How to Utilize Local SEO in the Real Estate Industry
Go Back To Previous PageIt’s estimated that 96% of home buyers search for homes online. Positioning your real estate website to appear on the first page of search results can help you generate reliable ongoing business and close more sales. With the National Association of Realtors predicting over 4.7 million home sales in 2024, it’s time to boost your search engine optimization strategy so you can be a top choice for local clients. This article explains how real estate agents, brokers, and investors can benefit from SEO. We’ll review how to optimize real estate sites to ensure you appear at the top of the search engine results pages. We will also offer a few additional real estate SEO tips that can help generate more organic traffic.
What Is Local SEO for Real Estate?
Local SEO encompasses search engine strategies that aim to increase a real estate professional’s rankings in local search. The higher real estate agents or investors rank in the local market, the more seller and buyer agreements they can generate. Local SEO focuses on reaching local area customers rather than ranking high in national searches.
Real estate businesses can leverage the following benefits from local SEO:
- Better local visibility – Your real estate business can obtain better visibility by ranking at the top of the local search engine results.
- More traffic to real estate listings – Generate more organic traffic to your real estate companies’ listings to sell them faster and for a better price.
- High rankings for local search results – Real estate companies focusing on local rankings can appear at the top of the search results in their target market.
- Cost-effective results – Local real estate SEO focuses on generating organic traffic, which can be more cost-effective than other options, like Google ads.
SEO will become increasingly important as the Internet becomes essential in the real estate industry. While traditional marketing methods, like direct mailers, may still serve some value in real estate, those customers will head to the internet to solidify the business partnership.
You can benefit from local SEO in the real estate niche. Local SEO for real estate focuses on location-specific search queries, keywords, and high-quality content. Investing in SEO for real estate investors helps your brand stand out in a highly competitive market.
How to Utilize Local SEO in the Real Estate Industry
Local real estate SEO uses a mix of online reviews, business profile optimization, website optimization, and on- and off-page techniques to produce more organic search results. To appear higher in Google searches, utilize the following local SEO strategies.
Setup and Optimize Google Business Profile
Google My Business (GMB) is a free business profile available through Google. Setting up a GMB profile is easy with the following steps:
- Log in and claim your Google Business Profile.
- Add or edit your business information.
- Choose your business type or category.
- Enter your location and serviced cities.
- Include your contact information.
- Verify your business using your business mailing address.
- Optimize your profile with relevant keywords and locations.
GMB is essential to your local SEO efforts. A GMB profile allows you to be discovered by local buyers and sellers searching for realtors or investors in your area. You can also manage your business hours, services, and reviews in your GMB.
An estimated 67% of realtors use social media for outreach initiatives. Yet, GMB remains one of the most under-utilized platforms for real estate companies. On average, a business with a GMB is 94% more likely to be considered trustworthy and reputable.
Utilize the Power of Local Citations And Directories
Using various methods, Google continually measures your website’s trustworthiness, including comparing your page against local citations and online directories. Submitting your business to these directories and ensuring accurate information across all sources should be part of your real estate SEO strategy.
Individual customers are more likely to trust a real estate agent if they can find consistent local business listings. Customers are approximately 2.7 times more likely to trust local businesses listed on multiple directories.
Local citations and directories can also help your real estate business get seen online. In addition to Google, agents should submit their websites to directories like Yelp, Bright Local, WhiteSpark, and Yellow Pages. Taking advantage of relevant business categories for directories can also boost your real estate SEO. Realtor.com, Yahoo Homes, HomeSnap, and Homes.com all accept agent submissions.
For the best results, ensure your business name, address, phone number, and email address are accurate and consistent with all relevant directories.
Start a Review Solicitation Program
Local SEO optimization depends mainly on social proof, and reviews are one of the best ways to demonstrate to Google that your real estate agency or investment business is trustworthy. Reviews also show Google that you are a reputable real estate agent and deserve higher rankings.
Starting a review solicitation program increases authentic reviews from previous clients, helping to establish that trust further. Set up automated email campaigns to request online reviews from previous clients. This also helps establish trust with potential clients, which leads to more traffic.
As real estate becomes even more competitive, leveraging reviews may be the factor that helps set some professionals apart.
Research and Use Local Keywords
A well-optimized website with local market keywords is a key to good local search engine optimization. At the same time, keyword research helps you beat out your competitors in real estate marketing. Ensure your real estate website meets industry standards for optimization, including keyword use.
Keyword research helps identify the search phrases your target customers are searching for. Once you identify these phrases, you can integrate them into your blogs and website content, which helps you rank higher for relevant keywords. Keyword research tools allow you to search keyword volume (how often the phrases are searched) and customer intent (where the customer is in the buying cycle).
Some keywords are more accessible to rank for, and the ease of ranking for them typically depends on how competitive your local real estate market is. Using Keyword Manager, list desired keywords and create a strategy to target easier-to-rank and harder-to-achieve keywords.
You can conduct keyword research using popular online tools like SEMrush or Google Keyword Magic. Following best practices for on- and off-page SEO helps you rank better and includes optimized page titles, meta descriptions, and anchor tags. Other beneficial tools for local SEO for real estate include Ahrefs, Keywords Everywhere, SEO Minion, and Page Speed Insights.
Publish Local Guides on Your Website
Google and other search engines favor websites that use keywords in a natural language style. This means strategic content ideation and blog planning based on targeted keywords. Local guides are an excellent way to boost keyword usage while offering potential customers expert value.
Positioning yourself as an expert in the industry helps build trust with Google and local buyers and sellers. Publishing valuable local guides that educate people about real estate trends can boost your search engine rankings.
Publishing other adjacent, local-based content can also help optimize your digital marketing strategy. Consider guides like the best parks or restaurants in the neighborhood. Integrate local keywords in your blog post to target high-intent traffic.
Focusing on quality when creating local guides also helps encourage shares. As other businesses share these guides, your real estate services are put in front of new audiences. Links from other businesses, also known as backlinks, also help boost Google’s trust in your local business. Many online tools even have topic generators to help you identify share-worthy topics.
Create Landing Pages Based on Your Geography
Local SEO rankings are based on location. Google aims to provide the user with as much value as possible, so it also determines the user’s location when choosing which results to display.
Creating landing pages based on your real estate location and nearby cities serviced can help meet that local search intent. Unique landing pages with city-specific information produce the best local search results. You can boost local-based search rankings by optimizing these pages with geo-based title tags, meta descriptions, and local business schema, which can be done through coding.
The real estate market is more competitive than ever, making SEO a requirement. Focus on publishing high-quality, keyword-based, local content and earning the trust of both Google and your potential clients. In doing so, you’ll likely notice an increase in organic traffic.
In Summary
SEO is a powerful tool for real estate agents and investors. Leveraging SEO can bring significant results if you’re trying to increase views on listings or find more real estate clients. Submitting your website to real estate-based directories or optimizing your GMB profile are just a few excellent strategies that can lead to higher local-based search rankings.
FAQ
Is local SEO still relevant for the real estate industry?
Yes, local SEO is still highly relevant in the real estate industry today. Search engines aim to display users with the most relevant results, including ones based on location for certain services, like real estate.
Can real estate agents set up their Google Business Profile listing?
Yes, Google Business is extremely user-friendly, meaning most real estate agents can set up their listings themselves.
Are Geotags effective for search engines?
Yes, geotags can be especially beneficial for local SEO. Search engines consider a variety of data, including metadata, to determine a website’s ranking. Geotags tells the search bot the specific markets in which the business most often works, helping to display it higher in local SEO.
Georges has been working in Wall Street for the last 16 years trading derivatives with hedge funds. He has been an active real estate investor for over a decade. Georges graduated from HEC Business School in Paris and holds a master in Finance from ESADE Barcelona.
