Are you in the real estate industry and are looking to selling homes? If so, you likely have a website set up for that sole purpose. However, did you know that there’s more to a website than merely selling homes? For example, what kind of content are you producing? Does it all contain keywords to attract your target market? Do you offer different media, such as pictures and videos, to showcase the home that you’re intending to sell? Keep in mind that all these factors affect user experience and relevancy to anyone looking for homes to purchase.
Know that all these factors and many more, also affect your SEO efforts. This means that, even if you’re selling the best homes for the lowest prices, you will not make a sale if no one notices the website.
In this article, we will share with you six SEO tips to ensure that your website sells real estate effectively:
1. Determine your keywords
When you’re creating content for your website, such as written content, you should implement the right keywords. This is important because it is these keywords that will help match your content to the query of your potential visitors.
Whenever you write anything on your website, whether it be headlines, metadata, URLs, and content, be sure to implement as many keywords as possible. However, always keep in mind to not overuse the keywords, as doing so won’t only hurt the quality of your content, but search engines will also penalize you for doing so.
2. Ensure that your site is mobile-friendly
With more than half of all Internet users using mobile phones, you need to make sure that your site mobile-friendly. Without implementing it, it would be better if you hadn’t created a website in the first place.
While that statement might sound a bit harsh, a website that isn’t usable on mobile devices will not be able to attract a wide range of audiences. As mentioned previously, more than half of online users are on mobile, which is why you should not neglect to reach out to this demographic.
Seeing that many people online are looking for homes to buy, you’re giving yourself a huge competitive advantage over other real estate sellers that do not have a website or has one but aren’t mobile-friendly.
3. Utilize social media to expand your reach
Not only are most internet users on mobile devices, but many of them use social media platforms daily as well. From Facebook to Twitter, to even Instagram, these platforms are great places for you to take your marketing efforts to.
If you don’t have a social media account set up for your business, do so right away. With it, you can take your marketing efforts there and create a path from there back to your website so that you can increase traffic and potentially earn new buyers. Keep in mind that your social media account will only be useful if you update them often and produce regular content. Because of this, you might want to have a dedicated team manage your social media needs or outsource it to another agency.
4. Get customers to review your deals
While you might be offering some of the best deals that could be found anywhere else on the market, customers will generally be a little careful about a business that has little to no reviews. To them, reviews are similar to personal recommendations.
Once you manage to sell something, ask your customers to write a review to encourage other customers to come to you, especially if that review is a positive one. Negative reviews, while it might hurt your business, can still be used to win the hearts of your potential buyers if appropriately addressed.
5. Go Local
Seeing that various search engines prefer to focus on local content, you should take advantage of this fact. A search engine’s job is to give all the information a customer needs as quickly as possible, and the easiest way to go about that is to go local. As a plus, there’s less competition locally, meaning that you have a higher chance of succeeding.
As to how you can be local, you should include local information, such as restaurants, shopping, landmarks, and community resources. You can even use Google Maps to show your location in more precise detail, allowing users to look around. These resources are especially valuable to anyone looking for homes to purchase and are in need to find out what local resources are available to them when buying a certain home.
5. Produce high-quality content
While you might be pumping out hundreds of articles every month, they’re all for naught if you sacrifice quality. Even if you produce thousand-word articles every week and fill them with nothing but keywords, you’re sacrificing quality because they essentially offer no value to the user.
At the same time, search engines will also notice this “trick” by looking at customer’s activity, which would most likely go something along the lines of looking at your articles, figuring out it isn’t relevant, and leaving immediately. As a result, Google will notice this trend and rank another business that retains the visitors higher.
6. Maintain simplicity
No matter what you do, be sure to keep everything simple. Remember, customers are always on the lookout for websites that offer a seamless navigation experience.
When you build your website, test it out first, and put yourself in the shoes of your users. Is your site hard to look for information? Is navigating through the sites annoying? Is it loading slowly? Are you running into different technical issues? If it loads slowly, keep in mind that you run the risk of losing customers. If your images aren’t loading properly, your company image will also get tarnished. This is why you should maintain a simple website at all times.
Conclusion
When it comes to building a successful real estate business, having a solid website helps you gain higher chances of making a successful sale. That said, you must focus on creating a quality website that’s easy to use, informative, and gets straight to the point. When these three requirements are fulfilled, you’ll find that your web traffic increases and that visitors turn into buyers much more frequently.
In need of professional assistance to help optimize your website? We offer digital marketing services that utilize robust SEO practices to help you make a successful sale! Contact us today and find out how we can help you.