The competitive nature of real estate, and the importance of technology today, means agents and brokers need to impress online. Positioning your real estate business as a local expert, through various Internet channels and optimization tactics, is the way to gain clients and make sales in our current market. This won’t be changing any time soon as local SEO for real estate becomes even more vital.
While implementing SEO strategies to show up as that local expert might be challenging, the good news is anyone can do it. Small, medium and large firms equally have resources available to appear as a local pro in search. Agent and broker websites, local listings and even YouTube channels can be optimized to highlight regional market knowledge and area expertise.
Whether you sell real estate in Los Angeles, New York City, Atlanta or somewhere else, you need to demonstrate territory savvy to procure sales. The web gives you many perfect opportunities to do this through local-focused content, directory listings and smart linking. Blogs, social media posts and videos are great ways to share local information about market trends, schools and social culture. All of these outlets and strategies get you on the radar of buyers and sellers searching for an expert in a city – your city.
Here are some local SEO for real estate tactics to use when positioning yourself as a local expert.
Perform an SEO Audit
Before you implement any real estate SEO strategies, you need to perform an SEO audit. To find out what local tactics to focus on, it’s important you know where you stand in terms of SEO. Where do you show up in search? Are you showing up in search? If your website doesn’t rank locally, potential clients won’t see your great local content and can’t learn why they should hire you.
Run a local SEO audit, and if you website isn’t performing well, check these areas:
- Site structure – XML sitemap and redirects
- Page structure – URL, Title tags, meta descriptions, H1-H3 tags, ALT tags
- Content – Structure, keywords, link placement, visual elements, duplicate content
- Links – Inbound and outbound, broken links, interlinking
- User-friendliness – Site speed, mobile usability
Website Optimization
After you’ve run a local SEO audit to identify website inefficiencies or lack, it’s time to optimize your website. Address any major problems you found, and use local SEO strategies for optimization of all other aspects of your site.
Take these steps to optimize your website for local search:
- Perform keyword research for local keywords
- Create local SEO-friendly URLs
- Optimize title tags, meta descriptions and ALT tags with local keywords
- Optimize web content with local keywords
- Link to relevant local businesses including schools, restaurants, attractions and service providers
- Remove or fix broken links
- Address bounce rate
If you don’t know how to tackle any of these SEO strategies, hire a managed SEO services provider like Galileo Tech Media. We make sure all these aspects of your website are optimal, as well as many others.
Optimize or Start Your Blog
Whether you currently have a custom website or a basic IDX site, you need to have blog along with it. If your current site doesn’t have blog capabilities, it’s imperative you switch to one that lets you post about local topics. To position yourself as a local SEO expert, you’ll need to have a dedicated space where you talk about the area that you serve. A blog speaks directly to your target clients, through subject matter and integrated local keywords. This is one of the most important tactics to kick off your local SEO for Real Estate strategy.
Great local content for your blog includes:
- Educational/Explanatory articles – Informative blog posts about your neighborhood’s walkability, schools, home price trends, crime statistics, restaurants, resources and social culture (written from the position of a local expert, not generically)
- Local business owner Q&As and stories – Help potential buyers get to know your area by introducing and interviewing local business owners, painting a picture of the neighborhood (business owners might even share your blog posts with their audience)
- Photo tours and videos – Visual content (home and neighborhood tours) makes fantastic content for blog posts, and it can be optimized through ALT tags that incorporate local keywords or through geo-focused hashtags
These are just a few ways you can use SEO for real estate to optimize your business’ online presence for local search, and to position yourself as an area expert.
You can also:
- Optimize for mobile – More than 48% of real estate searches now begin on mobile, so address mobile website design, page speed, local keyword-focused content, site navigation and usability
- Get listed on Google My Business – Make sure you’re listed locally on Google My Business and take advantage of their many features
Register with local business listings and directories – Registering with real estate company listings and directories creates backlinks for you, but take care that your UNAP is correct across all listings and that you register on trustworthy websites - Create regular video content – Consistently upload locally optimized and focused content to your YouTube channel (create a YouTube channel right away if you don’t already have one)
To get help with any or all of these real estate SEO strategies, contact Galileo Tech Media.
