real estate SEO consultant

Does SEO work for real estate?

What is SEO and does it work for real estate? Let’s first start with defining SEO. This is the process of getting free traffic from search engines. Search engines, such as Google for example have over 200 Algorithms. Algorithms are computer programs that try to give the searcher exactly what they are looking for.

So for example, if you type a search query in a search engine such as Google or Bing, it will show you two things. The first thing that shows up is paid Ads. These will be at the top of the search result page. Obviously, you have to pay for these and although effective it can get expensive. They will have the word ‘Ad’ beside them. Below is an example.

For this example I used Audi. The search results came back and at the top of the page is Acura. So Acura is using paid advertising and has purchased the word Audi. Beside Acura at the top is the word ‘Ad’. Below is Audi Canada and that is your organic, or unpaid search results.

These are some of the following SEO stats according to Ahrefs.

  • 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine. (BrightEdge)
  • 92.96% of global traffic comes from Google search, Google Images, and Google Maps. (Sparktoro)
  • SEO drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media. (BrightEdge)
  • 53.3% of all website traffic comes from organic search. (BrightEdge)
  • 90.63% of pages get no organic search traffic from Google. (Ahrefs)

For those that don’t know, Ahrefs is a very popular SEO tool that can be used to get higher google rankings. Check them out at https://ahrefs.com/.

Those are some interesting and very important stats. The 90.63% stat of pages that do not get organic search traffic from Google is alarming. Why does that happen? Well, there are 3 steps on how search engines work;

Crawling – Search engines will send out robots to find out any new web pages on the internet and record info about them. Their main purpose is to discover new webs sites or pages and look at the content you have on your website.

Indexing – This is when a search engine decides whether or not it is going to use the content that it has crawled. Most web pages that offer unique and valuable content are placed into the index. These are some of the reasons internet pages may not be indexed;

  • Content is considered duplicate.
  • Content is considered low value or spammy.
  • The page or domain lacked inbound links.

Ranking – This is the most important step. This can only happen after Crawling and Indexing have been completed.

3 Pillars of SEO

As mentioned above there are more than 200 ranking signals that search engines use to sort and rank content and they all fit under the 3 pillars of SEO;

  1. Technical optimization – This happens behind the scenes. These are things that are done to improve SEO but are not related to content.
  2. On-page optimization – This is the process of ensuring the content on your site is relevant and provides a great user experience. There is a lot that goes into this area!
  3. Off-page optimization – This enhances your websites search engine rankings through activities outside of your website. This is largely driven by backlinks.

So how can a real estate SEO consultant help you the realtor?

Just having a website is not enough. I don’t need to tell you this but there is a lot of competition in Real estate! This blog post is a brief overview of SEO but you get the idea of how important it can be to your business. For the most part, if someone is doing a search for Realtors chances are they are not going to look past the 2nd or 3rd page. By working on SEO you can improve those search rankings for your business. Contact Digital Marketing Real Estate to see how we can help!