How To Perform SEO for Real Estate Website to Generate Organic Leads?

If you’re a real estate business who is looking for tips on how to improve your brand’s online presence, then you have landed on the right post.

This article will unfold the key components of real estate SEO strategy implemented by real estate SEO experts to ensure that no matter what search engine your audiences use, you can propel your real estate website to the top of any Search Engine Result Page (SERPs.) This will not only bring you more online traffic and sales but offline as well.

With a real estate business like yours, it becomes absolutely necessary to capture the online audience using real estate keywords. One has to consider the key elements that Google is looking at as it’s the largest search engine on the web.

What Does Real Estate SEO Mean?

Well, it’s the work that goes into proving to search engines that you’re the most trusted source of information and providing the most definitive answers to a searcher’s questions related to buying and selling of homes.

Let’s dig deeper to unleash the potential of SEO in the real estate market.

The three elements, Expertise, Authority & Trust (EAT) is actually an updated Google Guideline that encourages content, which is backed by author names and their biographies. It also takes into consideration several other factors to determine the authenticity of your real estate website.

Does E.A.T Effect Real Estate?

As a business, what is important for you and your customers? Expertise, Authority, and the Trust that you eventually gain with the previous two.

But the question is, what will make the target audience choose your real estate business when there are so many others that already exist in your location?

If you have established offline authority on a location, then customer loyalty, trust, and sales inevitably pour in. However, how can you rank #1 on Google’s organic search?

Google considers your website’s authority in an area based on several factors. The most important factor that Google considers is the credibility of the information you provide to your audience.

The elements of EAT together contribute to the reputation of a brand, and this is precisely what Google is looking at.

Are you a reputable source of information on real estate in a particular location?

If you are, then you can rank higher than someone who might not have a similar or better reputation. So, expertise, authoritative, and trusted are those key elements around which reputation plays along.  

Get Your Domain Fixed

But before any of these, remember your real estate website needs to work first. Good hosting, right code, excellent speed, and flexible template are all essential components for every website.

The back end website elements like site structure, Schema, XML sitemaps, robots.txt, etc., constitute an integral part of Search Engine Optimization too.

This is where the role of a developer becomes extremely crucial since, at this point, someone who understands technology, make sure that part is taken care of.

He or she will also take care of the plug-ins for WordPress, and other CMS’s that make it worthwhile and easy to do, but this is really the bare minimum.

It’s only after this can you build your E.A.T. So, let’s get down to the stuff you can actually do if you are not a technical whiz.

• Business Listings should be the basis of your digital marketing. Make sure you have as many listings as possible. Particularly ensure that you’re listed on your local directories. Be expressive in your description. By this, it doesn’t mean you will keep repeating the same text over and over again. Go to different listing sites and give as much description as possible. Optimize the text as per the context of your site. Try to add great photos and videos along with your description. This is eligible only when the listing site allows you to do so.
• Google needs to know you are legit. Google My Business is the best as it verifies your location and makes sure you are real. Make sure whatever business listings you do, you syndicate your NAP (Name, Address, Phone.)
• To establish a sense of expertise in all your communication, ensure the information you provide in your descriptions consists of details like the kind of businesses that may be around, the malls, the restaurants, the distance to the nearest public transport, or the number of schools that are in the neighborhood. This shows that you’re an expert and you have some really good information about what is happening in that particular area.

This will also separate you from your competition who might be putting out anything over the web just to attract a larger audience.

Why is SEO for Real Estate Agents Critical?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization means the process of making particular research-based changes in your website so as to attract more and more traffic to your site. Real estate is a massive business where there is indeed a fierce competition.

So, how do you actually outstand your competitors on the internet? Optimizing your real estate website in accordance with the current trends can take your business to a different level. 

With the advancement in technology, today, most of the people interested in buying property tend to search the web before actually making the decision. If a customer lands on your website and gets in touch with you to further become your customer, you need to make sure of that first impression on your customer.

Your website is the first link between you and your prospect, and real estate SEO makes sure that your site experiences a good flow of traffic and enhance the user experience. Search Engine Optimization basically makes your website visible to the audience on the World Wide Web. 

These SEO practices have real estate keywords as these are one of the most critical aspects — keywords are words which the general public types on the search engines to find what they are looking for.

Fully optimizing your website means adding those trending keywords to your website that are inherently related to your business. Good quality content on your site also succeeds in getting credibility to your website by the search engines.

Likewise, more reliability means more recommendations of your website to the searcher. 

How to Optimize Content For Real Estate Website

Creating content while dealing with real estate is crucial for any website to succeed in the real estate business. There are several methods of creating content while also driving traffic to your site and finally getting to the point where a potential customer converts into a paying one. The first and foremost is creating sensible and relevant content for your real estate website. 

1. Content for your own site

As you already know, your website is the first link of contact between you and your customer. So, you need to put in everything you have to leave an impression. Content on your website plays an important role when it comes to building trust.

Excellent and informative content makes your visitor stay longer on your website and also might allow them to sign up on your mail-list. Not only the content on your site brings you closer to getting into a deal, but also it helps your website to gain credibility by the search engines. 

2. Writing Content for established websites

When you formulate content for other websites about your expertise, you display to the readers that you are an experienced realtor. If you put a backlink in the articles you wrote for the other website, the reader might as well land up on your site. This again increases the trust of the potential buyer, giving you credibility and also enables traffic inflow. Make sure you’ve paid ample heed when it comes to curating your web content so that it aligns perfectly with your real estate services.

3. Creating effective backlinks

Backlinks are such links on other websites that take a viewer to your website. And if you have already optimized your website, it will definitely make an impression. These links are generally added to established sites, which receive a significant amount of traffic on a daily basis.

Adding a back-link that rarely gets any traffic is of minimum use to you. A reputable real estate company will assist you in coming up with the best linking strategies that will maximize your growth.

4 Realtors SEO Tips to Increase Website Traffic

1. Focus on selling your most important properties

Writing blogs about the properties that you are most keen to sell can be very helpful in getting your clients and also in being known as an expert in your field.

You can curate blogs on your real estate site, other blogging platforms, and, most importantly on other established platforms so as to get a strong backlink network and a good ranking by the search engines. 

2. Adding images and video of your properties can only do more good

Incorporating pictures of the properties for which you wrote a blog can help the potential customer in getting a better idea of the property. Commonly, people look for images and prices of properties for comparison; adding pictures and videos can only get that property closer to being sold. 

3. Make your real estate website mobile-friendly

While looking for properties online, people often prefer using their mobile devices to mark the properties they like and would like to visit.

When you change your desktop site with a mobile one, your viewers will easily be able to view your content on their phones well. As it is known to all, the increased usage of mobile phones around the world, everything is and can be done using just mobile phones.

Making your website mobile-friendly will only benefit the traffic on your website. Getting along with an experienced realtor SEO firm will help you understand the actual vitality of instilling mobile-friendly elements on your website.

4. Incorporating social media on your website

Social media is the place today to find anyone and everyone. There is everything being done using social media, even businesses. The real estate business, when brought in front of the audience through a social media platform, can not only increase your traffic but also give you myriads of people added to your mailing list.

Social media will bring you a lot closer to your customers; you just need to present to them the perfect deal. Make sure you’re proactive about this front so that you don’t end up missing out on a tremendous amount of web traffic.

Getting There: A Few Basic Steps Involved In Local SEO

Local SEO is the first step when starting to completely optimize your website in accordance with the search engine to gain a better rank. Performing Local SEO is not a big challenge; here are some steps to make it easier for you. 

1. Build your website structure for appearing on the first page

Building your website according to your location is crucial for any business to be known locally. You need to add your address so that people can turn in to be your customers.

Besides, there are numerous local SEO measures that need to be exercised when it comes to boosting the chances of getting such a favorable SERP.

2. Optimizing your meta description, title tags, content, and headers

Adding your city and your location on the title tags will help you rank better in your area. Optimizing your content will also give you credibility and will help you rank better.

If you want to play big in the real estate market, it’s essential to be attentive to suitable optimization of your website elements. 

3. Using Schema Format when listing your NAP

Listing your name, address, and phone number in schema format to increase traffic. In case you don’t hold a lot of knowledge about this, a real estate SEO company will be your best bet since they have understood such intricacies in detail. 

4. Incorporate Google Maps

Google Maps is a fascinating thing as it can take you anywhere you want. When you incorporate your address along with a google map, it will help your customers reach you and make purchases. This turns out to be a significant factor when you’re planning to be focused on your local SEO measures.

5. Including a prompt call to action can help you convert

When doing business, you would not only want people to see you but also want them to become your customers. Including proper CTA will allow your potential customers to get in touch with you.

Also, make sure these are catchy and give a clear overview of your services so that a customer doesn’t have to struggle in making their decision. 

6. Add user reviews and feedbacks

Testimonials and reviews can never do wrong to your real estate business. These elements not only allow people to trust you but also bring them closer to being paying customers. Most prospects tend to evaluate user reviews when it comes to commenting on the reliability of a real estate company.

It’s because satisfied customers often tend to leave genuine reviews of the selected service provider. You can also encourage your clients so that they give you an honest rating depending on the experience they reaped.

7. Mobile-friendly websites are always preferred

With the advancement of a technology-driven time, phones have overtaken laptops and desktops, people are doing everything on their phones. Keeping that in mind, making your website mobile-friendly will only get you more profits. 

Before optimizing anything, you will have to know how people are searching for properties in the area that you’re representing. So research those “search terms” that people use to search online.

• To dig out these terms that people are using, you can use free tools like Google Keyword Planner and the Chrome extension ‘Keywords Everywhere.’
• There are a few paid tools as well that can provide a better insight into these keywords, such as SEMRush & Moz.
• You can also look for trending search terms in your area and compare them on Google Trends.
• Also, ask real and local people what terms they look for properties online so that you can know what they use. Your target is to not only promote your real estate website but also to tell people what makes your area so appealing and why your properties are the ideal in the city.

Whatever descriptions you write for business listings or blogs for content marketing, ensure that you describe the property to the people.

Your write up should also be answering about the things that might be of interest to your audience in that area, but they are not aware of that yet. Which means you have to do your share of research of the surrounding area.

8. Answer the most common questions

 Try to answer the most popular inquiries like, “Why is the area a good place?”, “What are the things around?” and “How would it be like to stay here?” You can also use social media to collect the most pertinent questions asked by your target audience. 

9. Using vernacular

Some people look for ranch style bungalows in the downtown area vs. the main street. The vernacular used locally is going to differ here.

You need to make sure that you’re well aware of it before using it within a website, descriptions, or any other content.

After all the research, you will find yourself to be an expert at choosing and positioning your words in the listings, blogs, and website content that you create. Since Google can understand the intent of these terms, it is easy to rank your real estate website.

10. Optimizing page titles

 Choose your page titles and h1 tags with terms like “NEAR” or “NEARBY”, for example, “homes for sale in Germantown.” Such terms add context to your content.

It’s like saying this property is near this school or bus stand or the nearby restaurants.

Terms like these also give an expert view of something. It’s like when you go up to someone who lives in a town, and he tells you about everything in the corner.

Think about those terms, think about the colloquialisms that give the impression and the understanding of expertise.

11. Creativity is the mother

 Be creative in any blog post you do. Think about different situations that relate to your core business. Like where is the nearest park, supermarket, or parking space? We are only 10 minutes from IBM, Downtown China, etc.

These are the little details that, when all put together, give one an idea and understanding of what people are searching for and improve your SEO real estate measures.

And as said previously, it’s important to provide them with the best answer. Also, ensure that the author of the blog is somebody who is an expert in the real estate industry. Adding the author bio to the blog will help in better ranking in Google search.

12. Add graphics wherever you can

 Adding mobile-friendly maps, drawings, and diagrams can add value to your content. And yes, never forget to give your map or an image and alt text containing proper details of it. Ensure that you customize the alt text for the location.

13. Ask for citations and reviews

 Encourage third parties and real people to review you and give citations. This will automatically establish your authority in that area.

If you’re being quoted in the local online publications, you might as well add to your reputation in the area.

14. Market for Backlinks

 Inspire local businesses and local schools to give your blog’s backlinks from their websites. Sponsor competitions that are held locally in your area.

15. Building link-worthy content

Creating content that goes viral and attracts links isn’t easy. Sadly, as per the Search Engine Journal, 71.9% of content writers today are more focused on creating content, but they ignore the very essence of it.

Content is meant to serve a purpose. It has to be valuable and relevant to the query raised by the audience. If you can create something that is unique and can convince more and more people to share it, most of your job is done. You automatically receive back-links.

The competition of creating the best content is fierce. You’re competing with blog posts, podcasts, infographics, videos, and so on that are already trending.

Just ask yourself, “What makes you different from your competition?”

Most often, fabulous content is outperformed by something mediocre.

Why? Because it wasn’t marketed well.

The content you create is your asset. It has the potential to generate valuable links that will improve your Real-estate SEO.

But this is only half the battle when it comes to SEO for real estate agents.

To understand this, it is crucial for you to figure out why people actually link their websites. It is often recommended by the real estate SEO experts that you create as many backlinks to your website as you can. This increases your credibility, increases the inflow of traffic, and also helps you rank better on the results page of the search engines. 

Here are some very effective ways to create link-worthy content: 

16. Try including animation, infographics, and images to your content

When you include graphical content on your website, it allows the readers to stay longer on your website. This will enable an increased rate of conversion. The main goal of any website dealing with real estate is to increase profits. By creating engaging content, you allow more and more websites to link your website to the content on their website. Alongside this, incorporating such elements will give a detailed idea of your business to a prospect so that they can decide better.

17. Using relatable content which is original and research-based

Plagiarism is condemned by Google and other search engines. No search engine will recommend your website to a user to land upon your site and read copied stuff. Original and fresh content is always appreciated both by the readers and the search engine.

Adding a survey and facts to your content also makes it more credible and trustworthy. When this happens, other websites will invite you to link your website to theirs.

The relevancy of your content and the ads you display on your website should be related to your real estate business in some or the other way. 

18. Testimonials are always welcomed

Testimonials from trusted and esteemed clients are always seen as a thing that makes you special to the others in the same business. Testimonials allow the potential customer to put more trust in you, and they also lead to increased profits as a result of an increased conversion rate. 

19. Establish Relationships with Local Influencers

If you’re creating amazing content and nobody links to it, does it make a difference?

Unfortunately, great content doesn’t guarantee you links.

Therefore, realtor SEO companies suggest that you need to establish relationships with influencers. Influencer marketing is the hottest trend right now.

When a local influencer endorses you in the location that you’re targeting, you are almost doubling your network because the influencer’s followers will see you and give you attention. You acquire this attention since their role model is recommending you.

Ensure that the influencer you work with is able to fit your purpose. It will make more sense to your audience and the influencer’s audience.

An endorsement from an influencer with lots of followers will instantly make your brand more appealing to a whole new audience. When it comes to identifying influencers, think in terms of relevancy and look for micro-influencers.

Real estate SEO is the cub from a different pack. Any ordinary website can be optimized to bring in leads and then convert them into a long-term source of lead generation, but when it comes to SEO for real estate, you need to work repeatedly to get it done. Only then will it constantly bring in traffic and leads and convert them into your new clients.

How to Generate leads through Real Estate SEO

Generating leads is all about how well you optimize your website. When you use the right keywords, anchor texts, content, and give your viewers a great user experience on your website, you are not far from creating yourself a potential lead. You can incorporate mail-list forms that let you achieve crucial leads for your business. 

As said earlier, your website turns out to be the first link of contact between you and your customer. You wouldn’t want to go wrong with it.

Displaying relevant, well-written, and informative to your viewers will allow them to stay longer on your real estate website and finally fill up your mailing list form. Excellent content not only brings you closer to your customer but also allows Google to give you a significant amount of credibility and recommend your website to searchers. 

How Establishing Relationships with Local Influencers can Help?

Owing to the social media addiction this generation is going through these days, influencers are tremendously benefitting. Influencers are people or groups that people tend to follow ardently; in simpler words, influencers influence the general public to follow a specific trend.

Getting in touch with these influencers will help you gain the trust of the people who follow the influencer. This will give you more leads, out of which you can find your buyer.

Subsequently, you can get along on the path of cost-effective SEO when you’re working alongside local influencers as they don’t tend to charge a fortune.

Top Real Estate keywords to get started

Keywords are essential for your website to rank and to be visible on the World Wide Web. There are specific popular keywords that, when included in your website content, will allow increased inflow of traffic. 

• Home
• Realtor
• Houses for rent 
• Property for sale
• Land for sale 
• MLS listing 
• Commercial real estate 

However, you must dive into the essentiality of long-tail and location-specific keywords that have more chances of obtaining secure results. While at it, ensure finalizing an outstanding keyword choice so that your content can get the desired boost. 

How Local Directories help in Boosting Your Real Estate SEO Ranking

Local directories are online directories of businesses on the internet. These directories bring your buyers closest to you. You are required to list your NAP or name, address, and phone number so that the buyer reaches you or gets in touch with you with ease.

Such directories showcase your business’s rating by the general public and also the feedback they have for your business. A great rating and a number of positive reviews make more and more people choose your firm for securing real estate deals.

Based on the rating and feedback, Google gives you credibility and also recommends your business or website to the people searching for something related to your business. The ranking has a significant amount of importance when you are in the market for earning profits via your website. 

Conclusion

All in all, it is not wrong to say that Search Engine Optimization is an integral part of your site’s success on the World Wide Web. When you optimize your website in accordance with the search engine and the current trends, there is very little that can come between your real estate site and a decent rank on the results page of the search engine.

As a realtor, you need to add relevant content and present the properties on your website in such an attractive way that the viewer has no option but to get in touch with you.

Make sure you have invested a justified sum in your SEO practices so that your web traffic can get the deserved hike.

Alongside this, you also need to be watchful for evaluating the results of your implemented strategies so that any pitfalls can be chalked out beforehand. Subsequently, you can exercise the required modifications so that the best results can be obtained.