5 Ways to Boost Your Real Estate Website’s SEO Ranking
In today’s world, searching for services online is the standard, especially when it comes to house hunting. According to a National Association of Realtors survey, 50% of home buyers purchased their home over the internet. With a high percentage of online hunters, it’s crucial to have an impressive and functional user-friendly website.
Google remains the easiest, most popular way to get the answers customers look for. It’s the highest-ranking search engine, and with so much competition, the ultimate way to get to the top of a search engine’s results page (SERP) is to be the best in your industry at search engine optimization.
When a consumer searches on a search engine, such as Google, the engine’s “crawler” assembles all the information it can find online and brings it back to the search engine where it builds an index. This index then goes through the search engine’s algorithm and tries to match what was found to what the consumer is searching for.
Now that you know how search engines help consumers find their perfect match, here are five ways you can optimize your website’s performance.
How to Improve SEO Performance
Use Industry-relevant Keywords
Keywords are important for optimizing website traffic for any industry, especially real estate. Information seekers use keywords to find what they’re looking for in search engines. SEO uses real estate keywords to scan websites that would best fit what the home buyer is looking for. These keywords define what your website pages are about and can drive more traffic to your website. For example, if a buyer searches for “houses for sale in Orlando,” the search engine will use an algorithm to scan websites that have this keyword phrase to present the best options for the person searching. Changing your website’s keywords to relevant, frequent searches, including a picture’s image file, name and title, can lead to increased website traffic.
Secure Your Website for Search
Did you know there’s a difference between HTTP and HTTPS website URL’s? It’s true! The difference is encryption. HTTP website data is not encrypted, making it susceptible for third-party hackers to gather information from your website. Because of this low sense of security, HTTPS — where the “S” stands for secure — became more common and is now seen as a more credible website URL.
A secure website not only keeps your brand safe from cyberattacks, but also those who visit your website; and your website needs to be secure to be considered a top Google search result. For more information on why having an HTTPS website is important for you and your consumers, check out our article on three reasons to use HTTPS.
Create a Strong Back-linking Strategy
Backlinks are essential for SEO and your website. A backlink is a link on a website that takes you to another page or website. Google uses high-quality content and link building to rank websites. By partnering with local businesses, you can get your real estate website back-linked from credible sources, boosting your ranking.
Here are a few more ways to get your web pages back-linked onto other credible websites as a way to get you further to the top of search engine results pages:
- Build guest blogs to link back to your website
- Be a resource for other bloggers
- Look into HAROs to get free press
Local Search Strategies
If you’re investing your time trying to get your local community to choose you as their real estate agency, you must also invest in local SEO. Local SEO is the process of optimizing your online brand to attract your local audience and pop up on their search engines. For example, if you search for “realtor near me,” search engines will provide you with a map of the top results along with reviews for the websites.
If your real estate company wants to excel in local SEO, keep your online presence, including your social media, up to date with current, credible content. Consider creating a Google My Business account for insights on your consumer engagement to help with delivering content to your audience and future clients.
Helpful Organic Content
With organic content, your website can rank higher on search engines by optimizing your copy and HTML. Adding a blog to your website helps answer questions your audience has regarding the homebuying process. By making your content both helpful and easy to read, you help validate your authority in the eyes of search engines. When updating your copy to help with SEO, add keywords into your title tags and URLs. Your meta description should also include keywords because when consumers are searching for a real estate agent, the words they use in the search bar will be bolded in the meta description of the pages below.
You can also strengthen your organic content via social media. While social media and SEO aren’t directly related, they definitely complement each other. If your content is relevant and creative enough and is linked to a page on your website, you are increasing the amount of traffic coming to your website organically.
Need SEO help for your real estate firm? Don’t know where to get started on SEO regardless of your industry? We can help! Appleton is an award-winning, full-service Orlando marketing firm that specializes in search engine optimization. Appleton works with local, national and international clients to deliver inbound marketing strategies that put your website ahead of the competition. At Appleton, we want to learn about your business, empower your marketing team and be your creative resource. Your SEO goals are worth a conversation: contact us at 407-246-0092 or info@appletoncreative.com.