Most real estate agents would agree, having a strong online presence is no longer a choice—it’s a necessity. Your Instagram is the equivalent of your calling card, your LinkedIn is your resume, and your client reviews on Zillow, Realtor.com, and Google My Business can make or break your next deal. 

When it comes to websites, many agents choose to rely on their profile pages that are housed on their brokerage’s website. However, a well-optimized realtor website can significantly enhance your visibility in search engine results and drive organic traffic to your business. In other words, when done correctly, a dedicated website can be a major differentiator. To help you maximize the potential of your real estate website, we’ve compiled a list of 10 SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tips. Implementing these strategies will not only improve your website’s organic search rankings but will attract more qualified leads and over time will grow your client base and ultimately your success in business. 

What is Real Estate SEO?

According to Backlinko, websites appearing on the first page of Google receive 91.5% of all organic traffic. This statistic right here is the “why” behind SEO. Real estate SEO refers to the practice of optimizing your real estate website to improve its visibility in search engine results and increase the odds of ranking on page one of Google. 

SEO exists in the first place because search engines like Google want their users to have a seamless, valuable search experience. This means that when you type in a query, the top results that appear should answer your question, be authorities on the subject matter, and provide a good site experience. Consider the alternative: you type in “SEO tips and tricks” into Google and the first five websites are spam sites that take three minutes to load and then don’t provide any value. Yeah, not exactly a great experience. Google wants you to search again and again and the way it ensures a good experience is by ranking websites based on a complex set of criteria. This set of criteria is what makes up SEO. 

By implementing SEO strategies specific to real estate, you can increase the chances your website has of appearing higher in search rankings when potential clients search for relevant keywords or phrases. This form of marketing is subtle but it is powerful. It gives you the opportunity to build your brand, communicate value, associate your name with relevant topics and questions, and connect your name to the real estate industry. 

 

Why is Real Estate SEO Important?

Research from NAR shows that 93% of home buyers use the web as their primary research tool when searching for properties. This shouldn’t be surprising—in fact, I’m surprised it’s not higher. There is a wealth of real estate information online ranging from upper-funnel, informational topics like “how to begin your home buying journey” to lower-funnel, purchase-oriented content like “homes for sale near me”.  With such a large percentage of potential clients turning to search engines, it is essential for brokers to optimize their websites for maximum visibility.

Real Estate SEO helps you:

1. Increase Organic Traffic: By appearing higher in search engine results, you can attract more organic traffic to your website, leading to increased brand awareness and new clients. Plus, SEO is “always on” meaning you don’t have to put paid resources to benefit. You can build your SEO slowly over time and continue to win dividends years down the road. 
2. Establish Authority and Credibility: A well-optimized website with informative content and quality backlinks can position you as an industry expert, building trust with potential clients. 
3. Generate Qualified Leads: By targeting specific keywords related to your real estate niche, you can attract potential clients who are actively searching for properties or real estate services. 

Now that we’ve covered the importance of real estate SEO, let’s dive into our 10 SEO tips to improve your real estate website.

 

1) Conduct Comprehensive Keyword Research:

Any SEO strategy should include the identification of relevant keywords and phrases that potential clients might use when searching for real estate services. The best way to do this is by utilizing keyword research tools to identify high-volume, low-competition keywords specific to your local market and niche. The tools we recommend using are Ahrefs, Semrush, and Google Keyword Planner. While you do need a paid account to use the keyword planning tools on Ahrefs and Semrush, the investment is well worth it as these accounts will be able to show you the monthly search volume for keywords, what websites are currently ranking in the top spots (and the monthly traffic those URLs are pulling in), plus information about how your competitors are ranking. 

Once you’ve identified the keywords that are applicable to your brand and market, incorporate these keywords naturally into your website’s content. A good rule of thumb to avoid keyword stuffing is for your keywords to appear no more than 5-10 times per 2000 words. Your keyword should be most prominent in your page titles, headings, meta descriptions, and body text.

 

2) Leverage Local SEO

A big benefit of SEO in the real estate industry is that a lot of the content you’re producing is specific to the markets you work in. While there may be some healthy competition for “Steps to Selling my House”, there will not be as much competition for “Selling my House in Greenwich, Connecticut”. Use this to your advantage in your keyword strategy and incorporate location-specific keywords throughout your website’s content, including titles, headings, and meta descriptions. Complement this by optimizing your Google My Business profile, generating positive reviews from locals, and ensuring your contact information is consistent across online directories. 

3) Optimize Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

Use your keywords in steps one and two to craft compelling and keyword-rich page titles and meta descriptions for each page of your website. These elements are displayed in search engine results and serve as a brief preview of your content. Including relevant keywords and persuasive language in these elements can increase click-through rates and improve your website’s visibility.

If you’re working from WordPress or another website platform, we recommend downloading an SEO plug-in to help monitor your site’s SEO health. This allows you to easily edit meta descriptions and primary keywords directly from the plug-in. For WordPress, we recommend Yoast or All in One SEO Pack. 

 

4) Abide by EEAT: Engaging and Informative Content

It’s easy to forget that a core tenet of SEO is the content itself. Only by producing high-quality, original content that provides value to your audience can you rank high on search engines. Google’s acronym E-E-A-T is highly regarded as the cornerstone of SEO. Standing for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust, these pillars must be present for an article to rank well. 

As a broker, the best way to create high-quality content is to author blog posts, articles, and guides hosted on your website that address common questions and concerns in the real estate industry. In fact, HubSpot reports that websites with a blog lead to 55% more website visitors. Incorporate top-asked questions and topics into your blog on your website with the goal of becoming the go-to resource for real estate information in your target market.

 

5) Implement On-Page Optimization Techniques

Now that the bulk of keyword strategy has been optimized, it’s time to tweak your website’s structure and on-page elements to improve its SEO. This includes: 

• Optimizing URLs: URLs should be short, simple, easy to read, and include your keyword. 
• Using descriptive headings in your blog posts: Each blog post should only ever have one H1 title, two or three H2s max, and H3s and H4s if you require. Every page must have an H1 title. 
• Adding alt text and titles to images: These should be short and use keywords. 
• Optimizing images: Compress size so that images don’t slow down the site speed (more on this lower down in the article).
• Linking structure: Broken links, 404s (page not found), and redirects all negatively impact your website’s health and SEO. Make sure you track this and receive regular reports that crawl your site and audit these issues. Fix important issues like 404s and broken pages or images immediately. 
• Improving internal linking between relevant pages: Aim to link internally and externally when writing articles.  
• Checking site speed and ensuring there are no slow pages 
• Make sure your website is mobile-friendly: 60% of all searches now come from mobile devices; mobile responsiveness is a crucial factor for search engines and thus SEO. 

 

6) Build Quality Backlinks

SEO is an ecosystem with many moving parts that need to work together and quality backlinks from reputable websites are one of those vital parts. Backlinks are when a website links to yours. Search engines code backlinks as a “vote of confidence”. If the New York Times writes an article on the top brokers in Manhattan and you’re on the list, that backlink adds credibility and authority to your website, helping to convince Google that your URL can be trusted. Backlinks are vital for site SEO. 

A study from Backlinko found that the number one pages on Google have an average of 3.8% more backlinks than results #2-10. While it’s no easy feat, you can aim to acquire backlinks by creating shareable content, guest posting on industry blogs, and reaching out to influencers or other real estate professionals for collaboration opportunities. And remember, when it comes to SEO, slow and steady wins the race. Backlinks aren’t made in a day. It will take time and persistence to be known for content online but the more valuable articles you write and share, the more likely you are to receive backlinks which will build over time. 

 

7) Incorporate & Compress Visual Content 

When done correctly, including visual content like high-quality images and videos, can enhance user engagement and improve your website’s SEO. Real estate agents can use beautiful images of listings, neighborhood architecture, virtual tours, and local establishments. Just check to ensure you can legally use the images on your website. If you’re not sure, it’s better to err on the side of caution. Unsplash and Pexels are two stock websites with plenty of free, high-quality royalty-free images and videos. 

When you do add visuals, make sure to optimize them by compressing in size (images should be under 500KB in size; we like Smush Pro as a WordPress plug-in to help optimize), using descriptive file names (file name should include keywords when applicable), and providing alt text (a description of the image added once uploaded) to help search engines understand the content. 

 

8) Optimize for Voice Search

With the rise of voice-activated devices, optimizing your website for voice search is becoming increasingly important. Our best suggestion for doing this is to incorporate conversational, long-tail keywords and create FAQ-style blogs that match the way people ask questions when using voice search. If you’re struggling to think of good questions, the answers can be right in front of you! Next time you meet with a potential client, write down their questions and then write blog posts that answer them. This can help your website appear in voice search results and capture voice-driven search traffic. 

 

9) Improve Tech, Website Speed, and Performance

If a website takes too long to load, visitors will leave. This is called “bouncing”. If your bounce numbers are too high, search engines will penalize you. A fast and responsive website is crucial for both user experience and SEO. You can optimize your website’s loading speed by compressing images, minifying code, and leveraging browser caching (we like NitroPack). Website performance tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or Ahrefs can provide insights and health reports that will allow you to make the necessary optimizations. 

 

10) Track and Analyze Results

It just wouldn’t be a marketing blog post without reminding you to track your results. Use your analytics tools to track the performance of your website and SEO efforts. Sign up for weekly or monthly reports and monitor key metrics month-over-month like organic traffic, top-performing pages, keyword rankings, SERP (Search Engine Result Position), bounce rates, site health, backlinks, and conversion rates. Track the data and analyze it to identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to refine your SEO strategy.

 

A well-optimized website is the foundation for a thriving real estate business in the digital age. Incorporating SEO strategies into your real estate website really can make a significant difference in your online visibility and lead generation. By following these 10 SEO tips, you can improve your website’s rankings, attract more qualified leads, and ultimately grow your real estate business. 

Remember, SEO is an ongoing process that requires consistent effort and adaptation. It is a space that is constantly changing and staying up to date with industry trends and algorithm changes is crucial to ensuring your website remains optimized and competitive. If you’re ready to take your real estate business to the next level and need expert assistance with your website’s SEO, we’re here to help. Contact us today to schedule a consultation to discuss your real estate marketing needs. We’re here for you—helping you achieve your business goals and maximize the potential of your real estate website.