4 easy tips to gain maximum visibility for your real estate website

Are you making these common real estate SEO mistakes? Most of the traffic to your real estate website comes from search engines. When real estate search engine optimization (SEO) principles are properly applied, your real estate website can achieve a top position on search engine result pages, gaining a high visibility that will attract home buyers. If you make mistakes when optimizing your website for search, however, your website can end up buried so far down on search results that it is effectively invisible to the typical home buyer.  To help ensure your website doesn’t suffer this fate, we’ve identified 4 of the top real estate SEO mistakes. We’ve pulled some key facts from Google’s Digital House Hunt  report that illustrate the dangers of these mistakes, and we’ve included real estate SEO tips to help you optimize your website the right way to achieve a higher search rank. Ready to see how your website measures up?

Real Estate SEO Mistake #1:

Your real estate website doesn’t deliver perfect performance on all mobile devices. It looks and works great when viewed on a desktop but on mobile devices the pictures may appear distorted, the buttons may be too small or awkwardly placed to work with thumbs, and visitors may need to scroll side to side to see all of your content.

Why this is a problem: Google now counts mobile-friendliness as one of its ranking factors on mobile search. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile, it will be penalized with a lower search rank.  And that’s a problem for realtors, because mobile applications are used by 68% of new home shoppers as they research their purchase.

Real Estate SEO Tip: Switch to a responsive real estate website design. Responsive real estate websites automatically adapt to perform perfectly on every device, including smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. With a responsive real estate website design, your visitors will enjoy flawless performance that will make your site their go-to resource for real estate searches no matter how they access the web.

Real Estate SEO Mistake #2:

You’ve heard that the use of keywords can raise your search rank, so you’ve loaded up your web pages with as many real estate-related keywords as you can possibly insert into the text.

Why this is a problem: What you’re doing is called ‘keyword stuffing’ and Google frowns on it. If your website hasn’t been hit with a major search penalty yet, it will be soon. Prepare to have a virtually  invisible website once it is dropped far from the first page of search results.

Real Estate SEO Tip: Use keywords with moderation. For the best results, use a single keyword or keyword phrase in your page titles, 3 or 4 in the content of your pages, and only one in each of your image or video titles, Alt tags, and descriptions.

Real Estate SEO Mistake #3:

You looked up the most popular, highest trending real estate keywords, and now you’re only using keywords from that list in your search optimization efforts.

Why this is a problem: The large OTAs and national realty companies are firmly entrenched in the top spots on the most popular, nationally trending real estate keywords; for many of these terms, smaller real estate agencies cannot even crack the front page of search results. If these are the only keywords you use on your website, you’re not going to have a chance of appearing on the front page of results for any search terms.

Real Estate SEO Tip: Local keywords (like Boca Raton condos or Pinecrest homes for sale) are the best weapon for smaller real estate agencies seeking high search rankings.  These terms are very popular with home searchers – in fact, 69% of home shoppers who take action on a real estate brand website began their search using a local term. The large, centrally located OTAs may rank for some local terms, but the specialized knowledge you have of local communities gives you a ‘home’ advantage when it comes to local search strategies for real estate that they simply cannot match.  Creating Community sections in your website, with Neighborhood pages that are full of localized information, page names, and content, will help ensure home shoppers are guided to your website.

Real Estate SEO Mistake #4:

You’ve done a good job building your real estate website, and you see no reason to add to it. Your website has  integrated  IDX, so visitors can search for current listings- you see no reason to update your content anytime soon.

Why this is a problem: Google and the other search engines like websites that have fresh, new content for them to crawl on a regular basis. If you never add new content to your website, the search engines have no reason to crawl your pages. Also, SEO for real estate agents and related real estate keywords are constantly evolving and changing, so your website will end up falling in search rank unless you have a way to add new keywords to your website.

Real Estate SEO Tip: Adding a bi-weekly real estate blog gives you a way to add the latest keywords to your website. The consistently new content will keep search engines crawling your website so you can maintain a high position in search listings, too. That’s critical to your success as a real estate agent, since 90% of home buyers search online during their home buying process.

Correctly applying SEO principles to your real estate website can be a tricky, involved process, even with our tips to guide you. If you prefer to concentrate on selling homes and listing properties, the marketers at For Sale Marketing can take care of these SEO chores for you. We offer comprehensive SEO services for real estate agencies, including responsive real estate website design, expert SEO content creation services, monthly SEO maintenance packages, and more.

Contact us at For Sale Marketing today at 954-779-2801 for more real estate SEO tips and expert SEO support services that will help your website’s search engine performance soar!