What is Real Estate SEO?
If you owned a real estate company in the 1990s and you wanted to generate leads to your listings, newspaper ads would have been your first port of call.
The internet has been adopted globally on a large scale, resulting in many changes. Today, a large majority of prospective home buyers are looking online for information and guidance about their home purchases.
Real estate SEO is a marketing strategy that helps get your online business listings in front of people who are interested in them. The site can be used to connect sellers with buyers interested in purchasing a home.
This article will explore how you can take your real estate business to the top of Google rankings. We’ll look at some tips and tricks that you can use to improve your business’ online presence and get ahead of your competition.
What Does SEO Mean in Real Estate?
The main idea of SEO is to improve your ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for certain keywords that are relevant to your business. You can do this by conducting keyword research to find the right keywords to target.
If someone is looking to sell their house quickly in California, they might search on Google for advice on how to do so. California residents searching for this term are likely to be good prospects for your business. Wouldn’t it be great to capture their contact information?
Well, with targeted real estate SEO you can. To improve your website’s ranking for real estate-related searches, optimize your website for relevant keywords and embark on a comprehensive SEO campaign.
How Does Real Estate SEO Work?
Contrary to popular belief, the internet is not as complicated as it may seem. Search engines can be thought of as libraries. This is helpful because it can give you a better understanding of how search engines work.
Google looks through its collection of information whenever you ask it a question. A quick search through its index will return the most relevant information for your search.
The top search providers for real estate, like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, are always searching the web for new content. The algorithms are always searching for the best content to show the audience in their search queries. They find high-quality pages related to real estate and save them for future reference.
There are many factors that help search engine crawlers determine the niche of a website, in addition to keywords. These include: how recently published the content is, how credible the source is, the screen size on mobile devices, the website’s loading speed, and whether the business is local.
We’re saying that SEO isn’t just about increasing website traffic in general, but specifically about increasing traffic from your target audience that is likely to convert. This is what you want if you are looking to get into the real estate business.
Since SEO is organic, cheap, and sustainable, it would be foolish not to include it in your marketing and lead generation strategy.
Why is SEO Important for Real Estate Lead Generation?
Many people in the real estate industry spend a lot of money on generating web traffic and leads. While many channels claim to offer a good return on investment, very few can match what real estate SEO can provide.
SEO for real estate does very well considering that 44% of modern home buyers look online for listings before making a purchase.
Here is something even more exciting. Homebuyers under 36 are almost 95% more likely to be influenced by online content when making purchasing decisions. Sounds great right?
Well here’s the thing. The majority of internet users only look at the first page of search results and don’t scroll to subsequent pages. According to Backlinko, the first result in a Google search result gets a massive 32% of all total clicks. This means that if your website is not the first result, you are missing out on a large chunk of potential traffic.
This is the goal of SEO, to get your website to the number one spot on Google for terms that your target audience is searching. If you’re not on these results, then your competitors who are will be stealing lots of customers and making millions of dollars from you.
Are you going to let this robbery happen? Your website needs SEO for real estate in order to be successful.
Do Real Estate Agents Need SEO?
Search engine optimization is a type of marketing strategy in which you make it easy for your ideal customers to find you, instead of actively seeking them out. Outbound marketing is the opposite of what we’ve been discussing, which is when business owners actively seek out customers through paid ads and other means.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if your ideal clients were constantly coming to your real estate website, giving you their contact information, and asking you to help them buy or sell a home, without having to spend any money on paid advertising?
If you’re interested in doing SEO for your real estate business, it’s worth considering.
SEO for Real Estate Investors
SEO generates a higher ROI for the real estate industry than any other industry. For every dollar you spend on SEO, you will continue to get leads. Every real estate investment company can expect their investment to grow exponentially over the years.
Benefits of SEO for Real Estate
For many real estate agents, the increased performance of SEO is what makes this dream a reality. Agents who use SEO can bring in motivated leads who want to buy or sell property directly to their websites. They close more deals than their competitors, which results in more sales. SEO-savvy real estate agents are able to take a step back from unproductive lead-generation activities and instead focus on selling homes and serving clients. If you want to be ahead of the competition, grow your business and generate income and leads that are qualified, search engine optimization is the best marketing decision you can make. Here’s why:
SEO Establishes Your Online Presence
More people are turning to the internet to buy or sell their homes. It is more and more important to have a good online presence so that your business can be found by possible customers and so that you can stay in front of the market.
SEO Attracts a Steady Stream of Qualified Leads
Since more people are now looking for homes online as opposed to referrals, this has become a significant change. If you want to have a lot of clients coming to your business, you need to have a strong web presence.
SEO Increases Your Website’s Online Visibility
Good SEO takes time and effort, but it is worth it because it will help you rank higher in the search engine results page. This will give you more visibility and a better online presence.
How to Increase Real Estate Sales Using SEO
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by real estate SEO, don’t worry. There are some common techniques you can implement. Below are some great tips about how to best use SEO for your real estate business:
Real Estate SEO Techniques
1. Keyword Research
Doing keyword research is important for optimizing your content for search engines. The phrases and words you use as keywords for your real estate business will determine if you’re able to get more natural traffic.
Each month, billions of search queries are made on search engines such as Google. You will need to optimize your website for relevant real estate keywords if you want to appear in organic search results. If your website isn’t using the right keywords, you’ll attract more low-quality traffic.
If you want your real estate website to be successful, invest in the right keywords. This will help your website appear in front of more consumers, receive more engagement, and generate more sales and revenue.
including the different types of keyword research you should be doing Here are some tips you can follow when conducting keyword research, including the different types of keyword research you should be doing.
- Build a localized list of keywords and phrases to target local audience
- Find out the keywords that your competitors are using to target customers who are searching for those keywords
- Take advantage of ‘Google suggest’ to find additional keywords
- Find out the questions that your customers ask and use the Google Keyword Planner to check the frequency and competition
- Make use of ‘People also ask’ section to get additional keywords
- Use keyword research tools to like Moz or Ahrefs as they will help you figure out a good keyword combination in terms of demand and relevance to search results
- Maximize the usage of long-tail keywords as people who use that have a specific problem
2. Competition Research
Researching one’s competition is a necessity for anyone who owns a real estate website. It can be a guide of what you need to improve to be on the same level as your competitors. This research will help you identify the areas where your competitors are weak and help you develop strategies to take advantage of their weaknesses.
You can improve your ranking for competitive keywords by analyzing your competitors. Doing this will help you avoid getting too comfortable, push you to be innovative, and help you stay focused on improvements in every area of your business.
3. On-Page Optimization
Search engines are becoming more sophisticated and it is becoming more difficult to achieve a high ranking. Other variables play into the search engine algorithms, and if you’re not on top of it, you could fall behind More than just useful content is needed to outrank your competitors because other variables are involved in the search engine algorithms. If you’re not aware of this, you could fall behind. As the owner of a real estate website, you need to have a good understanding of on-page optimization. This is because it is one of the very first steps you need to take when doing proper SEO.
To improve your website’s search engine ranking, you can make some changes, such as to the content or structure of your site. A well-executed plan will improve your website’s ranking in search results.
Here are some tips to do proper on-page optimization.
- Check if the content written on your website is unique and relevant
- Make sure you have used proper heading tags (h1,h2, h3, and h4 ) are used to highlight your headings, subheadings
- Title tags should not exceed 65 characters
- URL must be short, self-descriptive, and have keywords
- Add unique and relevant meta description related to the post or page
- The website must have proper HTML and CSS validation
- Use proper alt tags for images
- Formulate a good internal linking strategy to in
4. Off-Page Optimization
Off-page optimization focuses on increasing the domain authority of your real estate website by getting links from other websites. It takes a lot of time and effort to get links to your page from well-respected websites.
The backend of a website is important because without good ranking, a website cannot be successful.
If you attempt to improve your website’s SEO rankings by buying links, your website will be penalized. It is considered as a black-hat SEO practice.
Here are some things you can do to optimize your website that don’t involve changing the actual content on your pages.
- Use blog directories, forum signatures, comment link, article directories, shared content directories, and link exchange schemes to acquire backlinks
- Make sure you actively post on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook
- Promote your blogs on famous websites such as Reddit, ScoopIt, Digg, Mix, etc
- Try guest blogging to get quality backlinks
5. Measuring and Improving Results
To be successful in SEO, you need to constantly measure and improve your performance. However, measuring SEO is easier said than done. There are many factors needed to measure success.
If you are new to SEO, it will be difficult to determine what is effective. However, if you dive deeper and start measuring other crucial SEO metrics, you’ll likely uncover more problems that need to be fixed. If you only track one metric, like keyword ranking, you may see some improvements but you will probably find more problems that need to be fixed if you look at other crucial SEO metrics.
However, only considering a single metric will not provide a comprehensive view. It’s like saying a puzzle is complete by just adding one piece to the board. So, you have to track multiple metrics.
Below are some tips to help you measure and improve your SEO performance.
- Identifying for the keywords which you rank will help you figure out if you are targeting the right keywords and if your site is actually growing
- Monitor the quality and quantity of the backlinks. Check for the trust flow, citation flow, and domain authority to check for quality
- Keep track of changes in organic search by using Google Analytics
- Check for the bounce rate, time spent on the page, mobile traffic, click-through rate, returning visitors, and direct visitors
Real Estate Local SEO Strategies
Local SEO is the practice of optimizing your website to appear higher in local search results. SEO that is specific to a geographic location is one of the most powerful ways to promote real estate services to a local audience. Majoring in local SEO is a must.
This section will provide an overview of the local SEO strategies that can be used for real estate websites.
1. Consistent NAP Details
You need to make sure your business’s NAP (name, address, and phone number) is consistent across all areas, including online citation. The NAP information should be present on every page of your website, preferably in the footer, as well as on your contact page.
2. Google My Business
Google My Business is a great opportunity for companies to appear on Google Maps and in local search results. And the best thing is, it is absolutely free. This text provides information on how to display opening and closing times for a business, as well as a contact phone number, physical location, and website link. You can optimize your GMB by,
- Writing a clear description of your business
- Adding your latest blog posts to your GMB
- Including photos and videos of your business
- Collect reviews from your satisfied customers and respond to both positive and negative reviews
If your business is changed by the COVID-19 situation or there are any changes in your working hours, you should update it GMB.
3. Schema Markup
A few years ago, the major search engines joined forces and created a markup language called schema.org in order to standardize the way webmasters code their pages. If you want your real estate website to be easily found by search engines, it is important to include a page title. This will help search engines understand what your page is about and make it more likely to appear as a search result. Understanding your business better will provide users with snippets.
Google may display rich snippets in some search results, such as.
- Real estate agents
- Offer
- Product
- Place
- Rent action
- Residence
4. Local Keywords
Local keywords have geographical location words in the keyword. If you want to find a dentist in your area, you have to search for ‘Dentist’ and you will get results. Instead, you have to search for ‘dentist in NYC’. This will help people in your area to find you easily You can also add the name of your area to the city name. This will help people in your area to find you easily.
If you use local keywords for your real estate business wisely, it can have a great impact on your business. and also in boosting your website ranking in search engine results. They can help you attract local customers to your website and also improve your website’s ranking in search engine results.
Getting Started with Real Estate SEO
The above best practices are a great starting point, but there is more to learn in your real estate journey. You need to be patient when it comes to SEO – it’s an ongoing process and results won’t happen overnight. The tactics mentioned above may not show results immediately, but they are still worth your time.
Also, remember that best practices also change over time. Check your website regularly to see how well it is performing and identify any changes or updates that could help bring in more relevant traffic.
