How to Do SEO for Real Estate
SEO for real estate aims to ensure that the real estate website appears in the top positions in search engines,…
Toñi Rodriguez
2 years ago
SEO for real estate aims to make the real estate website appear in the top positions in search engines, to increase and attract traffic to the site and generate more opportunities for property sales.
And how is this positioning achieved?
By optimizing certain factors such as keywords, Link Building, local SEO, among other tips shared by experienced SEO colleagues in the real estate sector.
By reading this article, you will learn everything you need to know about SEO positioning for real estate.
How does SEO for real estate work?
In the real estate sector, there is a lot of competition, and to make matters worse, the portals that are positioned have a lot of authority. Therefore, we don't want to be pessimistic, but we do want to warn you about the complexity of the matter.
For this, we rely on recommendations from professionals with extensive experience in the real estate sector.
Stay tuned, as this will surely help you!
Long Tail Keyword of "nearby points of interest"
Just like when working on SEO for businesses, one of the first actions you should take is a keyword study.
In the case of real estate, you need to align the analysis with commercial objectives. Analyze what words users are searching for and which of them are positioned by the competition. Especially the search volume and the level of difficulty.
We previously mentioned in earlier articles that it is less laborious to position long tail keywords that have few searches than to position more competitive keywords.
These long tail words are those composed of a series of meaningful words that make a search more specific.
Well, in this case, we have the expert advice of an SEO colleague who prefers to remain anonymous, but I assure you that he is someone very well-known and with a lot of experience in the real estate sector.
He gives us advice on how we can target the keyword " nearby points of interest", for example: "apartments in Barcelona near San Miguel school"; this strategy is much easier than positioning another more competitive keyword like "apartments in Barcelona".
SEO Tips for Real Estate
Let me tell you a bit about what we have done with real estate clients: Since the real estate sector is so complicated in terms of SEO, because there is a lot of competition and those who are there are very well positioned and have a lot of authority. (pisos.com, idealista…)
What we do is target, apart from provinces or localities, which will take a long time to position and is more complicated, what we usually target is by nearby points of interest.
And let me tell you, maybe there are people who are not looking for an apartment in Granada, but are perhaps looking for an apartment in Granada near a bilingual school, just to give you an example. Because maybe they are foreigners and want to enroll their child in a bilingual school, but they don't want the house to be too far away, they want it to be close. So, what we do is see what nearby points of interest there are and from there is where we develop the SEO strategy.
What do we achieve with that? Well, since those searches have no competition, we position them quickly. For the client, it is a good evolution and in terms of conversion, as mentioned, it has little, but there are people looking for that, there are people looking for localities, near the university or near something or near a shopping center for whatever reason.
Create quality content
SEO for real estate can start to be worked on through the creation and publication of relevant content about buying and selling properties, rent-to-own, urban planning information for the area, information about legal aspects...
The content must be original and resolve the user's doubts. For example, good valuable content would be:
- When someone buys an apartment, the electricity is in the name of the previous owner. Explain how to properly manage that change of ownership of the electricity supply, without having problems with cuts.
Search intent
The search a user performs when looking for a property is transactional, as they are interested in buying. Once we have conducted the keyword study, we must analyze what they are looking for.
Looking at the results for the search " apartments in Barcelona", you will see the portals and websites of the main real estate agencies. If you want to appear, you will have to create a landing page that targets that search intent.
If you search for "how to sell an apartment," only articles will appear; to appear in the results, you will need to work on an informative article.
In both cases and due to the competition in the sector, if you want to appear, you will need to get links that provide you with authority that Google loves.
Multimedia content
Add images and videos of the highest possible quality and give them an alternative title or alt tag. This helps Google understand the topic.
Keep in mind that the user searching for housing first looks at the photos and virtual tour videos….
Here you should work hand in hand with the person from the real estate agency who will take the photos.
Ask them to take advantage of the sunlight, ensure the property is tidy and clean, photograph the rooms from the corners to give a wider angle of view, and highlight the most attractive points of the property.
We have also asked people who work in the real estate sector, like MarcK Spin. He explains how some real estate agencies publish the most attractive properties as a hook, and then when the client shows interest, they tell them it is sold and offer them another.
Here he explains:
By the way, a technique that is also done, a bit "Black", is that there are real estate agencies that publish fake ads for properties that look very good, of course, they are attractive, right? So when you call, they tell you that one is already reserved, but they can show you another. This way they already have you captured, then they start sending you other properties that are the real ones that the agency has.
Well-structured website
Structuring your real estate business website well will help Google bots to find what they are looking for and what you want them to find. In addition to a coherent structure that benefits user experience.
An attractive design, easy navigation, adapted to all devices, and fast loading will also benefit SEO.
The ideal depth level is 3 clicks, as the closer the page (property listing) is to the main page, the more important it will be for search engines.
Main page > Blog, about us, related services… > Categories (apartments, houses, rentals) > Product (apartments in Barcelona, houses to renovate..)
At the same time, use headings (H1, H2, H3…) so that the content also follows a hierarchy.
Optimized URLs
URLs are the addresses of each category, subcategory, and product. They should be simple so that users can understand them and access the content.
Regarding optimization, it is not recommended to use uppercase letters, as the server may not interpret them correctly and think we are duplicating content. Do not use underscores, as they can be misinterpreted, and do not exceed long URLs; ideally, they should be less than 115 characters.
Regarding expert SEO advice for real estate, we have Daniel de la Cova who gives us two recommendations that have worked very well for him:
In the real estate agency I worked for in Alicante, they do a lot of prospecting; Doing a lot of prospecting means many new URLs > city > then neighborhood… After the prospecting, when a house is sold, do not delete the URL from the website so as not to lose it or take it off the market, and when they call asking about that house, offer them others because that one is already "committed". You can also redirect to similar properties.
SEO goes hand in hand with marketing and sales, especially in these cases. As a result, we have been the top real estate agency in Alicante 1/2.
The real key for real estate agencies is paid ads on various platforms, fotocasa and idealista. How can we take advantage of this? Well, these portals use many price filters, so you can get all the prices in the area (if you ask the account manager) to get valuable information to analyze and adjust prices.
Title and meta description
The meta-title should reflect the content of your page and be attractive so that the user clicks on it. It should be between 50 and 60 characters and include the main keyword.
The meta-description is a description of what users will find on the page. It should never be longer than 160 characters, and in the case of real estate, you can add price, location, features, and characteristics of the properties.
Interlinking
Very important in SEO for real estate because it helps not only to retain the user by offering related content. It will also help search engines understand the structure of the website better.
To create a good internal linking structure on a real estate website, you can put the main categories in the menu.
Another thing you can do is link the properties within the blog articles. But without overdoing the number of links and using anchor text with keywords, phrases, or synonyms related to the content being linked.
For example: you are writing an article about how to change the ownership of the electricity bill for a property you have purchased. You can link it to the properties you have for sale, with the anchor "buy a house in wherever".
Link Building for Real Estate
These strategies consist of getting other pages with high authority to link to you, with the aim of improving your real estate agency's SEO and therefore organic search traffic.
To get quality links you have our tool from Unancor, which is more than a tool; it is a weapon for making " massive Match.
In which we have the means and quality blogs ideal for your website; related to the real estate sector, such as thematic newspapers, sector portals, blogs …
If you prefer, you can request a personalized proposal, where a SEO professional will accompany you throughout the process: from project analysis to anchor text selection.
If you work on link building in your company, you will improve your visibility, authority, and online reputation.
So come on, schedule a meeting and do not waste your time or money and increase the visibility of your real estate business with high-quality link building.
Practical case: Increase visits with link building
This real estate company managed to increase its visits by +1000 visits in 2 months thanks to a link building campaign with Unancor.
A campaign based on searching for potential clients, focused on the media that their target person usually visits, directing their content very well to the pain points of their potential client, and using brand anchors to gain authority.
Relevant data:
- They have acquired publications only in two media in this campaign.
- They have increased traffic to their website by more than a thousand visitors.
- They have positioned 778 new relevant keywords for their business.
You can use SEO tools to measure results and also from Google Search Console go to the "links" tab and you can see for free the pages that are linking to you.
Local SEO for Real Estate
When searching for "real estate agencies in Barcelona," the first thing that appears is the Google business listing, so if you want to appear in local searches, you will need to optimize the listing among other aspects of Local SEO to consider.
- Create the Google My Business listing if you don't have one and optimize it as much as possible. Fill in all fields with your real estate information, NAP name, address.
- If you have several offices within Barcelona, it is ideal to create a landing page for each of them. For example: "Real estate in Tarragona" "Real estate in Girona"…
- Gain popularity through reviews, local citations, geolocated links, and mentions.
In the real estate sector, it is very important to obtain links from organizations with influence in your area, as traffic will come from people living nearby, meaning it is geolocated.
Sales Techniques for Real Estate
In truth, the SEO strategy for real estate goes hand in hand with marketing and sales. If results are to be achieved, both teams must join forces.
In this case, we again have the expert advice of Marck Spin.
He explains to us:
I can tell you about techniques that they usually do now in which they try to innovate to get clients. For example, when you now put a house up for sale, one of the things they are doing is presenting themselves as if they were a private individual. They act interested, etc. They often do not present themselves as the real estate agency. Instead, they say, hello, how are you? My name is Pepito de los Palotes. I am interested in the property you are selling and so on.
So they come off very friendly, playing the part of a private individual because many people are wary of real estate agencies. Then once they gain a bit of trust, they say, look, I work for so-and-so, but I just want to explain to you because you are going to gain what you want. We do not charge you a commission.
That is one of the new techniques. I mean, you don’t pay anything, but the commission will be paid by the client who buys. In reality, it’s the same. I mean, if I want to sell it for 130, they publish it for 135 and that’s what they take.
But well, that’s a technique they use that I don’t like. It can work, but I don’t like it because it bothers me that they pretend to be private individuals just to gain a bit of trust, attention at first, and then it turns out they are real estate agents.
In fact, many people in ads put "real estate agencies abstain" and when you put that is when they use the technique of presenting themselves as a private individual, they don’t call saying I am the real estate agency so-and-so, for example, without saying now that my name is Marco. Look, I’m calling you because I’m interested in the ad and they act a bit clueless.
This usually works!
Monitoring and Analysis
It is important to analyze the actions you have implemented on your website to evaluate the success of the SEO strategy and make adjustments if necessary.
You can use free tools like Google Search Console for:
- See clicks and impressions.
- CTR: how many people who visited, clicked on the link.
And use Google Analytics to see the organic traffic, user behavior, where visits come from, and through which device they reached us, among others..
Need help with your Link Building strategy?
Our team of experts is ready to help you boost your project with personalized strategies
Contact us nowConclusion:
As you can see, SEO for real estate is the same as for any sector, but with the peculiarities we have seen:
Optimize the landing pages of your website, analyze the competition and their keywords, obtain links from the real estate sector, work on local SEO, and have a bit of cunning to sell properties….
A job that requires consistency due to the great competition that exists. So much so that according to this study the 95% of the population uses digital platforms to buy a home.
So we hope this article on SEO for real estate has been useful.
