Real Estate SEO: The Full Guide
Image courtesy of Patina Maldives
The following article highlights top real estate SEO tips and the best real estate SEO strategy for quality content, and more. But what does SEO mean in real estate? SEO stands for search engine optimization and plays a prominent role in enabling you to rank higher in search engine results whenever someone is searching for anything to do with real estate online.
What is Real Estate SEO?
So, what is real estate SEO? SEO in real estate is vital in getting a property, a project, or a real estate business noticed and diverting traffic to its website, essential for everyone from developers to hotel owners to marketers to lenders and home buyers. Think of a higher ranking on a search engine such as Google as your reward for creating content that’s so SEO-rich it satisfies the search engines’ algorithms’ ravenous appetites. This means you rise to the top of that search engine list when queries are entered which in turn attracts those clicks to your real estate website.
Why do you need Real Estate SEO?
Studies have shown that 90% of home buyers use the internet, half of homeowners find their dream properties online, and there’s a 60% chance users click on one of the top three results when searching for such things as real estate content. Ranking at number one will result in 36.4% of total clicks, while 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results. What’s more, real estate SEO does all the promotional work for you, creating leads while you sleep.
Advantages of doing SEO for Real Estate
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SEO for real estate is an inexpensive and organic method of drawing visits to your website by making it more visible on search engine results. This is the most self-explanatory and obvious advantage of SEO for real estate, but there are others:
● paid advertising and marketing might initially get clicks but once the spending stops so do the visits. The best real estate website SEO boosts your profile ranking on search engines and makes sure you stay there. It’s simply the most cost-effective way of connecting with your target audience, and once you’ve built your domain authority, you could reap the benefits for years to come.
● SEO, especially when combined with a strong social media presence, helps create brand awareness and makes yours the go-to site for local real estate.
● SEO gets you to the top of search pages organically, which viewers value more than advertised results
● you’ll see an improvement on your ROI with SEO. When it comes to click-through-rates and lead conversions, SEO is hard to beat.
Importantly, SEO is often overlooked by real estate developers and marketers, who prioritise an ads-first approach. This means that there is a very real and valuable opportunity to create one of the best SEO real estate websites and thus position your company or project in the crosshairs of market demand.
Tips for better Real Estate SEO
Like the foundations of a fine building, all real estate SEO is built upon keywords. Master SEO description for real estate and everything else will follow. So, what is SEO in real estate?
KEYWORD RESEARCH IS KEY
Keyword research is one of the most significant aspects of SEO for real estate websites, yet it is one of the most underexplored. While many in the business dedicate great chunks of their time and resources to developing content marketing and social media strategies (both of which are certainly important), the less sexy research of keywords gets largely ignored. But remember, it’s those SEO descriptions for real estate that seduce those algorithms that bump you up the list, and the thing that should be dealt with first.
Keyword research for your real estate company SEO is all about understanding what it is the consumer wants and is split into two categories: head keywords and longtail keywords.
HEAD KEYWORDS FOR BETTER REAL ESTATE SEO
Head keywords are generally short and to the point, which in this industry would be words and phrases like real estate (obviously!) or best realtors or homes for sale.
Competition for head keywords is very high and they’re already likely to have been monopolised by long-established, high-authority brands and sites already multiple SEO steps ahead of you. So, the best way to compete and claw your way towards the top of a Google results page is by employing the second category of SEO real estate keywords: longtail keywords.
LONGTAIL KEYWORDS FOR BETTER REAL ESTATE SEO
This is a kind of keyword research that is far more specific, usually concerning local searches and local SEO words and phrases such as San Francisco’s most sustainable apartments or luxury residences in Jamaica or London’s best real estate developer.
Longtail keywords also serve as supreme SEO real estate marketing, far more likely to lure your target audience than head keywords which account for only around 18% of total searches (versus 70% for longtail keywords). As a rule, more long-tailed keywords also generally mean higher intent, and higher intent leads to greater conversion.
KEYWORD RESEARCH TOOLS FOR REAL ESTATE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Aside from using local terminology and words and phrases specific to your business or target market, discover your best SEO for real estate listings by employing the likes of Google Ads, a free service that provides a keyword search functionality report that highlights all queries that trigger ad impressions. Also, Google Analytics, Spyfu, and the Ahrefs Site Explorer are invaluable SEO real estate tools that help identify keywords steering users towards businesses similar to yours.
Tips for On-site Optimization
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On-site, or on-page, optimization – sometimes called on-page SEO – is all about what specific actions and processes can be applied within a website in order to boost its search engine rankings. Once keywords have been generated, tactics include of the tactics already mentioned like optimizing images and generating keywords continue to be applicable here.
KEYWORD-RICH CONTENT
Once keywords have been identified, use them liberally across your website – and other real estate content – with them in titles, headings, and image descriptions as well as the main text (but be careful not to ruin the flow of the writing by shoehorning too much real estate SEO description in).
GET BLOGGING
A real estate SEO blog is a straightforward and sure-fire way of better positioning your website for curious clicks. A blog offers you not only the opportunity to share real estate news, but to showcase your expertise and points of difference about your business or projects while also providing a platform to share personal insights and experiences and engage with your audience.
Updating your blog regularly not only keeps it fresh and more interesting but helps improve its ranking – ditto for images. Just like readers, Google also loves visual content. Blogs can easily incorporate SEO-rich images, videos, and infographics and can be seamlessly shared on social media (more on that later), another useful tactic for driving traffic to your site. The longer the article, the better, though try not to go too much above 2,000 words.
BE MOBILE FRIENDLY
This one’s a no-brainer. With more than half of all global internet traffic coming via mobile devices, it’s essential that your website is mobile friendly – operable on both smartphones and tablets. The most important aspects of mobile optimization include responsive design, which concerns how well your site automatically switches between screen sizes, and page speed which is how fast information loads – remember that slower speeds run the risk of visitors looking for another site to satisfy their needs instead. Generally, the simpler you keep things, the more likely the site is to run efficiently across various mobile devices. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool will keep you on track.
OPTIMIZE IMAGES AND VIDEOS
The optimization of images and videos is another vital SEO strategy for real estate. When uploading such media to your website, as well as adding the relevant keywords and descriptions to them, also include alt text. Alt text, short for ‘alternative text’ – and sometimes called ‘alt tags’ or ‘alt descriptions’ – is the written copy that displays in lieu of an image when the image fails to load. As well as helping visually impaired readers, alt text enables better rankings of your website on search engines and ensure that it’ll show up on a Google Image search.
CREATE AND OPTIMIZE VIDEO CONTENT
Video is a fast and efficient way of both getting your message across and showcasing visuals and is becoming more popular by the day. Create your own video content and optimise it by way of a channel like YouTube. Services such as YouTube, Facebook and Instagram offer video and livestream options that can be shared across social media to build bigger audiences. Take the same approach as you do with a blog by updating your video posts regularly to keep the content fresh and up to date.
REVIEW YOUR META TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS
Meta titles and meta descriptions are a vital component of SEO – with the title being what users see in search engine results and the description explaining what they can expect to find on their page. The title especially has a significant impact on search engine rankings and should include the page’s main keywords to entice clicks, stretching for 10 to 70 characters in length. Aim for 150 to 300 characters for the meta description which should further lure users.
UPGRADE TO HTTPS
Upgrading from HTTP to HTTPS will bolster your ranking position as search engines place greater trust in websites with that extra ‘S’. The ‘S’ represents ‘secure’ which means all information transferred between the internet browser and your website is encrypted using an SSL certificate which offers greater protection for all users.
ENSURE ACCESSIBILITY
Just as everyone, regardless of disability, deserves to be able to access physical spaces, so too should they be able to access any digital space. Screen readers, for example, are common tools for the visually impaired, but websites must be built to accommodate them. As instructed by the Americans with Disabilities Act, in order to be ADA compliant websites should follow guidelines that include:
ensuring all media players and PDF documents are supported by downloadable software
colour should not be solely relied upon for design
there is alt text, which will help with search engine rankings
video has captions, and remember to make the video script (and therefore captions) SEO rich
no strobe or flashing animations
images do not replace functions achieved by text
when the window is resized to 200%, the layout or usability of the page is not affected.
Tips for Off-site Optimization
The final link in the SEO chain is off-site optimization, also called off-page optimization. One of its main purposes is to establish backlinks from reputable sites which proves to search engines that you are a website of authority and worth a higher place on those search result lists. Of course, this will only happen if you ensure your site brims with quality content.
GET GUEST BLOGGING
Developing relationships and building collaborations are key to off-site optimization; both can be done through guest blogs. Seek out reputable publishers within the industry and pitch them ideas – most will be happy to oblige. And within those blogs you may – with permission – add those backlinks.
LIST YOUR PROPERTIES ON MAJOR PLATFORMS
Realtors, developers, and hoteliers should aim to get their listings on substantial online platforms such as the prominent real estate marketplace, Zillow which will significantly increase site views (Zillow gets more than 7 billion visits a year) and provide a wealth of information for research for blogs. Other useful real estate sites include Trulia and Realtor.
GET LOCAL CITATIONS AND DIRECTORY LISTINGS
Local citations offer excellent potential for SEO for real estate websites as they reference any mentions of your business online. Citations include your company name, address, and phone number, usually referred to as your NAP, and appear on the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Superpages, Yellowpages, Superpages, MapQuest, and Yelp. Aim to get backlinks to your website. Even if you can’t get backlinks, these directory listings are still a useful addition to your SEO strategy, so it’s essential that they are kept up to date.
CLAIM A GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE
Another wonderful free tool from the web’s most prominent search engine, a Google Business Profile – formerly known as Google My Business – not only allows potential clients and customers to easily find your location, contact details, opening hours and so on, but also allows for the addition of business descriptions and photos. Optimizing those photos and splattering the listing with keywords as described above is another neat way of feeding those SEO-hungry search engine algorithms and sneaking to the top of the search result lists. Always ensure all contact information is complete, properly formatted, and up to date – and used throughout your website – to get the best out of this Google service.
We can help you with your Real Estate SEO
You’re never fully done with SEO, but once you’ve laid the foundations for successful real estate SEO marketing, it’s worth conducting an SEO audit to find out which pages are working best and how you can make improvements. Proven Partners are here to help with this and much more. While many real estate consultants concentrate on traditional advertising campaigns, we realise the power of SEO and the power of organic growth – especially if you’re in it for the long haul.
Auditing aside, we’re experts in everything from optimization techniques, keyword research, SEO strategy, content strategy, and backlink building to name but a few. Find out more about our SEO services here.
