SEO for Real Estate Businesses: Your Expert Guide

When it comes to SEO for real estate, there are a lot of factors to consider. You’ll want to focus on local SEO, but also reach people who want to move to the area from elsewhere; you need to build positive relationships with potential clients, but be direct in asking for the sale; oh, and you need to make sure you’re taking care of all the classic SEO work like keyword research, content development, and linking.

Feeling overwhelmed yet?

Don’t worry, we’re here to help. This guide will go over everything you need to know to start improving your real estate business’s SEO.

What Is SEO for Real Estate?

SEO is an acronym for search engine optimization, which is a process to encourage search engines to show your content to searchers. SEO for real estate can include technical aspects of your website, the content you publish, the words you include in blog titles, and so much more.

Because of how search results influence buying decisions, ranking well on search engine results pages (SERPs) is a powerful tool in your digital marketing strategy. From driving qualified leads to your website that you can retarget later to influencing people to call you first in their quest to buy or sell property, the tangible results for your business can add up.

The process of real estate SEO can take a while to drive results, but it’s well worth it for the end goal: being the top result when your target audience is searching for your services. Over 25% of searchers click on the top result, making SEO a powerful tool for visibility and lead generation. 

How To Get Started With SEO

There’s a lot that goes into getting SEO results, but with a few simple steps, you can set your SEO project up for success. Here’s everything you’ll need to do to start seeing SEO results in about 6 months.

Technical SEO

Making sure your real estate website is set up for technical SEO success lays the foundation for every other SEO project. To make sure your technical SEO is ready to go, you’ll want to check:

• Page load speed: If any page on your website takes 3 seconds or longer to load, that’s a bad sign. Look into ways you can speed it up, such as compressing your images and limiting the use of external scripts.

• Secure browsing: If you don’t have an SSL certificate yet, it’s time to get one. Websites that don’t have HTTPS set up are less secure, which can impact search rankings.

• User experience: Is your website easy to navigate? How intuitive are your menus? The easier your website is to use, the better the user experience, which is a huge part of SEO rankings.

Keyword Research

All good SEO for realtors will start with research. After all, it’s hard to write pieces that deliver SEO results if you don’t know what’s getting results in the first place.

First, you’ll want to see what your competitors are doing. Are they posting short, listicle-style pieces or long, thorough how-to guides? What keywords are we targeting? Especially if you’re new to SEO for real estate, competitor analysis is an invaluable tool to see what’s working and where there are opportunities for you to rank.

Once you’ve seen what’s ranking and what keywords are popular, it’s time to broaden your horizons. Are there any similar search terms that don’t seem to be getting much attention? What’s missing from the SEO content you’ve seen so far?

Building a Real Estate Content Strategy

Now that you have some keywords in mind, it’s time to start developing your content strategy. This is going to be your roadmap for creating SEO-friendly content, so it’s worth spending a little extra time here. 

Map out which keywords you want to target and what topics would be a good fit for those keywords. Try to come up with a few different topic options for each keyword so you have options to choose from based on what’s trending at the time. For example, if spring warmth comes particularly early, “Best Spring Break Activities in Orange County” might be a better topic than “Indoor Activities for Spring Break in Orange County.”

As you’re planning out what you want to post and when also consider any holidays or major local events that you might want to cover. Examples might include Halloween, Memorial Day, local festivals, and public school events. 

Content Creation

With keywords to target and topic ideas in hand, it’s time to start creating your website’s content. You can write the content yourself or hire professionals to do it for you – the best option for you will depend on your revenue, availability, and how ambitious your business goals are. 

The process of content creation involves a lot of steps, but each one is crucial to the success of your blog:

• Researching: In addition to your keyword research, you’ll need to research the subject you’re writing about. Important things to look up include direct quotes, any statistics you want to use to support your point, and similar topics your readers may want to know more about.

• Writing: This is probably the part you already know about – to publish written content, you’ll need to write that content or hire someone to do it for you. Make sure your content is easy to read, engaging, and includes relevant links.

• Optimizing: Now it’s time to sprinkle in your keywords and other SEO best practices, including but not limited to subheadings, internal links, calls to action, and multimedia content with alt text.

• Publishing: Once your content is researched, written, and optimized, it’s time to send it out into the world! Post it on your site, then share the link and any important context with your social media followers, email lists, and other places potential leads might be.

Ideally, you will want to post content at least 2-3 times every week as part of your SEO strategy. If you won’t be able to write high-quality, optimized content that often, it may be worthwhile to consider outsourcing those tasks to an SEO writing service.

How Can I Improve My Real Estate SEO?

If you have already been working on your SEO for at least six months and aren’t seeing the improvements you’re looking for, here are a few ways you can improve your results.

• Submit your sitemap to Google: Submitting your sitemap is a great way to encourage Google to index and crawl your website. You can do this for free using Google Search Console.
• Update existing content: If you have content on your website that uses outdated statistics or simply hasn’t been updated in a while, taking the time to freshen it up can make a big difference. Consider adding sections, replacing old data with newer numbers, and revising the content to meet current SEO best practices.

• Use a backlink strategy: Backlinks are an important part of how search engines determine your website’s authority score. You can work on getting backlinks through guest posting on other platforms, adding your website to directories, or investing in a link building service.

The Importance of Local SEO for Real Estate Businesses

Local SEO shares many best practices with other types of SEO, but it’s not exactly the same. If you want to effectively target people who already live in the area you serve or are looking to move there, it’s important to make sure your content will show up for searches like “houses for sale near me” or “how to sell a house in my area.” That’s what local SEO is all about.

If your SEO strategy is working but not specifically targeting local searchers, you may get a lot of website traffic, but there will be fewer relevant leads. If you’re practicing real estate in Florida, but you’re showing up in search results for real estate in Iowa, most people aren’t going to stay on your website for long. This increases your bounce rate, which can have a negative impact on your overall SEO results.

How To Improve Your Local SEO Results

In addition to the SEO best practices we’ve already discussed, here are some ways you can improve your business’s local SEO results.

Google My Business and Other Local Directories

The first step you need to take is to make, claim, or update your Google My Business profile. This is part of how search engine algorithms determine where your business operates, so it can help them identify which “near me” searches are actually near you. It can also drive traffic to your website when people are browsing real estate businesses in your area.

Once you have Google My Business set up, it’s time to start joining other directories. By setting up profiles on websites like Yelp or TripAdvisor, you’re creating local search citations. This is important for local SEO because local citations help verify your business’s location and contact information as well as driving traffic to your website.

Publish Locally Relevant Content

Is there a landmark everyone in your town loves or a festival everyone looks forward to? Publish content about it! In addition to targeting keywords people around you are likely to search, this further cements your business’s location and authority on local happenings.

Engage With Online Reviews

When people leave reviews for your business, how do you currently respond? By liking, replying to, and otherwise engaging with online reviews, you increase your trustworthiness and can further optimize your online presence with relevant keywords and accurate contact information. If you don’t have many online reviews yet, consider asking previous clients to leave reviews and offering some sort of incentive to get the ball rolling.

How Much Is Real Estate SEO?

How much real estate SEO costs will depend on how competitive your market is and how quickly you want to start seeing results. Many SEO services will start as low as $999 a month for keyword research, content development, and regular reporting. However, if you want to start seeing results quickly, you may want to spend a bit more to add on services like link building and get more content each month. 

Get Results With SEO for Real Estate

SEO for real estate can be complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. Our team of experts can help you with everything from keyword research to content publishing, and we love being part of achieving your goals. Get started today to see how we can help your website achieve new heights in local search results!