Did you know that 50% of home buyers found their homes through the internet?
This is why real estate agents need to make sure that they have a good website that is attractive, easy to use, and uses relevant SEO tactics.
Keep reading to find out how you can have a great website for real estate agents by implementing our SEO tips.
What is Real Estate SEO?
Most potential customers will click on the first few websites that come up in the ranking. The first page of Google captures 71% of search traffic clicks. That’s why SEO for your real estate website is vital.
SEO for real estate agents essentially can help to take your website up the rankings so that your potential customers can find you easily. Whether they’re looking to buy or sell a property in the local area, you want to make sure you have relevant keywords so that they come across your business.
Due to the competitive nature of real estate and potential customers searching for the best site to look for homes you need to have:
- A good functional website that is easy to use and optimized for other devices such as mobiles and tablets
- Regularly published content to show Google or the search engine that you’re relevant (blog posts that add value for your customers, such as marketing your home)
- And a solid SEO real estate strategy that uses keywords to drive qualified leads to your website.
Whatever size your business is, you need to focus on local SEO for real estate. During a month, there will be hundreds or thousands of people searching for places to buy or sell in your local area. These are the keywords that you need to rank for to ensure you get the customers your business deserves.
SEO Tips for Real Estate Agents
There are several ways you can improve your real estate website’s SEO. For example, you need to make sure you have keywords in the right places and that you rank for long-tail keywords. You can also add internal links, publish relevant content, add a Google Map, and include your testimonials.
1. Use Keywords
The most important way to make your SEO work for you is by using keywords. The first thing you should do is run an SEO audit, to discover if you rank locally, drive organic traffic to your website, and if you’re generating leads.
When you conduct an SEO audit, make sure you look at these key areas:
Site structure, this includes your XML sitemap, robots.txt, and redirects
Page structure, this includes your titles, meta descriptions, H1-H6 tags, and your URLs.
Content, this includes your keywords and link placements, content structure, visual elements, and proper redirects.
Links, this includes the outbound and inbound links, and your interlinking across the website. You also need to remove any broken links.
The final area of your SEO audit will help you work out how usable your website is. This includes the speed of your site and if it is mobile and tablet friendly.
Then you can work on your keywords. Do some research into what keywords are relevant for your business and what rankings they have. Make a list of all the keywords you want to rank for and then start implementing them across your website.
Make sure that you have placed the keywords in the right places. There are 5 key areas to place your keywords for maximum optimization, these include:
- URL
- Page title
- Keywords or variations of the keyword throughout the page
- Title of images
- Image alt tag.
Avoid keyword stuffing though. As a general rule of thumb, only put your keyword in 1%-2% of the entire page. For example, if you have a page of 1000 words then make sure you don’t use your keyword more than 10 or 20 times.
You should also think about ranking for long-tail keywords because you’re more likely to rank for these.
2. Add a Map
Embedding a Google Map of your business on your website can help Google determine where your business is. It also helps to verify that your business is real and helps to show your local customers where you are.
You should also register your business on Google My Business, as this is another easy way to confirm that you are a legitimate business. Google and other search engines rank legitimate businesses higher in the search engines.
3. Publish Regular Content
Publishing regular content that is informative and of value to your customers is a great way to improve your SEO. This is because it shows Google that you know what you’re talking about and it gives you an opportunity for backlinks.
Backlinks are a key part of SEO because it shows that other sources trust your business. You can also get backlinks from local organizations, local websites, and guest posts on other blogger’s websites.
4. Testimonials and Customer Reviews
Another way to improve your SEO is by having a range of testimonials and customer reviews. These generally work best when they are in several different places online. For example, you could have reviews on Yelp, Google Places, your own website, and realtor specific websites such as Trulia and Zillow.
So, don’t be afraid to ask your customers for reviews and testimonials. Not only will they help you gain trust with potential customers in the future, but they will also build trust with Google and improve your search engine ranking.
Improve Your Website for Real Estate Agents
There are many ways you can improve your website for real estate agents by using SEO tactics. Follow some of our above tips to get started and see how much more traffic your website can acquire.
Check out some of our other SEO articles to find out how you can attract more home buyers to your website by using relevant keywords.