Agents in the real estate industry usually have the hardest time getting rankings on search engines. There are a variety of factors which keep agents from getting first page rankings for common real estate searches, so it takes more effort and creativity to help brokers and agents get found in the search engines. As a realtor marketing initiative, search engine optimization is a tough but rewarding avenue of promotion for elite real estate agencies.
More than any other group, agents understand that “location” is important for getting traffic from search engines. Unfortunately, there are a lot of real estate agents out there, and most of them already have websites. By necessity, real estate websites are very similar, with community information, MLS functionality, and a standard page layout. There is a certain expectation among real estate professionals and their customers that agent collateral material (business cards, brochures, vehicle stickers, and websites) is always the same. For instance, almost every agent has a business card with their picture on it.
Breaking out of this pattern, at least on your website, is the key to successful search engine marketing for the real estate professional. Given that most real estate websites are ready-made from a template, search engines tend to ignore sites with content that is duplicated across multiple sites. By making sure that all of the content on your site is unique, you have an advantage over many of your colleagues who bought a template where the only difference between sites is the name of the broker and the communities that are serviced. Most importantly, the homepage of your website should have content that stands out in its originality, and exceeds 250 words in length.
SEO professionals will first advise realtors about the pages on their site before getting into advanced tactics. This is because real estate sites not only need original content on as many pages as possible, but also need back-end code that tells the search engines what the site is about. One way to stand out among most of the template sites is to have well structured title tags that don’t compete with each other. For instance, if your website is about “Scottsdale Real Estate” then you should not be overly repeating the term in the titles of your pages, or else the search engine will not know which page is the most important source for the topic. You can make the homepage about “Scottsdale Real Estate” and the interior pages could be about communities in Scottsdale, or variations like “Scottsdale Homes.” The title of your web pages is a very big factor in determining on-site SEO, and there are several strategic methods used by SEO experts to get as many valuable community terms by matching your site titles with content on the same pages.
A real estate site should also avoid the biggest SEO failure for sites built from templates, which involves “off site” content that looks like it is still on your website. For example, if you click on the MLS feature of your site, and you go from www.MyRealEstateSite.com to www.TemplateRealEstateSite.com/MyRealEstateSite then your site is not getting found for an important part of its content. If your main URL changes when you click on certain links, then you don’t get the same kind of credit that you would get from having the content hosted on your site. Your website can look incomplete, which doesn’t help it rank in search engines.
Successful SEO for real estate websites also includes factors that are not on the page. Search engines value links from other sites to your site, and this is even more true in the real estate game. In a popular community or big city, thousands of agents are vying for the same territory, and they are all trying to make their sites rank for the areas with big commissions. When all the on-page factors are the equal among a big group of sites, then a search engine like Google will need to make its judgment based on the “endorsements” that other sites provide through linking. A link from a trusted site relevant to real estate can be worth hundreds of times more than a link from a site that is not relevant, so selecting and soliciting links from the right places is essential for the realtor who needs search engine rankings.
One way real estate agents stand out in the online world is to have a specialty. If you specialize in foreclosures, luxury real estate, condos, apartments, buying homes, or certain properties, you have an opportunity to stand out. Moreover, if you have client services like buyer rebates or free multiple listing services, you are also better positioned to gain traction in areas that other agents aren’t working. Part of the standard SEO process for real estate agents involves keyword research, which shows the number of searches made in the past month for a particular term or phrase. By matching your site with phrases that have high volume, or better conversion rates, you can cherry pick your market and even weed out searches that may be looking for low value offerings.
What if your site can’t be changed or fixed? There is still an option in the field of search engine marketing (SEM) on the Pay-Per-Click side. While this is more expensive in the long term than optimization, it can get very fast results. Basically, you are paying for a small ad to show up near the search results. The cost for each click generally get higher as you move toward to the top of the list, but once again, having a site that stands out will give you an advantage considering that many people will click several ads before choosing an agent. You can put your ad in the fourth, fifth, or sixth position and still get traffic that yields results, especially if you study your competitors and present unique options to your potential prospects.
Even though there are fewer real estate agents than there were two years ago, the realtor marketing field is more competitive than ever. Given that buyers have the advantage and inventory is at an all time high, it is essential for realtors to get as many leads as possible. By using advanced SEO tactics, and having a site that stands out, it is still possible to get search engine traffic from interested buyers and sellers who need a good real estate agent. Even better, SEO can put a single agent ahead of agencies that may spend more on high-rent locations and multiple staffers. By understanding the search engine playing field, the average agent can have phenomenal results and search volume, and in many cases the process costs less than a single commission.
The best way for marketing on the web is optimizing the search engine. If real estate agents want to sell, it would be an edge if they enter into web paging and optimize it. It would be best if agents learn how to develop their websites so as people will be able to locate them easily. One way of which is to offer their special services like foreclosures, luxury real estate, condos, apartments, buying homes, or certain properties. Show in your site what people are looking for. Then, the more it will be looked up. The more chances of selling states.