The digital world has expanded by leaps and bounds in recent times. And the iconic rise of the internet has come to offer opportunities to every business owner as online traffic continues to increase. Real estate business is one such example – the real estate industry has realized tremendous potential through online presence. With people conducting online searches beforehand regarding what they want and what the market offers if your real estate presence is formidable in the digital domain. And that quite obviously will result in your business being able to tap into the huge and thus far unexplored potential for increased sales. Such an outcome is in fact highly achievable through effective real estate SEO.
To further this claim, lets us present you with some online search facts and techniques to incorporate into your digital marketing strategy in order to help you improve your SEO presence.
What does SEO mean?
Let us take a quick glance at Google search statistics before we explain what SEO actually is.
We can observe from the statistics above how significant search numbers on Google are these days. The mass public tends to start an online search with a search engine query. And there are over 228 million such searches conducted via Google every hour – a number that is rapidly growing. The majority of traffic only refers to the results displayed on the very first page while the first few results are the most significant in relevance to our search queries. And this is where SEO comes into play.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to a group of techniques employed to improve your search engine rankings. When people want to search something over the internet, they simply Google it. Now when you search against a query, Google crawlers instantly start working and present you with the most relevant results against your search. If your website and the content displayed on it is well optimized in terms of SEO, then people searching for real estate opportunities and relevant news will easily be able to find you over the internet, or rather you will be able to find potential clients through effective SEO. Thus if you are lagging behind in your SEO activities, it would naturally imply you are missing out on business opportunities. Your SEO presence is actually something that can either make or break you.
Now that you have a basic idea as to what SEO is, let us present you with an array of suggestions that will help you improve your SEO rankings.
Content relevancy is integral
The entire domain of SEO revolves around useful and relevant content. Whether you create content for your website or a related blog or guest blog, you need content that is relevant to the search queries of your audience, all the while being relevant to your business. Experts say content is the KING and they are absolutely right. That doesn’t, however, mean that ALL content is right, rather it is only the content that is optimized correctly which holds true potential.
The content on your webpages should be unique and useful when weighed against relevant keywords. Keywords or key phrases help Google crawlers and spiders identify relevant material against search queries. In terms of real estate presence, your content needs to include pertinent research material regarding your locality and the most recent trends. Moreover, your website should include easy to access company information through which people can contact you. Since trends and prices often change in this industry, a good practice would be to create dynamic content tabs which can be altered with ease.
Quality backlinking is the crux
A strong backlinking profile is extremely important for search engines to recognize you as a formidable entity. Backlinks refer to links which lead back to your business from various online sources. The more credible the source is which offers you a backlink, the better will the backlink be considered by Google.
In the past, this was considered to be the ONLY technique to improve your standing but with fast-changing dynamics, search engine owners have optimized certain metrics which you must be wary of. Irrelevant links and backlinking through suspicious/dangerous websites can in fact damage your quality score.
Your content plays an integral role here. If webmasters find your content useful for their audiences, they will be more than accommodating in posting it on their website with links to your business. The best practice here is, therefore, to approach different webmasters with a posting pitch where you can tell them how your content can add value to their viewers’ experience. Including a few good words about their business and online presence will also help you form a mutual relationship with them.
Optimized websites are fruitful
Your website is the hub of your online activities that is why it needs to be thoroughly optimized. An efficient real estate website would have well-optimized content developed on the basis of proper keyword research. Your tags and Meta descriptions should be precise and to the point. Link placement is something that you must particularly take into account – it improves the overall structure of different webpages and also allows you room to maneuver things. Create internal links within the website with useful content. If people stay on your website for longer intervals that means you have a declining bounce rate. And Google considers this an effective metric to judge the quality score of a webpage. Similarly, website speed is another metric considered important for better ranking. Make sure there are no broken links within your website and all the elements synch together making the entire loading process seamless.
While optimizing things you need to make sure you have a sufficiently strong internet connection to help you analyze the right way. This will help restrict your effort from being hampered. If needed you can look through your local high-speed internet options to help you in this regard.
Mobile-friendliness is important
We all use mobile phones probably more than we use our laptops and desktops. Being in the real estate business, your audience might be using mobile platforms to search for potential offerings. Make sure you cash on this opportunity on your website, plus the content on it, is mobile friendly. Run a few tests to ensure when you visit your webpages from a mobile platform, they look good, to say the least. A design that is responsive across various platforms tends to draw the most traction. A real estate website generally includes multiple forms to help people search better, therefore you need to make sure the forms don’t take too long to load and include responsive elements to facilitate customers. If you have the additional budget, there are trends that suggest it may be worth building a native mobile app.
SSL certificates offer security
With growing online traffic, it is important to include SSL certificates to instill a sense of trust among your customers. Data theft is a sad reality in the digital world that we all must deal with. SSL certificates work on a two-way key basis. The first key encrypts the data over a connection while the second key decrypts the data at the other end. This adds a security layer to protect the transfer of information occurring between you and your clients. Even if a hacker gets to one of the keys, they would also need the other key to access the data, but thankfully that becomes exceedingly difficult for them.
When the audience visits your website, if you have the SSL badge, it will be visible next to the URL and will become a source of assurance for them – it would tell them your digital entity is trustworthy to establish a business liaison with – and this, in turn, will result in higher potential revenues for your business.
Online lists help you be discovered
There are a number of online business directories available with good credibility where you can list your real estate business. These directories provide you with backlinks that are quite useful as mentioned earlier. Your starting platform should be Google’s GMB (Google My Business) listing. When your result appears in affiliation to a Google tab, people will naturally consider that authentic. Make sure the information you put in is accurate and true. Afterward, you can list your business on different platforms like Yelp, Craigslist, CitySearch and Merchant Circle.
Video content is the IN thing
Videos can act as the primary differentiating factor between you and your competitors. Try to create a real estate YouTube channel of your own and connect it with your website. Videos have become integral to real estate businesses helping people judge the outlook and the build of any property, virtually or digitally. Video content can in fact help your customers enter the decision-making process or drive them to conclude it. They don’t always have to visit the physical space beforehand and this saves time and money for your business which might otherwise be spent on exploring a dead-end i.e. if customers simply do not end up like a property.
Try creating short videos against different offerings that might appeal to your target audience. In terms of SEO, your video hits also translate into higher traffic that will in-turn improve your quality score.
Statistical representation helps clients
Last but not least, always try to facilitate your customers through statistical data. The real estate domain is largely dependent on statistical information like financial numbers, on-location measurements and related factors like the number of bedrooms, full and half bathrooms, etc.
Use the nitty-gritty details to your advantage. This will allow you to optimize more keywords against your content and the better the optimization, the better the search engine ranking.
Working on these SEO tips will surely help your business’s digital presence improve. If you are a real estate business owner and haven’t incorporated SEO in your online effort as of yet, now is the time to act and you will certainly be able to find success online.
