I am going to show you how to get local traffic from the search engines to your real estate agency website really easy.

The traffic will come every day on autopilot from the search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

No more need to phone around cold calling clients and going to meetings.

This is done through search engine optimization (SEO) techniques and strategies.

When people search for real estate services your website will be there.

More and more house hunters are using the internet to get one.

Don’t be the agency that gets left behind or playing catch up.

Investing your time in SEO will pay off big time for you.

When your site hits the top for your target search terms you get traffic and leads 24-7 without doing a thing, even when you sleep.

All you have to do is follow my simple step by step guide listed below.

I will show you how to rank your real estate website for any related general search term.

I will also show you how to rank for any local real estate search terms.

This way you get highly targeted buyer traffic to your website non-stop.

What is SEO for Real Estate

Doing SEO for any project is no different from real estate.

The object is to pull traffic from the search engines.

How do we do this?

We discover what your prospective customers are searching for.

Then we go ahead and optimize your pages for those searching for phrases (which we call keywords).

You will be pulling in visitors to your website that are looking to buy or sell the property.

Let’s break it down for you in simple terms.

Think about the steps you take when you are looking for real estate services online:

The key is to get your website listed in the search engine results pages right at the top.

You can also aim to get your website listed in the local three-pack.

In SEO terms, keywords for real estate are very competitive right now.

This will become even more so in the future, which means it’s vital to get started as soon as possible.

Competitive keywords are not a problem if you follow this strategy.

It has been developed to rank top for any search term out there.

It’s also good to note that competitive search terms are in most cases the most profitable ones.

Why Do Real Estate Agencies Need SEO?

According to the hip-consultant.co.uk website, now 95% of people search to buy their home online.

This will go up and up until it reaches 100%, that’s for sure.

Therefore it is very important that your property listings are set up well for local search terms performed on Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Some local search terms can produce 500+ search per month.

If you rank for a lot of these it will mean a lot more buyer traffic for your website.

You will get laser targeted traffic, exact people looking to buy homes in the local areas you are targeting.

Depending on where you live, the number of monthly local searches could go over 1000+ per month.

Some cities in the USA get well over 7000 searches per month for location + homes for sale keywords.

With the basics of SEO out of the way, let’s get started on how to do SEO for your real estate website.

How To Do SEO for Real Estate Website

The most important part of any SEO project is keyword research.

Get this right at the start makes things a lot easier further down the line.

It’s best to target low competition keywords with the highest monthly search volume.

I am going to show you how to do this fast using tools that are completely free.

Keyword Research

The tool that we use has free and premium plans available, the free tool is good enough for this tutorial.

First of all head on over the keyword research tool website spyfu.com.

Enter a seed search term; for my example, I entered “houses for sale”.

I found some keyword with low SEO difficulty scores and high monthly search volumes:

As the top-ranking website earns 33% of the traffic you can work out how many visitors you will get from a top ranking.

As you can see, targeting search terms like this can make a big difference to your real estate business.

Of course, not all of these visitors will turn into sales.

Even poor converting websites convert at around 1%.

At a very low conversion rate, you will get at least 80 new sales for the search term “house for sale in Leitchfield ky”.

Most websites convert at around 3% to 5%, so the number of new sales will be much higher than this.

However, in real estate, the chances of people just looking for information is much higher.

However, these people will now know about your website and brand, they will be back when they are ready to buy.

You can also use the SpyFu tool to see what keywords your competitors are ranking for.

The website that ranks top for “Houses for sale in Florida” is also ranking for a whole load of other search terms.

It is actually ranking for over 100 real estate keywords.

Just pop the competitors URL into the search bar and it will reveal all their keywords and SEO competition scores.

The page ranking top features:

The content includes a clear call to action button labelled “More Details”.

This is important, this ensures your website visitor moves through your website, and most importantly not back to the search engines.

If a visitor moves back to the search engine results page then you will have a high bounce rate, which is not good for SEO.

There are three other important factors to take into consideration when doing SEO for your real estate website:

More are more people are performing online searches using mobile devices.

If your website is not mobile compatible then your rankings will suffer.

To check your website is mobile friendly you can go here.

Also, you need a fast loading website.

If your website loads slowly most visitors will not use it and return to the search engine results pages, also resulting in a very high bounce rate.

To check the load speed of your website click here.

The median age for home buyers right now is 46 years old, you can see more home buyer demographics online by following the link.

As time goes on, even people in the older generation over 60 are going online to find where to buy their next property.

As the property market online becomes more and more aggressive the cost per click for advertising in this sector gets higher and higher.

Google Ad cost per click can be as much as $7, find out more here.

This makes it even more important to work at organic SEO for your website.

By not utilizing SEO for realtors you are leaving a lot of traffic and money behind.

On-Page Optimization and Content Creation

Now that you have your keywords in place, it’s time to create or optimize your existing content.

You can see the full SEO checklist if you follow the link.

It’s important that you have your target keywords within your content.

This includes having them within your website METADATA.

It’s also important if you are ranking for local search terms to include your NAP information in your web page copy.

This means you should have your Name, Address and Phone number on the page.

It’s also good to pop a Google Map of the location into the web page copy.

You can use the keyword research and content optimization strategy to get more traffic to your real estate website.

However, it’s not finished there.

The most important part of the ranking process is to have backlinks to your website.

Earn Links

The number of quality links that point to your website correlates to how high you rank in the search engines for each keyword.

If you want to climb the rankings you need to earn links for your website.

You can do this with ease, quality content first and foremost is the main priority.

After that, you can reach out to bloggers in your niche and ask to share your content.

Not only will these links boost your website rankings, but it will also boost your brand and position as an expert in the real estate field.

When it comes to SEO for Real Estate, links are absolutely essential.

This is because most search terms are competitive.

Google uses links as a ranking signal, they have considered a thumbs up to your website that the content is top quality. The more you have, the more thumbs up you have.

How many backlinks do you need to rank top?

This can be done by taking a look at your competition.

You do this by putting the top ranking site URL into the free backlinkshitter.com tool.

The top-ranking website for the search term “property for sale in Florida” has just one backlink.

The backlink comes from a new website, you can visit this website and reach out to them and get that link too.

When you do this, your website will get a much better search engine ranking.

Also, take note of the anchor text used, you should use the same.

Anchor text is the words used within the hyperlink to your website.

Start Blogging

The final part of the ranking puzzle is to keep adding content to your real estate website.

You can do this by adding a blog to your website.

Every time you do a blog post remember to link to other pages on your sites, internal links help to rank too.

The main goal of search engine optimization for real estate websites is to attract more house buyers and sellers through increased search engine visibility.

Now, the more blog posts (content/keywords) that you add to the website the more chances you have in doing this.

For experienced real estate agents,  SEO marketing should be about building your brand and building trust and credibility in the field. You do this by sharing your knowledge on your blog.

By writing a blog with useful guides on things like how to sell your house quickly online, or how to sell a house for free online you will attract more readers and potential clients.

You will become an authoritative source for selling and buying real estate, your traffic and rankings will grow rapidly.

Does SEO real estate use google maps?

You should optimize your “Local Google My Business Page”.

As mentioned earlier, this will get you listed on the Google search results pages in the Google 3-pack.

The Google 3-pack looks like this:

It is always shown at the top of the SERPs, and therefore it is important you are there too.

These listings take up a lot of space on your screen, they are very eye-catching and get a lot of clicks from the SERPs.

To get your listing set up and running go to google.com/business.

Enter all the details they are asking for. It’s important to include everything about your business location.

As you can see above, the listing shows your agencies:

You can even add photos of your business and secondary categories.

Make sure that the details you use regarding your NAP data are consistent with what is used on your website, if not update it.

It is called the 3-pack because it usually only lists three business at any one time.

The search algo favours listings that have been fully completed.

So, to be there, you must add and complete all the fields given.

It’s also important to make sure your NAP is coded correctly using schema markup.

Your Schema Mark Up code will look something like is shown above.

To test the data is done right you can use this Google tool.

If you have trouble with editing the code for your website it is probably best to hire someone to do it for you.

NAP Business Citations

One of the main ranking signals to get established in the local 3-pack is business citations.

These are business links back to your website from websites that have listed your NAP details on their site.

This sends a strong signal to Google bot that you really are located where you say you are.

The four main local SEO ranking factors according to webfx.com include:

Your NAP details must be consistent across all websites that link back to you.

That’s the very first thing you should do to improve your local real estate rankings.

You can visit the website listed in the image to get your business listed including all your NAP data.

If you do not have the time you can use a service, we have one in our SEO store: 20 Google Business Citations [Local 3 Pack Ranking].

Outsourcing some of the work will save you an incredible amount of time.

Tip: every time you submit your NAP data for listings on other website make sure it is 100% accurate and matches the NAP data you listed on your website and Google Business Page.

Correct Schema Mark Up

The Schema mark up helps Google bot understand your website code and it’s listed format.

For example; you may have a form on your website for contacting an estate agent. The TITLE CODE for this form should be named accordingly.

Using Schema mark up helps Google bot understand all your content, even the images on your page can be understood with ALT TAGs.

If everything is done correctly, you could get featured in Google snippets, this may be a reviews rating or an image. This makes your website listing stand out and be more likely to be clicked on.

Studies have proved that schema mark up will improve your click-through rate.

So how do you mark up your Schema the right way as a realtor?

The first thing is to ensure all your NAP data is listed correctly.

There is a free tool you can use that generates the correct Schema Mark Up code for an estate agency.

You can access the tool here: http://microdatagenerator.com/realEstateAgency.html

Next, you need to mark up your property listing the right way.

You can see how this is done the right way here.

The schema marks up for your property listing will look something like the image above.

It will include the:

With all this in place, your website will rank high for any real estate search terms.

Online Reviews and Recommendations

Many online searchers will look for website reviews before they go ahead and use your services.

This is even more so important for real estate agencies.

If a potential customer reads a positive review they are highly likely to visit you.

Online reviews are a Google and search engine ranking factor.

This shows Google bot that you are trusted, as it does the web surfer too.

Real estate agents marketing goes a long way, it includes a lot more than just optimizing your website.

You need to consider off-site factors too, like reviews and feedback.

Review on your website will be shown in the rich snippets search results, they can also show in the organic search result listings.

Do not just focus on Google for reviews, you can actively seek reviews by contacting your current clients to review you on Facebook and Yelp too.

You would also benefit from being listed and reviewed on Trust Pilot.

Social Promotion

Your first step after optimizing your content is to promote it on social media platforms.

This is a great way to earn links quickly and to improve ranking fast.

Every real estate agent should be active and have profile and backlinks on all the major social media platforms including:

Of course, there are other platforms, however, the key to success in building your followers is to stay active every day.

This can be very time consuming, so if you are just starting out with a small team go for Facebook and Twitter only.

As you grow and have more you can get active on the others.

Advanced SEO Tips for a Real Estate Website

That’s the basics covered.

If you have a bit more time on your hands you can go further into SEO for your real estate website.

Create Local Keyword Rich Content

This is where a huge opportunity lies in the real estate industry.

Content for many keywords is thin, showing property listings only.

You can use this to your advantage, produce property listings combined with helpful guides and buyer tips.

To get long term rankings it is worth putting the effort into producing some quality helpful content.

This will pay off for you big style in the long term, all your competitors will be playing catch up while you knock out more quality content.

You can get blog post ideas from using the same free tool that we used earlier, SpyFu.

When you search for keywords it throws up “questions” too.

You can do inspirational blog posts answering these questions.

For example, if you search for “how to sell my house” on SpyFu you will get these questions that you can use to produce content for blog posts:

Remember you can also pop competitors URL’s into the tool to see what they are writing about too.

Always add value and people are guaranteed to read and share it.

With that comes the links and the high rankings.

As you can see, the search term ” How to sell your house yourself” gets 2600 monthly searches.

Ranking top for this keyword would bring you some serious long term traffic to your website.

Keeping the content flowing on your blog ensures more indexed URLs and more traffic.

On that note, make sure you add your real estate website to Google Webmaster Tools.

You can follow this guide on how to add your website to Google Webmaster tools.

Then you can add a sitemap, this will help Google find all your pages.

You can even index new pages/posts individually in your Google Webmaster Account.

You simply pop the URL into the tool search at the top and request indexing, that’s it.

This will ensure you get traffic from Google search results.

Well Written META FIELDS

Your META TITLE and DESCRIPTION should be written to entice clicks from the SERPs.

Make sure you include the benefits of your content.

However, do not tell lies, as this will boost your bounce rate.

There is nothing worse than clicking on a link from the SERPs only to find the page does not deliver on what if offered in the TITLE TAG.

What’s the first thing you do? You click back to the SERPs.

This will have a negative impact on your search engine rankings.

You can see how to write a good META TAG for high click-through rates here.

The basis is very simple and easy to follow:

Say you want to write a new post around the focus keyword “How to sell your house in 5 days”.

A good title tag would look like this “Small Secret to how to sell your house in 5 days for FREE”.

The listed title using words like “secret” and “free” are persuasive and make the searcher curious to click.

YouTube Marketing

We have talked about other social media platforms and the biggest search engine in the world, Google.

But what about the second biggest search engine in the world, YouTube.

If you miss this out of your marketing strategy you are missing out on a lot of traffic.

Better still, it’s very easier to rank videos for certain keywords on YouTube, and ranking is instant for long tail search terms.

We have done an in-depth guide on how to rank videos on YouTube quickly.

Marketers that utilize video get more leads per year than those that don’t. It’s a great way to boost your brand awareness too.

Real estate videos are even more powerful than regular videos in other niches. Showhome videos of properties for sale in certain locations have very high click-through rates and convert at a high level too.

Many online gurus estimate that the majority of online content will be video related in just a few years time.

For 10 tips on how to shoot great real estate videos take a look at this video:

Use video wisely and the videos will not only pull traffic from YouTube but from Google too.

Optimizing Your Website Images

Image search on Google can pull your real estate website a lot of traffic.

When you write a new blog post you must include images and media to keep the visitor on the page longer.

Website visitor dwells time is a ranking signal too.

If a visitor is on your site longer then they are reading the good material, it’s a signal that your site is a good resource.

When publishing an image on your website you can help Google bot understand what the image shows by filling out the following fields:

The ALT TAG is a good one to add your target keyword to but only do this once on every page. If you overstuff it will have a negative impact on your rankings.

Adding these basic details will get you traffic from Google image searches.

This is something that is very much so worth doing.

Technical SEO Factors

A large website will every now again have a broken link, this hurts the user’s experience.

You can use a free tool to find and fix any broken links that you might have on your website.

Simply pop your website URL into the search box and let it do its thing.

Note down the broken links, go to your site and remove or fix the links.

Things You Should Stay Away From Doing

There are many things that you can do that will harm your ranking, this section will help you avoid doing such things to your website.

Keyword Stuffing

As explained earlier, do not put the target keyword into too many IMAGE ALT TAGs or overuse the keyword within your content.

Your keyword density should always be below 1%, this will keep you nice and secure from keyword overuse.

Link Types

Certain links will hurt your website rankings.

Google and other search engines will penalize your website if they discover you are buying links are trying to cheat the search results in some way.

When a website is penalized all of your pages will be removed from the Google index.

You can go to this website to check if your website has been penalised by Google.

Copying Content

Do not publish duplicate content, Google will very rarely index content that is already out there.

That goes for on your site too.

Do not publish the same retail listing over and over on your website on different pages only changing the page title.

This will not work, many pages will not index and you are wasting your time.

Who does real estate SEO work?

The short answer.

Here at Rankers Paradise, we provide SEO services for real estate agencies all over the world.

We have five different monthly SEO packages to choose from.

The one you choose to go for depends on how many keywords you want us to rank.

We will cover every aspect of SEO for you that I have discussed here.

That includes all on-page and off-page optimization, this includes content writing too.

Our starter package is very affordable.

Why choose us?

We are a little different from other SEO agencies out there.

If you go ahead and take a look through our SEO blog you can see that we prove what we can do.

Many other agencies just state what they have done, without any ranking results to back it up.

Our blog posts rank number 1 for many search terms time and time again.

We will use the same strategies for you your real estate website.

What makes us different?

Other SEO agencies provide a report once a month.

Not us.

Upon sign up, you will be given login details to your Rankers Paradise SEO dashboard.

This is where we log the work done on your website on a daily basis.

You can log in and view the work done at any time, you can even message us on the dash and we will reply right away, we are on there all the time.

It’s easy to get started.

Head on over to our monthly SEO packages page, select a package that fits your budget and make payment.

We will send you your login details to your email address.

You can then login and see your start rankings and work done, this includes on-page reports and competitor analysis.

If you have any questions before sign up please feel free to get us on live chat right now, give us a call or send us an email to info@rankersparadise.com.