Real estate search engine optimization (SEO) supercharges your website, increasing traffic, improving lead generation, and driving higher conversion rates. Let’s break down the best real estate SEO strategies and how they can set you apart in your local market.
SEO is how a website wins traffic in internet searches. Successful real estate search engine optimization (SEO) means your website is tailored to a search engine’s (like Google) algorithms. The more fine-tuned your SEO, the higher you’ll rank, ensuring your content appears before your competition. Because SEO is integral to finding and nurturing new leads, an effective real estate SEO strategy is among the best digital marketing investments one can make. In fact, half of marketers believe that SEO has the best return on investment of any channel they use.
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10 Must-dos for Effective Real Estate SEO
There’s no question that SEO is crucial to any real estate business. Here are our top ten tips for optimization, or, if you’re too busy to implement them yourself, hand your strategy over to the SEO experts at Luxury Presence.
Real Estate SEO Strategy #1: Conduct a real estate SEO audit
An SEO audit is a periodic check of your website’s performance. In-depth audits take a few hours to conduct and should be performed at least twice per year. The results provide a real estate SEO roadmap for improving your site’s rankings.
An SEO audit should assess your
- Content: is it original and valuable to your audience; does it leverage keywords; is it published regularly; does it build an interlinking web of pillar and subpillar content?
- Technical SEO: your site speed, page indexing, mobile-friendliness, and navigation
Local SEO: check your Google Business Profile, optimize for nearby searches and other location-dependent info. - On-page SEO: assess website design, article headings, tags, images, alt text, meta descriptions, and outbound links
- Off-page SEO: consider social media engagement, backlink strategies, and mentions
- Competition: compare your site’s performance against competitor
Not sure where to start? Book a free strategy call with our team for customized, one-on-one guidance.
Real Estate SEO Strategy #2: Optimize your site for fast search
Optimizing for fast search means that your site (and data your site pulls from, like IDX) is lean and easy to load. When it comes to speed, every fraction of a second counts. You’ll lose 53% of potential visitors if they wait three or more seconds for content. And conversion rates tumble 8.3% for every tenth of a second someone spends waiting for your articles or listings to appear.
Start by checking your speed on Google’s PageSpeed Insights analyzer, which provides a list of issues that need to be addressed.
Real Estate SEO Strategy #3: Prioritize for mobile devices
Sixty percent of searches happen on mobile devices, so having a mobile-friendly site is good for business. It is also a top SEO requirement because Google prioritizes the mobile version of your site over desktop.
Start with a responsive website design that loads based on your visitor’s device. Responsive design also reduces the chance visitors end up on an error page or come across unreadable content.
Real Estate SEO Strategy #4: Be accessible and ADA-compliant
Sites are areas of public accommodation, so all visitors need to be able to use all website features. One in four Americans has a disability, from mobility issues that make website menus tough to navigate to visual impairments that make it difficult to interpret images. Assistive devices help make a site ADA-compliant and optimized for search engines. For example:
- Make links descriptive. Avoid phrases like “click here,” which does not tell users what kind of content they’ll get when they click.
- Use alt text on all images, which helps Google understand your page’s content and rank in Google Images.
- Use accurate title and heading tags that help readers recognize they’ve landed on the right page.
Real Estate SEO Strategy #5: List your business on Google and other relevant directories
To capitalize on traffic and elevate your website’s authority, list your business on Google with a free Business Profile. You’ll be included in local search results when readers run a search query for a “real estate agent in [my city].” Your Google listing also ensures you appear on the Google Knowledge panel, Google Maps, and the Google Three-pack (the top results from a local search).
You should also list your company name, address, and phone number on your social media profiles, local directories, and real estate-specific sites like Zillow and Realtor.com.
Real Estate SEO Strategy #6: Get backlinks to your real estate website
A backlink is a link from another website back to your website. It’s important to real estate SEO that reputable websites include a backlink to your site because it’s a sign to Google that your site is trusted and authoritative.
Earn backlinks with guest posts in publications, newsletters, websites, speaking engagements, sponsorships, and blogs. To build relationships that lead to quality backlinks, sponsor a local team, pitch a story about real estate trends to the local news outlet, or teach a class at a local venue.
Real Estate SEO Strategy #7: Publish location-specific content on your blog
Location is king in real estate—and real estate SEO. People often start their real estate search online when seeking information about a location, schools, neighborhoods, and what it’s like to put down roots in a community. That’s why it’s essential to publish helpful real estate SEO content centered on your location.
Write stories on your blog about local real estate and development trends. And don’t forget neighborhood blogs where you can regularly post quality content, answer questions, and engage. You can also start a newsletter to drive traffic to your website, connect with your target audience, and build lasting trust.
Real Estate SEO Strategy #8: Optimize images for search
Optimizing images is an effective way to amplify the real estate SEO potential of your articles and listings. Google Image Search receives millions of views per month, and its new multi-search (combining words and images) benefits agents who leverage their gorgeous listings photos and glossy, in-depth neighborhood guides.
To optimize your images, include your focus keywords in file names, use alt text to describe them, and add captions that match your topic and image.
Real Estate SEO Strategy #9: Provide helpful tools and resources
While traditional marketing meant blasting your services to the general population via bullhorn, today it’s about finding ways to serve your target audience with focused, personalized, quality content.
Develop and deliver content written for your target audience that is helpful and original. Features like mortgage calculators, checklists, FAQs, and neighborhood guides offer value, improve your real estate SEO, and drive more traffic.
Real Estate SEO Strategy #10: Act now, but be patient
SEO is a long-term strategy. It can take five months to two years for a new article to rank, depending on the difficulty of the keywords. Even with low-competition keywords, ranking can take up to a year for websites that haven’t been fully optimized.
But take heart: Google indexes content within days, so updates or technical optimizations can result in new visitors almost immediately.
Luxury Presence + a winning real estate SEO strategy
If you’re ready to start ranking higher and bringing in more quality traffic, our expert real estate SEO team is here to help. We’ve got the deep industry knowledge and experience to optimize your website, develop content that establishes you as a local expert, and help you generate and convert more clients. Get started by booking a demo now.
