Both offline and online, the real estate industry is extremely competitive. With tens of thousands of small, mid-sized and large companies vying for their share of the market, finding a client and generating qualified leads are always a challenge.
Here are some SEO tips that will improve your real estate website and help it dominate in local search.
Conduct An Audit For Your SEO Performance
It’s always the best practice to run an SEO audit first to know which areas of your online presence you need to focus on. If your site fails to rank locally, drive any organic traffic, generate leads, or convert clients, you need to find out why.
A website SEO audit is a huge topic in itself. For a local SEO audit, pay attention to these areas:
Site structure: XML sitemap, robots.txt, redirects.
Page structure: Titles, meta descriptions, H1-H6 tags, ALT tags, URLs.
Content: Keyword and link placement, structure, visual elements, duplicates, proper redirects and canonical tags.
Links: Outbound and inbound, interlinking, broken links.
Usability: Mobile-friendliness, site speed.
Take note of these points and focus on improving them and you’ll see a considerable increase in traffic and clients.
Remember that an optimized site will rank nicely, including for local searches.
Improve Your Website And Make It SEO Ready
Once you’ve pinpointed all the problem areas of your website, invest an adequate amount of hours into fixing them.
A perfectly optimized website is essential if you want to show up in local results. Address all the SEO essentials or better, have a professional take a look and fully custom design your website to meet industry standards in terms of layout, design and how your site would adapt to various viewports.
You’ll also need to create and post in your website some relevant content that would draw your intended audience to your website. You should regularly produce content that is timely and informative.
Google My Business
To build a continuous stream of clients from organic search, get your business listed in Google.
Google offers you Google My Business and Google Maps. If you list your business there, its visibility in search will dramatically increase especially if your site’s age, authority, and content meet a high standard. It will definitely secure one of the top three non-paid positions on Google search results.
Obviously, users pay more attention to search results that feature snapshots, ratings, reviews, and Google Maps directions.
Start a Blog
Your online presence depends on the content you produce.
When you create properly optimized content that speaks to the needs of your targeted audience, you build your path to dominate local search results.
Here are some ideas for your blog:
Informative articles. These are blog posts about your neighborhood: schools, crime, walkability, median income, prices, social life, entertainment, restaurants, etc. Provide unique perspectives and describe actual pros and cons of the neighborhood.
Interviews with local business owners. These can take a pretty large chunk of your time, but it will be time well spent. They will display the soul of your neighborhood and demonstrate to prospective home buyers how nice your area is. On top of that, business owners will share these interviews on their social pages and websites, building awareness and increasing reach for your business.
Visual content. These are your images (ordinary and 360-degree immersive panoramic photos), infographics, video tours, live-stream videos, virtual tours, etc.
Optimize your content for search engines before posting and sharing. Include “location based” keywords into titles, subtitles, meta descriptions, ALT image texts, URLs, hashtags, etc.
Social Media
Social media can help your SEO efforts, though it may not necessarily improve your organic rankings. However, social media is important because it helps you:
Connect with your targeted audience.
Build awareness, authority, and trust.
Increase exposure.
Drive more traffic.
Convert this traffic into customers – and sales.
As a real estate business, it’s tough to gain visibility online unless you have social media accounts (including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest). Use social networks to post and share your blog content, videos, and other important things (stats, news, etc.).
You can use the power of social networks like Instagram and Pinterest to promote your site with visual content. Let users have a peek at the best home sale opportunities on Facebook. Create boards on Pinterest to simplify pinning. Share stories on Instagram.
Conclusion
By doing these real estate SEO tips, you can build a strong foundation that will help you dominate your area’s local search. If you do your homework and optimize your site for local search properly, it will rank nicely.
Make sure you consult or hire a professional like Ubertor before taking your first step. It’s easier to avoid mistakes than fix them.