Real Estate SEO

SEO Consulting can be very challenging for any REALTOR.  Search Engine Optimization is the art of having your website be found using the search terms that you want.  The challenge in good SEO for Real Estate is that it is dominated by the big, nation-wide companies such as Zillow, REALTOR.com, Trulia and Homes.com.  After them, you are fighting the large brokers.  You even have to fight with the Real Estate Franchises such as Keller Williams, Remax and Coldwell Banker.

So How Can My Real Estate Website Outrank Everyone Else?

The first thing you need is a strong website that when consumers find it, they stay on it for a long period of time navigating through multiple pages. Google sees what we call “quality stats” and give a higher priority to sites that people stay on.  If someone finds your site by using a search engine, and they stay on your site longer and click through more pages than other sites found by the same search terms, Google will advance your rankings for those search terms.  Having IDX on your site greatly helps as consumers will click through listings thus spending more time on your site.

With more internet traffic coming from mobile devices than from desktop computers, your site must display properly on all mobile devices.  Google even announced that if your site is NOT mobile friendly, they will make it very challenging for you to be found on mobile searches.  Although there are multiple ways to achieve a mobile friendly website, we strongly recommend having a fully responsive site.  That means that the same content will render differently for mobile devices than they do on full desktop computers.

You need links that go to your site from popular websites that have a strong web presence.  For instance, if USA Today runs an article on real estate and links to your site when it references “New Orleans Real Estate” Google looks at that as you are an authority for that term.  Needless to say, it’s not easy to have USA Today link to your site, but it is very possible to get other quality sites to link to you.

Your real estate website needs to be optimized for search engines.  In its most basic terms, that means having the correct Meta Titles, Meta Descriptions, H1, H2 and H3 Headers, the correct amount of text (using the correct words) and labeling your pictures correctly.  This is SEO at it most basic form.  These basic things need to be in place, but by themselves will not put you above other well optimized real estate websites.

With the explosion of Social Media, the search engines look closely at sites that are prominent on all of the major Social Media Platforms.  They also give quite a bit of credit if you have multiple posts (that lead back to your site) from those large Social Media Platforms that generate traffic.

Google like sites that are fast.  Your web visitors will greatly appreciate it too!  Many SEO Consultants overlook the need for the site to load quickly.

Ninja SEO is a term that I use to describe Search Engine Optimization that goes well outside of the SEO basics.  Ninja SEO gets very technical and sometime requires proprietary programs to be efficient.  These are the things that make new sites rank very high, even for competitive keywords, very quickly.  My best example of Ninja SEO was when Movoto hit the market, within only a couple of months, they were on the first page of Google for all major Real Estate search terms.  The same thing was done with other (Now) national brands such as Travelocity, Orbitz and Expedia.  In a very short period of time, they were winning for Search Engine results such as “book a flight” or “find a hotel”. Nina SEO can get expensive because of the massive amount of work involved, but if your business plan is to continuously obtain new business from your website, it can be worth every penny.  It’s important to remember that any advertising (including SEO) needs to have a good return on investment. Even if you are spending an enormous amount of money on SEO, if the new traffic and recognition is flooding you with new clients you will find that you are happy to pay.

We offer a Free SEO Audit of your website.  This full featured report will give you very valuable information on how Google and other search engines see your website.  It only takes a minute and you will see some of the reasons that your site doesn’t rank where you want it to.  Please visit our Free SEO Website Audit page to run your report now.

We offer a full variety of Search Engine Optimization options ranging from basic SEO setup, Website Siloing, Link Building, Social Media Presence and Search Engine Marketing via Google Pay Per Click (Adwords).