SEO For Real Estate Agents: 4 Easy Things To Boost Results

SEO for real estate agents is a topic we’ll keep coming back to again and again.

Why?

Because SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is key to the success of your personal real estate website. It’s what helps you get discovered by people — potential clients — who don’t already know you. And like Instagram’s algorithm, SEO best practices can change and evolve.

It’s been a few years since we last talked about SEO for real estate agents, so it’s about time for a refresher.

Looking to incorporate SEO best practices in your real estate marketing efforts? Here are four easy things real estate agents should try to boost results.

Update Old Content…

You’d be forgiven for thinking that once you write and publish content on your website, it’s finished. Never to be touched again.

Not true!

Relaunching existing content like blog posts can be a great way to reignite visits and readership. Not every piece of existing content, though – specifically, content that has performed well in the past and that makes use of some keywords you’d like to rank for (e.g., “Toronto housing market forecast”).

Google Analytics can help you find your best-performing blog posts. When you’re ready to update, think about tweaking the content with meaningful updates. So, not just word changes here and there, or a new image, but adding new, up-to-date information that makes the content more interesting and helpful for readers.

You can also add links to new content (things you’ve published in the years since). You can also incorporate headers — HTML tags like <H2> — with keywords, to help organize your posts into sections and boost your potential for ranking. Most website platforms will have this formatting option available in their content editor.

Keep the same URL, but update the title. Adding the timing of the update in brackets (e.g., “Updated September 2021”) to the end of the title is a great way to signal to readers — and to search engines — that this content is current and refreshed.

…And Add New Content

You also need to be spending time writing new content for your real estate website.

Real estate blog content is one of the most effective tools in your toolbelt for proving your expertise to potential clients and generating traffic to your real estate website.

To ensure that the new content you’re writing is SEO-friendly, keep the following in mind:

• • • Word count. Generally speaking, long-form content — over 2,000 words — receives more traffic than short-form content. But it’s about tailoring the length of your content to the subject you’re writing about. A neighbourhood guide probably warrants a higher word count; there’s lots of detail to share! A post about fall events in your area may not need as many words.

• • • Use keywords. Keywords are *key* to SEO. This topic deserves a post of its own, but a few basic best practices for incorporating keywords into your content are to:

• • • Use keywords that you actually have a chance at ranking for (e.g., “Toronto condo real estate agent” versus “real estate agent”)

• • • Not overstuff your content with keywords

• • • Use your keywords in key places, such as your title, description, and header tags

• • • Write for humans. All that being said, make sure you’re writing for humans first — not for search engines. What really matters is that people are finding and reading your content. Plus, Google can tell when your content is filled with too many keywords and not enough useful information.

• • • Answer questions. Search engines love content that answers the questions people are searching for. Start Googling keywords related to real estate and your market. Here’s an example of what Google shows for “Toronto condos.” These are questions you can tackle in your content (you can literally put the question in the title!).

Metadata

Metadata is one of the building blocks of good SEO. It’s essentially information that provides information about other information — in other words, it’s a description of an information source.

In search results, metadata is the information that accompanies a result. There’s a meta title (the title of a web page) and a meta description (the short copy describing a web page). Here’s an example of metadata for a Google search result about Toronto condos:

Metadata is important because it’s what convinces users to click on a search result. More clicks = a better ranking in search results = even more clicks.

If you don’t create your own metadata, Google will do it for you by pulling the title of your page and using a snippet of the page content as your meta description.

Most website content editors give you the option to edit your metadata. Take it!

Here are a few best practices for SEO-friendly metadata:

• • • Keep your title under 60 characters. Google won’t show more than this in results. Make sure it includes your keyword (preferably near the beginning), and that it accurately describes the content of your page.
    • Keep your description under 160 characters. For the same reason as above. Likewise, your meta description should include your keyword and should accurately describe what readers will learn from your content.

• • • Don’t recycle and reuse. Your meta titles and meta descriptions should be unique for each of your website pages. You want to differentiate your content so that searchers can find exactly what they’re looking for when they come across your website in their search results.

Get Yourself a Favicon

Here’s a small (literally) but mighty tip: make sure your real estate website has its own favicon.

“A what?” you may be asking. Take a look at your browser tab right now. See that “mrp” icon on the tab for this page? That’s a favicon.

From Wikipedia: A favicon, also known as a shortcut icon, website icon, tab icon, URL icon, or bookmark icon, is a file containing one or more small icons, associated with a particular website or web page.

Why do favicons matter? Well, a good, highly visible favicon can make a difference when it comes to which search results people choose to click on. That’s because Google displays favicons in mobile search results.

Google offers guidelines to creating favicons. It’s a tiny space to work within, so don’t try to cram too much imagery or text into yours. Keep your favicon easy-to-see, with high-contrast colours and minimal details.

How often do you update the content on your personal real estate website?