Practical real estate SEO strategies agents can leverage
You are done with the big “why,” it’s time to proceed and learn how to proceed with your SEO strategy. This section shows you the next steps to reap a windfall from real estate SEO. Let’s take a look and get moving.
- Perform careful keyword research
All real estate searches start with keyword phrases. Thus, getting it right with your keywords gives you an advantageous head start in your quest for enhanced online visibility. Use keyword planners to research the types of keywords searchers use to seek your services and offers. Go ahead and determine these keywords’ availability based on their volume and competition.
This initial investigation also reveals the keywords your competitors are ranking for. It also shows the keywords you already rank for before starting your journey quest to convert potential customers.
- Leverage long-tail keywords
Still on keywords, you need to leverage long-tail keywords. These keywords are more comprehensive even though they’re less popular than their short-tail counterparts. Long-tail keywords are also less competitive but more specific to your searchers. Therefore, optimizing them helps you outrank your competitors without spending to convert potential clients.
- Track your keywords rankings
It’s not enough to rank for the most effective keywords. You also need to track your goals and report on your performance by monitoring these keywords’ evolution. This way, you will be better positioned to detect any changes in their search volumes and rankings for timely adjustments or strategy changes. Monitoring also enables you to know the pages that rank lower and require additional optimization.
- On-page SEO optimization
Higher search engines rankings require careful on-page real estate SEO. Google’s algorithms crawl web pages to establish their value to Internet users. Crawlers also consider other technical backend factors in evaluating your:
- Title tags.
- Meta descriptions.
- URL structure.
- Page titles (H1, H2, H3, and H4.)
- Keywords.
- Internal and external links.
Hiring a competent SEO experts helps assess your website’s on-page SEO for real estate best practices. A reputable digital marketing expert will also help you position your site for peak optimization to attract more potential clients.
- Spy on your competitors
Practicing real estate SEO means arming yourself for the ever-raging battle to win and retain customers. You can’t wage successful battles if you don’t know your opponent and what they do to gain more organic traffic or higher search results. Here, competitor spying becomes necessary to understand which keywords make them outrank you. It also reveals what kind of content they publish, plus their website and page structures.
Your competitor analysis should reveal what works best for your competitors’ real estate websites and little marketing strategy secrets. This study also exposes their weaknesses and strengths, giving you an advantageous head start for your overall marketing strategy formulation.
- Perform a complete technical SEO analysis
You also need to analyze your website’s technical features to run a successful real estate SEO campaign. Your analysis will show these elements’ current status:
- Response codes 404, 401, 410, 503, 505.
- Website structure, orphan pages, and internal linking.
- Canonical tags challenges.
- Duplicate URLs and duplicate content problems.
- XML sitemaps and robots.txt file setup.
- Web security (SSL certification).
- Negative SEO (harmful backlinks pointing to your site).
Establishing these elements’ health necessitates corrective measures like fixing broken links and boost your link building efforts.
- Leverage web analytics tools
You must leverage web analytical tools to succeed in your campaigns because SEO is a marathon yielding long-term dividends. Continuous assessment requires gathering and analyzing data on how your users interact with your website.
This analysis also enables you to set specific targets and events corresponding to your user activities. Consequently, you’ll be better positioned to segment your users and target them with valuable content and information.
- “EAT” well
You should also “EAT” (expertise, trust, authority) well to make your website rank favorably in search engines and win your visitors’ trust. Correct “EATing” positions you advantageously for higher ranking because Google uses EAT to rank your website.
So, how do you go about your EAT efforts and overall SEO program? You can optimize your website by ensuring that all your relevant pages like contact, about us, and homepages have updated information. Loading them with correct and appropriate details about your business portrays you as a credible authority in your real estate niche.
Don’t shy away from including your awards or accreditations because they cement your credibility and authority as a real estate agent.
- Optimize for mobile search
In 2018, Google started ranking websites using mobile responsiveness and friendliness. It uses mobile-first to favor mobile-friendly websites. Here is Google’s statement and position on this matter:
“Mobile-first indexing means that we’ll use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking, to better help our – primarily mobile – users find what they’re looking for. […] we continue to encourage webmasters to make their content mobile-friendly.”
So, you need to take your website’s mobile friendliness seriously. Invest time to run your website through mobile-friendly test tools to determine how easily users interact with it on mobile devices. These tools will show you if your website has any elements that make it difficult for users to enjoy it on mobile devices. Remember, early difficulty discovery is the first step towards timely recovery and remedy. After test results, you can take these steps to make your website more mobile-friendly:
- Improve your website’s loading speed.
- Ensure your site’s design adapts well to smaller phone and tablet screen sizes.
- Ensure that any pop-up you use on your website doesn’t interfere with its mobile device use.
Making your site mobile-friendly means remaining good friends with Google and, most importantly, your users.
- Add schema markup
Adding schema markup structures your website’s code to show Google the kind of format it assumes. For instance, you could have tables describing properties with fields for their prices and bedrooms. This approach means that your table is most likely to feature in Google’s highly coveted instant answers and snippets.
According to studies, pages utilizing schema markup have a 20-25% higher click-through rate in search than those that don’t. But how do you actualize this strategy for your real estate SEO? You can do it by marking up your business listings to feature contact details and business hours. Additionally, you can mark up your products or properties to feature these fields:
- Name (the property’s address)
- Offer price (500,000)
- Offer currency (C$)
- Leverage videos
Video content is an excellent way to boost your SEO presence and success. Professionally done video content is a perfect for showing your target buyers your listed properties’ interior and exterior dimensions. Interested buyers can take video tours to scout property neighborhoods without touring the physical location. Just ensure you have perfect drone-captured videos to give buyers that near-reality feel of your listed properties.
It’s also worth noting that people can watch high-quality videos longer than reading texts without feeling bored. So, leverage videos in your SEO marketing to drive more traffic to your site and generate qualified leads. Just look at these figures to see how much video can boost your real estate SEO.
- The Aberdeen Group research reports that video marketers win 66% more qualified leads annually and a 54% enhancement in brand awareness than those who ignore video marketing.
- 2016 BoldContent video marketing stats revealed that video-backed real estate listings attract 403% more inquiries than those without. Sadly, a mere 2-9% of realtors leverage video content.
- According to a Cisco prediction, video content has generated 82% of all consumer web traffic since 2020.
- Optimize your images for search engines
Real estate is a highly visual industry. People searching online want to see how their prospective properties and their environments look. Thus, they need crisp and well-optimized images to inspire their decisions. Sadly, loading your real estate listings with beautiful photos can be counterproductive if they slow down your pages.
The issue of images compromising on-page SEO isn’t new, though. One study revealed that unoptimized images cause about 78% of all websites’ on-page challenges. So, use compressor tools to compress your images without compromising their quality.
Additionally, optimize photos using relevant alt texts, captions, titles, and meta descriptions. Don’t forget to include relevant keywords in your descriptions and titles.
So, what do you reap from taking extra time to optimize your real estate images? Definitely, it pays long-term dividends because Google rewards you with more clicks. Your website will earn an additional 37% more clicks from Google Images than your competitors who don’t optimize their pictures. Now you know why that extra mile pays, don’t you?
- Don’t forget your local backyard
Lastly, everything ends in your business’s backyard: your location. Overall, your realty SEO should focus on your local SEO because locals dominate search engine searches in the real estate industry. Local searchers want to get a credible real estate business NEAR THEM.
Do you want to become that business they seek in Calgary or Ontario? Then rush to claim and optimize your Google My Business listing for improved visibility in Google and other search engines. Optimize your listing by:
- Adding relevant posts.
- Localizing your website’s content.
- Including your accurate name, physical address, and other contact details like phone numbers or email addresses.
Closing Remarks on Real Estate SEO
There you go, with everything you need to know about executing a successful real estate SEO campaign. You are abreast of its benefits and how you can harness real estate SEO.
What are you waiting for? The power is not in the knowledge by the applying these insights to generate leads, win referral traffic, appear more in local searches, and ultimately, win more local business for your real estate agency. See you at the top of real estate SEO in 2022!
