Whether you're running a commercial or
residential real estate company or a real estate agent trying to start your own
domestic or local business, maintaining a high-performance website is a key to
success in today's digital world. In 1981, it was through newspaper ads and
word of mouth through friends, family or neighbours that people searched for PPC for real estate agents.
But today's world we live in is quite
different from back then. From virtual tours and smart locks to property drone
footage, the digital age has led the real estate industry into a whole new
frontier.
Target
local keywords
Simply put, keywords are the terms in
Google or any other search engine that you want to show up for. Create a
comprehensive list of keywords for which you want to rank and then develop a
strategy to ensure that all of these terms are incorporated throughout your
website. As you are surely aware, local seo for real estate is a hyper-competitive
industry. For the attention of a small pool of potential buyers, thousands of
firms and individual agents are all fighting. While your company may do
business across multiple towns and cities in a regional area, it is better to
start optimizing one-by-one local keyword phrases rather than attempting to
tackle your entire service area in one fell swoop.
Form
a good content strategy
If you think you can just publish listings
of properties and check out the marketing box for content, think again. While
online listing is an important part of your website, it's just one piece of the
puzzle. Regularly updating your website with fresh, informative blog posts,
articles, tools and resources is a great way to keep visitors coming back and
engaging with your site, which is one of several key factors in Google's
ranking.
For example, if you want to target a
certain city or geographic area, consider writing a series of blogs about the
top reasons to live there. Or create a free download checklist for home buyers
that helps simplify for the first time the complex steps involved in buying a
home. You may even be able to create an online tool that allows prospective
buyers to estimate what they can afford based on their monthly income and how
much they can pay as a down payment.
Get
into social media
To some extent, an estimated 91 percent of
real estate companies are already using social media, but are they using it to
their maximum potential? Real estate firms with active profiles on social media
benefit from increased brand visibility, customer service and commitment. Being
an immovable agent is all about developing and building relationships with your
clients, and social media is the perfect confidence-building tool to do just
that.
Attract
inbound links
Yes, backlinks are a critical component of
the overall rankings of your site, but achieving increased traffic and user
engagement is a better goal than trying to build links. Generally speaking,
you're going to want to avoid buying or paying for links as this tactic is
considered to be "black hat" SEO and when they find out, Google will
penalize you. Instead, focus on creating unique, original, high-quality content
that will naturally be linked to by other sites, giving you organic link
building points.
Another way to attract links is to sponsor
or attend local community events such as races, fairs, school events, etc., as
is working with charities and organizations. By engaging in your local
community, you gain brand recognition and may gain inbound links to your website
when local reporters or other organizations write about the event.
Have
a responsive design
If not, your website should be responsive
to whatever device your users use— laptop, desktop, tablet, or smartphone. Most
home buyers these days are searching for properties online using their mobile
devices. If your website is not tailor-made to adapt to mobile technologies,
you will be missing out on a huge stretch of traffic.
Improve
the page load time
Another
important factor in Google ranking is page load time and site speed. In this
area in particular, real estate sites tend to be slammed due to oversized
images, unnecessary content, and a build-up of old listings that will never be
deleted. That said, you don't have to boast the fastest site speed to be #1
necessarily. For example, you may create landing page with high-quality images
and an embedded video that slows down page load time but provides your visitors
with a valuable resource. The pros of displaying the property or your services
in this case may outweigh the con of slightly slower side speed.