A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategy is needed to increase your web presence and allow you to be found by prospective clients. An unplanned approach to putting content on your website will not rank you first on Google. Chris Grozdon of Dash-SEO recently wrote a great article on SEO tips for real estate. From his article, we have picked 25 tips that will help your brokerage’s website get found in search engines and put in front of prospective home owners and sellers!
- Ask clients for reviews on Google, Facebook, Yelp and other review sites
- Make sure your business name, hours, address, etc are consistent across all websites
- Leverage social media that links back to your website and increases brand awareness
- Target website content to your audience and differentiate yourself from your competition
- Make sure your website contains keywords searched locally
- Include ‘user-intent’ keyword phrases that have a higher likelihood of conversion (ie. “Best real estate agents for luxury homes in Dallas”)
- Incorporate relevant synonyms (LSI Keywords) that may be searched
- Avoid repeating keywords and phrases as this will decrease your ranking in searches
- Make your website secure by installing SSL
- Have a consistent heading hierarchy (ie. before using H3 on a page, make sure the page already has an H1 and H2 headings )
- Acquire links back to your page organically and through content creation and outreach to relevant local and national websites
- Ensure your website is optimized for performance (ie. Enable browser caching, reduced image file size, leveraging a content delivery network) in order to decrease bounce rates and allow search engine bots to scan and rank your site
- Create relevant local content through posts and blogging
- Upload assets that your viewers can download (ie. How To Guides, Local Information, Infographics etc..)
- Target nearby towns by including keywords relevant to those towns on your site
- Research where people moving to your city are coming from and include landing pages dedicated to these individuals in their own language if possible (ie. If you have a brokerage in Toronto with many people from China buying homes in your area, have a landing page in Chinese with a title like “从中国搬到多伦多”)
- Avoid USING content already found on other websites as this will hurt your ranking
- Find local bloggers to help contribute to your blog and backlink their blogs to your site
- Focus local: You may not be able to beat Zillow for your city, but you can beat them in your neighbourhood
- Use heat mapping software to see which content on your pages is attracting attention and what could use more work
- Add your website to the list of your local chamber of commerce
- Sponsor charities, organizations and sports teams to get links from their pages to yours
- Use Alt Text and descriptive file names for your images so your images rank in image searches
- Implement local schema on your site to ensure search engine crawlers can determine your businesses name, address, etc… This can be done by going on Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper and copying and pasting your brokerage’s code across your site
- Ask past clients to add a link to your website on their company’s website or social media accounts
Need more website, SEO, blog, or social media tips? Check out Lone Wolf’s blog for more!
