The real estate industry is highly competitive, especially in major cities. Here are 8 tips tp help drive traffic to your website
1. Start with an SEO Audit
An SEO audit helps to determine which pages are doing well and where you can make improvements. Though performing an audit can be time-consuming, it serves as a benchmark for your progress and gives you the information you need to create a roadmap.
Does your site rank locally?
Are you getting any organic traffic?
Are you generating leads or converting clients?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, there’s a reason for it. The SEO audit can help you figure it out.
2. Optimise for Search
With your audit results in hand, create a plan to address each of the issues.
A systematic approach is best, to ensure you don’t overlook anything. After you’ve fixed the problem areas, look for other ways to improve your overall optimisation.
Focus on:
Keyword research and analysis
SEO-friendly URLs
Optimization of titles and meta descriptions
Image optimization
Proper outbound and internal link placement
Broken links
Redirects
Site speed optimization
Content optimization
CTR and bounce rate optimization
Schema
Robots.txt
XML sitemap
SSL certificate
W3C validation
3. Optimise for Mobile Devices
More than half of global internet traffic (52%) comes from mobile devices. That means, if you want to keep Google and your potential customers happy, your website needs to operate smoothly on smartphones and tablets.
A responsive design automatically adjusts your site to fit any device’s screen, which is crucial for usability. Fast page speed is important because if visitors have to wait too long, they’ll likely click back to the search results to find a more user-friendly site.
A general rule of thumb is to keep things as simple as possible.
The more a user has to navigate through to accomplish their goal, the less likely they will be to follow through all the way to the end. The Mobile-Friendly Test tool will help you determine if your current site passes the test and present you with a list of issues that need your attention.
4. Add Your Site to Google My Business
A big part of local SEO focuses on local citations. The more places where you have your site listed, with your name, address, and phone number consistent across all of them, the better.
Start with Google My Business, and keep your profile up to date. Complete as much of the profile as you possibly can. Spice it up with photos, videos, and other relevant content.
5. Get Social
Social media won’t directly affect your search engine rankings, but it is still an important part of your digital marketing strategy. This will help you to drive more traffic and conversions to your website.
6. Publish Useful Content on Your Blog
Having a blog on your website gives you additional opportunities to target relevant keywords. As a small business, you have limited resources and cannot afford to compete with large enterprises so that’s why it’s important to prioritise the kinds of content you will include.
Before posting the content and sharing it, take a few minutes to optimise it for search engines. Include the relevant geographic keywords in titles, headings and subheadings, meta descriptions, alt text, hashtags, and URLs.
7. Create Video Content
Content is often the easiest to produce, but if you can, you should invest in creating and optimising video content. It can help you distinguish yourself from the competition.
Consider:
Launching and optimising a YouTube channel.
Consistently upload videos to that channel.
Share or upload your videos to your website and social media pages.
Run live streams on Facebook and YouTube to build a larger audience.
Add your geo-targeted keywords to headlines, descriptions, and hashtags.
For accessibility, add subtitles and a transcript. If you add the transcript in the description, it makes it easier for the search engines to crawl and index the content.
8. Use Structured Data Markup
Structured data markup, or schema, helps Google and other search engines learn more about the kind of content on your page. If your site to display rich snippets in search, you need to implement it where possible.
If you’re unsure of what to use or where to start, consult with an SEO professional.
Once you’ve added schema to your site, check it for accuracy with the Structured Data Testing Tool.