Reinvigorate Your Real Estate SEO Game With These 5 Strategies

Are you running a real estate SEO campaign and struggling to find results? Looking to funnel more traffic through your blog? When you’re starting out, it can be beneficial to stick to the basics.

Keeping it simple allows you to focus on pumping out as much high-quality content as possible. Once you have a foundation of content to draw metrics from, it’s time to conduct a proper content audit.

During your audits, consider these 5 advanced SEO strategies that will help push your blog to the next level.

1. Expand Your Most Popular Content

Digital marketing efforts almost always require some form of content. When it comes to building a powerful SEO strategy, blog posts are key.

There’s an initial baseline of content that needs to be published to start bringing in traffic, which allows you to begin measuring the success of your content with tools like Google Analytics.

You’ll be able to tell which posts are pulling in the most traffic, and which ones need some extra love — even if the reasons why aren’t clear. Over the course of your content audit, you’ll want to do everything you can to improve both high-performing articles and less popular ones.

Improving your best articles first gives you more leverage to improve your less popular articles later.

We’ll explain this idea further in the next section.

Note: For those who don’t have their own blog posts, or are just starting out, search for popular blog posts by other agents and focus there.

Find More Keywords, Provide More Value

This is perhaps one of the simplest strategies listed in this article and might be the most effective.

4 Steps to Expand Your Best Content

• Identify Top Posts — Review the analytics for your blog posts to find your best-performing posts.

• Find Main Keywords — Once you’ve identified these posts, go through them, and pick out some of the main keywords. 

• Get More Keywords — Next, use a keyword planner tool like Keywords Everywhere or UberSuggest to generate a list of long-tail keywords that relate to the keywords pulled from your original content.
• Create More Content — Create useful content about the new keywords and add them to your post.

It’s important to understand that instead of just adding these keywords into your article wherever it makes sense, you’ll want to add more useful content to your posts. 

In other words, when you’re done, the article should be thousands of words longer than it originally was. You should be using your newly identified keywords as subheadings in your article, and adding new content beneath them.

Let’s detail some of the steps above so you know what to look for when expanding your best articles.

Identifying Related Keywords

Imagine one of your top-performing articles is targeting the keyword phrase “how to buy your first home”, and you want it to perform even better.

If you’re using the Keywords Everywhere tool (or a Keyword Surfer + Keyword Shitter combo – a free alternative), you’ll see the estimated monthly volume, cost-per-click, and competition ranking right underneath your search. 

• Start by searching your original keyword phrase. This gives you a baseline to compare related keywords.
• Go through the list of Related Keywords, as well as the People Also Search For suggestions. Both of these lists can be found directly on your Google search, on the right-hand side of the search results.

• Pick out some keyword phrases that weren’t directly covered in your original article. Take a look at the highlighted results below:

Here are four topics that can be added to your How To Buy Your First Home article. By using these keyword phrases as subheadings, we’re now targeting an additional estimated volume of 1,200 searches every month.

Create More Written Content

‘How to buy your first home with bad credit’ and ‘first time home buyer government programs’ both work well as article subheadings, and give us enough material to add another 1,000 words to the article — at least.

Generally speaking, longer written content performs best. Of course, refrain from adding any filler that doesn’t contribute to your rationale.

• Use your new related keywords to add more written content to your article.

While written content on its own has the capacity to drive more organic traffic to your website, you can also create useful images to improve your article’s comprehensibility, along with its shareability.

Create Useful Images

‘Home buying process flow chart’ and ‘buying your first home checklist’ provide the opportunity to add images to your article.

• Research similar image ideas and create something better.

You can search for ‘home buying process flow chart’ right now, and you’ll find there aren’t many results that include a flowchart that’s both well-designed and informative for first-time homebuyers.

• Include the subtitle Home Buying Process Flow Chart into your article to target an estimated 480 searches per month. 

Also, according to our Keywords Everywhere tool, the competition is fairly weak at 0.23 (on a scale of 0.00 to 1.00). This gives you the chance to climb to the first page quickly, allowing more people to find your flowchart. 

If you create a graphic that’s clearly better than other top results, your article could be shared by other agents, real estate websites, Facebook groups, forums, etc…

This article will briefly explain how to have images created inexpensively.

First, let’s talk about what to do with our less popular content.

2. Boost Other Content with Internal Links

When you’re building out your SEO strategy, it’s important to consider your link juice flow.

Link juice is an SEO slang word that describes the value of a particular hyperlink, and the collective value of multiple backlinks pointing at the same webpage. 

The more authoritative a web page is, the more powerful a link from it is.

It’s similar to the combination of reputation and wealth in our society, whereas reputation is Domain Authority, and wealth is Organic Search Traffic. 

Ideally, you want multiple backlinks from multiple high-ranking websites. The problem is, obtaining powerful backlinks from other websites can be tough when your competition is fighting for the same link juice.

Fortunately, you can direct the link juice of your most popular content to less popular content through internal links.

Building a Network of Internal Links

Internal links are hyperlinks from one page of your website, to another page of your website. 

• While you’re expanding your most popular content, look for opportunities to link to other articles on your blog. In order to maximize your efforts, make sure your internal link is relevant and adds value to your reader’s experience.

Furthermore, by adhering to a few basic copywriting principles, you can increase the conversion rates of your internal links, which will help pull your less popular posts up in rank.

This strategy is effective when consistently implemented throughout your entire website. Once the heavy lifting of content creation is finished, setting up your internal links is relatively easy.

For example, consider the roundup post detailed below. It’s a large piece of content that’s specifically designed to be shared as much as possible. 

You can direct where the link juice from your roundup post will flow.

By using internal links, you could draw link juice from your highly-shared roundup post, all the way out to a hyperlocal area page. 

It’s even easier to accomplish this with a system like AF Area Guides, which automatically connects blog posts written about a specific neighborhood to its corresponding area page. 

When implemented successfully, the most popular pages on your website will solidify your search ranking on a hyperlocal level, making it difficult for competition to steal your top spot.

3. Leverage Infographics

Infographics are a great way to organize information.

If your flowchart or infographic strikes your reader as particularly valuable, they’ll be more likely to share your article. It’s also possible that other blog writers use your infographic and cite your website, providing the opportunity to grow your backlink network significantly.

Instead of Googling ‘how to make awesome infographics’ and developing your design chops, you can simply hire a professional. 

Fiverr Makes Easy… and Cheap!

Online marketplaces like Fiverr offer an array of skill levels, with prices starting as low as $5. There are other popular freelancer websites like Upwork, but they usually require more time and effort to complete the process.

Fiverr’s platform is easy to navigate, and there are plenty of freelancers to choose from for almost any digital task. 

What sets Fiverr apart from most other freelancer websites is the way they organize the available services.

Take a look below at two of the search results for ‘infographic designer’:

Notice how the most relevant pieces of information are front and center. You can get an idea of each freelancer’s ability, rating, pricing, and style, all in one glance.

Other websites often share the same information and might offer higher-quality workers, but their processes usually follow a more traditional approach.

This means you’ll need to create a job listing, interview multiple candidates, and decide which candidate to hire. 

Fiverr turns their freelancer’s services into products (called gigs), and has a standard way of presenting them. This works great for straightforward assignments like infographics and saves both parties a lot of time. 

Also, fees on Fiverr are usually very low.

Outsourcing work is what separates the self-employed from business owners.

The concept of outsourcing can also be applied to the final advanced SEO strategy in this article, but in a way you might not expect it.

4. Roundup Posts

Roundup posts are used to create a piece of content that multiple experts are incentivized to share with their audiences.

They’re incentivized to share your post because you interviewed them about their career, then published their answers in an article showcasing their expertise. It’s a great look for them.

Since you’ll be copy/pasting their answers, a majority of your content has already been written for you. From this perspective, you’ve outsourced the task of writing in exchange for positive publicity.

If done successfully, there are 3 main benefits you’ll bring to your business:

1. A Stronger Network — By offering an opportunity that benefits multiple influencers and experts in the real estate industry, you’ll be improving your professional network.
2. Increased Authority — When you create a roundup post properly, you’re essentially hosting an event. By inviting experts and influencers to your event, you’re tapping into their collective knowledge and their combined audiences.
3. More Traffic — Your featured guests will be invested in the success of this article, which means they might want to share it on all their channels. Furthermore, since the roundup is full of expert advice, your audience is more likely to enjoy and share it with others.

For example, imagine building a blog post titled “37 Expert Real Estate Agents Reveal The Most Common Mistakes New Agents Make”.

Agents from all backgrounds and levels of success are going to be curious to know what these experts have learned over the years. 

If the article is done correctly, you’d have 37 authority figures interested in promoting your content.  

While this won’t be your only source of promotion, it’s one of the best methods possible for spreading the word.

Focus on These 4 things When Creating Your Roundup Post

Questions — Ask questions your target audience needs an answer to. Make it easy and fun for experts to answer.

• Experts — Choose experts that have created and shared great content in the past, as well as experts with instantly recognizable names.
• Content — Format your content so your readers can enjoy it. Try to create a consistent, well-designed theme for your experts.
• Promotion — You shouldn’t expect every expert to share your roundup post. Create your own promotional strategy that will succeed on its own, and treat experts sharing it as a hefty bonus.

For each of the steps above, try to come up with a unique angle that’s useful to your audience. Many roundup posts get slapped together hastily, so you’ll want to take your time.

5. Leverage Schema Markup

What happens after you reach the #1 spot for your main keywords? You make your search result look and perform better with schema markup!

What is Schema Markup and How Can It Be Used?

Schema markup is a form of code you can add to your web pages. It improves the usefulness of your web page in search results and gives you instant authority.

Not only that, but schema markup is also still vastly underutilized. According to Searchmetrics, 36.6% of Google search results include Schema markup, yet only 0.3% of websites use it. This is the most technically involved SEO strategy in this article, which helps explain its lack of implementation.

In the simplest words possible:

Schema markup tells Google in computer language what kind of data is being displayed – for example, the title of this article is 5 Advanced Strategies for Real Estate SEO in 2020.

Google can already read the words, but the schema markup tells Google that it’s the ‘name’ of the article. This is called microdata – and now Google can do more with the information you provided. 

You’ll have an immediate advantage over most of your competitors by leveraging Schema markup. Not only that, it can do a lot for your image online. 

Take a look at some examples of what Schema markup can do below.

Showcase Social Proof

You can add a star-rating meter within your search results to showcase your social proof. 

One of the most powerful pieces of content you can share with your audience is proof that other people would recommend your services. 

Collecting reviews and testimonials is very important for effective real estate SEO. You can increase your social proof even further with the Testimonials Tool, which features Schema markup automatically.

Additional Links & Descriptions

You worked hard to earn your spot in Google’s search results. Why not take up more space with links to your webpages?

Notice how this listing has virtually tripled in size. It also includes six direct links to specific web pages, with room for a short description underneath each link. This method also gives you a chance to show your target market what your website is all about. It could lead to even higher conversion rates for your SEO campaign.

How to Add Schema Markup to Your Website

We can use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper, which gives us an interface where we can click elements on the website and mark them with the appropriate tags. 

Enter your website’s URL and choose ‘Local Business’ to get started. For this example, we used AgentFire client Mel Biondi’s page for Coastal 239.

As you can see, there are loads of microdata that you can tag for Google. For tags that you can’t click on the page, you can enter the values manually by clicking ‘Add missing tags’ on the bottom right.

Once you’re done, you can click ‘Create HTML’ on the upper right of the interface – now it’s just a matter of inputting the schema into your own website’s HTML source code or copy-pasting it by downloading the file.

Once you get more comfortable using this tool, you can add even more microdata to squeeze as much juice out of your website as possible – here’s a long list of real estate agent schema markup ideas, along with their HTML resources.

In Conclusion

Right now there are thousands of real estate agents publishing content, capturing the attention of homebuyers in their hyperlocal area. This is an essential part of dominating your market, and a few small tweaks and simple concepts can keep you one step ahead of your competition.

The rules of the SEO game are constantly evolving, and Google has a vested interest in keeping their algorithm changes private. That said, it’s become apparent that Google is doing everything they can to make their search engine as useful as possible. This translates to higher rankings for the highest-quality content.

Listed above are 5 advanced strategies that will ensure your blog’s optimization. It’s important to remember that while these strategies are effective, you need a strong foundation of truly useful content for them to truly shine.

And if you want to dominate your hyperlocal real estate market, check out AgentFire’s AgentFire Sites, #1 rated for several years in a row.