Avoid Real Estate SEO – 4 Reasons

If you are trying to learn more about Real Estate SEO, my real estate team sold more than 500 homes and I currently rank on Google for highly competitive keywords…

Who better to learn from than an experienced real estate agent and investor who happens to know a thing or two about SEO?

In this post we will cover :

• What is Real Estate SEO
• How to Rank Content
• How to screen SEO agencies so you don’t get scammed
• 4 Reasons you should NOT do it

What is Real Estate SEO?

Real Estate SEO is the process of optimizing content to rank higher within search engines like Google. There are a bunch of search engines but Google has 91%+ of the market share.

SEOs (Search engine optimizers) focus on organic search results. Here is an example of organic search results:

Since companies like Zillow and Realtor.com dominate those searches, real estate agents should focus more on local SEO with a Google Business Profile (GBP). Your GBP shows in what is known as the ‘map-pack’.

The map-pack is a list of GBPs and their location on a map in whatever area the user is searching. See the example below for ‘real estate agent in Lexington, KY’.

If you compare our traffic and traffic value to the ‘we buy houses’ company I was showing you earlier, we have roughly the same amount of traffic but look at the difference in value of that traffic…

The keywords they get clicks for are much more valuable than our keywords.

Now let’s talk about photos on your posts…

Original Images and How to Label The Alt-Text

If Google has the capability to 3D photograph every road in America and blurs license plates with a bot… Chances are they have the ability to scan your images and find out if it’s original content.

Your real estate business involves lots of photos so use those photos! No one else has those same photos except for you! When uploading photos, there is something called ‘Alt-text’. Here is how one of the most reputable SEO companies, Moz, defines it:

‘Alt text (alternative text) describes the appearance or function of an image on a page. Alt text is read aloud by screen readers used by visually impaired users, displays in place of an image if it fails to load and is indexed by search engine bots to better understand the content of your page.’

Use the alt text in your photo to support whatever point you’re trying to make in the article. Be mindful of stuffing keywords… Google doesn’t need to see ‘real estate SEO’ 100 times in this article to rank for real estate seo…

If you took the photo with your phone and the EXIF data says it was taken in your local market, I don’t think that would hurt!

So… Sound like too much work? Don’t want to master real estate SEO?

How to Screen a Real Estate SEO Agency

If you’re still convinced SEO is something you want, but don’t want to work on yourself, I’m going to teach you how to filter through the BS real estate SEO Agencies. There are a ton of real estate businesses that have gotten ripped off, myself included…

Here’s how I would screen a search engine optimization company:

Ask for Case Studies and Proof of Revenue

Most people think their real estate SEO strategy should include a goal of a certain number of impressions or clicks… efff that!

If you are spending money on marketing, it should be generating a return. I will say impressions, clicks, and rankings are good leading metrics to track, but that’s not the purpose of an SEO campaign… Or is it?

Traditionally speaking, SEO is the practice of ranking higher in search engines… which isn’t easy. Converting that traffic into leads is something totally different.

It’s called Conversion Rate Optimization or, CRO (crow), for short.

Chances are, you don’t have the funds to pay for a full-fledged SEO campaign and a CRO expert. Therefore, the agency needs to be able to prove they’ve helped a real estate business generate revenue through their SEO.

How can they do that?

One way would be to connect you with a real estate business that they have done work for. After that, I would want to see a few things about that business’s real estate website…

Ask for Traffic and Analytics Data

Remember how I said impressions and clicks are good leading metrics? Make sure the data about the real estate website or GBP they provide in their case study is first-party or directly from Google. Here are some examples:

Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results.

It will show you keywords that you are ranking for, clicks for those ranking keywords, clicks to certain pages, and how your rankings move over time. This is a free, extremely valuable tool provided by Google.

Google Business Profile performance

Similar to GSC, your Google Business Profile (GBP) will track performance metrics such as calls, website clicks, bookings, and impressions. This is also valuable information because 25-50% of the phone calls are high-quality leads.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a little different because it tracks activity on your website. This is helpful when tracking conversions. But, most SEOs aren’t going to mess with your Google Analytics and it’s data can be inflated by getting people to go on your website and just click around…

Whereas the other two tools actually show search engine results and even some of your rankings.

Third-Party Data

There are a TON of SEO tools on the market. They assist SEO efforts by showing what competitors are doing, estimating the traffic of websites and the value of that traffic, and conducting keyword research.

Oftentimes, people will post little glimpses of these third-party tools which can be WAY off.

I suggest giving these tools 1/10th the weight of GSC and GBP stats.

Summarizing Real Estate SEO

There are a ton of other search engines out there, but Google is still king. Generating leads by creating content in the form of blogs for your real estate website is going to be difficult, but if you approach it like a full-time job, you will dominate.

Why?

I don’t see anyone doing it except for wholesale companies… And I believe Google will give licensed Realtors more credibility due to the license. This isn’t a free way to generate leads, but it can be very cheap if you DIY.

If you dig in, you’ll find that there is a helpful community of SEOs, and you just happen to be in the real estate niche.