Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
The importance of search engine optimization is undeniable - it's a crucial component of any company's marketing strategy. Local search optimization has become especially relevant of late, as changes in major search engine algorithms have specifically targeted local search results for consumers looking for goods and services in their area.
This goes double for real estate professionals, as local SEO can and does drive high amounts of traffic towards realtor sites thanks to the ability to look at home and apartment listings online. As a real estate professional, ensuring that local search optimization is included as part of your marketing strategy can lead to higher levels of success; here's what you need to know about how to use local SEO to accomplish that goal.
The days of consumers relying on the phone book or even word of mouth to find product or service providers is long gone. In fact, research shows that in 2017 alone, 81% of people turn to the internet to research large purchases. This includes not just information about the object they're considering purchasing but the services they use to make that purchase, whether it's which particular dealership they want to use to buy a new car or which realtor they want to use to broker the deal on their new home.
This means that a real estate professional with a strong internet presence is much more well-situated than a colleague that has less of a presence, or no presence at all. In other words, it's in your best interest to ensure your real estate practice is easy to find on the internet - and with 93% of internet experiences beginning with typing a query into a search engine, you've got to ensure your realtor site is properly optimized so that it can be found easily in internet searches.
Getting to the top of the search engine result list is all about having an authoritative presence online. This means you've got to work to ensure that when someone searches for "real estate agents near me," search engines like Google and Bing direct prospective consumers to you instead of a competitor.
In local SEO, building this authority is all about citations. Ensuring that your company's name, address, and phone number (NAP) and website address are distributed across as many internet channels as possible - and that these citations are uniform and identical wherever they appear - builds consistency that search engines interpret as authority.
Authority also means that you've got a history of good customer interactions. Ensuring your real estate business has several positive reviews associated with it provides a big boost to search results. In fact, real estate agencies with 10 or more positive reviews get 3.5 the attention - and 6.5 times the inquiries - as agencies that don't.
The key, therefore, to using local SEO to your advantage is twofold: visibility and positivity. Ensuring your NAP and website info are accurate in online directories like Google My Business and that you have plenty of positive reviews of your services will build your online presence as an authoritative one. This will drive more traffic to your site, which will then lead to higher conversions and better success as a real estate professional.
The internet age is here to stay. Make sure you're prepared to ride the wave of local search optimization and you'll be sure to reap the rewards in your real estate business.
Great article. Real estate is very local which provides tons of opportunities for real estate agents located in larger cities. To add to your article, I would add the importance of rich snippets. Rich snippets will help websites and web pages stand out from other listings and help increase click through rates. For example, doing an event rich snippet for an open house will provide information such as date, location and time in search results. This is very powerful!!!