Real estate companies are on the rise with a dense market of over 3 million agents in the US alone. It is the best brand that wins. Clever and informed real estate businesses are leveraging on Google My Business and local SEO to beat the competition. This is to ensure they generate quality leads.
It is no news that the world is now seen through a screen, this is possible through technologies like smartphones and other mobile devices. Real estate clients have turned to the internet for information. They want to view houses and basically meet all their need from the comfort of their homes or offices.
Google My Business For Realtors
How can you make your site accessible and visible online? How can you build traffic?
The answer is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). With Google My Business (GMB) you can now optimize your listing on search engines, improve visibility, drive traffic and generate quality leads.
It will be a loss if any real estate company neglects this strong digital marketing strategy. It has proven to be a difference between a known brand and an unknown brand.
Fortunately, the real estate business is location sensitive. You do not need to compete with the hundred thousand real estate companies. You can only compete with others within the same location.
This real estate competition varies by the location. So location competitiveness can be fierce and too intense while others might not be. But Google My Business can give you a fighting chance to stand and scale on the internet.
Local SEO Tips to Boost Real Estate Websites
As you know, nobody really wants to go to the second page before they get what they want. So in creating posts for your real estate website, on the top of your mind should be Google My Business which is a major part of Local SEO.
With so much competition, the battle for clients has consumed a lot of companies. It has pushed them into the abyss called the third page and other further pages.
Here are a few local SEO tips to help you optimize search engines and improve your website listing on the internet.
1. Review Your SEO Stance
Before embarking on a journey, you need to know clearly where you are. By asking yourself these basic questions:
- Where are you now on the internet?
- From the customer point of view how is the company thriving?
- What pages have the most organic traffic?
- How responsive is the website in converting leads to clients?
- Where can you make improvements?
Through this review, you can now create a feasible roadmap to progress to improvement
In making the review for your SEO stance, these are areas you should focus on:
- Sitemaps and page structure
- Content (keywords)
- Links
- Responsiveness i.e. is your site accessible, mobile, and fast in answering queries.
When you are able to upgrade these areas, you will see a drastic change and more organic traffic.
You can use Google Analytic and Google Search Console to help with your review.
2. Optimization of Search for User Friendliness
Now that you have made your reviews, you can now strategize on how to address the issues at hand. Optimization should be done systematically, being careful not to overlook any issue.
After fixing the places that needed it, you look for a way to boost your overall optimization.
Here are areas to focus on
- Keywords research
- SEO friendly Uniform Resource Locator
- Title optimization
- Image optimization
- Links
- Redirect
- Site speed
- Content optimization
3. Website Accessibility
SEO isn’t just about words. It is making your website available to all persons, regardless of their disability.
A lot of websites have failed in reaching out to all kinds of people because of no accessibility while creating content.
For a very long time the people with disabilities have been overlooked but there is a contest for fair online experience.
With the rise of awareness, we must be careful to always include the disabled to our content place and strategies. As it is also a positive progress for the society at large and your real estate company.
Ways you can be more accessible can be
- By the use of audio.
- By the use of relevant links.
4. Optimization for Mobile Device Friendliness
A whole lot of traffic on the internet comes from mobile devices. More than half (52%) to be precise and it is not coming down.
This is the reason why your Real estate website should be Search Engine and customer friendly. Your website needs to operate smoothly on mobile device.
Here are some areas you should look into:
- Site speed
- Design
- Page and hosting speed
- Home page
- Site navigation
Your real estate web design should be able to adjust to any screen type.
Speed is very crucial. A customer now has the ability to open more than one page at the same time, and will switch to the fastest site if they have what they want. Your site needs to have high-speed that isn’t prone to crashing.
5. Your Real Estate Site on Relevant Directories
Directories like Google My Business play a big role in local SEO. They help you become seen by more people. The more places your website is located the better.
Start with Google My Business for visibility. Fill it up with lots of information about your real estate company. Add images and videos to spice it up.
6. Connect With Social Media
Social Media doesn’t directly affect search ranking, but plays a big role in digital marketing. This is because it gives you the opportunity to relate directly to your clients. It helps you to engage with your audience and learn their behavioral pattern.
Having a good and consistent social media presence can help you;
- Gain authority
- Increase exposure
- Build trust
- Create awareness
- Direct traffic to your site
- Start meaningful conversations
Real estate businesses might not have the right amount of exposure without proper social media presence.
Try putting you real estate business on core social media sites like
7. Create Relevant Content for Blog
Having a website blog will help SEO. As you may know SEO is keyword Centric and creation of blog posts will help to clear up all your keyword problems.
Your priority on the post should be content. What kind of content are you giving your viewers? Your content should build interest as well as educate your viewers. You can build connections about the local environment, school, leisure centers in the environment, and roads.
8. Use of Image and Infographics
According to Havard Health, “the human mind avoids stress. It will run away from anything that looks cumbersome or boring. With the aid of images and infographic content, you can keep you viewers coming and engaged”. Images could include house interior, exterior, building processes, 3D models. You could also include simple infographic content that will educate the viewer quickly and easily.
9. Creating Video Content
Video content can help you make a difference between you and other competitors. If you can, it is advisable to optimize it. Consider optimizing a YouTube channel, consistently uploading content, running live streams. You can optimize search listing by adding location targeted keywords to your description, headline and hashtags. Adding a transcript will also help search engines crawl into your channel and index the content.
10. Updating All Site and Social Media Handle
Now that you have got your social media handles and site going, you must remember the word “consistency”. People’s pages grow by how active they engage on their handles. You can create a content schedule for your pages, so as to keep you from running out of ideas and delayed posting. Include local sensitive hash tags, descriptions, heading to every post.
Now, you should always put all your Social media in consideration. Do not allow one suffer while the other thrives. Your contents should tally with one another.
You can achieve this by
- sharing post to your other handles
- Including links
- Adding of hashtags
This will keep your handles up to speed and in correspondence with each other, so one handle doesn’t have to be fuller than the other.
11. Use of Schema
Schema or Structured Data Markup, helps search engines learn and get information about the kind of content you post on your website and other platforms.
If your site will display rich snippets in search results, you will need to apply Schema where necessary. What you will use is highly determined by your site structure.
If you are not sure what to use, you can consult an SEO professional or use an SEO company.
12. Earn Featured Snippet
Featured snippets can be of help in these areas:
- Increase your traffic
- It can attract users interested in your offers
- Boost you up in search ranking
It isn’t so easy to gain featured snippets. Only a few businesses and major websites have grabbed the spot for this featured snippet. Instead of competing with them, you can search for queries that don’t already have one.
Search for Local focused keywords and phrases, add the keywords and phrases to a well refined content. Mark up your content properly and create a Question and Answer section on your platform to compensate.
Conclusion
With the help of these SEO tips, you can scale through the fierce competition that is in the real estate business world. You can take charge and command authority even as a real estate business.
Invest in SEO and build your ranking today!! If you need help with Google My Business, get in touch with an SEO consultant. Gain traction, generate quality leads and higher conversion rates with Deyo Digital.