Real Estate SEO: Quick Wins and Long-Term Tactics

Your realtor website is up and running, complete with several listings of beautiful homes ready to be bought. But you don’t seem to be getting any traffic and, when you do an online search, you only see competitor links. What can you do?

Well, creating these pages isn’t enough in this competitive landscape. To get potential buyers to see your listing, much less convince them to click and find out more, you need to get in front of them with marketing. You can pay for traditional and online advertising, but those dollars can add up quickly without providing much return.

But what if you could get prospects to your real estate website without spending a dollar? That is where search engine optimization (SEO) can make an impact on your traffic and page views. While this marketing strategy takes time and resources, there are numerous benefits to improving your online presence and getting your listings seen!

What Exactly is Real Estate SEO?

Real Estate SEO can seem confusing and extremely technical, especially if you’re still learning how to do this type of marketing for your website. Essentially, SEO is a search engine strategy that helps get your links seen by the right people searching for the right terms. Whether you’re selling million-dollar condos or starter homes, using real estate SEO will help make sure that your listings will show to appropriate leads.

Keyword Research & Your SEO Strategy

To get your listings shown on Google, you’ll need to do some keyword research. Keywords are the terms that people use to search for information on different topics. To make sure that your website shows for related searches, doing some deep diving into research is crucial.

Focus on topics that make sense for your real estate business, including your region and type of properties that you specialize in. Then, use tools like Google Keyword Planner or ahrefs keyword research tool to see what thee average traffic looks like, as well as any related and long-tail, or more detailed, keywords you can include in your targeting.

Audit Your Website for SEO Opportunities

Once you’ve identified your keywords, it’s time to take a look at your website for quick wins and long-term strategy.

This might be the most daunting task for many real estate agents, as you do need some technical knowledge to make sure that your website was built with real estate SEO in mind.

For real estate agents who have limited web development experience, working with a 3rd party like Screaming Frog or similar companies is your best bet for a thorough and in-depth audit. Once they have the results, you can partner with your web developer to get your real estate website up to speed and optimized.

As well, an SEO audit will help ensure that the real estate keywords you spent so much time researching are in the right place for Google to rank your website. Your on-page SEO matters just as much as the technical aspect, so it’s important to make sure keywords are in important fields, such as page headers and meta titles

Reaching Real Estate Prospect with Local SEO

Real estate is local and so should be your real estate SEO strategy. To nail down this area of real estate marketing, consistency and presence is key.

Let’s start with your Name, Address, and Phone Number (or NAP in the world of real estate SEO). While seemingly basic information, NAP is incredibly vital to building your brand and validity as a realtor. Establish a template and stick to it when building out your online presence.

Once you’ve decided on your NAP, get your hands on your Google My Business listing. When people search for you, this listing will appear on the results page, increasing your chances of getting clicks and traffic right from the first page! As well, with all the bad realtors out there, this is just another way to build trust with potential clients looking to find out more information.

To increase your chances of popping up the next time someone searches for real estate in your area, get social! Build out a Facebook, Yelp, LinkedIn, and profiles to connect with clients on those platforms, as well take over more “real estate” on the results page with more branded links.

Go Mobile to Get More Real Estate Leads

According to the 2019 NAR report, 73% of home buyers are using their smartphones and tablets to find more information on homes for sale. As well, 17% researched and picked their real estate agent all through a mobile device. Numbers like these are exactly why your real estate SEO strategy needs to be mobile-first.

As part of your website audit, your site speed will be evaluated. In today’s world of instant information, if your site is too slow, your prospect will leave or “bounce” without taking any action. These lost opportunities can be avoided by working with your web developer to get your site speed up to snuff.

If you’re building a new website or looking to give your current one a face lift, you should consider a Mobile-first build. This allows for responsive design that adjusts to the size of the viewer’s screen. Google dings websites that do not look great on phone and tablet screens, so for your search rankings, you need to think of every device a home buyer could use to get to your website.

Additional Tips & Tricks for Real Estate SEO Success

Once you get these essential tactics in place, there are numerous other ways you can expand your search engine presence. Some ideas for you to consider as part of your strategy include:

Start a Real Estate Blog

Creating unique articles will help build your credibility in the real estate market, as well as expand the number of touchpoints for home buyers to learn more about your listings.

Link Building for SEO

Work with influencers, review websites, and other potential partners to get your links on their websites. By doing this, Google ranks your links better and it will make it easy to get traffic to your website from credible and relevant sources.

Get into video

Video marketing is changing the real estate market, with drones taking gorgeous shots and home buyers attending virtual walkthroughs via video. Adding videos to your listings will not only help drive conversion, but it will help with your real estate SEO strategy as well to get those prospects to the site!

Real Estate SEO Keywords

Real Estate is one of the most competitive industries to rank a website on google because of huge competitors like Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, Realtor, and Loopnet.

In most Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s) these huge competitors take over the ENTIRE first page.

For Example is you search for San Diego Homes for Sale these are the results you get:

Notice that above the fold only 1 organic listing shows up, Zillow. Surprised? I didn’t think so. It would require too many resources to rank number one for the keyword “San Diego Homes For Sale”.

So what about the rest of the real estate SERP?

Here are results 2-8 for the real estate keyword”San Diego Homes for Sale”:

Notice how competitive it is. All of these results are high quality, brand name, IDX websites.

These websites have built they’re brand over the years.

Their User Experience is extremely responsive, and they’re websites are designed to keep the user entertained for prolonged periods of time.

So how does a local real estate company compete with any of these massive, branded, websites? It’s simple, you don’t

How to Find Profitable Real Estate SEO Keywords

In order to get high quality targeted traffic you have to go for long tail real estate seo keywords that are too specific for most to go after.

Top Real Estate SEO Keywords (Long tail)

1. multi family homes for sale in + “city”
2. beachfront homes for sale in + “city”
3. single story homes for sale in +”city”
4. homes for sale “specific community” “city”
5. foreclosed homes in “city” for sale
6. foreclosed homes for sale in “city”
7. “specific community” + “city” homes for sale
8. modular homes for sale “city”
9. manufactured homes for sale “city”
10. victorian homes for sale “city”
11. homes for sale in “city” country estates
12. foreclosure homes for sale in “city”
13. “city” country estates homes for sale
14. “city” homes for sale near beach
15. trailer homes for sale in “city”
16. “city” waterfront homes for sale
17. craftsman homes for sale in “city”
18. historic homes for sale “city”
19. beach homes for sale in “city”
20. downtown “city” homes for sale
21. cheap homes for sale “city”
22. mid century modern homes for sale “city”
23. “city” vacation homes for sale
24. “community” “city” condos for sale
25. beach condos for sale in san diego
26. condos for sale “city” county
27. beachfront condos for sale in “city”
28. condos for sale “community” san diego
29. oceanfront condos for sale in “city”
30. high rise condos for sale in “city”
31. “city” waterfront condos for sale
32. cheap condos for sale in “city”
33. “city” condos for sale on the beach
34. “city” beach condos for sale
35. condos for sale in “city” downtown
36. log homes for sale “city”
37. cape cod homes for sale “city”
38. art deco homes for sale “city”
39. craftsman homes for sale “city”
40. contemporary homes for sale “city”
41. colonial homes for sale “city”
42. dutch colonial homes for sale “city”
43. Georgian colonial  homes for sale “city”
44. federal colonial homes for sale “city”
45. mid-century modern homes for sale “city”
46. french provincial homes for sale “city”
47. Greek Revival homes for sale “city”
48. Italianate homes for sale “city”
49. Mediterranean homes for sale “city”
50. Modern homes for sale “city”
51. Neoclassical homes for sale “city”
52. Prairie homes for sale “city”
53. Pueblo revival homes for sale “city”
54. Ranch homes for sale “city”
55. Townhouse homes for sale “city”
56. Tudor homes for sale “city”
57. Spanish Homes for sale “city”
58. Victorian homes for sale “city”
59. Cottage homes for sale “city”
60. farmhouse homes for sale “city”
61. Oriental homes for sale “city”

Claim Your Free SEO Audit

Better yet, if you’d like a free SEO audit to see if you’re website is ranking for the right real estate keywords contact us today.