We are living in the Internet-age and we use Internet for nearly everything. When it comes to Real Estate, there is no exception either. Here are two staggering facts  you should know (credits to the National Association of Realtors) when it comes to real estate buyers and sellers:

• Typical buyers who do not use Internet for home searching usually spend around five weeks for searching and visited around five homes. Compared to those who use Internet, Internet users takes a longer time to search for home (approximately 10 weeks) and visited 10 homes.
• Over 80 percent of real estate (especially homes) buyers found photos and detailed information about the properties for sale which are deemed extremely useful.

It is proven (more than a dozen times now) that the Internet plays a huge role in successful real estate buying and selling process. Apart from just the choices and gaining more visibility, another huge factor that you should consider is getting qualified leads.

Make no mistakes. Qualified leads are hard to come by! It doesn’t matter if you are selling or buying a real estate property. The methodology is pretty much similar in both cases.

Don’t worry you are already scratching your head or start panicking when you hear about Real Estate Seo a.k.a. search engine optimization. This article will consist of five parts which will help you get higher rank and more importantly, getting the right leads in the real estate industry.

Step 1: Target (The Right) Local Keywords

When it comes to searching for the right Keywords, research has shown that majority of potential home shoppers are using extremely common terms such as “{location} {common keywords}”. Here are some examples for easier understanding:

• {Location} real estate
• {Location} home for sale
• {Location} apartment for sale
• {Location} realtor
• {Location} real estate agent
• {Location} real estate agency

If you are a realtor, you probably manage at least one website to showcase your business. The above words or any related keywords should be incorporated within your website.

How to find (popular) local keywords

The easiest way is to use Google Keyword Planner (click here for the link). To start searching for the keywords, follow the below format.

You need to change is by replacing ‘real estate’ with any general keywords you have in mind. If you have more than one keyword, you can use the comma option to further refine your search results.

Note: For more specific results, change the targeting setting from ‘Florida’ to the areas of your preference.

The result page will be as follow:

There are two options you can choose from; ad group ideas and keyword ideas.

• Ad group ideas represents groups of keywords which represent the same meaning.
• Keyword ideas are specific keywords which are searched by others.

Now, it is time to syphon the data.

Keywords (by relevance) – This represents the keywords which are generally searched by others

Avg. monthly searches – This represents the number of searches that people does in a month

Competition – This is gauge by high, medium and low. High represents many competitors while low represents a low count of competitors advertising for the specific keyword

Suggested bid, ad impressions. share and add to plan are for those using Google Adwords for advertising.

Additional tips

Do you log for even more specific results?

During the keyword research, replace the standard keywords with the following:

• “keyword”
• [keyword]

When you use “keyword” for searching, the results will only display keywords with exact match to your keyword suggestion.

On contrary, using [keyword] will result in related keywords to the original keyword of your choice.

By not selecting any specific filters, Google Keyword Planner will display all keywords based on its own algorithm.

 

Step 2: Writing blog posts

A website is more than just your portfolio. It represents your brand, personality and business for many. But do you know that you can do more than just that?

Successful realtors use their website as a jumping stone by publishing blog posts about homes or real estates they are selling.

Now, take a moment to think about this. How can it impact your chance of selling?

For starters, blog posts (if done correctly) are indexed by Google. This means that apart from your website, your blog posts could also be ranking on Google search pages and you can easily generate powerful leads (and traffic) directly from this.

Besides that, publishing the listing will tell others that you are have real estates for sale … but that’s much about it. When you publish a blog post, you are giving an insight to the potential buyers on the property. It can include additional information of the property which will distinct yourself from the rest of your competitors.

Important tips when it comes to writing blog post

1. Focus on one keyword per blog post

One of the biggest mistakes for many is using too many keywords in one post. Instead, aim to enrich one main keyword per post.

If you want, you can integrate a few related keywords (not more than 5 keywords) in the blog post to avoid over stuffing keywords and making the blog post more readable.

1. Number of words is important

There are many myths when it comes to number of words in a blog post. Some say that it has to be longer than 1,000 words while others say that the blog post can be as short as a mere 600 words.

Generally, Google usually favorable towards blog posts that have over 600 words. So, you don’t have to stress out too much about the number of words in the blog post.

1. Quality over quantity

Apart from everything, quality matters in terms of search engine optimization. This means that you will most probably outdo your competitors even when you have only 10 quality posts compared to their 100, low quality posts.

If you are planning to publish blog posts, ensure that you aim for quality and there is absolutely no two ways around that.

Step 3: Leverage the power of photos and videos

Visual is more important than words.

No wonder Social Media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are trying hard to captivate audience using visual medias.

Most realtors publish photos and videos of the real estate property on their website. If you are still unconvinced, here are some facts to convince you further:

Studies (like this one) had shown that adding a video on a page triples the inbound links compared to pages that doesn’t have video embedded in them.

So, here are some nifty tricks to stand above the crowd.

Publish only media that are professionally edited

Look around. Most realtors are uploading videos and photos of the real estate property without any editing.

When you upload professionally edited media, they often look better and more importantly, it will result in better lead generation as more people would be interested in it.

Getting testimonial through videos

Do you notice that there are many realtors who publish written testimonials on their website? You can start doing it different by asking your happy clients to leave a quick 30 to 60 seconds video clip on your service, professionalism etc.

Always remember that when video testimonials carry more weight compared to written one.

 

Step 4: Integrating social media into your overall marketing strategy

Social media works like charm for any types of business, including real estate. The biggest question would be, “How do you integrate social media into your real estate?”

More importantly, how can social media helps you in term of search engine optimization?

The answer is simple.

Social media posts and updates are generally indexed by search engines such as Google.

If you are still unconvinced, here are some advantages using social media:

Advantage #1: Social signals help you to gain exposure

Every time you publish a new post and update on social media, it literally goes live and you may very well reach hundreds if not thousands of people.

Let’s take an example of Facebook Edgerank algorithm. Cookies are kept on your browser and relevant advertisements or posts related to your previous search will be more visible on your timeline. This means that you will probably get more advertisements and related posts closely to the topic you had been searching earlier.

At the same time, the availability of paid social media advertisements would generate more qualified leads than you can image.

Advantage #2: Social media updates are indexed by Google

If you have no idea yet, social media updates are indexed by Google. This means that these posts will be visible on search results.

Here’s an example of the search results:

 

Do you notice that these are updates taken directly from Google+ (or Google Plus)?

Apart from Google+, Twitter is also said to be indexed approximately 466% more tweets by Google (credits to Search Engine Land).

Important tip: Social media may be an extremely useful tool for real estate buyers and realtors but always remember that quality is always better than quantity. Instead of constantly sharing real estates for sale, aim to provide value more than anything else. Throwing up random photos or updates on social media isn’t going to help you gain exposure. Furthermore, you wouldn’t want your followers to label you as spam, right?

 

Step 5: Making your website mobile responsive

Before we discuss on this, here are some serious statistics for you to dive in:

• 89% of new home shoppers are using mobile devices to search for home
• More searches are done over tablets, which is approximately 300% increase of searches based on year over year basis
• The number of home buyers searching for foreclosure through mobile devices has risen to over 180% year over year basis

The next time you are commuting or waiting in-line at your favorite café, look around you. You will find that majority of people are using their tablets and mobile devices as the primary way of communication.

Apart from that, take a moment to understand the human behavior. What are the main reasons for potential home buyers to visit your website?

Here are some reasons behind that:

• Comparing prices
• Comparing features
• Searching for a realtor
• Doing research on mortgage financing
• Locating a local listing agent
• Finding for potential homes to purchase

With that being said, it is an absolute no-brainer than making your website mobile friendly is more than just an important factor when it comes to real estate SEO.

Not sure if your website is mobile friendly? Click here for Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

Basically, websites which are not mobile friendly (or not responsive) would require the visitor to constantly zoom in and out to read the text. This affects the overall user’s experience.

Having a mobile friendly website is more than just having a beautiful display on mobile devices. It also (potentially) helps you to have better ranking on Google search results or SERP in short.

Google even said that they have preference for responsive designs which further emphasized the importance of using mobile friendly website themes.

 

Conclusion

As a realtor, the competition and stakes are high. Your ultimate goal would be finding more leads, sales and better ranking on major search engines which are accomplishable through proper search engine optimization techniques.

Make no mistakes as real estate SEO can take up a lot of time and even money if it is not done right. Therefore, having the right strategies would lead to more promising growth.

 

 

 

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