The first thing your potential clients do when they need to buy or sell their house is to “Google” services like yours. If you are not ranking high enough on the search results (ie. on the first page), you are probably losing lots of business to your competitors who have a better SEO strategy.
Despite the huge importance of SEO, many real estate teams don’t even have the SEO basics covered simply because they regard SEO as a complicated matter. That is a BIG misconception.
There are simple but effective things you can do to boost your website’s search engine ranking.
1. Use the right keywords
Identifying the right keywords for your website should be the first item on your SE0 to-do list. This is what makes it possible for your target audience to find your website. There is only one way to make it work: Thinking from your clients’ perspective.
What words or phrases do your real estate clients use in their search strings when they need a service like yours? You may be calling your service X but if your clients are using Y to describe it, then you should align your keywords and website content with the language of your potential clients.
Setting keywords for your web content is not a set-it-and-forget-it activity. You should be constantly researching and updating your keyword list at least every few months.
Use the long-tail
Your website may not able to rank for generic ultra-competitive keywords. For example, ranking for “Real Estate” may not be possible for you in the beginning. In this case, the best way is to go after more specific long-tail keywords that you can rank for, such as “top listing agents in Chicago” or “how to sell a house fast in Vancouver”.
2. Create Page Titles that Make Sense
Having an accurate title for every page on your website is an essential part of SEO. You should be able to effectively communicate the content of the page with the title. Once you align the page title with the content, search engines and users will be able to understand what your page is about. This will not only increase your ranking but also your click-through rate.
3. Add Internal and External Links
Search engines rank pages with internal and external links higher than those don’t contain any. Link your content to relevant internal pages on your website. Also, don’t be afraid to link to external pages that have high traffic and authority. This will help you with ranking, click-through, and user experience.
4. Optimize the text format to increase readability
User experience is an important factor for search engines. If your pages are not formatted well and not easy-to-read, that will affect your SEO in a negative way. To make both search engines and visitors happy, you should make sure that your paragraphs are not too long, you have enough white space on the page, you have used H1s and H2s to make the headlines and subheads stand out, and you have bolded some words or sentences to highlight important parts on your page.
5. Tailor the URL
The URL structure is another aspect of SEO that helps search engines rank your page. Just like your page titles, your page URLs must be aligned with your content and easy-to-understand. Never use long URLs with unnecessary words, always use hyphens between each word, and remove stop words.
Still, need help with your online presence? Contact us today and one of our executive coaches will be happy to help.