For a busy real estate professional, a wide variety of real estate SEO tasks can be challenging. Following SEO updates, constantly evolving optimization techniques and changing local ranking factors can give agents a tough time. To navigate the SEO scene like a pro, take a look at a full list of one-off and recurring real estate SEO tasks you need to master.
Local SEO is an extensive area. Plus, like we were saying, it changes all the time. Search engines roll out new updates every few months. The usual techniques you got used to becoming no longer relevant. Your competition seems to grasp these new opportunities faster than you can.
To actually get SEO results you’re hoping for, it will help to create a blueprint of the tasks you need to do. A handy approach would be to divide your real estate SEO tasks into two parts:
- one-off, or basic tasks;
- recurring, or growth-oriented tasks.
Below is a quick recap of all the activities you need to do to put your SEO work on a fast track.
Combine one-off and recurring real estate SEO tasks to boost online visibility
One-off SEO tasks
1. Do fundamental on-page SEO work for each page on your website. Optimize new website properties as you create them to avoid additional workload later. Here’s a checklist you can follow:
2. Set NAP – name, address and phone number. Typically, it’s included in the website footer and shows up for every page. It’s vital that your NAP info is consistent and the same everywhere on the Web.
3. Claim a Google My Business listing and optimize it properly (add, business hours, address, categories, photos, etc.).
4. Get local citations. The best citation sources are local and national real estate and business directories, local media websites, convention & visitor bureaus, etc.
5. Audit your Google My Business listing and remove duplicate pages as they undermine your local rankings. Sometimes your staff can create a few of these pages or you may face this issue if running several brick and mortar locations.
6. Hire an IT professional to fix any technical issues with your website so it can load fast and show up fine across all devices.
7. Create an About Us page. Describe your business and optimize the page for local keywords to have more locally relevant content on your website.
8. Write a neighborhood page for each local area you service. Neighborhood pages is a powerful SEO trick which is nevertheless frequently overlooked. Craft some great copy and update it once in awhile if something worthwhile happens in that neighborhood.
9. Optimize images. Adding alt tags to your images is a super simple way to make your real estate website indexed and ranked faster. You can add a focus keyword as an alt tag but don’t spam: just one query per image will be fine.
Recurring real estate SEO tasks
1. Update your list of keywords every few months to spot any changes and new queries. Remember to pay attention to long-tail keywords (i.e., 4+ word queries) and use them in your content. Tools like Ubersuggest or Keywordtool.io have great (and free) functionality for uncovering these keywords.
2. Blog consistently. Blogging or guest blogging is a fantastic opportunity to generate online leads and strengthen your digital presence without resorting to (often expensive) online ad campaigns.
3. Earn lots of reviews, all the time. Online reviews are gradually making their way to the top local ranking factors and the importance of earning lots of positive reviews can’t be stressed enough. Once you get your reviews, make sure you are sharing them wherever you can and not just letting them sit quietly on your Google My Business page.
4. Never stop your link-building efforts. Backlinks are powerful signs signaling that your real estate website is a credible and popular resource.
5. Build your local real estate brand with these effective SEO steps.
6. Audit your real estate website periodically to spot any issues and fix them on the fly.
7. Remember to update your Google My Business listing, directory listings and citations every time you change your business information.
8. Keep learning. Like we were saying, local SEO is a dynamic scene and you have to follow the how-to’s closely in order to keep your head above the water. AgentDrive’s blog features a dedicated real estate SEO category which you can check out when you need.
What’s next?
Incorporate these real estate SEO tasks in your daily activities to catch up with 98% of homebuyers who are looking for your services online. The sooner you start, the sooner your sales funnel will fill with new leads.
