It's no secret that millennials are a generation that searches heavily online before making purchasing decisions.
Actually, before doing most things, they search online for the best option that meets their needs.
As a realtor, you know how competitive the space is online.
It's clear that you need to make sure your digital footprint attracts those digitally savvy customers but the space seems crowded.
There are multiple digital real estate marketplaces that are dominating the space right now.
It's still (in the USA) who you would expect if you're in the real estate industry. We have Zillow leading, Realtor, and Redfin in the number 2 and 3 spots, respectively.
Undoubtedly, more and more real estate and site un-seen purchasing decisions are occurring online.
Having a website and an active social media presence just isn't enough these days.
If your listings aren't at the top of the search results where most clients start their new home-buying journey, it will be difficult to see them.
In order to improve that position and get more eyes on the listings you have, we need to make sure you have a bulletproof search engine optimization strategy.
The good news is you don't have to compete against the hundreds of thousands of real estate agents online.
You need to focus on a hyper-local strategy that targets clients interested in the region you do business with, not the entire state, or midwest, or the national stage.
By hyper specific and leveraging local SEO you can maximize your impact online and ultimately dominate the local competition.
What is real estate SEO
SEO for real estate agents is the process of optimizing your site content to increase the amount of traffic you get through organic results, this is often compared in contrast to say paid search or pay for performance channels (Google or Facebook Ads etc.).
This process requires planning and targeted implementation of best practices to succeed. It's not simply about links and keywords at this point.
The main focus is providing as thorough and complete solution for the client's need as you keep their digital experience top of mind.
Great page experience is a well documented priority for searchers be it by Google research or industry research. Anyone can tell you that it's no fun dealing with a page that won't load or a button that moves just as you try to click.
This focus on what the SEO industry calls "Core Web Vitals" pay dividends when you execute with excellence. For example:
- If a site meets the CWV thresholds, users are 24% less likely to abandon on page load.
- As you lower your Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) by each 100ms, conversion rate has a tendency to rise +1.3%.
- Domain rank improves as you lower your Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) and approach 0.
It's a complex process, and the landscape is always shifting but if you keep the customer and optimizing their experience as your north star - you'll be on track to see serious benefit.
What are some of the benefits of implementing a real estate SEO program
There are main benefits to investing in SEO for realtors. Being visible online is a critical piece to the success of any business but it's imperative for real estate agents due to the highly competitive nature of the industry.
Here are a few of the main reasons why you need to start investing in your SEO program today.
Increase traffic and revenue:
The number one benefit to a strong SEO strategy that includes things like quality content and improves your backlink profile all while supporting your overall authority in the industry is that you will gain more traffic.
Not only will your traffic increase, but the outcome of making sure you provide quality content is that it answers the questions of relevant customers in your market.
As we know, it's not about clicks its about revenue. So by investing in the right SEO program and building content that answers customer questions and provides value you will ultimately receive more revenue.
Boost Brand Awareness:
Additionally, when you provide quality content to your new customers, you set yourself up as an authority in the real estate industry. This is crucial to building up trust with new potential customers.
When a potential buyer or seller reads your content and gains value from it they are interacting positively with your brand.
Maybe that prompts them to share your name with a friend looking to buy an investment property or maybe it just continues to sear into their minds and reinforce what you know.
The more you share what you know about the industry, how the market is moving and insights that are regionally relevant the more often potential customers will see you as an authority. This builds and compounds into better brand awareness and overtime increases your conversion rate along with lowering friction in the consideration phase.
Improve Brand Protection:
The more content you put out that is valuable to customers the more control you have of the Search Engine Results Page or SERP.
An added benefit of SEO that is less common to consider, but highly relevant for real estate is the ability to own your branded SERP and be able to protect your image online.
Sometimes it's common to leverage affiliate programs as they can certainly help improve your revenue. Unfortunately, it's also difficult to compete with those larger sites if you're not actively working on your SEO.
If you prioritize the right SEO program you can protect your brand and make sure that you control the majority of ways your brand is represented online as opposed to leaving it to chance in connection with an affiliate.
How has the SEO industry changing
As we mentioned, SEO is a great way to improve traffic and revenue to your site and build out a brand that has the potential to dominate an industry.
I've been an SEO for over a decade and there isn't anyone out there that would say it's getting "easier."
Search algorithms are continuously changing on a daily basis.
As of a few years ago, Google admitted that they improved their search product 4,500 times in 2020, which equates to ~12 per day.
That's just one of the major search engines out there.
What worked for improving the traffic to sites in the early days does not necessarily work now.
Some of what we don't suggest:
- building out spammy links
- Forum comments and links
- Cloaking content
- Thin Content
- Keyword stuffing or meta keywords
These are just a few of what some people still try to do/ or insist will work. Long gone are those days.
Now, there are plenty of proven strategies and tactics that will increase your traffic and revenue while building that brand you've been struggling to solidify.
- Keep your customer top of mind
- Consistent high quality content built for your target market
- Local features in the press
- Focus on building the brand you would want to work with
- Written content based on focused keyword research
- Contribute to the industry with your own thought leadership and research
- Take an omnichannel approach, integrate SEO with your overall marketing strategy
Can SEO work for real estate agents
Yes
Like with all industries, SEO for real estate agents takes time. It's a grind. You have to show up everyday and be on your Ps and Qs in order to see success.
The thing is, when you finally do. It's all worthwhile.
It can take longer depending on a few things:
- Your budget
- The competitive set within your market
- The resources you have currently
- Your commitment
One example of this would be 'houses for sale near me', where we can see over 300,000 searches per month.
As we know based on Click Through Rate research done throughout the industry, the top 1-3 organic results end up with the most traffic.
Now for a keyword like this, Google and other search engines will localize the results and personalize the SERP based on the users location and past search history (+ leveraging anything else they can get to build out a full profile of the user) all in order to make the results as relevant as possible.
If you're not in the top of the results, your business is going to lose out on meaningful business.
Based on the click-through rate research mentioned above we're talking about ~60% of that total search volume clicking on sites at the top of the results page.
If you ranked in position #1 that could mean almost 120k click per month.
Now if we looked at a more localized search the numbers wouldn't be that high, but the scenario is the same.
That search volume has the potential to convert into hundreds, and maybe even thousands of potential leads each month.
That's just one keyword, so you can see why SEO is important and if done right begins to snowball fast.
Google My Business (now Google Business Profile)
Google Business profile is an absolute game changer for real estate agents.
Local SEO is powerful and relies on the 'map pack' in order to show locally relevant business listings to potential leads.
These business profiles are shown when a search is locally relevant and in market for businesses close by.
As a lead generation tool it is one of, if not the most effective way for real estate agents and real estate companies to increase their local visibility, prominence and drive more sales.
This profile enables you to focus on home buyers directly in the city or region that you serve. Just like your website, this profile can be fully optimized to improve those positive outcomes.
- Share new properties and listings with Google Posts
- Make sure you are consistent and on brand
- Prioritize reviews on your Google Business Profile with past and current customers
This work will enable you to stop relying on Zillow and other marketplace platforms in order to move inventory.
As of January 2023, Google has +84% of the global search market with that potentially being higher in the US market.
Knowing how important Google is to the consumer means that prioritizing your Google Business Profile is not an option. It's a must.
Moving forward, as I continue to post more I will be sure to share more GBP / GMB specific tactics that any business can leverage to grow their customer base.
As of now, some of the best tactics you can implement include:
- Optimize you profile name within the guidelines
- Leverage your business categories, and custom categories if possible
- Complete your business description
- Share high quality imagery/ photos for your profile regularly
- Select service that reflect your offerings
- Ask your past customers for reviews, and implement that practice moving forward
- Reply to as many reviews as you can, after ~80% response rate there tend to be diminishing returns though.
Apple Business Connect?
Realistically, this powers businesses within the Apple ecosystem. Apple Business Connect is a better late than never response to Google My Business.
This platform creates a place card that is accessible on all apple devices and built-in apps.
Through this platform sharing directions, contact info, and business information along with contact actions have never been easier.
This platform is new so expect updates relatively soon and new ways to leverage ABC for specific industries (like real estate).›
Real Estate SEO Tips: 18 step checklist
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Full SEO Audit - Technical and Content
Before you know exactly what to improve you need to get a baseline on how your site is currently performing.
An audit will help you determine what improvements need to be made and where they need to be deployed.
Certainly this step is a time-consuming process but it will underpin everything you do in the future and will ensure your real estate SEO program is successful.
Some key areas to focus on when performing this audit include:
- Site structure: Redirects, Server Errors, XML Sitemap, Robots.txt
- Page Structure: Titles, Meta Descriptions, Heading Tags, Alt Tags, URLs
- Content Gap: What content do you have, what do competitors have? How is your content mapping to the customer journey you serve?
- Content: Structure, keyword and link placement, visual elements, duplication, etc.
- Links: Outbound and inbound links, internal linking, broken links.
- Usability: Accessibility, mobile-friendliness, site speed
If you focus on the areas above you will see an improvement in the quantity and quality of the traffic your site receives.
I'll be creating an SEO audit checklist and will release that as a download here in the future so stay tuned.
Additionally, a great resource for testing your sites performance and nailing down technical issues is web page test for both performance and core web vitals issues.
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Optimize your site for mobile
It's common that users are searching via their mobile device these days and that number is only going up.
Google switched to mobile indexing first meaning that it is crawling sites with a mobile bot.
This mobile bot is treating your site just like a mobile a device would, so it's never been more important to prioritize performance and the user experience for those on mobile.
Focus on page speed, responsive design for smaller viewing screens, and limiting popups and interstitials as they can interfere with the mobile experience.
Some other areas include:
- Hosting speed
- Homepage performance
- Site Navigation
- Site Search
- Forms
- Conversions on mobile
- Usability
Test your site for it's mobile friendliness via Google mobile page testing tool - Click Here
Once you know how your site is performing it will be easier to address the opportunities and improve your mobile performance.
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Define KPIs for your real estate SEO program
In order to measure success you have to set clear goals and KPIs that are relevant to your business needs. Some of the KPIs you might prioritize could be:
- Increased Google Rankings on key terms for your real estate business
- Increased Traffic tracked in Google Analytics
- Increased Click -to- Call on Google Business Profile
- Increased Click -to- Web on Google Business Profile
- Improved Click-through rate from Organic (CTR)
- Improved Time on Page
- Increased number of pages per session
- Increased soft conversions (downloads, subscriptions, views, etc.)
- Improved average position
- Improved number of high-quality backlinks
This is a simple list but you need to figure out what metrics you hold as a priority and which will help you meet the greater business goals you've set.
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Do keyword research
As with any industry you need to know how your potential clients are searching when they start looking for homes your area.
Once you have a pulse on the search results within the local real estate industry you need to identify which are good options based on search volume and competition for each of the keywords.
You can use SEO platforms to help aid in this process. I'll be adding into this segment in the future to fully explain the ins and outs along with linking to a separate article in the coming weeks on Keyword research regardless of industry.
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Analyze your competitors
I'm sure you are already well aware of your competitors within the local space but the who and how you compete changes from one keyword to the next and you need to be aware of that nuance.
The best way to fully understand the lay of the land digitally is by running a competitor analysis to find out who and how you compete with on search engines both locally and nationally.
When you find out who you compete with that is helpful in understanding what works well within your industry locally. You get a better understanding of what type of content is working and how they structure the information on their site.
If you take time gathering insights from your competition now, it will pay off in the future as you can leverage the wins and even some of the mistakes without having to waste time.
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Look for long-tail opportunities
For smaller businesses or even new businesses it can be a beneficial practice to target long-tail keyword opportunities.
These tend to be opportunities that offer lower monthly search volume but can have higher intent or increased conversion rate as they include more words and can be more specific in nature.
They searches tend to be more niche and less competitive, so if you find a keyword relevant to your audience you can end up dominating the results.
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Local Approach
One key to success in a regional and local market is to make sure potential clients know how best to get in-touch with you.
One of the most important local search platforms for any business, including real estate, is Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business). This platform gives you access to local customers in your area and interconnects all of your business information across Google Search and Google Maps.
You can communicate directly with your customers via customer reviews, Questions and Answer, along with Google Posts which will all work to increase your relevance within the local market.
Some important website you might consider for backlinks:
- Realtor.com
- Redfin
- Yahoo Homes
- HomeSnap
- Neighborhood Scout
- Zoocasa
- Local.com
- Yelp
- Yellow Pages
- Manta
- Better Business Bureau
- Whitepages
- City Search
- Angie's list
- YellowPages
-Merchant Circle
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Create quality content with your clients in mind
You need to create content that your potential clients and those moving to your area are going to want to read.
Informative articles that include the unique features of a neighborhood is a great place to start. If you can give a detailed account along with the pros and cons you'll gain more eyeballs.
- Walkability
- Cost of living
- Social life
- Schools
- Crime
- Restaurants
In addition, make sure you leverage visual content as much as possible. Try posting unique images with your articles.
- Vide tours
- Virtual tours
- Live stream videos
- Infographics
As you get more and more comfortable with creating content on your own reach out to other local business owners and get their perspective. The more you get to know the neighborhood the easier it will be to sell it to new comers.
As you become more known for sharing local business owners you will certainly open up new relationships for future business and partnerships.
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Prioritize solving any crawl/ indexing issues
If search engines can't crawl your site you're not going to be included in the index and therefore you will not rank. It's vitally important for any site to prioritize issues that negatively impact it's crawlability.
Some of the most common issues include:
- Blocking the page from indexing via the robots meta tag
- NoFollow Links
- Blocking the pages from indexing via robots.txt
- Internal broken links
- URL errors
- Outdated URLs (link rot)
- Pages with denied access
- Server errors
- Limited server capacity
- web server misconfiguration
- XML sitemap format errors
- Wrong page in sitemap
- Internal link issues
- wrong / broken redirects
- slow load speed / timing out
- Duplication via poor architecture
- Broken JavaScript or CSS
- Flash Content
- HTML frames
This is a pretty substantial list. In the coming months we'll be breaking down each one of these in a full crawlability issue article. I'll link that here once it's finalized.
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Use real estate agent schema markup
Schema markup is structure within your code that tells search engines about the content in verified and previously agreed-upon formats.
This helps search engines better understand your site and therefore improves how easily they digest and help potential clients find your site.
There are two types of schema markup for real estate businesses. RealEstateListing and RealEstateAgent schema. These denote a specific listing and an agent within the content on your site.
Leveraging these types of schema can improve your chances of snagging a featured snippet within the search results and can improve the number of searchers that see your content.
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Monitor your keyword rankings
If you don't measure it you can't optimize it. That's the name of the game with SEO.
You need to see where you stand within the rankings for your keywords and as you implement changes and grow your body of work online see how those rankings change over time.
Monitoring your keywords enables you to see where you have gaps and opportunity to share perspective to potential clients with new pieces of content and where you need to refresh or shore up older pieces.
Make sure you take time keep keyword tracking a priority and digest the insights that it provides so you can grow.
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Get local backlinks to your real estate website
As within the physical world, word-of-mouth referral is a huge piece of the business. It certainly can offer some of the best business you can hope for.
A backlink from a local store or business, one that operates within your industry or within your neighborhood is a vote of confidence. When search engines run into it, they see that you're not only active within the space but
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Monitor your analytics for insights on your industry and clients
In order to improve your real estate website, you need to make sure you have an analytics tool that will help you gather data and analyze how your clients and potential clients are using your site.
Some tools are more robust than others but a good place to start is by simply implementing Google Analytics on your site and starting there. Be sure to add GA as soon as possible so you at the very least begin to aggregate data and leverage it once you're ready.
Traffic and user analytics tools are useful for truly understanding the needs of your customer and building out a website that provides exactly what they are looking for.
Once you have a tool in place, you'll be able to set goals and track events on your site. Additionally, it will help you to segment your users into groups and more effectively reach them with content that meets their needs.
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Test and iterate to improve your conversion rate
It takes a lot of work to get a website firing on all pistons. You'll need to find the right content and positioning in order to see what clicks with your users.
Experimentation with all aspects of the site can help you find the right recipe for success. If you're looking to improve user experience and increase conversion rate you should consider testing different versions of the same page. This will enable you to find the right combination of elements that work to help users convert.
The guiding principal throughout the majority of this work should be the helping the user and improving how customers interact with your site. As long as you keep this priority you drastically improve organic rankings and help more clients along the way.
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Improve your E-E-A-T (Double E-A-T) Factors
Google pulled the curtain back on how it determines what constitutes relevant and helpful results within it's ranking system.
This was orignially all about the Expertise, Trustworthiness, and Authority as it pertained to the author or the content and domain. Each one of these is highly important to users and based on that Google informs the way it ranks content and leverages it throughout platforms.
You need to be sure to make an effort to nail each on of these factors and doing so doesn't need to be difficult. An example would be to make sure relevant information lives on your about page, that the contact page and home page are up-to-date with all of your information and call out how you're positioned as a local authority in the real estate industry. List your awards and accreditation or licensing you might have, these all speak to the body of knowledge and the years you've put into serving your customers.
The original acronym only included one E, and stood for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. They updated this recently ( December 2022 E-E-A-T update) to include Experience as well.
Google mentions that "experience" in this case deals with how the content and body of work demonstrates experience in terms of knowledge and in terms of perspective as well.
You might want to focus on sharing personal experience on the locations and neighborhoods that you work near. This would help to speak to both expertise and perspective regarding locations and where you sell homes.
When you're able to communicate the experience you've had in a development either living there or spending time in a community is lends more authority to your shared perspective and by default makes your content more relevant to those clients looking to move or buy a house in regions you travel and live yourself.
This aspect really underpins the idea that Google aims to elevate helpful content to it's users and if this information and content is original work that makes an even better case as they hope to show more diversity of thought within the SERPs.
Don't be afraid to share your perspective and let your experiences shine throughout the content you publish.
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Make sure your site is ADA compliant - Accessibility
Americans with Disabilities Act requires businesses to provide individuals with Disabilities equal access and services. This might mean that you would need to install a ramp on your walkway at an office building, but there are considerations online for a website as well.
It's good practice to leverage a tool that can provide insight on specific aspects that need to be improved in order to meet a threshold of compliance. These insights can then be used as a starting point for bringing your website in line with recognized accessibility standards, like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
Set your KPIs - track as soon as possible
The ROI of real estate SEO
There have been many studies on the relevance of organic search and it's impact across industries. A few that stick out and support the perspecive that SEO and organic traffic as a channel has the highest ROI are these:
- Organic search drives 300% more traffic than social media - Outbrain
- 49% of marketers report organic search brings in the highest ROI out of any digital marketing channel - SEJ Twitter Poll
All SEO campaigns and projects are different so there isn't an exact science to estimating the ROI of SEO but the rule of thumb is ~5:1 or 500% ROI.
Meaning that for every dollar spent you can expect, on avg, to see $5 in return. This is a great tempering of expectations and would be amazing to see for any project but you should keep in mind that it is not uncommon to see return that is well over this benchmark as well depending on the industry and the level of commitment.
Keep in mind, unlike other channels, this is not pay-for-performance and therefore takes time to implement and track the outcomes, iterate and begin to see traction. It's a longterm investment in the growth of your business and overall success online.
Best SEO Tools for Real Estate
Even as a seasoned business owner it can be daunting to jump into SEO and optimize your site for organic traffic. That's why I'm here to help. I've listed a few of the best tools (in my expert opinion) that can support any real estate agent on their journey to leveraging a website for my success.
SEMRush - (Paid Tool)
One of the easiest digital marketing, online visibility SaaS platforms that takes the complexity out of SEO and helps you focus on the numbers that are important to business success. This tool is one of my go-to solutions for small-to-medium businesses and is leveraged across industries by newcomers and experts alike.
Google Analytics - (Free Tool)
The first thing anyone should add to their website. This will enable you to track users and gain insights off of how your customers and potential customers are using your site. A must-have for any and all websites (including Real Estate).
Google Search Console - (Free Tool)
not as common for those outside of the SEO or Webmaster community but this tool is a powerhouse. It enables users to see click-through-rate from search engine to your site along with impressions and avg positioning. Along with "some" of the queries customers are using to find your site. Certainly one of the (if not, the) most powerful free SEO tools.
WebPageTest.Org - (Free Tool)
For powerful testing and info on how your site is performing this is my current go-to. From site performance, Core Web Vitals, to lighthouse testing this platform will enable you to see detailed test results for free. It is one of the best troubleshooting and analysis tools when trying to understand impact from new site elements or when monitoring complex user behavior issues.
Final Thoughts
A strong SEO project can help to elevate the lead generation process of any real estate agent. This is a long term play that will enable you to not only generate but to sell more listings in your area as well.
Our hope here at Landmark SEO is that you feel more informed to tackle some of this work on your own. We're committed to sharing insights and aggregating knowledge so that it is more accessible to business owners throughout industries.
If you end up needing help or some of what we mentioned resonated with your goals and ambitions for your business please let us know. We're happy to discuss how SEO can help you reach the next level and take on more market share within your region.