SEO for Real Estate Listings: 6 Actionable Tips
Realtors marketing strategies!
As a realtor, you probably already know that a large portion of your clients find you and your properties online. An increasing number of consumers turn to the Internet for all of their needs, and home buyers are no exception.
How can you make your property listings accessible and findable online, though? With search engine optimization (SEO), you can optimize your listings for search engines, which increases their visibility in search results, meaning more eyes (and offers) on your available properties.
Keep reading to learn more about SEO for real estate listings, plus get six real estate SEO tips to help you make the most of this digital marketing strategy. If you’re looking for professional help with your real estate listings’ SEO, contact us online or call us at 888-601-5359 about our SEO services!
What is SEO?
In order to start doing SEO for your real estate listings, it’s important to first understand what exactly it is. Basically, SEO is the process of tailoring your website content to rank well in search engines like Google. If you rank well, Internet users who search for terms related to your website (ex. “homes in San Francisco”) will see your website in the search results.
Realtors commonly address SEO by adding high-traffic keywords to their website content. While that is not necessarily a bad strategy, it can be a lot of work to tailor the keywords for individual listings to attract the right buyers.
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How to do SEO for real estate listings
You can gain serious traction by optimizing real estate listings for SEO. Learn how to get started with SEO for real estate listings below, and you can stay ahead of the curve and keep your potential clients informed, satisfied, and ready to take the next step.
1. Begin with an effective, responsive website
To maximize the reach of your listings, you should start with a website that’s responsive. Your potential clients are most definitely typing addresses into search engines via mobile devices and expecting to find real estate listings.
An effective website is the foundation of SEO for real estate listings. Once your website is in place and highly functional, you can move your focus to optimizing your real estate listings for search.
2. Do your research
Keyword research is an essential part of planning SEO for real estate listings. You need to know the search terms that will lead potential clients to your website and real estate listings. Once you know these terms, you will strategically insert them into your listings.
There are many tools for doing keyword research, but one of the best is Google’s keyword planner. If you have an Google Ads account, this is a great way to see how many people are searching for terms related to your industry and how many other businesses are competing for traffic from those terms.
3. Optimize your listings for search engines
Once you’ve found appropriate keywords for your listings, you’ll want to include them where relevant. Resist the temptation to use them in every single listing, as this is called “keyword stuffing” and can actually negatively affect your rankings, but use them wherever it makes sense.
For example, if you are trying to list a 750 square foot apartment in Harrisburg, you might list is as “750 Square Foot Apartment in Harrisburg.” But if keyword research shows you that more people are searching for “one bedroom apartment in Harrisburg,” that’s probably a better choice.
260%
increase in organic revenue
198%
increase in organic transactions
150%
increase in organic traffic
3872%
increase in sessions from SEO
7 real estate SEO tips
Get the most value from using SEO for your real estate listings with these seven real estate SEO tips:
1. Include local keywords
Although your property is only technically located in one city, think about other keywords that describe the surrounding area. For example, if you are listing a property in Harrisburg, consider how buyers in the area might search for properties. Think about broader descriptions like “Central Pennsylvania” or “Dauphin County,” and do some research on those keywords as well.
2. Use the address in your header tags and body
Be sure to include the street address, city, and zip code as a part of your real estate listing SEO strategy. This will draw attention to the listing and make it easier for the search engines.
3. Promote the listings on your real estate website and blog
Although search engines are extremely helpful in bringing traffic to your listings, don’t rely on them to do all the work. Make sure to link to your individual listings from your website, and consider creating a section on your homepage that shows your most recent properties.
If you have a blog, that can also be a great way to keep visitors up to date on new listings. Don’t be overly promotional and risk losing subscribers, but adding a few new properties you think your readers might be interested in at the bottom of a post could potentially spark some new clients.
4. Also promote the listings on your social channels
Posting links to your listings on social media platforms will help with exposure to your audience. That being said, be careful not to do it too often. Your fans will get annoyed if your social channels fill their news feeds up with real estate listings, so limit yourself to one or two properties per week at the most.
5. Optimize your images
Images are some of the most important parts of real estate listings. They can make potential buyers want to contact you, and give a much better sense of a property than text alone. But even though they can work wonders with human visitors to your site, search engines cannot process visual content.
The only way search engines can tell what your photos are of is with file names and alt descriptions. Be sure to include these as a part of your real estate listing SEO, and make sure that they are relevant to both the photo and the content on the page.
6. Create local profiles
Be sure to create local profiles on all the big directories for real estate listings. Then, consider reaching out to other online communities that will benefit from your listings, such as community or neighborhood online communities.
Get more clients (and sell more homes) with real estate SEO
When you use SEO for your real estate listings, you help your business reach more clients, from homeowners looking to sell to first-time homebuyers. SEO for real estate websites, however, takes time and dedication.
If you know that your company doesn’t have the time to dedicate SEO, but recognizes the value of SEO, think about investing in real estate SEO services. With professional SEO services, like from WebFX, your business can attract more clients and sell more homes, without cutting into your busy day.
Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 for a free proposal!
