A Comprehensive Guide To SEO For Real Estate Brokers And Agents
The real estate industry is highly competitive. If you want your business to stand out, your website must be visible in search engine results when people look for your services.
In fact, 68% of clicks go to the top three organic search results on Google. Additionally, 97% of homebuyers use the internet in their home search.
If you want to generate leads and attract potential clients, you need to optimize your real estate website for search engines.
However, real estate search engine optimization (SEO) can be complex—over 50% of marketers struggle to keep up with it.
In this article, we’ll guide you through everything you need to know about real estate SEO. We’ll also provide some practical steps you can take to get SEO for real estate right.
What Is SEO and Why Is It Important for Real Estate?
SEO is the process of improving your real state website so that it appears higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
It involves optimizing various elements of your website—such as the content, structure, and technical performance—to make it more appealing to search engines and rank higher for relevant keywords.
For example, if someone searches for “homes in Utah,” a search engine-optimized real estate website can appear at the top of the results, increasing the chances that potential buyers will visit your website.
Below are some key reasons why SEO is so important in the real estate industry:
Increases online visibility
As mentioned earlier, the majority of homebuyers search online. SEO helps your real estate business appear at the top of the search results when they do this, making it easier for potential clients to find your listings and services.
Attracts local clients
As you know, real estate is a highly location-specific business. Local SEO techniques, such as optimizing for “near me” searches and creating a Google My Business profile—which we will discuss later in this article—help your business target individuals in your specific area. This ensures you’re reaching the right audience.
Builds credibility and trust
Websites that rank high on search engines are perceived as more trustworthy. By optimizing your content and website, you position your business as a reliable source of information, which is crucial in a competitive industry like real estate.
Generates high-quality leads
Almost 30% of marketers consider organic search as their top lead-generation tactic.
Unlike traditional advertising, SEO targets people actively searching for real estate services like yours, whether they’re buyers or sellers. This ensures that traffic to your website is more likely to convert into paying clients.
| What Is Organic Traffic? Organic traffic refers to visitors who arrive at your website without you paying for them to do so. These visitors find your site because it appears in the SERPs for what they’re looking for. |
Cost-effective marketing
The return on investment (ROI) of SEO for the real estate industry is 1,389%, making your SEO efforts worthwhile.
Compared to paid advertising, for example, SEO is a cost-effective strategy that offers long-term results.
Once your website starts ranking in the SERPs, it continues to attract organic traffic without the ongoing cost of advertising campaigns.
Showcases your listings and expertise
A strong real estate SEO strategy can highlight your real estate listings and blog content, such as neighborhood guides or tips, positioning you as an expert in your market.
What Happens When Someone Googles a Real Estate Business?
Google Search uses web crawlers to explore the internet and discover web pages. These crawlers regularly scan websites and gather information to add to Google’s index, which serves as a database of all the pages the crawlers find.
If your real estate website isn’t included in this index, it won’t appear in Google’s search results.
The process of how Google search works involves three main steps and part of real estate SEO is ensuring your website successfully navigates each stage:
Stage 1: Crawling
Automated tools called crawlers scan the internet, collecting text, images, and videos from web pages they encounter.
Stage 2: Indexing
Google automatically analyzes text, image, and video files on each page and stores them in its index.
Stage 3: Search results
When a user searches for something on Google, the search engine pulls relevant information from its index to deliver results that match the user’s query.
| Should I Only Optimize for Google? Although optimizing your website for all search engines is crucial, Google dominates as the number-one search engine, with an 81% global market share. |
How Does Google Rank Websites in Search Results?
Several key factors determine how Google ranks and displays websites in its search results, including:
Authority
Another ranking factor is how credible and trusted your website is. This is often influenced by backlinks—links to your website from other trustworthy sites—and your overall reputation within your industry. We’ll discuss links from trustworthy websites later in this article.
Content quality
Google prioritizes websites with high-quality, accurate, useful, and well-written content. This ensures that users get valuable information, which we’ll cover in more detail later. A real estate website with helpful and engaging content is more likely to rank well in search results.
Relevance
Google aims to match search queries—what visitors type into search engines—with the most relevant results.
For example, if someone searches for “real estate agent near me,” Google looks for relevant pages that address real estate services in the user’s specific location.
The closer your content aligns with what users are searching for, the higher your website will rank.
5 Important Factors You Need to Understand for Real Estate SEO
There are various vital aspects of real estate SEO that you need to understand before you can get started.
Later in this article, we’ll explain how to get each of these steps right. If you’re already familiar with these concepts, feel free to skip to the next section.
1. Keywords
Keywords are the words or phrases people type into search engines when looking for something.
For example, if someone wants to find a local real estate brokerage, they might type in “real estate brokerage near me.” This phrase is known as a keyword.
When creating content for your website, integrating the right real estate keywords helps search engines understand what your site is about.
If your site uses the same keywords that users are searching for, it’s more likely to appear in the SERPs.
2. Local SEO
More than 45% of Google searches have local intent. The search engine knows that your real estate services are location-dependent and that people will be looking for nearby brokerages.
Local SEO is crucial to your real estate business as it directly affects your search engine rankings in your area.
It’s the process of optimizing your online presence to attract more business from local searches.
This type of search engine optimization focuses on making your real estate business visible to users searching for services in your specific area.
When someone types “real estate services near me” or “real estate agent in [area name]” into a search engine, local SEO ensures that your business shows up in those SERPs.
If you want search engines to serve people your real estate website in local search results, you must optimize for local SEO.
3. On-page optimization
On-page optimization refers to all the actions you can take on your website to help Google understand it and its content. On-page tasks include:
- Using keywords.
- Making sure your content is high-quality.
- Using title tags correctly.
- Adding images to make your content more engaging.
- Using internal linking to link to other relevant pages on your site to help visitors and search engines discover more of your content.
- Organizing your content with headings and subheadings.
Additionally, on-page optimization ensures your blog posts help search engines understand and rank your site better. This includes the words you use and the structure of your blog articles.
4. Off-page optimization
Off-page optimization refers to the things you can do to build your website’s reputation outside of on-page SEO to make it more trustworthy and authoritative in Google’s eyes.
One off-page optimization tactic is building backlinks. Backlinks are like recommendations from other websites.
When another site links to your real estate website in its content, known as an inbound link, it shows search engines that these sites trust yours, giving you more authority.
For example, if you publish a blog post about the best ways to stage your home for an open house, a home staging company may link to this article in its content because it’s useful to its customers.
The more backlinks you have that point to your website, the more search engines trust your website. This may help it rank higher in search results and attract more traffic.
Later in this article, we’ll explore some tactics you can use to build inbound links to your website.
5. Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the behind-the-scenes work you can do on your website that helps Google find, crawl, understand, and index your site more effectively.
Your technical SEO efforts will not be visible to your visitors, but they can help you rank higher in the SERPs.
Technical SEO is vital because it ensures that your website is created so that search engines can easily find and understand your content.
Without good technical SEO, even the best websites might not be seen by your target audience.
Some technical SEO tasks include fixing errors like broken links or improving your site’s speed and structure.
Many real estate businesses will outsource technical SEO as it can be a complex task to achieve yourself.
How to Optimize Your Real Estate Website for Search Engines
Now that you understand how Google works and the key components behind search engine optimization let’s look at some real estate SEO tips to improve your search rankings:
Create great content
Creating high-quality content is essential to getting your website crawled, indexed, and displayed in search results.
Regularly updating your site with fresh content, like blog posts, encourages search engine crawlers to visit it more frequently.
By naturally including relevant target keywords within your content, you can help Google understand the focus of your website.
Search engines favor well-researched, in-depth content that provides comprehensive coverage of a topic, as it’s seen as more valuable for users.
Additionally, producing valuable content increases your likelihood of getting other websites to link to it. As mentioned earlier, these backlinks from reputable websites are crucial in boosting your SEO performance.
Here is how you can develop high-quality content that gets Google’s attention:
Do keyword research
The foundation of creating effective content starts with keyword research. This process involves identifying and analyzing the words and phrases people use when searching for real estate services like yours.
Keyword research helps you pinpoint the terms to target in your website’s content, increasing your chances of reaching the right audience and improving your rankings in the SERPs.
It also provides insights into what your potential clients are searching for, enabling you to develop content that directly addresses their needs and answers their questions.
Ahrefs, specifically its Keyword Explorer, is a popular tool for keyword research. Here’s how you can use Ahrefs to do keyword research:
- Come up with a few ideas: Start by using your understanding of your audience. Consider the questions they often ask and the solutions they’re looking for. You can then use these ideas to form a list of potential keywords.
- Start with a seed keyword: Enter a broad search term related to your business, such as “real estate agent colorado,” to generate related keyword suggestions.
- Evaluate keyword metrics: Ahrefs will provide data on metrics like search volume—which is how often a keyword is searched monthly—and keyword difficulty (KD)—which measures how competitive a keyword is to rank for. Look for keywords with a good balance of high search volume and low competition to maximize your chances of success.
Below is the search volume and KD for “real estate colorado.” As you can see, this would be a difficult keyword to rank for:
Look for keywords that work: Ahrefs will suggest keywords related to what you’ve entered. This can help you find additional keywords that could be relevant to your website and content. Ahrefs will also display question-based terms, which are great for creating content that answers search queries.
Here you can see the additional keywords and questions that Ahrefs has generated based on our keyword “real estate colorado”:
Analyze the SERPs: Next, look at the current top-ranking pages displayed by Ahrefs for the keyword you’re researching. These pages will help you understand what your competitors are doing and what content is ranking well. You should analyze these pages to generate ideas on how you can do better on your website.
Below, you can see Ahref’s SERP Analysis for our keyword. These are the top five pages that are ranking for the term:
Filter your keywords: Using Ahrefs, export your keywords into a spreadsheet. Next, filter by search volume, keyword difficulty, or specific terms to narrow down your list.
Here’s what the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer looks like for “real estate agent LA:
Set up a content calendar
Consistent blogging is essential for improving how often Google crawls your website and rankings. To achieve this, it’s important to organize your blog posts into a content calendar.
A content calendar helps you plan your articles in advance, ensuring a steady flow of content without last-minute rushes or long gaps between publications.
It also lets you strategically align your blog topics with your target keywords and SEO objectives.
By using a content calendar, you can ensure you cover a diverse range of keywords and topics while avoiding overuse of the same terms, supporting a more balanced SEO strategy.
Choose topics your audience cares about
Write content that addresses your target audience’s pain points and interests using the questions you’ve identified in your keyword research. Examples include:
- Homebuyers: “10 Questions to Ask Before Buying Your First Home.”
- Sellers: “How to Prepare Your Home for a Quick Sale.”
- Investors: “Is Real Estate Still a Good Investment in 2024?”
It’s important that you stay updated on the latest real estate trends and market changes to provide timely and relevant insights to your readers.
Enhance your blog posts for readability
Here are a few ways you can optimize your blog posts so that they are easy to read:
- Engage the reader with your title: Use numbers, questions, or action words to make the title enticing.
- Use headings and subheadings: Break your content into sections with clear H2 and H3 headings to help readers and search engines navigate your content.
- Write short paragraphs: Keep your paragraphs concise, ideally two to three sentences long.
- Include bullet points and lists: These formats make key information easy to scan.
- Add a table of contents: For longer posts, include a clickable table of contents to help readers find specific sections.
Perform on-page optimization for all your content
Optimizing each blog post you create for on-page SEO is crucial to ensure it performs well in search engine rankings while offering a great user experience to readers.
To effectively optimize your blog posts, follow these steps:
- Incorporate keywords: Use target keywords strategically throughout your post, including the title, headings, body content, and meta description. This helps search engines understand your topic and improves your chances of ranking. Tools like Surfer SEO can assist you in fine-tuning keyword placement.
- Use headings and subheadings: As mentioned earlier, you should organize your content with clear headings and subheadings. These improve readability for the user and help search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of your article.
- Add alt text to images: Alt text provides a description of images to search engines, which can’t interpret visuals directly. It also enhances accessibility for users who rely on screen readers, improving the overall user experience.
- Include internal links: Link to related pages or articles within your site to encourage visitors to explore more content. Internal links also help search engines crawl your site more effectively, boosting SEO.
- Optimize your URL structure: Ensure your blog post URL includes relevant keywords and is concise. This will help search engines and users understand the focus of your content.
- Write effective title tags: Title tags are part of your website’s code and appear as clickable headlines in search results. They inform both search engines and users about the content of your page. Ensure your title tag is clear, relevant, and includes your main keyword.
Here’s an example of a well-crafted title tag from Keller Williams:
- Craft engaging meta descriptions: A well-written meta description that includes keywords briefly summarizes your article and appears in search results. It encourages users to click on your post by offering a glimpse of what they can expect.
Below is the meta description for the Keller Williams blog post:
Set up and optimize your Google My Business listing
Did you know that 70% of people are more likely to do business with a company with a Google My Business (GMB) listing? In fact, 93% of visitors use Google Maps, where your GMB listing appears, to find a business.
With a Google business profile, you’re setting up a digital business card that helps your real estate company stand out in local search results, especially on Google Maps.
When searching online, people usually see two types of results: Google Maps and Google My Business listings.
If you want to appear in these results, you need a good Google My Business profile.
Here are the Google My Business profiles that showed up when we searched “real estate agent Utah”:
Below are the steps you need to follow to create a Google My Business profile:
- Create or sign into your account: Go to Google My Business and sign in with your Google account. Click “Manage now” or “Create business with this name.”
- Add your details: Enter your business details, including your phone number, website, business name, service area, and business category.
- Verify your business: The next step is to verify your business. This typically involves Google sending a postcard to your business address with a verification code that you need to enter into your profile.
- Add a description: Complete your profile with an engaging description of your business and operating hours. You may want to include some listings here, too.
- Post regularly: Ensure you create regular posts for your Google My Business listing. These can be property listings, news about your company, or market trends.
- Include your services: Add your brokerage’s services, such as open houses and creating virtual tours.
- Allow clients to message you: Enable the messaging feature on your profile so potential clients can contact you directly from your GMB listing.
Below is an example of a great Google My Business profile from Utah Realty. It includes all their business information, including their service areas, website, location, and operating hours. They’ve also kept their listing up to date with regular posts:
Set up local citations
Aside from Google My Business, you can also create additional local citations for your business to improve your local SEO.
Local citations are mentions of your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) on other websites, apps, or directories. Yelp is an excellent example of one directory that can help your local search rankings.
Keeping consistent and accurate local citations across the internet boosts your search rankings because Google considers them a ranking factor in determining the credibility and relevance of your business in local searches.
Your website may rank higher if trustworthy directories consistently mention it.
You can get more local citations by manually submitting your business information to local directories. To do this, you’ll typically need to create an account on these platforms and complete a form with your business information.
There are also some great citation management tools like Moz Local, Yext, or BrightLocal that can help you manage citations across multiple platforms.
Below is a local citation for Raha Rustagi, a real estate agent at Keller Williams Cupertino:
Share social proof
More than 70% of people will trust a recommendation from someone they don’t know. Additionally, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
Including social proof, such as customer reviews and testimonials, on your website or Google My Business profile can positively impact your SEO.
Social proof showcases the experiences of satisfied clients, which can build credibility, establish trust, and improve your site’s online visibility.
When determining website and business rankings, google factors in user-generated content (UGC), like reviews. Businesses with a higher volume of positive reviews are often considered more reliable, which can result in higher search rankings.
Displaying star ratings or reviews helps you stand out and can increase your click-through rates (CTR).
| What Are Click Through Rates (CTR)? CTR measures the percentage of users who click on your website link after seeing it in search results. A higher CTR signals to Google that your site is relevant and valuable, which may enhance your search engine rankings. |
Here’s an example of a real estate website for the Joe Taylor Group, displaying social proof:
Build backlinks
As mentioned earlier, building backlinks is a key component of effective SEO for real estate. This is because backlinks enhance your website’s authority and credibility, which can boost your rankings.
When other websites link to your content, they pass on some of their authority to your pages.
Below are a few link-building strategies you can use for your real estate business:
Public relations (PR) backlinks
PR backlinks are valuable links to your website from reputable sources such as news outlets, industry journals, or prominent blogs.
These links are often earned by sharing press releases with media organizations, highlighting major announcements, service launches, or company updates.
If your press release is published as a news story, the content may include a link to your website, giving you a high-authority backlink.
In the example below, the Herald Sun published a news article discussing affordable land opportunities in Melbourne. The article references RPM Real Estate and provides a link to its website.
Guest posting
Guest posting involves writing a blog post on another website with links pointing to your site.
Below is a good guest blog post written by an expert in real estate investing, TJ Porter, published on Investopedia:
As you can see, the article’s byline includes a backlink to a bio that includes a link to TJ’s website.
When delving into the world of guest blogging, focus on finding niche-specific websites to write for. Look for blogs related to real estate, home improvement, property investment, or local communities. These audiences are more likely to engage with your content.
Unlinked mentions
Unlinked mentions occur when another website references your business but doesn’t provide a clickable link to your site. These mentions present an opportunity to gain a backlink by contacting the site owner and requesting they add a link to your website.
Linkable assets and content
Producing high-quality content, such as well-researched blog posts, infographics, videos, or case studies, can encourage other websites to link to your work, enhancing the value of their own content.
The skyscraper technique
You may also want to consider using the skyscraper technique, which was coined by the founder of Backlinko, Brian Dean. This is when you create content focused on improving existing popular articles.
By offering something better—such as a more detailed, updated, or visually appealing article—you can convince websites linking to the original resource to link to your improved version.
To do this, you need to identify content in your niche with a high number of backlinks. Next, create your own enhanced content by adding unique insights, updated data, or multimedia like infographics.
Then, reach out to websites that link to the original resource and pitch your improved version.
Directory submissions
You can submit your website to relevant online directories designed for business listings. Directories often provide backlinks that can improve your site’s authority.
Focus on finding niche directories related to real estate and high-quality general directories like Yelp.
Ensure you choose authoritative directories and that your NAP is correct and consistent across all listings.
Broken link-building
Broken link building involves finding broken links on other websites and suggesting your content as a replacement.
In doing this, you provide value to website owners by helping them fix broken links while gaining backlinks for your site.
You can use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Check My Links to identify broken backlinks. Then, contact website owners with a polite email offering your content as a suitable alternative.
Optimize for technical SEO
As mentioned above, you need to optimize your website for technical SEO if you want to rank well in the SERPs. Here are just a few of the key components of technical SEO that you need to get right:
Improve your page speed
Did you know that 40% of users will leave a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load?
Page speed refers to how quickly your web page loads and becomes usable for visitors. It’s an important ranking factor for search engines, particularly for searches on mobile devices.
To enhance your page speed, consider optimizing your images. This can be done by compressing image files to reduce their size while still maintaining good quality.
You can measure your page’s speed using tools like Google Page Speed Insights, GTmextrix, and Pingdom Website Speed Testing.
Optimize for mobile devices
Over 60% of all Google’s organic search traffic in the U.S. originates from mobile devices.
Making your real estate website mobile-friendly involves ensuring it functions smoothly and looks good on smartphones and tablets.
This includes creating a user-friendly design, fast loading times, and layouts that display properly on small screens.
Without mobile optimization, your site’s search rankings could decrease.
Responsive web design is key, allowing your website to adapt automatically to different screen sizes. Incorporating touch-friendly features like larger buttons and intuitive menus can also improve mobile user navigation.
Ensure your website has a logical structure
An organized website structure allows Google’s crawlers to navigate your pages more effectively, ensuring your content gets indexed and appears in search results.
A clear structure also helps search engines identify how your pages are connected and determine their relationship, which can contribute to improved rankings.
Use an XML site map
An extensible markup language (XML) sitemap is a file that organizes all the critical pages of your website in a way that search engines can easily understand.
This sitemap acts as a guide for Google’s crawlers, helping them discover and index even your website’s less visible pages.
Many content management systems (CMSs), such as WordPress, offer plugins that automatically create and update your XML sitemap. Alternatively, you can choose to create one manually.
Once your sitemap is ready, you can submit it through Google Search Console to ensure it’s aware of it and uses it efficiently to crawl your site.
Fix broken links
Broken links, often called dead links, are hyperlinks on your website that fail to direct visitors to an intended page. Instead, they usually display a “404 Not Found” error or a similar message.
To fix broken links, you’ll need to identify them using tools like Google Search Console or broken link checkers.
Once you find them, update the broken link to the correct page, replace it with a relevant link, or remove it altogether if no replacement is available.
Track the progress of your real estate SEO strategy
Monitoring your SEO performance is essential to your success. Regular monitoring allows you to:
- Evaluate how your website ranks in search engine results.
- Pinpoint areas that need improvement.
- Assess the impact of your SEO strategies.
There are three main ways you can track your SEO progress:
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a tool that offers key insights directly from Google about your website’s performance in search results. It provides data such as:
- Total number of clicks.
- Impressions your site receives.
- Your average CTR.
- Your website’s average ranking position in search results.
Here’s an example of how Google Search Console tracks these metrics, including clicks, impressions, CTR, and position:
SEO tools
SEO tools such as Ahrefs, SEMeush, and Moz help monitor your SEO performance.
They enable you to track the rankings of your target keywords over time and evaluate how your site performs for specific search queries. This allows you to adjust and refine your SEO strategy as needed.
These tools also provide insights into your backlink profile, which includes all the backlinks and domains linking to your site.
By analyzing the quality and quantity of these links, you can assess your site’s authority and identify opportunities to acquire additional backlinks.
Here’s an example of how a backlink profile is displayed in Ahrefs:
Website analytics
Website analytics tools like Google Analytics are essential for tracking important metrics and evaluating your SEO performance.
With Google Analytics, you can monitor organic traffic—the number of visitors coming to your website from search engines.
Additionally, you can assess how effective your chosen target keywords are and determine if they’re driving results.
Free Up Time to Perfect Your Real Estate Website with Paperless Pipeline
If you get SEO for real estate right, you’ll see massive results. When your website appears in search results, leads, and potential clients will start rolling in.
However, as you can see, SEO is complex and time-consuming, especially if you want to ensure you’re covering everything from on-page optimization to local SEO.
How do you find the time to invest in SEO when you’re bogged down with the endless transaction process?
This is where Paperless Pipeline can help. Our purpose-built transaction management software is designed to streamline and simplify the entire transaction process from listing to closing.
Our system can help you save hours each day, which you can dedicate to high-impact tasks like optimizing your website and building backlinks.
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