Real estate SEO can help turn up your real estate game by consistently bringing in leads every single month. It’s something that every real estate agents wants but, few are prepared to work hard for.
Begin with on-page real estate SEO optimization
On page SEO optimization is optimizing a certain page on your real estate website to rank in Google for a specific keyword and long-tail keywords.
Main Real Estate On Page SEO Ranking Factors:
Title Tags – Making sure the use of your top ranking keyword is in the main title tags
Heading Title – <h1> Is your strongest content title tag. Make sure to use it with your main keyword.
Content Mention – Make sure to use the keyword again at least once in the content. Don’t force it. It should come up naturally when answering the question of the searcher.
IMG alt text– Including the keyword you’re searching for in the alt text of an image.
URL – Make sure that the URL of the page matches the keyword. If you want to rank for “Top Realtor In Orange County”, the page with the URL should look like /TopRealtorInOrangeCounty. This is not applicable for homepages.
Resources:
Anatomy of a perfectly optimized page
Advanced On Page SEO optimization (Definitely worth the read if you’re past the basics)
Internal Linking
Internal linking are links that go from one page on your real estate website to another page directed at your same website. These types of links are generally seen in the navigation tab or in the content/body when linking to a relevant area/post on your website.
How to use internal linking for your real estate website:
Start by deciding what page would be most valuable if you ranked it higher. For most real estate agents its going to be your homepage targeting a specific search term.
Start with opensiteexplorer.com and enter your URL (it’s free)
Click Top Pages
Sort and identify your pages by the top ranking ones
After you’ve identified your top 10 pages. Start figuring out how you can link to your homepage inside of the content naturally.
- Don’t go overboard with internal linking, it can actually hurt your rankings if you do it too much.
- Remember: Linking inside your content passes more ‘link juice’ than in your navigation.
- This isn’t a miracle technique, it has the potential to move you up a page but, won’t take you from rank 60 to rank 1.
Internal Linking straight from Matt Cutts of Google:
Resources:
Internal Linking: A scientific, scalable approach (Great webinar, definitely worth the watch)
The 7 commandments of internal linking
9 Pro tips for internal linking
Building Links
Building links is arguably still one of the most important ranking factors there is. Googles algorithm is taking more signals from different places to help rank real estate websites but, still the number one thing to get your real estate blog or website in the #1 spot is backlinks.
The trouble with real estate backlinks for SEO
The people you write content for most likely don’t have a blog to share your content on. In a lot of industries it’s a lot easier to get backlinks because people might use their content as a source for a new post. In the real estate industry, this is rarely true.
So what’s the answer to getting backlinks for real estate websites?
The answer is summed up in this video below:
Basically you’re going to want to get involved in places where your real estate prospects might spend their free time.
For most Realtors, a good place for this is:
- Local & major news websites
- Local community websites
- Local bloggers
- Industry related places such as Inman
- Local even websites
- and the list goes on.
The main take away for this type of real estate SEO is to keep in mind that the content you’re going to be creating and sharing on your blog won’t actually attract backlinks that often. And that’s ok!
You can write and get featured from these other sources who are interested in what you have to say, to help rank up your website and content.
Resources:
Everything you need to know about backlinks
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