Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
If you’re a real estate agent, you’re keenly aware of the important role the Internet plays in your industry. As a realtor, you need to have a strong social media presence, as well as an effective website. Of course, in order to attract as many potential clients as possible, you also have to understand how to use those avenues the right way.
A big part of that is understanding SEO, which may not be the easiest thing in the world to grasp. To help you out, here are five important keys to using SEO, tailored for the real estate industry.
Most people who are looking for real estate are looking in a specific location, so you have to make sure your website is optimized to receive traffic for that particular location.
You may service a broad range of places, including multiple cities, but you need to make sure the names of all the major cities you cover are mentioned specifically all over your site. You should also mix in your primary location alongside important keywords like “realtor,” “real estate listings,” and “homes for sale.”
If you can get these keywords on your web site next to the names of the cities you serve, you’ll put yourself in position to get a lot of traffic from search engine visitors searching on those specific phrases. Pay particular attention to the titles of your pages.
The inclusion of photos and videos can make a major impact on a site’s SEO value, and since real estate is all about getting people to envision themselves living in a particular home, you must include plenty of photos and video on your site and in any blog content.
Be sure to label your images properly including location keywords in their file name and description.
Video tours of a house you’re trying to sell can be invaluable towards not only selling that house, but also in attracting more clients for other homes. Studies show that video listings in real estate can increase traffic exponentially, so if you’re not making videos of your listings, you’re doing yourself a disservice as a real estate agent.
Google considers both whether the website can be viewed properly on mobile devices and how fast it loads when it's determining ranking.
So it's imperative that you create a mobile version of your website. Millennials are starting to buy houses, and they’re searching for them on their mobile devices, so if your site isn’t mobile, you’re going to lose out on potential clients.
There are so many websites out there, and the attention span of those searching for property is so short that you must focus on creating great headlines in order to stand out.
Obviously, you need to use keywords in your title, but you also need a catchy phrase or a promise, something that can stand out to both search engines and readers.
You need to understand how a title can make or break the interest of a potential client. When someone is using a search engine they usually have ten choices to click, so make your listing stand out.
Once you’ve mastered the art of the headline, the best thing you can do as a realtor to attract clients from an SEO standpoint is to keep publishing quality content.
The content has to be of high quality, because search engines will figure out if it’s not. It also has to be unique, because so much of what is out there with regard to real estate has been done before. Think about aspects of the real estate industry that get overlooked or that can be used to engage with potential customers, and create content about those topics. If you keep things fresh and creative, you’ll be sure to attract plenty of traffic to your site.
Photo Credit: Tumisu via pixabay
About The Author: Ben Shepardson has a long track record of success in online marketing and web development. While pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems, he worked doing enterprise-level SEO and started an online business offering web development services to small business customers.After graduating from college Ben relocated to Florida, where his web development business took off. Since then, he’s kept pace with the ever-changing web development industry, branching into social media management and content delivery services. This year his company NoStop.net will celebrate 13 years in business.
