Importance of SEO for Real Estate

SEO for Real Estate- A Complete Guide

You are thinking right if you are about to start SEO for a real estate website.

SEO is one of the most crucial performance marketing activities that your business can get in the year 2023.

The real estate industry has become more competitive than ever and SEO will not only drive traffic to your website but these users would convert from just visitors to customers.

The current Real Estate scenario

Did you know the Global Real Estate Market Size currently stands at $4000 Billion with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.6%, unbelievable, isn’t it?

But most real estate companies face the major challenge of consolidating their reach in this ‘New Media Age’ as the majority of the world operates digitally.

To overcome this challenge, we bring a viable solution for all real estate types, whether it’s rental, agency, or brokerage. It is to integrate it with SEO services and provide it with the benefits of scalability, visibility, and profitability.

SEO for real estate is pivotal. With the increase in searches about buying and selling properties the scope for such companies, agencies, or agents to have an online presence has profoundly increased.

Though, the online relationship between real estate and search engines is familiar, as 69% of the existing realtors already have a website. But, the main problem existing in their websites is visibility and optimization.

SEO can be quite handy in such situations as it incorporates strategies that work together to raise your company’s profile online and draw in more customers. 

The best thing is that you as a real estate agent or company won’t have to do cold calls or spend money on advertisements to get these leads. 

With a great SEO plan, your website may rank on the top page of search engines and you will start receiving un-paid or organic leads.

Why are SEO Services for Real Estate Important?

Increased Visibility

97% of Homebuyers begin their Search Online!

Using search engine optimization (SEO), a real estate company may raise its website’s profile, making it more likely that potential buyers would come across it when looking for a home or real estate services online. 

Local SEO

‘Houses for Sale Near Me’ is one of the most searched Google Queries with a monthly search volume of 1,000,000.

To succeed, a real estate company must be easily discoverable by those looking to buy or rent property in the region in which it operates. Using local SEO, a company may raise its online profile among consumers in a particular area who are looking to buy or rent a home.

Getting Quality Leads

Form submissions have proven to be the No.1 Conversion Tactic!

SEO aids a real estate company get more serious prospects to visit its website. SEO helps attract customers actively looking for properties by focusing on certain keywords and phrases. So, availing of real estate digital marketing services can be a full-proof strategy to get quality leads.

Increase Revenue

Increasing the customer retention rate by 5% can increase profits by up to 95% over the long term.

Simply put, SEO may boost a real estate company’s bottom line by bringing in more high-quality leads to its website. The reason is more visitors means more prospective customers, which in turn means more sales.

Mobile Optimization

Out of 8 Billion people in the world, roughly 6.92 Billion own a smartphone!

It is essential for a real estate company to have a mobile-friendly website, as the vast majority of property searches now take place on smartphones and tablets. 

To have further clarity on it, out of the daily 3.7 Billion Google searches, 60% of those are from mobile devices. You may have understood, how vital it is for real estate companies to rely on SEO and make their website mobile-friendly.

When a website is optimised for mobile devices, visitors can easily browse listings and get in touch with the company from their phones or tablets. Thus, making SEO a key component in this process.

Cost-Effective

The cost to reach an audience of 2000 through traditional marketing channels is more than $900 whereas SEO costs less than $50!

When it comes to advertising your real estate company, SEO is one of your best bets. SEO may be the way to go if you want to advertise your business but don’t want to spend a fortune doing so.

Domain Authority

If you want your website’s domain authority to be good then it should score between 50 and 60, if great then anything above 60.

Domain Authority, often known as “Authority Score,” is a popular SEO indicator that measures the relative importance of a website or domain.

Domain Authority is measured from 0 to 100; a higher number means your site is more likely to rank highly in search engines.

A significant factor in raising your DA is the production of high-quality, SEO-friendly content. 

Nonetheless, it is also important to work on getting rid of bad links, increasing page speed, constructing new connections, doing an on-page SEO audit, and aggressively distributing information on the relevant networks.

Therefore, real estate website’s aiming to rank at higher positions need to have good domain authority and in achieving it, the role of SEO can be essential.

SEO Strategies for Real Estate  

As we have discussed and understood the importance of SEO for real estate, now it’s time to know some viable SEO strategies which will help real estate companies or agents to increase visibility, attract more qualified leads and boost their revenue.

Conducting an SEO Audit for More Insights

You need to know where you are in the search engines and how well your pages are doing before you can create an SEO strategy to improve your visibility. 

As a real estate company, you might be wondering why to indulge in SEO audit services given its lengthy process.

You need to understand that an SEO audit is a useful tool for finding those hidden pockets of growth for a company.

Technical and on-page SEO problems, missing keywords, metrics for competitors’ sites, the ratio of organic to sponsored traffic, metrics for particular pages, and so on can all be uncovered with the use of an SEO audit.

Through this audit, a roadmap can be devised that aids in comprehending and highlighting the area where the work needs to be done for proper optimization of the website.

Detailed Keyword Research and Strategy

Although several aspects contribute to the effectiveness of a custom SEO plan, the keywords you pick for your real estate firm will affect its search engine rankings. 

Websites that are optimised for keywords related to local search intent receive more organic traffic and higher-quality leads. 

You could choose to advertise to those looking for “new developments in California,” but it’s also possible that people are more interested in finding “San Diego homes for sale.” 

You should also do a competitive study to glean useful keywords and spot keyword gaps, in addition to doing the aforementioned.

SEO Optimized Content Strategy

While creating an SEO strategy for real estate, once you have conducted an SEO audit, followed by detailed keyword research, now it’s time to focus on the content.

The content generation process follows an examination of the website and the gathering of relevant keywords. 

Unless you’re writing about simple fixes for a house, keep your real estate material short, simple, and factually sound. 

Use the “People Also Ask For” and “Google Suggest” sections in addition to inserting keywords into the text to enhance the quality of your post. Never forget that your content’s primary purpose is to satisfy the reader’s needs and add value to their knowledge.

To further strengthen your content strategy, you could even rely on some of the top AI content writing tools to generate novel ideas and eliminate writer’s block.

Local SEO is the Key

The way local SEO helps the real estate company or agents is marvellous. As more than 30% of overall mobile searches on Google are based on location. Also, from 2017 to 2019, searches for “on-sale” + “near me” (e.g., “homes on-sale near me”) on mobile devices have increased by more than 250% year-on-year.

Therefore, localized online content publishing can be highly effective for real estate SEO. 

This is because Google and other search engines like to provide users with the best results possible. 

If you’re trying to market real estate in the Los Angeles County of California, USA, for instance, you might want to write about the area’s many points of interest, such as schools, hospitals, restaurants, major attractions and nightlife spots.

Enhanced Customer Experience

You would not believe the fact that more than 50% of websites are unable to provide a satisfactory customer experience. Leading to a drop in traffic and an inability to create a loyal customer base.

Barring quality content on your website, you could also include the features of a loan or mortgage return calculator, real estate news snippet, etc. which will aid the buyers or sellers in their searches and enhance your website’s user experience as well as brand awareness.

Steer Clear of Black HAT SEO Practices

Black Hat SEO for real estate refers to methods that boost your search engine results page ranks but are against search engines’ terms of service. 

At first glance, this may sound appealing, especially for freshly founded real estate websites. 

However, engaging in such tactics can cause a significant drop in your domain authority (DA), draw fines, and even lead to a site ban. 

The following are examples of Black HAT SEO tactics to avoid:

• Because of how its algorithm is constructed, Google can spot plagiarised text with a single pass. It’s unethical to copy text or images from another website and post them as your own.
• Even while using keywords is necessary for search engine optimization, over-optimization or “keyword stuffing” will result in a Google penalty.
• Cloaking is another unethical method of search engine optimization in which the text of the article has nothing to do with the URL. When you cloak, you hide information from a user who specifically requested it.

High Quality and Optimized Images

Visual searches over time have garnered huge demand given the convenience they brought for the users, especially for the Gen-Zs and millennials. As the majority of customers (62%) prefer visual search above any other emerging technology.

Thus, images of properties or land have become advantageous for real estate websites. As many homebuyers or sellers do their search online, as proved by the abovementioned fact. 

The use of virtual tools, 3D graphics, and films may be very appealing to potential buyers. 

However, before you upload high-definition property photos on your website, optimize images for SEO first becomes primal, as it improves page loading speed by making it mobile-friendly.

Trackability through SEO Tools

The SEO market is flooded with the best SEO tools. 

They become a force to reckon with when it comes to measuring and monitoring SEO effectiveness is crucial, just like it is for any other industry. 

This may appear simple at first, but there are many factors and indicators to consider. 

So the best option to consider here is to rely on SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz Pro, and so on to monitor organic traffic while also checking the quality of your backlinks. 

SEO for real estate also requires looking at things like click-through rate (CTR), domain authority, average time on page (AToP), number of impressions (Impression Share), number of clicks (Click Share), and bounce rate which are possible through these tools.

Case Study of a Real Estate Brokerage Firm

After knowing about the importance and strategies, it’s time to check out a real-life case study of a real estate brokerage firm which witnessed tremendous growth and profits after following SEO. 

Introduction 

One of the most popular states of the US, California includes a plethora of real estate opportunities but many real estate brokers are finding it difficult to finalise deals in the current economic climate, and some have resorted to spending exorbitant amounts of money on advertising in an attempt to do so.

Need for SEO as a Cost-effective Digital Marketing Strategy

The concerned real estate brokerage firm after identifying the same issues tried to opt for SEO as their new marketing strategy and within a few months was astonished by the results provided.

Results

1. SEO vs. PPC

Irrespective of the lucrative results provided by the PPC Agency, SEO still holds superiority over it. Only about 2.8% of individuals in the US click on sponsored links during online searches.

2. Increase in Traffic

Alternatively, SEO has 20 times more traffic prospects than PPC does on desktop and mobile apps. This had a knock-on impact on their paid marketing, allowing us to produce 2x to 10x more on the same ad expenditure.

3. Early Mover Advantage

They pioneered the project and made a reputation for themselves online before other competing real estate brokerages ever got started on it. As a result, their sales teams were able to make more sales, as SEO content and promotional videos were more likely to be clicked on than those of competitors.

4. Higher Ranking

SEO improved the credibility of organic search results in the eyes of search engine algorithms, which in turn increases the number of clicks and, ultimately, the site’s ranking in Google.

5. Catchy Name

SEO also aided the company to have the consumer benefit-rich brokerage name which significantly increases their traffic and conversion rates.

Summing Up!

According to research, organic search has proved to be 300% more effective than social media at generating website visits and it also offers the greatest ROI than any other digital marketing channel.

Therefore, the importance of SEO for real estate or any other online business is quite essential for their success. Its ability to boost traffic, generate high revenues, and increase visibility and brand awareness is just unfathomable.

While SEO for real estate may seem simple in theory, there are several criteria to consider when developing an assiduous SEO roadmap. 

You can count on our team of experts at Uvisible to help your real estate company reach new heights just by seo outsourcing company or talking to us about how you can get ahead of the competition by scheduling a free consultation with us Right Now!