If you’re in the real estate business, then you know that SEO is essential for driving traffic to your listings. But what exactly is real estate SEO, and how does it work? In this article, we’ll take a look at what real estate SEO is and how it can benefit your business.
Real Estate is a competitive industry. In order to get noticed, you need to make sure your website is optimized for search engines. This is where real estate SEO comes in. Real estate SEO is the process of optimizing your website for the purpose of getting it to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher your website ranks in SERPs, the more likely people are to find it when they’re searching for properties.
Why Does Your Real Estate Business Need SEO?
Real estate SEO is unique in several ways. Firstly, real estate is highly competitive, with billions of dollars exchanging hands each year. As a result, real estate professionals need to be on the top of their game regarding online visibility. The realtor market is constantly evolving, with new properties listed and sold every day. Real estate SEO needs to be dynamic and flexible to keep up with the latest trends. Finally, real estate SEO also considers the specific needs of both buyers and sellers.
For example, a buyer might be looking for a property in a specific location or with certain features, while a seller might be trying to attract buyers from a specific demographic. By understanding the unique needs of the real estate market, real estate SEO experts can provide targeted and effective solutions that help everyone involved in the process.
The Key Benefits of Real Estate SEO:
Higher Rankings in Search Engines
Backlinko stats say “The top result in Google gets around 32% of all clicks”.
One of the main benefits of real estate SEO is that it can help your realty website rank higher in search engine results. This is important because the higher your website ranks, the more likely people will find it in search results. And, of course, the more people who find your website, the more leads you’re likely to generate.
More Organic Traffic
By ranking higher in SERPs, you’ll also be able to attract more traffic from potential clients. Organic traffic is the type of traffic that comes from people who find your website through search engines, rather than from paid ads. For example, if a user searches for “homes for sale in Los Angeles” and your website appears on the first page of results, there’s a much higher chance that they’ll click through to your site.
According to sparktoro, 59.2 percent of the world’s web traffic is driven by Google organic search.
This means there is a lot of potential traffic that you can pull in with a targeted organic real estate SEO strategy.
Improved Brand Awareness and Trust
Ranking real estate websites higher in search results will enable more people to see your brand and offerings, which will lead to improved brand awareness and trust. Web searchers tend to trust websites that appear on the first page of results more than those that appear lower down.
Featuring in Area-Specific Searches
According to Hubspot, 92% of searchers pick a business on the first page of local search results.
If you want to engage investors or sellers in a specific area, local search engine optimization can be a very effective way to do this. When you optimize your website and content for area-specific keywords, for example, if you’re a realtor in Los Angeles, you could optimize your website for the keyword “Los Angeles real estate.” This would mean that your website would come up when people in Los Angeles search for that term, increasing their chances of visiting your site.
Directing Qualified Organic Leads to Your Website:
A key benefit of real estate marketing is that it can help you direct qualified organic leads to your website by various methods, including forms and CTAs. By optimizing your real estate website for specific keywords, you can ensure that only people interested in what you have to offer will find your website. More targeted leads would mean that you’re more queries from interested buyers and a greater conversion rate.
Higher ROI
One of the vital benefits of real estate SEO is providing a higher return on investment (ROI) than other marketing activities. This is because SEO is a very cost-effective way to generate leads and improve your website’s visibility.
Some Key SEO Strategies For Real Estate :
There are many different ways in which real estate SEO experts can help you improve the visibility of your website in the local market. However, some of the most important tools that they use include:
Keyword Research
Keyword research is essential for your real estate SEO strategy. This is because it helps you identify the keywords people are using to search for properties from various real estate agents in their respective areas. Once you know what these relevant keywords are, you can then optimize your website and content for them, which will help improve your visibility in SERPs.
You might already know keywords like homes for sale is hard to achieve a top ranking without paying for ads. However, by conducting research, you may be able to identify other relevant keywords that have less competition but are still being used by potential clients in their searches.
For example, a keyword like “real estate agents in Los Angeles” would be much easier to rank than “homes for sale in Los Angeles.”
The large volume keywords might grab your attention first, but the long-tail keywords are actually more important for your SEO strategy. This is because they’re more specific and are more likely to be used by people who are further along in the buyer’s journey and are therefore more qualified leads.
Content Creation and Marketing
Content relevancy is the key signal that Google looks for when determining where to rank your website in SERPs. This means that if you want to improve your real estate SEO, you need to create content that is relevant to your target audience.
Your content should be well-researched and answer the questions that potential clients are likely to have about buying or selling a property. In particular, a real estate website should not be limited to IDX listings. Instead, it should provide valuable resources that will educate and inform your target audience about the neighborhood, housing market, and the real estate industry in general.
It’s also important to market your content so that it reaches your target audience. This can be done through various methods, such as email marketing, social media marketing, and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
If you want to know what makes good content, watch this video on Think with Google
Google Business Profile
For Real estate businesses looking to improve their ranking in SERPs, one of the best things you can do is to create and verify a Google My Business (GMB) listing. This will help your business show up in the “Local Pack” section of SERPs, which is where Google displays a map with three local businesses that match the user’s query.
It also tells Google that your business is real and trustworthy, which can help improve your ranking. Creating a GMB listing is free and easy to do. You just need to fill out some basic information about your business, such as your name, address, phone number, website, business hours, etc.
In addition, NAP Consistency (Name, Address, and Phone number) is very important for Local SEO. You need to make sure that your NAP information is consistent across all of your online listings (including your GMB listing, real estate directories, Facebook, Yelp, etc.). This will help Google verify your business and improve your ranking in SERPs.
Local SEO Optimization
Local search engine optimization is another important tool for real estate marketing. Local SEO includes on-page optimization, local citations, real estate business listings, using targeted real estate keywords, and various other optimizing processes. This will enable you to target home buyers and renters in a specific area. By optimizing your website and content for local keywords, you can ensure that your website appears when potential clients search for properties in your area.
Link Building
Link building is also vital for real estate SEO. Links from high-quality websites can help to improve your website’s visibility and authority. Link building can be a time-consuming process, but it is essential for any real estate business that wants to rank highly in SERPs. Believe me or not, real estate websites that have a Zillow Profile tend to rank higher than those that don’t. Probably this is because Zillow is a high-quality website with a lot of authority. So, if you can get a link from them, it will definitely help your website’s ranking.
Some other link-building strategies for real estate agents include writing guest blog posts, creating infographics, and listing your properties on online directories.
Real Estate Listings
A vital aspect of a real estate site is the listings it features. Customizing IDX listings and implementing REX in your real estate website will ensure that your site has the latest and most accurate listings. This, in turn, will help elevate your website’s visibility and its conversion rate.
When it comes to marketing for real estate, there are many different things that you need to take into consideration. However, by following an effective real estate marketing plan, you can be sure you’re on the right track.
Marketing Code is an experienced SEO agency with unique expertise working in the real estate niche. MC has a team of SEO experts that can help you improve the visibility of your website in Google and other search engines and generate more leads.
If you’re interested in learning more about how we can help, contact us today.
Want to check where you’re real estate website currently ranks? Request a free SEO audit.
