How to Optimize a Search Engine For Real Estate

With 97% of homebuyers conducting a search online, it’s no secret that real estate agents need a robust digital marketing strategy.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most effective ways to attract potential clients. However, it isn’t without its pitfalls. Let’s look at some common SEO mistakes in the real estate industry.

Keywords

Real estate agents must understand the importance of SEO, as 97% of homebuyers research properties online. Ranking highly on Google can dramatically change the amount of business an agent receives, so it's important to understand how to optimize your website.

Choosing the right keywords is an essential part of a real estate SEO strategy. This involves researching keywords that are attainable and relevant to your business. It also involves analyzing which keywords your competitors are targeting, and what they are doing to rank high.

You should also include localized keywords in your content. This means adding words that identify your location, such as “homes for sale in Boston.” These keywords will help you rank higher in search engine results for people searching in your area. In addition, you should build links from other websites that are relevant to your real estate niche. This can be done through guest posts, resource links, and editorial link building.

Local Search

Real estate is a highly competitive industry, both offline and online. Whether you’re a solopreneur or a large real estate conglomerate, the competition is fierce for visibility and listings.

That’s why local SEO is essential for real estate agents, offices, and teams. By optimizing your website for local search, you can increase your website traffic and generate more leads.

To start, conduct keyword research using Ahrefs or a similar tool to find the most popular real estate keywords. Then, look at their search volume and difficulty. The higher the search volume, the more competitive the keywords are, and the harder it will be to rank for them.

Next, create business citations on directories and local websites to improve your website’s ranking. Also, ensure that your website’s pages and content are optimized for local searches. Finally, make sure to reduce your website’s crawl errors and boost its page speed. This will help your website rank higher in SERPs.

Schema Markup

Real estate professionals can enhance their online visibility and improve search engine rankings with schema markup. These structured data tags help search engines understand the content on your website, resulting in richer SERP features such as Knowledge Panels and rich snippets.

Schema can be implemented in a variety of formats, including Microdata and JSON-LD. Both have their pros and cons, but JSON-LD is typically preferred by Google. Once you’ve chosen the format, it’s time to select the schema types that will best suit your needs.

For example, a local business schema can be used to highlight your company’s location, hours of operation, and phone number. This will increase your website’s visibility on search engine result pages (SERPs) and can boost organic traffic. Other schema types, such as the SingleFamilyResidence and RealEstateListing schemas, can provide more detailed information about a property. These can include details such as the address, price range, and number of bedrooms/bathrooms. These are the types of information that will be most helpful to potential home buyers.

Listings

Search engines work by assessing relevance and providing the best answer to a query. Real estate SEO experts can anticipate what types of questions users will enter into a search engine, and create content that provides the answers they’re looking for.

In addition to listing photos and virtual tours, a real estate search engine can display property prices, lease length options, neighborhood amenities like schools, gyms, restaurants, and banks, and other relevant information that buyers may need when making an informed decision about the purchase of a home. Some search engines for homes also offer maps to show the location of properties in relation to nearby landmarks and attractions.

Another benefit of a real estate search engine is access to listings that have not yet hit the general market. These are referred to as "coming soon" and/or "about to list" properties. These homes typically don’t make it to general consumer searches on Zillow and similar sites because the seller wants their agent to be able to exclusively market the property.