Digital Marketing for Real Estate

WHAT IS DIGITAL MARKETING FOR  REAL ESTATE?

Real estate SEO is a specialized form of search engine optimization built around the fundamental principles of how people shop for real estate online. Needless to say that online shopping is a legitimate staple of real estate marketing. Your potential clients may look at dozens of houses online before deciding to attend a showing.

This willingness to browse online listings indicates just how important it is that your real estate website perform well on search engines. That is the whole point of real estate SEO. At WebTek, our real estate services meet buyers where they are. We connect buyers with agents through organic search results, off-site content, and more.

WHY YOU NEED DIGITAL MARKETING FOR REAL ESTATE?

Even the most successful real estate agencies need to perform well on search engines. If you are not sure why, numbers tell the whole story:

Nearly 70% of all website traffic is generated by search engines

Of all the traffic generated by search engines, 90% is generated through organic results

Nearly 40% of web users admit to being influenced by search results.

Organic searches generate more than 50% of all web traffic

The top ranking website on any search gets the most traffic nearly half the time.

It is clear that search engines play a vital role in how people obtain information. This is as true for real estate as it is for news, sports, and retail shopping. You have a website because you want potential clients to find your agency. Their job is harder if your site is not optimized for SEO.

WHAT WE DO FOR  REAL ESTATE CLIENTS

A haphazard approach to SEO will not do in real estate. If we are to succeed as your SEO provider, we know we have to do things a certain way. That is just what we do. Here’s how we utilize proven SEO strategies to improve your site’s performance:

Complete Site Audit

A complete website audit is the starting point for any successful real estate campaign. An audit tells us exactly what your site currently brings to the table. It encompasses current and past SEO performance, potential issues with user interface (UI) and user experience (UX), and how your site compares to the competition.

In-Depth Keyword Research

Keywords are still the primary means by which search engine algorithms seek to understand page content. Keywords are especially critical in the real estate sector due to the specificity of visitor searches. As such, it is imperative that our team do extensive keyword research to determine those keywords and phrases with the greatest potential.

Note that the most popular keywords are difficult to compete for. We still go after them, but we also look for less popular keywords that can still prove beneficial. Broadening keyword possibilities gives us more opportunities to reach target audiences.

Tag Analysis and Optimization

Your website contains a variety of meta-tags that search engine algorithms use to analyze pages. Visitors to your website never see these tags. However, they are critically important to SEO. We go through and analyze and optimize them for search engine performance. They include title tags, meta-descriptions, image tags, and tags relating to content format.

Image Optimization

Images are critical to online real estate listings. Without images, potential buyers are not likely to stick around. The challenge is to make images easily accessible without slowing page load times. Google hates slow pages and ranks them accordingly.

We optimize images to create that perfect balance between image quality and load speed. We combine full size and thumbnail images to give users an optimal experience whether they are just browsing or they want to see a particular listing in more detail.

Content Creation

In the real estate arena, most content is found in the form of home listings. However, blog content should not be ignored. A site populated by relevant and informational content can draw visitors just from the content alone. The more often visitors stop by, the more likely they are to use the site when it comes time to buy.

Directory Listings 

National and global real estate search sites act as directories for local agents. A big part of our real estate SEO strategy is to get each client’s listings published on as many directories as possible. Directory listings equal traffic, and traffic equals the opportunity to land more qualified buyers. We encourage our real estate clients to utilize directories as lead generation tools.

Link Building

We further drive website traffic using link building strategies that take advantage of on-site links, outbound links, and backlinks. Link building is a proven strategy Google has recommended for years. Why? Because relevant links help search engine algorithms understand relevance and authority.

Local Search

Real estate SEO and local search are intrinsically linked. That is because while some people do search for homes outside of their local areas most searchers are local searches. Our team understands that. As such, we put effort into improving local search performance.

We produce content that includes local references. We take advantage of local real estate directories and citations. We write meta-descriptions that include local information. The better we do with local search, the better your site does among local buyers.

ON-SITE  CONTENT

Some industries can get away with limited content and still attract visitors. Real estate cannot. A real estate site is defined by the content it contains. Often times, content is key to turning casual visitors into visitors who make positive decisions with the information they find.

Real estate listings will make up the bulk of an agency’s website. However, we don’t think it’s wise to stop there. Our experience dictates that both blog content and video content can give any real estate website the edge.

Blog content focusing on buying and selling tips, home maintenance, homeowner’s insurance, and similar topics get the attention of buyers as they search for new properties. In-depth and helpful information can be enough to convince a buyer to go with your agency. After all, the right information tells buyers that your agents know what they are doing.

Video content is also quite helpful. These days, younger home buyers are more likely to watch videos than read text-based content. We can use video content in conjunction with our other SEO strategies to generate traffic among qualified visitors.

RESPONSIVENESS AND SPEED

Real estate SEO will not achieve the best possible results if responsiveness and speed are ignored. Responsiveness has to do with how well a website displays and functions on a variety of devices. These days, responsiveness is critical.

Google introduced a new mobile-first search engine algorithm that is now the ‘law of the land’ so to speak. This new algorithm gives preference to websites that are mobile friendly. The concept of responsiveness is to trend away from having multiple sites (one for desktops and the other for mobile) in favor of one that works on every device. The most responsive sites get the most respect from Google.

By the same token, Google is also very concerned about speed. Their algorithms give preference to those sites that load the fastest. With all of the images involved in real estate listings, the importance of speed should be self-evident.

Google knows that web users are not inclined to spend time on websites that take too long to load. And because Google makes its money by providing the kinds of links searchers want, they present the fastest pages first. Again, your real estate site needs to be fast if it is going to rank well.

TYING IT TOGETHER WITH  DATA

Nothing is left to chance at WebTek. As SEO experts, we have decades of combined experience in the SEO field. We fully understand how search engines work and how website owners can use them to their own advantage. All that we know and implement is rooted in data.

We rely heavily on data and analytics to determine effective strategies for each and every client. Just like real estate data guides the decisions you and your agency make, SEO data guides our decisions.

We rely on robust data analytics to tell us how a site is doing, how it did in the past, and how it might do in the future. Our data analytics tools can track:

  • keyword performance
  • link performance
  • how websites are found
  • how much time is spent on a site
  • what users do on a site
  • how quickly pages load
  • the devices used to access pages.

 

We can do a lot with data. The point is this: we understand that the success of our SEO efforts relies heavily on performance. The only way we have to measure performance is to look at the raw data. As such, we rely heavily on regular data collection and reporting.

How is your real estate website doing? If it is not meeting your expectations, perhaps you need a fresh new look at digital marketing for real estate. WebTek is here to help. Let us put our knowledge and expertise to work for your agency.

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