When it comes to real estate SEO, you might as well take everything that you’ve read about in those basic SEO guides and toss them right out the window.
Real estate SEO is a horse of a different color for many reasons, but for one in particular: whereas other websites can be optimized to bring in leads one time and then convert them into long-term clients, real estate SEO has to work over and over again, constantly bringing in new leads and converting them into new clients.
Why?
Because the average person doesn’t buy a house one day and then come back a week later to buy another!
What Makes It Unique
Sure, there is loyalty in the real estate game-when you get your clients a great deal and make everything run smoothly for them, chances are they will come back to you when they move again (or if you’re in the higher end of the market, buy a second or third home).
But let’s face facts here: that turnaround time isn’t something many real estate agents can bank on. Plus, since most agents only sell locally and most moves are made into a specific region or area, chances are that you won’t be getting a cut of your current client’s next move anyways.
That’s what makes real estate SEO so unique and vital to the industry. Without the proper techniques, you are waving an invisible, bait-less hook in a sea of fish that are being scooped up by your competition left and right-all of whom have fishing nets!
3 Things to Consider
Here are a few of the factors that complicate real estate SEO as compared to a wider-ranging business that can bank on global sales, customer loyalty and static products:
1. Local SEO is Everything for The Realtor.
While other SEO tactics can focus in on broader keywords that are related to the industry, this type of SEO has double the work. Not only do you have to rank for those standard keywords your leads will be looking for, but you also have to match for those keywords in the exact locations that you are selling or renting property.
This means double the keyword research, double the content, double the work. It means going different routes to get your rich snippets up and running, to get your local map showing on the search engine results pages-it means a lot of different work you have to put in, unless you have a system to do the work for you.
2. Content is Essential To Realtors.
With SEO for realtors, your market is constantly changing which is great considering you have to constantly bring in new leads and clients, but that translates into more content.
Real estate SEO needs more localized blogs, more pointed, helpful content, more keyword rich, sales driven webcopy and essentially more of everything content-related than standard business websites.
Why?
Because you have tons of listings and are appealing to a large audience from all over the country-or even world-trying to draw them into one very specific location. To do that, you have to cover all of your bases and to do that, you need a lot of content. Having a content management system in your hands will make things a lot easier.
3. Fresh Media and Consistent Updates Keep Up with the Changing Market.
Finally, real estate SEO is nothing without pictures of the properties. Not only do you need to have a fast load time (meaning your server has to be well-equipped, your pictures properly sized, etc.), but you also have to have alt-text for your pictures, each with relevant keywords.
The pictures should be placed in a logical order and all indexed with the search engines. This isn’t too hard to do with a few listings, but if you have 15 pictures of each property listing and 500 listings, you can see why things can start to get complicated.