SEO for Real Estate
Agents & BrokersWhen individuals or families are looking to buy or sell a home, they turn to Google or their search engines to find listings or a real estate agent to help them. Attract more buyers and sellers with our affordable SEO software tool.
Exactly What is SEO?
What Does SEO for Real Estate Companies Cost?
Help from an SEO pro costs anywhere between $750-1000 (or much more per month for sites that have many listings and agents or require a lot of content development). In general, your actual cost will reflect how much time the firm spends doing your SEO or building new content.
If you have a small budget, need a more affordable solution, and are willing to invest some time to learn, consider a DIY SEO software tool like the one offered by Jess. For $29 per month, you get step-by-step instructions that show you exactly how to optimize your site to appear when people search for real estate for sale in your area, analytics tracking that measures your results, and access to “Office Hours” webinars to get tips from our real estate SEO experts.
How Does SEO Make My Real Estate Website Rank Better?
SEO involves making small changes to the pages on your agency website that makes them more likely to rank higher in the search engines. When users type in keywords like “houses for sale in springfield ma,” they are really asking the question, “What houses are for sale in Springfield, MA?” Pages that answer this question well, load quickly, securely, and without any errors, and are viewed as more trustworthy by search engines are more likely to rank higher in search engine results when people search for homes in this city. Of course, you would want to optimize your real estate site for locations near you, not Springfield! In theory, it’s pretty straightforward, but it takes time to SEO your real estate agency website. It involves:
- Making sure your current website thoroughly describes all of the services you provide for buyers and sellers as well as your listings
- Improving user experience throughout your website
- Showing your real estate website is authoritative and trustworthy
- Developing new content on your website that describes what it’s like to live in the markets you serve as well as the latest pricing trends
The above outcomes are achieved through SEO tactics called on-page optimization, technical SEO, link building, and content development.
Keyword Research
On-page optimization of your real estate websites involves knowing what terms people use when searching for you and making sure you use these words and phrases on your agency’s site. The first step is keyword research which helps you know exactly what people are searching for and how often. “Houses for sale in City” (where City is the location of the home) is the most popular keyword phrase people search for when they are looking for a home for sale. It also helps you know about more specific keywords people use to search. For example, depending on your market, they might search for land, condos, lots, coops, luxury, new construction, or investment properties. Next, you place keywords on your page in your site’s title tag, meta description, page text, and headings. While there are plenty of keyword research tools and articles on how to add title tags, you will get better results and save hours of time by hiring an SEO pro or leveraging a DIY SEO platform like Jess that offers specific suggestions just for real estate agents.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO makes sure your site loads quickly and securely and can be crawled by search engines. Google’s Page Experience update scheduled to go live in June, 2021 makes technical SEO a bigger priority than ever. Contact your web developer if your website isn’t secure or if it seems slow. They should be able to help you speed it up. You can also improve site speed yourself by editing images on the website so they are as small as possible as well compressed and optimized for use on the internet.
Content Development
Many agent websites have just a few pages. This doesn’t give you much space to tell search engines or your prospects much about all of your services or neighborhoods you serve. If this describes you, consider adding some new pages to your website that describe the towns where you help people buy and sell homes and include information like the average home sale price, average income, and commuting time to major employment hubs.