6 MOST IMPORTANT SEO RANKING FACTORS FOR REAL ESTATE WEBSITES
Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t only about content with relevant keywords. Although this aspect of SEO carries a lot of weight, more goes into a strong SEO strategy for real estate websites. When you want results, you must look deeper into the website at components like the URL, social media utilization, organic backlinks, and the overall structure of the website. It doesn’t even stop there, which is why it’s important to know the following list of important ranking factors for real estate websites.
On-Page SEO for Real Estate
On-page SEO is where you will utilize your keywords. You need to have keywords in the content but also in the title tag and meta description. You can also use keywords in the alt tags of images. This is called “image optimization,” and it’s important because search engines can’t see images. Search engines rely on alt tags to properly index an image.
Search engine algorithms also prefer fresh content. This can be achieved by updating content as needed and posting regular blog posts to the website. As you refresh content and post new content, it is good to make sure you link internally to other pages on the website. This creates a hierarchy that visitors and search engines can follow.
The Website’s URL
It is good to have a keyword in the URL. This is an on-page SEO strategy that’s important. To do that, make sure the “slug” after the .com in the URL is the page title. If the page title contains the keyword, you’re in business. This sends a positive signal to Google.
Outbound Links
Another important element of on-page SEO is the outbound links. Find an authoritative source and link to it. It’s a way to send a user to another site to learn more about a subject. Why do you want to do this? It’s because it’s a Google trust factor. Make sure these links are used in moderation because too many can hurt your own PageRank. Diminished PageRank hurts your real estate website’s search visibility.
Off-Page SEO for Real Estate
Off-page SEO involves tactics that are carried out outside of the website. Obtaining inbound links is a good strategy because they show that other websites have trust in your website. However, you want to make sure that these links are acquired organically. Registering with business directories can hurt you more than help you. This has made the directory an obsolete link-building tactic. Think about quality over quantity when it comes to links. As a real estate website, many of your links will happen naturally because people will share property listings from your website. Most of these shares occur over social media.
Social Media
When using social media to give your real estate business an online boost, don’t rely on just Facebook. Make sure you have a Google My Business page, engage on Twitter, use Instagram, and make an impact in the world of social media so people will share your content. Shared content means more traffic. More traffic translates into a better ranking.
Real Estate Website Structure
Of course, the website coding needs to be clean. A good web designer will ensure there isn’t a lot of “junk” in the code that can bog down the website. A good web designer will also make sure you have a sitemap that helps search engines index all website pages. There are also some trust factors that must be included. Some of those factors include:
- A thorough “About Us” page
- Social media accounts that are active
- A domain name that is at least two years old (this comes with time)
- Whois info (website registration) that matches your contact info
- Check incoming links occasionally to make sure they are trustworthy so you can eliminate those that aren’t
- Not too many outbound links throughout the site
- A mobile-optimized website so it can be viewed on any device
- A domestic server
- Google Search Console integration (verification counts)
These aren’t all the trust factors, but they are very relevant to real estate websites and should be taken into consideration.
SEO Checklist
If you really want to dive deep into SEO for your real estate website, you can look at an SEO checklist. The list has approximately 200 items that include everything from domain length to duplicate content on the same website. If you can hit as many of those points as possible on your website, with those described in this article being those you want to target first, then you can greatly improve your website’s ranking.
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