If you’ve read about digital marketing at all, you’ll know that Google likes to change the rules – a lot. That can make it tricky for real estate professionals to take and keep the upper hand over their competitors.
Making sure you have your website SEO optimised is a detailed process. Take note of these real estate SEO tactics to find out exactly what you should be doing.
Google Keyword Planner
The first step is to make sure you’re targeting local keywords in your web content. One great way of finding suitable keywords is by using Google Keyword Planner. This handy tool allows you to see which keywords are getting the most amount of searches in your local area. For real estate, these are likely to be:
- properties for sale in ‘your area’
- real estate agents in ‘your area’
- houses/apartments for rent in ‘your area’
- top real estate agents in ‘your area’
You get the idea. Take a look at Google Keyword Manager now and see which keywords are performing best in your target location.
In addition to including your target areas within your keyword phrases, it’s a good idea to include broader regional terms too. These could include ‘New South Wales apartments for rent’ or ‘houses for sale Sydney’ and will help you to acquire long-tail search traffic.
The theory behind this is that the majority of your competitors will be bidding for the common terms, such as ‘houses for sale’. By making your keyword phrases more specific, you can pick up traffic that’s directly targeted to what your business is selling. After all, the aim of SEO is to drive relevant traffic to your site and by using specific keyword phrases, you can increase the chances of that traffic converting.
When optimising your agency site, it’s important to consider the mindset of the person searching for your keywords. What potential questions could they have in relation to them? Some examples of these could be:
- Best schools in Sydney
- Top real estate agents in Melbourne
- Average property prices
If you can create content that provides a solution to people’s questions like this, you’ll be off to a great start. This will help to establish your brand’s authority in the market, which in turn will increase your audience’s trust in you. The more your audience trusts you, the more likely they are to convert into clients.
Target your website to voice searches
This one may seem bizarre to you, but recent studies have shown that over 50% of teens and more than 30% of adults are using voice-activated tools like Siri to search the web every day. As voice technology improves in the future, this figure can only go up.
Instead of the short search terms we just discussed, voice searches sound far more personal, which adds a whole new level to the SEO game. Instead of searching ‘best schools sydney’, people are likely to search ‘which are the best schools in Sydney?’ instead.
It isn’t known how google deciphers voice-activated searches, so the best way forward is to focus on creating great, natural sounding content. By doing this, your content is far more likely to pick up on the conversational search terms people are using via voice search. All in all, this method will benefit you far more than inserting random keywords into generic blog posts.
A quick win you can get over voice searches is creating a FAQ page. By doing this, you’ll hopefully be able to answer most of the obvious questions your target market is asking – from these answers, you can then link out to other, more detailed content.
Capitalise on review sites
When you search Google for a great restaurant in your area, you’re likely to get several review sites at the top of the search results. Many of these review sites and directories are so highly optimised that they’ll often appear above the own businesses’ websites. This is no different for real estate. When you perform a search like ‘properties for rent in Melbourne’, you’ll be presented with the same.
A crucial part of your SEO strategy is keeping on top of your agency’s reviews. Search on the keywords you’re targeting and trawl through the top-ranked review sites for any comments about your business.
Be sure to respond to reviews, too. If they’re positive,thank the customer for their business. If they’re negative, express your apologies and offer to resolve the situation. It’s essential that you don’t let bad reviews cloud your reputation, so try asking recent clients to review you. This will help to boost your online reputation and the opinion searchers have of you.
Make sure you’re mobile
In 2015, searches from tablets and phones beat the number of searches from desktops for the first time. Since then, that trend has only continued.
Some simple ideas to implement that will help make your pages mobile-friendly include:
- Easily-locatable contact details on each page
- Photo galleries users can swipe through
- Large buttons for easy clicking
If your site isn’t optimised for mobile viewers, you’re going to miss out on a whole load of traffic. If a mobile viewer is greeted by a lack of functionality, they’re likely going to bounce straight off of your site before they even read your content.
With one of iProperty’s latest Real Estate website designs you can be assured that your website will be fully mobile ready.
Promote direct data
Although optimising your site for mobile-view is great, direct data will really help you out. If you can get your contact information to show up in search results, it will make searchers far more likely to contact you. If you can pair this with positive reviews, you’re definitely in for a win.
Direct data are pieces of data that appear with business listings within a search query, for example claiming your business on Google will enable your business contact details to appear when a search is done in your area for Real Estate companies.
Collaborate with other businesses
A fantastic way to boost your online search rankings is by generating backlinks from reputable sites.
In layman’s terms, that means getting other websites to post content that links to yours. Make contact with local mortgage brokers, home insurance companies and tradesmen to see if you can link to each other’s content.
This is an excellent method for proving your business credibility to Google. Direct links to your business are great, but even indirect mentions of your business will help to boost your search rankings.
In recent years, Google have made it harder and harder to cheat your way to the top. With Google’s current stance, the best way to reach the top of the search rankings is by providing a quality, reputable service for your audience. Invest in content, answer the questions your target market is asking and you’ll see noticeable improvements in your search traffic.
For more helpful real estate tips and information like this, check out our blog. You can also follow us on Facebook.
At iProperty, we provide leading online property management and real estate software, responsive websites, and more.