Real Estate SEO: The Definitive 2024 Guide
The real estate market has undergone a serious transformation over the last few years. Strategies that led to sales pre-pandemic won’t cut it moving into 2024.
Whether you’re a new agent looking to make a name in your city or you have an established agency that needs more consistent leads, real estate SEO is key.
This post will show you the importance of real estate SEO for securing more clients and eight proven strategies to up your content marketing game in 2024.
Why You Should Focus on SEO for Your Real Estate Business
How many real estate agents are there in your area? No matter your city, you’re probably in a crowded market.
The world of real estate has shifted. More and more potential sellers and home buyers are going online to find agents, look at houses, and research prospects. Leveraging local SEO for real estate and establishing a strong online presence is the most effective way to reach new clients in 2024.
Local SEO is also crucial for reaching home buyers right at the beginning of their buying journey. With the right SEO strategy, locals will find your business before any other agent, establish trust with your brand, and make you the obvious decision when it’s time to buy a home.
Without a strong focus on local real estate SEO, you’re missing out on countless opportunities to find new clients and build new relationships.
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3 Important Benefits of Real Estate SEO for Businesses of Today
Grassroots marketing is a great strategy for real estate agents, but investing in your online presence comes with three essential benefits.
1. Better visibility to local and qualified clientele
Imagine a young couple wanting to buy their first home. They have been looking through property websites for months, making lists of their must-haves, and saving up for their down payment.
Now, they’re ready to buy and want to find a local agent to handle the process for them. That couple is going to go to Google, type in “real estate agents near me”, and begin looking through prospects.
If you have an optimized website, strong content marketing strategy, and branded online presence, you’ll be the person they find, like, and contact for information.
2. Increase in revenue
Since real estate agents work on commission, the business is a numbers game. What’s better than a consistent stream of warm leads coming directly to you for your help?
Local real estate SEO will help boost your revenue by bringing in new clients ready to buy and sell every single month.
3. Greater brand awareness
Buying a home is one of the biggest purchases of anyone’s life, and clients want someone they trust to handle the process.
Focusing on your online presence isn’t just about landing new leads; it’s about curating an authoritative, trustworthy brand that people recognize.
Having an engaged, loyal fanbase online gives you more opportunities to build those client relationships early on. Whenever it comes time to buy or sell a house, you’ll be top of mind for potentially hundreds of local people.
SEO for Real Estate Tips and Best Practices
The benefits sound fantastic, but how do you actually improve your real estate SEO? Here are eight proven SEO strategies that you can implement today to begin seeing results.
Conduct Keyword Research and Optimization for Real Estate
No SEO strategy is successful without thorough keyword research. Start by understanding what your potential clients are searching for online so you know what you need to optimize your content for.
There are plenty of free keyword research tools online to get you started:
- Google Keyword Planner
- Ubersuggest
- SEMRush
- Ahrefs
Make sure you filter your searches by your geographical location so you get specific results. If you have no idea where to begin, head to Google and type in “real estate agents” and see what Google suggests – this can help start your search on the more extensive keyword tools.
Optimize Your Pages With On-Page SEO
Each of your web pages should be optimized for a specific keyword or phrase you want to rank for. Here’s where you should add your keyword to help boost SEO for real estate:
- The H1 or page title
- Within the body of the content (with a 1-2% keyword density)
- In the image ALT text
- In a H2 or H3
- Within the intro and conclusion
Your keyword placement needs to be natural – the minute you start keyword stuffing, Google will penalize your website as spam and prevent you from showing up in local searches.
Here are a few bonus tips for optimizing on-page SEO:
- Add high-quality, custom illustrations and infographics (Venngage found custom graphics work significantly better than stock photos).
- Write high-quality, valuable content that offers value to your readers.
- Include easy site navigation and a clutter-free layout.
- Ensure your payload speeds are less than two seconds (Google aims for less than 0.5 seconds).
Create Content Strategy Relatable to Real Estate
Blog posts are the best way to boost traffic consistently and target multiple keywords, but they need to be interesting for your target market.
Plan a content strategy that attracts potential buyers and home sellers, and provide long-form, valuable posts that keep readers engaged. Here are a few real estate blog post ideas to get you started:
- X Most Popular House Types in [Your City]
- How Much Money Do You Need For a Down Payment in [Your Area]?
- X Important Things to Look For When House Hunting
- How a Real Estate Agent in [Your City] Can Help You Find Your Dream Home
Enhance Your Real Estate Website With Technical SEO
You should already have a well-designed, professional website showcasing your real estate agent services. Remember, people trust you to find their dream home; they want an expert with credibility.
But having a beautiful website isn’t enough; you also need to optimize it for SEO. Here are a few quick ways to do that:
- Submit your site map to Google.
- Improve website load speeds.
- Make sure your website is mobile-friendly.
- Find and fix any duplicate content issues.
- Create a real estate SEO-friendly site structure.
Establish EEAT (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)
Google EEAT are guidelines that determine how trustworthy a website is. Although Google doesn’t use EEAT as a direct ranking factor, it correlates to website traffic, and websites with higher EEAT signals tend to do better in searches.
We have an entire post on how to improve your Google EEAT signals to boost your website signals here. We provide easy, actionable strategies you can begin implementing today.
Tap Into Link-building From Authoritative Websites
Getting featured in high-profile real estate publications is a surefire way to attract new clients. It shows your potential clients you know what you’re talking about, and you’re a trusted industry source for the best information.
Getting featured in publications is challenging alone, but we’re here to make this step of the process zero effort.
Our team at Linkifi specializes in creating powerful digital PR campaigns that get real estate agents featured in the largest industry publications. Not only does this significantly boost brand awareness, but it can also get a huge spike in traffic to your real estate website.
Cement Your Real Estate Digital Footprint With Local SEO
If you don’t already have a Google My Business page for your real estate business, this is now your top priority. And if you’re not convinced, here are some impressive statistics from Zipdo:
- 86% of consumers rely on Google My Business for local information.
- 77% of consumers look on Google Maps when researching local businesses (and you won’t show up on Maps without a GMB page).
- The average business gets 59 searches per month on Google My Business.
It’s free to set up, takes less than an hour, and will have an almost immediate impact on your local real estate SEO – that’s a no-brainer when it comes to real estate SEO services.
Must-Know 2024 Real Estate SEO Trends (And What to Avoid!)
Finally, let’s dive into some of the most highly anticipated real estate SEO trends of 2024 so you can stay three steps ahead of your competition.
1. Digital PR is taking center stage
The real estate market has undergone a serious transformation over the last few years, and it now far transcends buying and selling property. Potential clients are looking for connections, relationships, and a sense of purpose when looking for a new home.
As such, digital PR is going to become a real estate agent's best friend. 2024 is the year to focus on your brand story, build a positive reputation, and become the company that people associate with lifestyle, dreams, and ambition.
2. Interactive property websites
With a sharp rise in AI, people now expect immersive experiences from real estate websites, including 360-degree views and interactive floor plans. Research has shown that realtors who use these immersive tools sell up to 31% faster than those who don’t, so it’s worth the investment in 2024.
3. Automated customer service
Customer service chatbots provide instant connection for potential customers and ensure you don’t miss out on those important few minutes of a first impression.
Using chatbot data gives you a much deeper understanding of user behavior and intention, which is a gold mine of information for your real estate SEO strategy.
4. Human-focused content marketing
Don’t get too comfortable relying on AI – human-focused marketing is making a firm stand in 2024. Although AI tools flooded the scene in 2023, businesses are already waking up to the poor quality of content they churn out.
Instead, the real estate marketing will be focused on valuable, human-focused content marketing that provides local clients with actionable insights, solutions, and expertise.
5. Hyper-Localized Marketing
SEO analytics tools are becoming more and more sophisticated, which means you can get even more localized with your marketing efforts.
This year, focus on location-specific keywords, accurate local business listings, and valuable geographical-based content for your potential clients.
From interactive local maps to in-depth area guides, 2024 is the year to make your real estate website the go-to source for local information.
Get Started With Local Digital PR
Local SEO is a non-negotiable for real estate agents. By focusing on local efforts, you can attract more leads, build a reputation as an expert in your area, and establish a credible brand that homebuyers want to work with.
From in-depth blog posts and website optimization to optimizing Google EEAT signals and boosting brand awareness, there’s a lot to do.
So, let us take care of your digital PR! We’ll create PR campaigns that get your real estate business featured in leading industry publications. Get in touch today to find out more.
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