Real Estate SEO for WordPress

As a real estate agent, having an online presence that delivers consistent results can be the deciding factor in keeping your business going, especially in difficult financial times. Being on both sides of the coin, I’ve seen the potential windfall that awaits those with the proper marketing, and seen the black hole of frustration that can envelop those at the bottom of the list. That being said, nothing is more important to an Agent’s online success than being found by the right people, and being found often, and I’ve said it before. Of course the way your website looks and performs is a big factor in that success, but to be brutally honest, I’ve witnessed atrocities of design on the first page of Google that performed like a champ; as in any industry, it’s often who you know that determines how far you’ll go.

So what’s the secret? What’s the best plan for getting found by clients looking for what you offer, and capturing the lead? Search engine optimization is the smartest foundation for any online marketing campaign, besting all other approaches on cost, results, and strength. Bottom line, being on the first page is the holy grail of internet marketing, and it comes with many tall tales. Let’s brush aside the rumors and all the writing on the wall to look at the basic fundamentals of a successful real estate SEO campaign, and how we can use WordPress to make it all come together.

Keyword & Market Research

The first step in a SEO campaign is research. There are various online tools available for keyword research, some available for free, and all it takes is some time. The most effective method to finding good keywords is to put yourself in the shoes of your targeted visitor. What are they looking for? What would they type in to find this information? Concentrate on geographic specifics, as real estate is typically focused on an area. Find the most popular keywords, and create a list of 20-30 phrases you’ll use in your campaign. This will be the framework for most of your optimization techniques and will also serve as the ranking goals. For example, want to draw in potential home buyers in the Seattle area? Strive to be on the first page of Google for the keyword phrase “Seattle homes for sale” and you’ll know the rewards are coming.

Title and Description Optimization

When it comes to internal website optimization, ensuring your page title and description match your campaign and contain your keywords is vital. Use your researched keywords in your titles and descriptions throughout your site, and engines will naturally rank you for the phrase. Fortunately, WordPress is excellent at providing tools for optimizing your site for engines from the inside out, and specifically, the AgentPress WordPress Real Estate theme provides this advantage by including the feature standard with the theme. When optimizing the title and description, keep your users in mind. Don’t just stuff keywords where you can, but instead craft thoughtful sentences that appeal to both visitors and engines alike.

Article and Blog Post Writing

In this fast-paced internet revolution, if you stand still, you’re moving backwards. Same goes for SEO. Creating a site and optimizing it isn’t enough – you must consistently contribute to the engines and their thirst for content. In this respect, WordPress makes it easy by providing the most advanced blogging platform available. Fresh, relevant content goes very far in helping the engines find your site more often and ranking you higher, so take advantage of your site’s blog feature and write as much as you can. Again, use your researched keywords in the post titles and throughout the content, and keep your posting schedule routine. Having regular additions to the site are better than posting everything at once; we always want to give engines and users a reason to come back.

Community Content

Like I mentioned in my previous post on this topic, being a community resources is a smart way to appeal to users and provide them with what they’re looking for online. It’s similar with SEO, as search engines will index, or read this information, and classify you as a valuable site when it comes to geographic searches. Provide school and community data, recent trends in the neighborhood, or even maps and events, and you’re labeling your site through various channels, providing unlimited avenues for visitors and engines to find you, and potentially increasing conversions and rankings. All the information is out there, it’s simply a matter of putting it together in one place.

External Factors

Link popularity is a very sought-after stat in SEO. Essentially, this boils down to the number and value of the sites linking to your site, and is probably just as important as internal optimization factors when it comes to ranking. The best thing about link popularity is that it’s natural. Site owners will link to your site for good reason when you provide resources, data, and articles about a specific topic or market, and that builds your credibility with engines exponentially. You can also go out and participate in the online community and submit your site to various places that provide links to increase this stat, although it pays to be picky when choosing who you want to link with. Again, because WordPress is such an active community, taking advantage of that will help in building link popularity and driving your site to the first page.