Mastering Local SEO for Real Estate Agents

Blog, Real Estate

 

 Young couple and real estate agent looking at a laptop during a meeting in an office.

As you grow your real estate business, it’s important to understand search engine optimization (SEO) and its potential impact on your website. If done correctly, you can see hundreds or even thousands of new visitors to your website. These visitors will hopefully turn into leads and eventually new business! 

We’ve explained why SEO is important for real estate agents and how you can optimize on-page elements of your website but in this article, we’re focusing on the importance of local SEO and how to target potential buyers in your area. 

Local SEO 

Local SEO helps promote your business for location-based searches. If a searcher searches “houses for sale near me”, the search engine will only display houses for sale near the searchers’ location. To appear for local searches, we recommend starting by optimizing your keywords, Google My Business profile, external links, and creating a review and ratings strategy. 

Target Local Keywords 

In our blog post, On-Page SEO for Real Estate Agents, we discussed the importance of including strategic keywords. For local SEO, it’s important to include location-specific keywords in addition to more broad keywords. 

The more targeted your keywords are, the better chance you have of ranking. Consider adding search terms like [City] real estate or [City] real estate agent to capitalize on local search traffic.

Google My Business

If you don’t already have a Google My Business listing, go to google.com/business and start filling in your business’ information. You’ll want to make sure your profile is 100% accurate and up-to-date. Include your location, opening hours, website URL, telephone number, description, and photos. 

External Links

An external link is a link from another website to your website. Local link building is getting other websites in your area to link to yours. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing see local links as a sign of a trustworthy website. If you get enough links, you have the potential to show higher in search engine results pages (SERP) and bring more traffic to your website, resulting in more leads. 

An easy way to earn external links is to get listed in directories. Directories are known for getting a lot of traffic, so it’s most likely worth your while to get listed in directories like your local Chamber of Commerce or Better Business Bureau. 

Reviews and Ratings 

Most customers read reviews before contacting a business, so it’s important to gather online reviews. Having reviews allows you to establish trust with your potential customers and stand out among other real estate agencies. Not only are reviews important to potential customers, but reviews are also ranked highly in SEO algorithms. 

Ask your customers to leave reviews for you or your business on Google, Yelp, Facebook and other third-party review sites. If a customer leaves a review (positive or negative), be sure to respond and thank the customer for their review or address their concern. 

As the SEO industry continues to grow, it’s important to stay up-to-date with new trends to keep increasing your chances of showing up in SERPs. That means continually checking and updating your local SEO strategies. As the SEO industry continues to grow, the real estate industry will continue to evolve making it even more important to stay current with pre-licensing courses and continuing education opportunities at Hondros College.

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