Assume for one second, that you were in the market to buy a new luxury home or property in your local area or perhaps in a different place regionally or internationally. Where would you go first? No pun intended, but we both know the answer to that! In this day and age, you can’t help but use the internet as a resource for such information. Even if the nearest realtor is only two blocks away, the internet is the first place you’ll go for information before you even think of reaching out to a real estate agent or office. That’s just the way it is by default with today’s consumer.
From a real estate agent’s point of view, this means that the internet is definitely worth concentrating most of your luxury listing marketing efforts on with your real estate business. This brings about the importance of search engine optimization, for your luxury listings which involve optimizing your business and brand so that it reaches out to as many internet users as possible, marketing your business, promoting your services, bringing more leads in, and maximizing exposure. But then again SEO is not the easiest of things in today’s internet marketing, especially in the real estate industry where you’re likely to be dealing with a lot of competition. However, appealing your luxury listing may be, it won’t do much if your internet marketing strategy is not well optimized to bring in leads and traffic to the properties that you are selling.
Here are 6 tips to increase the SEO rating of your luxury listings for your real estate business.
1. The Right Keywords
One of the most effective ways to excel in the real estate business online is to know what your target clients are searching for. It gets even better when you know what they are most likely to search for in advance. Safari SEO Brisbane advises that using the right keywords in your SEO strategy is what will get you new leads, more traffic and even returning customers. In every online ad campaign that you launch, you have to know which keywords to use. Whether you’re promoting a luxury apartment, condo, townhouse, or a single-family home, you have to use the right keywords to be able to reach out to your online target clients. This means conducting research online to determine what your target market searches most on the internet and perhaps come up with a couple of variations, including LSI keywords to use in your content. Enrich your real estate listing with relevant keywords.
You just have to get your keywords right; period! With the right keywords, you’re bound to get more traffic to your real estate listings with more leads and more sales. You can always choose between using keywords that attract express buying intent (internet users ready to buy or sell their property) or those that target the research intent (for internet users who’re not ready to buy or sell their property). Both these kinds of keywords are equally important and none of them should be dismissed unless you’re only focusing on the short-term.
2. Content is Always King
This might have been mentioned earlier or not. Either way, it only portrays the importance of optimizing a website with the right keywords and the right content. Even though some may be huge critics of this, content is king, and perhaps content will always be king! Now that you’ve done your research and you have the right keywords ready, it’s time to put them to good use. For your listing, consider including content that is relevant, informative, educative and factual.
In all these, be sure to use the keywords from your research in creative ways but make sure you check your boundaries to avoid over-optimizing your listings so as to remain in the white hat SEO zone. High-interest keywords also perform better when used in HTML tags, title tags, descriptions, and header tags where possible. Optimizing a website and maintaining quality optimized content will also fetch you more leads, more traffic, and higher ranks on Google.
3. Cutting-Edge Imagery
Do you believe that a picture is worth a thousand words? Okay, this one goes without saying. Images are more effective in capturing attention and interest compared to textual content. Especially in the property business, clients will barely be interested in a property that they can’t get a pictorial idea of. Be sure to invest in professional photography with stunning images of every property you list. Be sure to use the best photos that highlight the most striking features of a property. And if you’d prefer going DIY on the photography part, perhaps for passion or due to financial reasons, maybe these real estate photography tips could be helpful. As a matter of fact, stunning images always do wonders when accompanied with a great website design.
4. High Quality Backlinks
Well, search engine optimization may be the mother of internet marketing of this day and age; you just can’t make it in SEO without a carefully planned backlinks strategy. In essence, there are two types of backlinks. These are inbound and outbound links. Inbound links are links that lead to your website from other websites or online platforms, whereas outbound links are the links that redirect to other websites or platforms from your listing website. There might be an easier way to put this, but link building for real estate business websites is a must. The most important thing, however, is to ensure that your inbound links originate from high-quality sources online, preferably high-authority sites in the real estate or related industries. Backlinks quality is one of the factors used by search engines such as Google to rank sites, in what is called the Google Ranking Algorithm.
5. Relationship Building
In an industry as competitive and challenging as real estate, you just can’t make it on your own. And most importantly, you’ll want to build and maintain a good reputation, which involves customer relationships. Back to the first point, however, you’ll need connections, references and referrals on an established platform that can help propel your brand forward. This encompasses developing and cultivating good relationships on a webinar platform with a wide variety of players in the real estate industry. You’ll want to be involved with a site that heavily interacts with real estate professionals, investors, and other players in the same industry, local and abroad.
6. Other IM Strategies
Organic search marketing is no doubt, the giant of today’s internet marketing. But let no one lie to you that you’ll maximize your online presence, traffic, leads, and real estate sales from SEO alone. A successful SEO strategy works hand in hand with other internet marketing approaches such as social media marketing, listing marketing and content marketing to deliver the best and most effective results. Social platforms are among the most accessed sites on the internet. Just having your site’s page on high-value brands’ social media sites is in itself a great boost for your SEO. Additionally, some people tend to trust the information on social media more than they do organic search results. For all these approaches, be sure to use optimized content with links pointing back to your listing.
However, there’s more to success in search engine optimization than just implementing a strategy. One thing is for sure; doing this all on your own is not a magic bullet for success in the real estate business or any other industry for that matter. You just can’t keep up-to-date with all the online trends. You are in the real estate business, not the SEO business, so hiring a good search engine optimization agency is a great option to maximize these benefits.
