SEO For Realtors
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As an SEO agency, we know that more than ever, active house hunters are finding their dream home online.
More than 90% of homeowners have internet and for realtors, now more than ever is the best time to take advantage of this unique audience.
According to the Digital House Hunt, a report on the latest consumer trends in the housing market, 53% of buyers started their pursuit of their home through searching online.
When it comes to convincing potential homeowners to buy a home, 86% of homeowners considered realtor websites to be their most used resource when purchasing their home.
As a realtor in Toronto, it’s important to understand the full impact SEO can have on your market share of searching homeowners.
With real estate searches increasing by over 250% percent every year, it’s easy to assume that homeowners have turned to the internet when searching for their dream home.
Realtors trying to get more traffic to their real estate websites with search terms related to real estate and homes can’t afford to miss out on the potential clientele that can fall on their laps.
By undertaking a strategic approach towards SEO and your website, realtors can truly benefit from that traffic.
How to get started in this SEO venture? By starting with locally targeted keywords on the realtors website.
Through achieving a local standing within their communities, can realtors benefit from the searching home-seeking community.
Here are a few tips on how to leverage your website and turn that into captured leads.
Locally Targeted Keywords And Phrases
A great place to start is a realtor’s main city or region they service.
Oftentimes, realtors will service multiple cities and municipalities, but it’s important to try to zone in on one locale to maximize results.
69% of potential homeowners usually begin their search with terms such as “Vaughan realtor” or the like.
It’s important for realtors maximizing on their website SEO to centralize all of their locally based keywords to this one location.
For best practice, a realistic goal for realtors in Toronto is to achieve top results for the following key phrases:
- [City] real estate listings
- [City] real estate
- [City] real estate agent
- [City] homes for sale
- [City] realtor
And then these words and phrases will appear throughout your website and create more avenues for homeowners to search for.
Creating blog posts and different pages that include your city as a key phrase will also create more ways into your website, such as:
- Living in Vaughan
- About your Vaughan realtor
- Vaughan homes for sale
By incorporating these key phrases into your pages and posts and curating them into the content pieces, you’ve added more ways for people to find your website.
For example, if you create a “Living in Vaughan” page, have the page act as a resource for your visitors, with links and citations to various important information a potential homeowner would want to see.
Things like crime rates and school districts or public transportation is all important deciding factors for home owners.
By centralizing your location to one city, rather than a scattered group of cities or an area, like “Southern Ontario” can really niche your real estate firm to unparalleled heights!
The more unique your search term, the more real results will be produced.
On using feeds from other real estate websites
While most of the useful information on the housing market can be found on MLS.ca or other websites, it’s important to remember because the feed will ultimately come from that source, Google won’t reward your website for that content.
Meaning, it’s feeding the listings from the main sites, so it’s important to add your own bits and pieces of information to help fortify your website’s SEO.
Writing Blog Posts On Upcoming Properties
At any given time, a real estate agent can represent many home listings at a time.
There will always be more “important” properties that the real estate agent will be keen to sell.
A tried and true method for accomplishing great SEO is to blog about these properties.
By creating separate posts with important information and specific to that property will no doubt give that property a much-needed boost.
In these posts, you should relay the address and Google map of that property.
By following all the best practices in these posts, such as keeping in line with all the meta descriptions, title tags, alt tags on photos and file name on photos, it will ensure a high ranking for that property’s page.
By creating good content for each of your key properties and by writing 200 words with unique descriptors and narratives, your property will stand out in a sea of thousands throughout the city.
By creating more unique content than what is already listed on those properties, Google will award you for your efforts.
Photos And Videos
As with everything online, visuals are absolutely key in selling the property to potential clients.
As attention spans go, so do your potential website visitors.
A video will portray much more than just photos and will be sure to capture the eye of the homeowner.
Consider filming testimonials and walkthroughs of homes to further enhance the buying experience for your potential clients.
By giving out testimonials, it will give other customers added comfort and assuredness you can sell them on.
A good rule of thumb might be to offer to film a recent home purchaser right after receiving the keys to their new home.
There’s no one happier than a recent buyer of a new home to get you a quality testimonial!
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Making Your Website Responsive
In 2019, ensuring that any website should be mobile-friendly and responsive should now be a given.
But given the trajectory of potential users that could visit a realtor website, it’s damn near essential to ensuring your website can be viewed on all mobile devices.
Consider that 89% of new home lookers will search for a home using their mobile device or that 300% growth of real estate related searches were done on tablets year after year.
Potential homeowners have been known to search for everything related to the housing market through a funnel of different terms, such as:
- General home information
- Compare prices to other homes
- Getting directions on Google Maps to visit houses
- Compare features to other homes
- Search a listing company’s property list
- Call a real estate agent
- Read reviews and testimonials
- Research mortgage financing
- Contact a real estate agent
- Watch an online video about properties
By making your website mobile-friendly, you’ve assured yourself that users won’t turn away from your website if things don’t look optimized.
Google recognizes responsive design and will reward websites for taking the time to get accomplished.
Real Estate Directories
Another great place to get more eyeballs on your real estate website through SEO is to get the property listed on the various online listing portals with the help of https://serpninja.io/local-citations/ to improve your visibility and availability in the search.
They have been proven to get a plethora of traffic and will no doubt increase your client’s chances at selling or buying their home.
Here are some worthwhile websites to get your property listed:
Bios On Your Personal Real Estate Website
For real estate agents working with a real estate company, you can guarantee a subdomain that will have your unique listings on them.
However, being lost in the shuffle of thousands and thousands of agents might not be the ideal place for your potential clients to be looking for you.
By creating your own website and in turn, your own bio page, you will secure what your potential client will be looking for when searching your name.
As a real estate agent, the name is everything – it’s advertised on your signage, on advertisements and on your website.
By giving yourself a meaty, content-rich bio, you will have the opportunity to give your best pitch to your potential clientele.
By creating a great bio on your own website, you gain control of your own bio page vs having it lost in a sea of real estate agents on the agency website.
The Importance Of Social Media
Keeping up with your clients and social trends, it’s important for real estate agents to have a strong social media management.
Keeping your visitors in the know about potential new hot properties and interacting with your clientele on any questions they might have is of tantamount importance.
A real estate agent can be present on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
Find out where your clients are spending their time online and activate those communities.
When it comes to real estate, it all boils down to the relationships you forge and the networks you build.
When you convey a sense of professionalism and expertise, your followers will see you as an expert in your field.
When you hashtag across all platforms keywords and phrases that fit the properties you are listing, it will go far!
Get Ready To Make Your Mark Online!
As competitive as any field can be, the real estate market is flooded with tons of professionals looking to sell homes.
To truly make your mark in the Toronto real estate sector, your website should be polished and strategically SEO integrated so you can see the top of Google’s listings!
6 reasons why to hire an SEO company.
Are you a realtor looking to get started with online marketing? All The Way Up Media is an digital marketing company that helps businesses grow online. We will help you choosing the right platforms to put your real estate business on the map. Get in touch with us today.
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