In this article, we’ll go through the different key factors that are always present in successful Real Estate Organic Search campaigns.

What are your Core Services?

Prioritising your key business areas in your campaign will guarantee that every action taken towards increasing traffic and conversion from Organic Search will also have a meaningful impact on your business results. Your SEO campaign should follow a holistic approach and create synergies with other marketing efforts, such as PPC and even offline advertising. One of the techniques we use to maximise these synergies is defining the different funnels our client’s customers follow across the Multichannel (PPC, SEO, Affiliates, Email, etc.). And with that information, define potential actions to implement in SEO to deliver dramatic revenue increases.

Who are your Best Customers?

You need to know who your most profitable customers are in order to create the different sales funnels that apply to them. A business needs to gain visibility on each step within their customers’ decision-making process in search. This requires a deep understanding of the customers and how they use search engines to achieve their goals in order for your site to be present at each touchpoint.

What are your Unique Selling Points?

What makes you different from your competitors and why potential customers should choose you will play a vital role in the different SEO sub-strategies that will be implemented. Both the content that goes on your website and your digital PR efforts should always focus on your USPs to achieve the desired level of engagement and brand positioning. 

Do you have more properties available? Do you offer the most updated listings? Using your USPs correctly can be a gamechanger for your click-through rate and conversions.

Content Strategies that Deliver Visibility on Key Moments 

Content Strategies for Real Estate need to focus on the most crucial moments within the customer decision-making process. From initial awareness to comparing offers to answering those questions stopping customers from buying, all these stages are filled with micro-moments that require different types of content:

A.Content to generate Awareness

B.Products & Services: Operation, Location, and Property Type

C.Pain Point Solutions

A.Content to Generate Awareness

Generate pieces addressing topics your customers usually have questions about in the initial stages of their decision-making process. Questions such as, ‘What is stamp duty?’ or ‘How much tax will I pay for my new home?’. This will help you gain a presence in the minds of potential customers.

B.Products & Services: Operation, Location, and Property Type

Your website should include pages covering the different operations, types of properties, locations your business covers, and other features, like the number of rooms. More details about how this all works are available in the “Increase Local Visibility” section below.

C.Pain Point Solutions

Content pieces about questions and doubts your customers have about the latest stages of the funnel will help with conversion. Investigate what issues or questions make your customers feel like they need more time to decide. Including content answering those questions on your website will give your website more visibility for users searching for those types of questions, users who are potentially closer to buying.

Digital PR is Still Important

Links are still important to let Google know how relevant your website is. However, links should always come from sources where your customers spend time reading information tied to their buying intentions. Digital PR can help you move the needle. But to achieve this, you need to investigate what websites your audience is visiting and how you can outreach to these websites with an added value proposal for collaboration. What do they write about, how you can help them with a piece that will be interesting for visitors, and how to approach the relationship with the person in charge are some of the questions you need to solve if you want to get links from websites with high authority.

The Technical Bits that Make a Difference

Google follows a process to include and rank content that consumes computing resources. The easier we make processing, the better results we can expect from this search engine. Resources are money, and making Google’s life easier will positively impact both your rankings and the experience users have on your website. Indexing issues should be fixed as soon as possible. If you think your site is suffering from this kind of problem, please check our guide for quickly finding indexing issues on your website. 

We need to keep in mind that making changes that make websites more efficient also improves usability, especially on mobile devices. Nowadays, searches on mobile devices drive most of the traffic on Real Estate websites, so making your website technically sound will positively impact your results from organic search.

If you are wondering how you can check if your website is suffering from any technical issues, both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools provide very useful information about how your website is performing in organic search. If you haven’t signed up yet, you should; they are completely free and a must-have in your set of SEO tools.

Watch out for Potential Toxicity

Again, links still matter, and successful Real Estate SEO campaigns always include a set of actions to prevent websites from being negatively affected by toxic links. Google crawls links pointing to your website and a large number of suspicious links can put you in a difficult situation, potentially suffering a penalty that is difficult to lift once your site has been flagged. You would be surprised how often companies run not very ethical “SEO Bowling” campaigns generating spammy links towards competitors to take them down. Tools like SEMRUSH backlink audit are very useful in finding out if your website’s profile needs attention and for monitoring how your profile changes over time.

Local SEO for Real Estate

Increase Local Visibility

Visibility in local results can make a difference. Your customers could be looking for a real estate agent or property types in specific areas; your strategy should cover both. When it comes to a local business, you will be reliant on Google Local Pack; so if you have branches in different locations, make sure an optimised listing is included for each of them through your Google My Business account. Having a presence in search queries about different operations, property types, and locations will deliver a significant amount of traffic. Therefore, it is recommended that you include faceted pages for your most valuable operation *property* location combinations. Examples of these pages are:

Flats to let in Newcastle

Bungalows to let in Heaton (a popular location in Newcastle upon Tyne)

Houses for sale in Gosforth

2 bedroom flat to let in Whitley Bay

etc…

Relevant Directories and Citations

In addition to Google my Business, you need to explore other quality listings your business can benefit from. Websites like Yelp and 192.com are great options, but you need to investigate the listings top performers in your market are using and look for other potential opportunities. In this regard, tools like Bright Local are very useful. 

When it comes to directories, you need to be careful and only include your site in the good ones. So, if you are unsure about any particular directory, the rule of thumb is not to add the website.

We hope this article helped you with some ideas for your Real Estate Business’ SEO campaign. You can find more useful information in our knowledge section, and remember that if you have questions, our friendly team is here ready to help you.