality leads, this is a great opportunity to get them without having to spend much.
What Is Real Estate SEO?
Real Estate SEO is a process to optimize online content to attract and gain organic leads from potential customers. Contrary to paid advertising, where you have to pay to reach your customers, the leads generated through SEO are less expensive.
You get these leads because your website content ranks on the search engine results page (SERP). SEO plays a great role in ranking your website on search engines.
Google has several ranking factors it considers before ranking a website. But its main concern is user satisfaction and credibility of the websites.
So, to rank higher in search engines, you need to create user-centric, authentic websites that give all information your customers are searching for.
Real Estate marketers use SEO to increase the visibility of their websites and get more organic traffic.
Real estate agents can use SEO to rank higher and showcase their properties and services to their target audience without spending much money.
Why Is SEO Important for Real Estate Agencies?
You might wonder what SEO has to do with real estate. You might think that when people search for “real estate property near me,” you will automatically appear in their search results. But that is not so.
There are a huge number of real estate agencies that are ready to compete with you for customers. Amidst such competition, you need to do the relevant SEO strategies and optimize your website to appear in front of your target audience.
Optimizing your website gives you a chance to
- be a step ahead of your competitors and reach customers first,
- increase the possibilities of generating quality leads, and
- generate revenue and grow your real estate business.
Here are some reasons you should start investing your time and effort in SEO strategies for your websites.
Create brand awareness
The main reason a business will start investing in digital marketing is to get as many people aware of their business as possible. Real estate SEO can help you establish your business as a trustworthy source for real estate-related services.
Increase traffic and generate revenue
Optimizing your website according to SEO standards can make you visible to your target customers and increase traffic to your website. If your customers find your content relevant and decide to convert it into customers, it will lead to revenue generation and can help with the growth of your business.
Build brand authority
The more content you post on your website and the more you optimize it to rank higher in search engines, the more your customers will believe in the credibility of your brand.
Using the right SEO strategy and optimizing your website can build brand authority and increase the trust your customers have in your brand.
What Makes Real Estate SEO Different from Other Industries’ SEO?
Unlike other businesses, real estate is a large business that requires customers to spend a large amount of money.
This makes it a complex field that requires great work to attract the right audience who are willing to spend money on your properties.
The involvement of the hefty sum needed in real estate also makes the customer journey a long process.
Real estate is unlike your skin products, where you can try other products if one doesn’t work out. It is a one-time journey, and you can imagine its importance from how long customers take to decide on a property.
You can’t stay idle during this period. You should know that customers go through several other real estate agencies to choose the best property for their budget. So you need to constantly communicate with them so they don’t forget about you.
Another factor that differentiates real estate SEO from others is keyword ranking. Usually, real estate agents focus on ranking for location-based keywords.
But since people first search for properties on a broader scale and then narrow it down, real estate agents should strive to rank in both local and broader searches.
Steps to Follow While Doing SEO for Real Estate Websites
To make sure you do everything right and make the best out of your SEO efforts, create a step-by-step process that you can easily understand and follow.
Here are the steps you can follow while optimizing your website.
- Identify your competitors
Want to know the best way to rank and be visible to your customers? It’s quite simple. Just identify the websites that already rank on the first page for your specific keyword. They are your competitors.
Analyze and identify what methods they use and what strategies they follow to be ranked higher than others. Optimize them according to your brand value and implement them in your websites.
Here are some aspects that you should analyze in your competitor’s web pages.
- What keywords do they use and how do they use them?
- For which of those keywords do they rank?
- How many backlinks do they have?
- How many web pages do their websites have?
- How much content have they published?
- What is the quality of their website and content?
Understand all these data and incorporate them into your SEO strategies. Optimizing them regularly can give you the desired results over time.
- Conduct technical SEO audit
Conducting SEO audits can help you identify which web pages are performing well and which need improvement with regard to user experience.
By evaluating various aspects of a web page, you can identify where they are lacking and what stops those pages from ranking.
Some things to consider while conducting SEO audits are
- site speed,
- web page indexing,
- page loading speed,
- responsiveness,
- hosting features, and
- mobile friendliness of the websites.
Below are the areas of a website that need an SEO audit.
- Site structure: XML sitemap, redirects, robots.txt
- Page structure: Titles, meta descriptions, URLs, headers, alt tags
- Links: Internal and external links, broken links, etc.
- Content: Content structure, keyword, link placement, canonical tags, redirects, visual elements (images, videos, etc.), duplicates
- Usability: Site loading speed, accessibility, mobile friendliness
- Identify and use the right keywords
Keywords are none other than the terms that users use to search for something on the Internet.
They are one of the most important ranking factors in SEO, because it is how search engines identify the relevancy of your content in relation to the search query.
For real estate SEO, you need to identify terms that customers use when searching for housing and properties.
Do comprehensive research and identify which keywords have the highest search volume and use them in your content.
Here are some areas of your website where you can use your keywords for better ranking.
- Title tags
- Meta descriptions
- Image alt text
- Anchor text
- Headers (H1, H2, H3, etc.)
- Content in your web pages
Note that just because you need to use keywords in many places, it doesn’t mean you can go around stuffing them at every nook and corner of your website. It is called “keyword stuffing,” and Google will easily identify if you do them and won’t rank your website.
- Create and optimize your Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile is none other than Google My Business. Its name was changed very recently to intrude many new business profile management changes in Google Search, Google Maps, and other Google apps.
There are also many new features that can help you reach and connect with your audience sooner.
Creating a Google Business Profile can benefit you in many ways. You can add quality information about your business, add contact details, add photos and videos, and create posts about updates, services, and other events.
You can give your customers your complete details and let them understand you better. This will make it easier for your customers to reach out to you.
There is a high chance for people who contact you through your business profile to convert into customers because they only contact you after going through your profile.
- Site architecture
Site architecture is how you organize and allot all the content in your website for better clarity and understanding for both search engine crawlers and website visitors.
It includes the planning and structuring web pages, links, functional interface, visual appearance, and many other aspects of the website.
This is done before the design and development of the website and is very beneficial for the website.
Site architecture is very important for a website’s on-page and technical SEO to build high-quality content with crawl accessibility and topical authority.
- Optimize your content
Content optimization involves creating and optimizing content so that it will be easier for customers to view your pages and understand them. It also plays a part in Google ranking, because it involves using the right keywords in the right places.
Focus on creating quality content that will be useful and informative for your customers and make sure they get what they need from it.
The most valuable content is the one that answers the user’s search query and provides new information that they can’t find elsewhere.
- Link building
Link building is a must-have factor if you wish to build trust and authority for your real estate websites.
Backlinks are links that you get from other authoritative websites in your particular niche, here, real estate.
Below are some of the most common methods of link building.
- Guest posting: You write an article and post it on another website.
- Resource link building: You have valuable information that can be featured on other websites.
- Broken links: You replace the out-of-date links on other websites with your links.
- Editorial links: You have your link placed in an existing article.
An important factor you should take note of while building links is to get them from high-quality websites that have authority in their field.
Don’t rush for immediate success and get links from low-quality link sellers. It will entirely ruin your SEO efforts
Real Estate SEO Best Practices
Now that you have learned the steps involved in SEO and some important steps for website optimization, let’s look at some best practices you need to keep in mind while creating your SEO strategy.
- Include relevant keywords in titles and descriptions. Use keyword tools like Ubersuggest and look into all the keywords available for your niche.
- Make your websites mobile-friendly. Most searches nowadays happen via mobile devices.
- Include local keywords in your website content so that people who are searching for properties near you can view your websites
- Use relevant images. You can add clear, highly-quality images of your real estate properties to give clients an idea about what facilities are available.
- You can add your location on web page titles and tags. This will allow search engines to identify your location and show your site to people searching for properties in that area.
- Make use of social media channels. Social media is one of the areas where you can capture most of your audience, so leverage it tactfully.
- Get reviews and testimonials from your existing or previous clients. Word of mouth is one of the best ways to gain the trust of your potential customers. So make sure to get them and place them on your web pages where it is clearly visible.
- Take your prospects on a virtual tour and give them real-time knowledge about the property. This helps clients understand more clearly the layout and structure of your property and motivate them to buy them.
Conclusion
Despite the fierce competition you are up against in the real estate market, you have great opportunities to win over your customers if you implement the necessary strategies.
Implementing SEO and optimizing your websites can make you dominate local search, get ranked higher, and get more quality leads.
If you are new to SEO and don’t know how to leverage it, you can seek the help of digital marketing agencies that provide you with effective SEO and other marketing services for your business’s growth.
Frequently Asked Questions
Real estate SEO is a process of optimizing online content to attract and gain organic leads from potential customers. Contrary to paid advertising, where you have to pay to reach your customers, the leads generated through SEO are less expensive.
You get these leads because your website content ranks on the search engine results page (SERP). And SEO plays a great role in ranking your website on search engines.
Yes, SEO can do wonders for your business and make it incredibly successful. SEO is one of the best ways to increase organic traffic and get qualified leads by spending a minimal amount of money.
However, SEO can’t give you immediate results. It is a long process that takes time to give you the desired results.
Follow these steps to improve and enhance your website’s performance.
- Choose the right keywords for your website.
- Optimize your website for mobile usage.
- Create quality content for your website.
- Build backlinks.
- Localize your SEO efforts.
- Stat writing blogs on your niche and publish them regularly.