8 Top SEO Tips for REALTORs® + The Best Keywords For Agents
Best Keywords for REALTORs®
Your a real estate agent and you want to rank on the first page of Google, but ranking organically for local SEO seems too challenge, well fear not, search engine optimization for real estate agents doesn’t have to be the hard. It just takes some understanding of SEO for REALTORs® combined with proper content marketing.
When you are trying to rank for certain real estate SEO keywords, where do you start? And do you need an SEO expert to figure it out? Most SEO tips for real estate agents can be accomplished with just a few simple tools.
The two things you need to keep in mind when you are working on a digital market strategy for SEO is you need to think like a user and a search engine.
The User:
The user experience is one of the most important parts of SEO. When we are trying to rank for certain keywords, we can lose touch with the fact that the whole reason for our efforts is to get buyers and sellers to land on our website. If their experience on your website doesn’t match their expectations then you can be prepared for them to bounce to the next Google result.
The Search Engine:
Search engines are not people. The search engines are getting very smart at understanding websites and tracking behavior, however, there are still some tasks we must properly execute in order to tell the search engine what our website is all about.
Without The User or The Search Engine, you don’t have a hope of ranking. If you nail your SEO but your user experience sucks then your rankings will fall fast. If your user experience is spot on but nobody can find you, then you will not receive an traffic.
How to Rank in Your City
There are a couple important guidelines when trying to rank in local SEO. Local SEO differs from SEO in that you are only trying to rank in your geographical area as a real estate agent. This actually makes life easier for real estate agents. You still need to compete with those in your market, but you don’t need to compete with real estate agents in New York if you are in California.
Local SEO is optimizing your content marketing and keywords for local audience. In most cases, this should be the main SEO focus for real estate agents.
Here are the top tips for REALTOR® SEO
Ideally, you want to hit the “local pack”, there are the top recommended local businesses in that given category that Google displays when the keyword is searched.
For example
Calgary Realtor
Calgary Real Estate Brokerage
Google My Business
Without a Google My Business account, your chance of ranking are almost non-existent for local SEO. You can easily sign up for one here. Google My Business
In recent time, there have been studies showing there are fewer people that are actually clicking through to your website and they are just relying on the info in Google My Business. Now if you don’t have an account then you are leaving it up to the online world to pull in relevant data.
Set up your Google My Business account before you do anything else.
Pro Tip: Have the word “REALTOR®” in your name to help your chances of ranking for this keyword.
Citations
Citations are basically mentions of your business on other local websites. It’s basically another business online that has your information posted on their site. This can be a local directory, a partner site, or any other city that would mention your info.
For citations, you want lots of them but they also need to come from quality websites. If you pay for a bunch of junk citations, chances are Google will penalize you.
Citations need to be exactly the same as your info on your website and Google My Business and must include Name, Address, and Phone Number.
If they are not exactly the same throughout, then you will not be credited for this citation.
If you need an awesome resource for finding the top sites for citations in your country and city, checkout Whitespark
Reviews
Here is the thing, Google needs to find some way to know if you are a recommended business. Reviews are the prime way Google can tell if you are a reputable REALTOR®. Don’t skimp on asking for reviews.
Positive reviews that came in organically play a huge part in your SEO.
If you need to learn how to send a link directly to your clients asking for a review, check this out.
Send this to your clients and database to make reviewing you easy. After all, if they need to figure out how to review you, chances are they will give up.
If you need a script we use, feel free to use the following.
Hi {{ first_name | fallback: "there" }},
I'm so happy that we had such a great experience working together. Now, this is me doing my real estate agent thing but you were a fantastic client and I really enjoyed working with you!
Absolutely no pressure at all but testimonials/reviews go a long way in our small business. If you are open to providing reviews we would be overjoyed if you could review us on Google.
You can write one online here: Google Review (https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=ChIJwwV8GNhvcVMRlzHhqUrToGM)
No need to respond and no worries if you would rather not!
Thanks so much in advance!
Keywords
Keywords are the words that you want to rank in Google for. For example, when someone types in Your City plumber, you probably don’t want to come up, so you would not want to optimize for “plumber”, however, you would want to shoot for “REALTOR®” or “real estate agent”
It’s crucial to understand that keywords come with a level of difficulty. General keywords can be almost impossible to rank for. For example “real estate listings in Calgary” would be very hard, however, “condo listings in Beltline, Calgary below $500,000” would be fairly easy.
The difference here is long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are more specific. They will receive less traffic but your chances of ranking are much higher, plus the searcher has a focused intent.
Pro Tip: Avoid spending countless hours trying to rank for Your City + Real Estate or Your City + Real Estate Listings. There are too competitive. Focus instead on long-tail keywords.
Best Keywords for REALTORs®
City + Realtor
City + Realtors
City + Real Estate Agent
City + Real Estate Agents
City + Real Estate Brokerage
City + Real Estate Agents Near Me
Find a Realtor in City
Top Realtor in City
Best Realtor in City
Condo Building + For Sale
Community + Homes for Sale
Community + Home Type for Sale
Sell Home in City
Sell Home in City Fast
Buy Home in City
Real Estate Market in City
Real Estate Trends in City
Real Estate Market Predictions in City
Ways to Sell House in City
Foreclosures in City
Foreclosure for Sale in City
New House for Sale in City
New House Realtor in City or Area
Condo Realtor in City or Area
Community Map in City
Real Estate Commissions in City
My favorite tool for finding keywords in SEMRUSH
Speed Test
Google has an awesome resource for those looking to determine their web load speed. The page insights show how your website loads on desktop or mobile. Google has outwardly said that page speed will impact your rankings.
Link Building
Although link building is becoming less important, strong links to your website from reputable websites improve your site’s authority.
Link building can seem spammy and Google has found out that people can manipulate link building and pay for links (although this is against Google’s Terms of Service)
If you are going to focus on building links to your website, do so naturally and build relationships with the website owners.
One of the best things about local SEO is you can meet the website owner in person if you would like to determine if it would be a suitable link.
Beyond the scope of this article, if you are going to focus on link building, also understand Follow vs No Follow Links.
Social Media
In the world of fake news and fake websites, social media activity is proving to be a great indicator of the site’s authority.
If you are a fake news site, chances are you will not have active social media accounts.
Having social media accounts and posting regularly helps establish yourself.
Conclusion
Ranking in the local pack for SEO is very possible. All it takes is some dedicated effort to make sure you have the proper keywords, links, citations, and usability.
Questions: Have you explored SEO as a real estate agent? How have you found it?
-Michael Montgomery
Follow Up Reading:
Build Your Network as a New Real Estate Agent
10 Top Habits of Successful Real Estate Agents