When house hunting, 90 percent of buyers use the internet.
In fact, over 53% started their research online, according to an extensive report on real estate consumer trends conducted by Google and the National Association of Realtors. Home buyers consider real estate websites the most useful source of information when buying a home.
The big question realtor always asked is: How can I capture internet traffic to my personal Realtor Website?
According to this interesting blog on improving realtor website SEO by Ubertor , You have to carve out a niche for yourself — think locally, and then expand.
Most home shoppers begin their research with a local keyword phrase, like “Toronto realtor.”
Most realtors service multiple cities and regions. However, when you start your website, focus on the main city you do business in first. From there, build out silos that target other areas. These words should appear on pages throughout your site and do peppered your sites with local keywords, info, and content that may be useful for your customers.
Optimize your website for search terms such as:
[Vancouver] real estate
[Alberta] homes for sale
[Ontario] real estate listings
[British Columbia] realtor
[Toronto] real estate agent
Some of the agent I met go even further by providing information on school districts, crime rates, median income, public transportation, and statistics on the housing market.
The more localized the keyword, the better the SEO improvement.
Eventhou you may have MLS/IDX on your website, Google doesn’t recognize the information contained in the IDX/MLS as MLS/IDX are rendered thru java jquery, hence it is important to extra facts and features of a property, putting up videos, photos
One way to secure traffic to your site for those specific properties is to write blog posts. Each blog post should target a specific property’s address, which perspective home buyers will be searching for using Google.
Go one step further and peppered your keywords are the following places: using the keyword in: Meta description, Title tag, Alt tag on photos, File name on photos. The content should range from 300 words to 750 words so that you can get better ranking in SEO.
Photos and videos are key engagement objects on all websites, but this is especially true of a real estate site. You can engage third party service provider like www.seevirtual360.com to help you create a 3d view of your property.
Real estate agent directories get a lot of traffic, so it’s worth your while to get listed in them. Each of the following highly trafficked real estate sites have directories available to realtors:
Lastly, lets boost up your social media presence: social media is a great way to start relationships or strengthen existing ones. A realtor with an active social media presence is able to interact with clients. Spread your digital presence across major social media platform such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and/or Instagram. Do remember, people might google your name, hence it is important to have a positive and professional presence on your social media accounts.
That’s all folks!