Gone are the days when newspaper ads were the prime source of information when you needed to buy a property. Today, more than 80% of home buyers go online to find homes to buy. As a result of that, real estate businesses need to align themselves with existing trends.
While many real estate businesses now maintain functional websites to reach customers online, most are not utilizing their online presence to the fullest potential. Consider how many more leads you would earn your business by adopting the best real estate SEO practices.
Craft Helpful Content
Content Marketing remains a top SEO strategy. Years back, a Hubspot study revealed that businesses with blogs record 126% higher leads monthly than their counterparts without. If you don’t already have one, now would be the best time to create a blog for your real estate company.
The blog should provide visitors with information on your services and home listings. It should also communicate high-quality information on real estate best practices. For each post, do ensure you leave a Call to Action that motivates visitors to patronize your business.
Optimizing Keywords
Keywords Optimisation is very important in content marketing. For all your posts, use keywords relevant to the real estate business. You have no business writing about food delivery. Focus your posts on your niche alone.
Follow the best keywords optimization practices by including relevant keywords in each blog post title, meta description, filenames of photos and the main content. In doing this, however, avoid keyword stuffing if you don’t want Google’s wrath.
Use Local SEO Tactics
Most people begin their search for homes by including the name of the specific community/town they are looking to live in. Therefore, real estate SEO experts would advise that your SEO tactics should be optimized for your local environment.
If you are based in New York, then when people search for homes in New York, your company name should pop up. Local SEO begins with ensuring your contact details appear the same everywhere, especially in NAP directories.
Optimize Website User Experience
Your website shapes people’s opinion of your business, even before they meet with you. You may be a credible company, but with a website that looks like it was created before the invention of the internet, you wouldn’t get ahead.
Therefore, take note of important areas pertaining to the user experience of your website such as page speed, intrusive ads, visual appeal, simplicity, etc.
Make Website Mobile-Friendly
Many people conduct searches on their mobile phones now than ever. Already, mobile devices account for 62% of Google searches. Also, 72% of home seekers conduct their research using a mobile device. Therefore, as a real estate company, it is very important that your website is responsive on mobile devices.
As mentioned in the earlier point, watch out for your page loading times and ads. Because of the small screens of mobile phones, intrusive ads are even more annoying to deal with.
Use Photos and Videos
This is as obvious as saying the sky is blue. Apart from the fact that you certainly need to showcase available properties on your website, multimedia helps SEO a lot. The visual appeal of photos and videos draws more users to your website.
Moreso, Google prioritizes images and videos as well in ranking pages. Also, if you can, use VR to give clients a virtual tour of properties.
Leverage Social Media
Social media marketing is a big deal in SEO now. Regularly posting on social media platforms and engaging (potential) customers will get you ahead of your clients. The aim of using social media would be to build massive followership online. Another advantage is that it helps in your link building strategies.
Through clicks and shares, social media can be the most effective platform for your SEO-based content.
Request Reviews from Clients
Maybe you have an idea but you would be amazed how many people depend on reviews to determine if a company is right for them. According to a study, 84% of shoppers trust online reviews as much as they do personal recommendations. That makes reviews a great addition to SEO strategy.
Always encourage (but not push too hard) your customers to leave a review. Then display these testimonials on your website so as to gain more customers.
Get Listed in Agent Directories
Seriously, why wouldn’t you? Many people depend on local directories to find the right real estate company and real estate agents to do business with. And considering that these directories have a whopping amount of page visits regularly, it only makes sense that you put your business forward.
That would make your potential clients find you more easily. Examples of such directories include Realtor.com, Zillow, Trullia, Homes.com, etc.
Get Listed in Google My Business
Google My Business has so far been helpful for several businesses, especially SMEs/SMBs. When you make a search, the business pages that appear on top show relevant sites that have been listed by Google.
You can do the same and harness companion services such as Google Maps and Google+. Go through all of Google’s verification process to show that your business is authentic and get you more leverage.
What’s Next?
After reading this piece about SEO for real estate, what you should do next is perform a complete SEO audit of your website. This will put things in perspective and help you determine areas that you should prioritize.
