10 Tips to Harness SEO for Real Estate Agent

Every real estate agent dreams of getting local leads to come to them. Fewer cold calls, lesser irrelevant leads, and getting clients even when you are sleeping. What if we told you it’s possible? SEO for real estate has the power to do all of the above and more if employed the right way. 50% of home buyers find their homes through the internet, so here are a few tips for harnessing your real estate SEO game.

Tips to Improve SEO for Real Estate Agents

1. Conduct an SEO Audit

Firstly conduct an SEO audit to see how your real estate website is performing. The purpose of this is to determine which pages are doing well and which ones have foundational issues affecting organic search performance, site ranking, and conversion of clients. An SEO audit is a standard routine checkup that is supposed to be conducted regularly. An audit can expose the following SEO issues:

• Technical SEO issues like redirects, page speed, and XML Sitemap.
• Page structure problems like meta titles, meta descriptions, alt tags ad URL.
• Content improvements - structure, keyword research, and user experience.
• User experience problems- mobile-friendliness, site speed, and accessibility.
  

A tool we recommend: Neil Patel’s free SEO checker gives a complete list of errors hindering your site from securing the top position on Google. In addition, it provides recommendations to improve your rankings and offers an overall SEO for real estate health score. We also use Ubersuggest. :)

2. Mobile Optimization

50% of the worldwide web traffic comes from mobile devices. Hence your website design must fit mobile and tablet device screens. Google has started mobile indexing, which ranks websites through the mobile view. This is one of the few times Google has let out its strategy, so real estate web admins need to gear up, as 89% of home buyers use mobile search engines throughout their purchase process, according to NAR. The following key website features need to be optimized:

• Page responsiveness
• Page speed
• Usability
• Search optimization
  

A tool we recommend: You can use Google’s free mobile-friendly test to check if your website is mobile-friendly. 

3. Find the Right Keywords

Your website might be filled with gorgeous listings and breathtaking views, but your target audience won’t discover your content if you don’t use the keywords people search for. Use specific keywords combined with engaging content to harness SEO for real estate. 

• Your keyword research should be a combination of long-tail keywords with low search volume but are specific to your locality and fat-head keywords that are highly searched for.
• In the world of SEO, keyword difficulty (KD) tells you how hard it will be to be ranked for a specific keyword. So look for words with moderate keyword difficulty ranging from 30% - 70%.
• Make sure your website URL has the right keywords.
• Your focus keyword should be used in your titles, first sub-headline, first paragraph, meta description and a few times in the rest of the content. You can also include secondary keywords on the website. 
  

A tool we recommend: Ahrefs is a free keyword generating tool that will give you keyword suggestions along with their respective search volume and keyword difficulty. Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest is also a good tool to consider.

4. List your Real Estate Site to ‘Google My Business’

Local citations are essential to be discovered on Google. Create a business profile on Google, and fill in your profile with your business name, category, location, address, contact detail, and website URL. Include photos and videos to make it believable to searchers. This will ensure you rank high up in Google search results. 

Tools we recommend: Enlist your business on other real estate directories like Redfin, Realtor.com, Zillow, and Trulia to increase your SEO in real estate visibility.

5. Landing Pages for Listings

Creating a specific landing page for listings can go a long way in selling them. Individual landing pages will give your real estate business a higher google ranking and increase website visibility. 

• If your listing is a luxury property or a mansion, feature a single listing per landing page. Otherwise, you can group area-specific listings into a single landing page. 
• Fill in listing descriptions with the right keywords. However, remember not to stuff them in as it can have the reverse SEO effect.
• Market the landing page through email marketing and social media. Include landing page links wherever possible to maximize your clicks and reach.
• Include your contact details on every landing page to make it easier for clients to reach you.
• Add beautiful images of your listings. Hire a professional photographer and get your listings virtually staged so that viewers get a clear idea of the size and feel of your listing. You can also try Virtual staging which is the process of digitally decorating your listing with furniture and home accessories. It is economical, time-saving, and flexible. Staged homes sell 73% higher than non - staged ones. 
• Virtual tours are 360-degree videos showcasing every nook and corner of the listing. These are great to be added to your landing pages to give an immersive walkthrough experience for clients. 67% of people want more businesses to offer virtual tours, according to digitalintheround.com.
  

A tool we recommend: Unbounce is a landing page software that helps users build beginner-level and advanced landing pages. It has a dynamic text replacement feature that replaces landing page keywords based on search queries.

6. Publish Valuable Content on your Blog

Blogs are a great way to up your SEO for real estate game. Publishing quality content over quantity will make you stand out from the chaos online. Prioritize the content you should include in your real estate blog. It should be a mix of informative, visual, and problem-solving content. Write about the schools in your locality, ‘10 Popular Restaurants in (your Area)’, and include images, infographics, and gifs to spice up your blog. Conduct interviews with residents and business owners in the neighborhood to offer their unique perspectives on the quality of life there. Write about your area of expertise and make it a combination of evergreen and topical content. Finally, remember to flesh out keyword-optimized content as mentioned above to ensure readers find your blogs. Add compelling headlines and optimize image names and alt tags.

A tool we recommend: Yoast SEO is a blogging tool that ensures your pages are optimized with all the SEO in real estate basics. Once you have installed the plugin in your browser, Yoast will give you an SEO analysis with a list of suggestions.

7. Internal Linking & External Linking

As seen in the diagram above, internal links are hyperlinks that direct readers from one webpage to another on your website. They provide a clear path for visitors and keep them engaged with your website for longer. These links establish your business in readers’ minds and encourage them to become your followers and eventually customers. Internal links improve your website’s visibility, site authority, and rankings. As your churn out new blog posts, update your old ones by adding the latest links in relevant places. 

External Links direct you to a reputable page on a different website. These links might seem counterproductive, but linking well-ranking, authoritative websites will help your website gain glory and help Google with SEO for real estate. However, ensure your links are credible; otherwise, it can have the opposite effect and pull down your page rankings. If you publish a blog with valuable content, you can ask another relevant authority website to link your page to theirs; this is called backlinking. ‍

A tool we recommend: Dupli Checker’s free site link analyzer tool will scrutinize your overall link profile compared to your competitors and find suitable web page sources that will be great to generate links.

8. Check for Broken Links

A broken link is a link that is no longer working because its destination has been changed/ removed or the URL is invalid. Broken links are not just detrimental to user experience but also SEO. This is because Google’s web crawlers go from link to link to collect data for ranking. Hence audit your website often to fix broken links.

A tool we recommend: Dead Link Checker, a free broken link checker that points out all your 404 pages that need fixing by crawling through your website.

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9. Generate Video Content

Google recognizes how difficult it is to create videos, so it ranks them differently than web pages. Therefore, there is a greater chance of your videos showing up in Google search results. So churn out video content to distinguish yourself from the competition. Consider launching a YouTube channel and consistently upload videos. Optimize video descriptions, headlines, and hashtags using the right keywords and share them on your social media sites. You may embed them in your blog articles too. Here are a few video ideas for real estate:

• Listing videos and virtual tours
• Open house videos
• Q&A live streams
• Neighborhood Highlights
• Interviewing locals and fellow real estate professionals
  

A tool we recommend: Animoto is a tool that helps you incorporate photos, video clips, text, and music to create quick videos that you can share on your website, social media sites, and email.

10. Feature Client Reviews

A whopping 87% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses. Real estate is a locality-centered business, so customer reviews can have a significant impact on potential homebuyers as well as Google. Getting positive reviews on as many online platforms as possible will establish your business as an authority in the eyes of search engines. Google trusts your clients more than you. So, testimonials are an essential factor in making your business look reliable.‍

A tool we recommend: Invite customers to review your business on platforms such as Google My Business, Yelp, Zillow, your website, and social media handles.

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Use the above SEO tips to generate hyperlocal SEO in real estate to help you navigate the fierce competition online and rank well against your competitors. 

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Styldod is a design tech company that aims to simplify real estate marketing and help agents present homes in their most favorable light online by reimagining and automating the listing photography process. Having begun as a virtual staging company, today, Styldod has affordable and best-in-class products and services for every facet of real estate marketing and photography. Styldod’s suite of services includes virtual staging, image enhancements, floor plans, virtual renovation, 3D renders, 360-degree virtual tours, and Matterport virtual staging, to name a few. We're trusted by over 10,000 realtors from all over the US and from companies like ReMax, Coldwell Banker, Keller Williams.