your-local-seo-terms

How To Beat The Real Estate Competition With Local SEO Terms

your-local-seo-termsIf you’ve looked into SEO previously, you’ll probably be aware that Google likes to rewrite the rule book occasionally. By occasionally, we mean several times a year.

As an agency, that makes your job of making sure your website is SEO optimised a bit more interesting. Take a look at the tips below to see if there’s anything you could be doing differently.

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Be creative with keywords

First and foremost, it’s essential that you cater for the most popular keywords within your area of real estate, as these are the ones that’ll be driving the most traffic to your site.

If you’re unsure of what these are, Google Keyword Planner will help you find the most frequently searched keywords within your area. Some of these typically include:

  • Real estate agent (your suburb)
  • Property for sale (your suburb)
  • Real estate (your suburb)
  • (your suburb) real estate

In addition to your own local suburb, it’s advantageous for you to include a broader area when you’re creating your site’s content.

Sadly, it’s unlikely that you’re going to be able to beat review and directory sites for the most popular search terms. Instead, the best means for you to start out gaining traffic is by targeting long-tail search terms.

By thinking outside of the box and considering the motivation behind each individual’s search, you’ll be able to create content that provides them with the answers they’re looking for.

Depending on exactly who your target audience is, you could create content on some of the following:

  • Average Gold Coast property prices
  • Sydney’s best performing schools
  • Where to raise a family in Melbourne

Make the most of your local knowledge when creating this content. After all, buyers and sellers will be looking for an expert for your location.

Prepare for voice activated searches

Since the introduction of Siri and Google Voice, voice searching has become increasingly popular. As of the start of 2016, 50% of teens and 30% of adults use a voice-activated function on their phone at least once a day. As technology is refined, that number is only likely to improve.

This presents a problem for SEO. Before, we were optimising for terms such as ‘real estate agency Sydney’, but voice searching is transforming these search terms into a much more conversational format.

Instead, the search term mentioned above will increasingly become something like ‘who is the best real estate agent in Sydney?’ or ‘what’s the best real estate agency in Sydney?’. As you can see, this opens up a whole avenue of other keyword possibilities that your site needs to be optimised for.

Unfortunately, it’s not entirely understood how Google search interprets voice searches. For this reason, the best approach for SEO is to ensure your site is packed with high-quality content that your audience will find useful. If you want to tick some of those question-format search terms off of your list, you could try creating FAQ-style or question/answer posts. Not only can these assist you with your rankings, they’ll also attract traffic due to their simple and appealing format.

Pay close attention to review sites

Searching for properties within any given area in Australia will, more often than not, bring up several review sites in the search results. Search for the keywords you’re targeting and check out any of the review sites that are ranking. If they mention your real estate agency, check that there aren’t any bad reviews associated with you. If you do have some, these can be remedied by asking happy customers to leave reviews reflecting their positive experiences.

You should also pay close attention to any of your company’s details listed on these sites. If they aren’t up to date, you could be missing out on valuable leads.

Optimise your site for mobile

Mid-2015, research found that mobile searches overtook desktop searches for the first time on record. For this reason, SEO experts now recommend that you place mobile as your top priority.

Some of the items you can incorporate into your site to boost your conversion rates include:

  • Clear, defined and well-spaced images
  • Easily noticeable buttons and links
  • Picture galleries that are enhanced for swiping

Allow direct data

Although having your contact information clearly listed on your website is essential, it’ll also help you to have it visible in search results. If a user notices good reviews for your agency in these search results and your contact number is next to them, it’ll definitely bode well for your conversion rates.

By using a tool such as Google For Business, you’ll be able to display contact information, as well as details of your opening hours..

It’s now harder than ever to trick your way to the top of Google search results. The best policy you can adopt is to focus on producing engaging content that will provide value to your target audience.

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