A real estate website is a great tool for promoting your business and interacting with customers and prospects. According to a recent study by the National Association of Realtors, about 50% of home buyers go online first when looking for property. This is why it is very important to optimize your site so as to make it easy for people to find you online.
Here are 5 great tips for optimizing your real estate website:
1. Have a solid content strategy
Content marketing is not just about publishing property listings on your site. To keep visitors coming back, you need to continually update your site with fresh and helpful articles, blog posts, resources and tools. The more people visit your site, the higher your site will be ranked in Google.
For example, if you are selling property in a certain town or city, you could write a series of articles taking about why people should consider living there. Or you could write articles offering tips for first-time home buyers. Go further and create a tool that property buyers can use to calculate mortgage payments.
Here are some tips for optimizing your content:
- Use high-quality videos, graphics and images
- Include keyword-rich alt image tags, title tags and descriptions
- Link internally to other resources and pages
- Write for people, not search engines
- Place your main key phrase or keyword in the sub headers and headers
- Write long form content (preferably 1,000+ words)
2. Target local keywords
Keywords are basically terms that people use when searching for information online. Including relevant keywords in your content will make it easier for customers and prospects to find you via search engines. To maximize your effectiveness, it would be advisable to optimize for local keywords or phrases. For example, if you are selling property in Bexar County in Texas, you should use key phrases like ‘Bexar homes for sale’, ‘Homes for sale in Bexar’ or ‘Bexar real estate agent’.
However, don’t make the mistake of using a keyword too many times on one page. Google could penalize you for keyword stuffing.
3. Attract natural inbound links
Besides boosting traffic and visitor engagement, backlinks can also help improve your site’s rankings. However, don’t make the mistake of paying for or buying links (black hat SEO). You will be heavily penalized when Google finds out. Instead, work on creating high quality, original and unique content that will attract organic links from other sites.
You can also create quality backlinks for your site by setting up business accounts/profiles in places such as:
- Yelp
- Your local chamber of commerce
- Your local newspaper
- Google Maps
- Angie’s list
- Yellow Pages
4. Get social
Real estate companies and agents with an active social media presence enjoy greater engagement and brand visibility. Some of the popular social media platforms to consider include Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest and LinkedIn. However, this does not mean that you must have a presence in all these platforms. You will need to research to find out what social media sites your customers and prospects are using and connect with them where they are.
To expand your visibility, be sure to use relevant hashtags like #texasrealestate or #miamicondos. Don’t forget to respond to comments quickly, professionally and appropriately. This will help build trust and credibility in your business.
5. Analyze your results
It is very important to analyze your SEO efforts regularly to see what is working and what isn’t. You could use tools such as Finteza to check metrics such as pageviews, new visitors, visitors’ location, and sessions. Continually re-adjusting your web optimization strategy will help you stay ahead of the competition and boost your bottom line.
Charles Mburugu is a HubSpot-certified content writer/marketer for B2B, B2C and SaaS companies. He has worked with brands such as GetResponse, Neil Patel, Shopify, 99 Designs, Oberlo, Salesforce and Condor. Check out his portfolio and connect on LinkedIn.
