Studies suggest more than 90 percent buyers start their search for a home on the Internet. If you want to engage with these people early in their ‘home finding process’, you have to make your content visible in search engine results. This is directly associated with increasing traffic to your real estate site. If people visit your site looking for properties and content related to buying and selling real estate, they will get familiar with your brand. Brand awareness will result in leads.
Now that you know the advantages of increasing traffic to your website, here are some tips you can follow to boost traffic:
Local keywords can improve your visibility in search engine results
Most real estate agents make the mistake of targeting broad keyword terms like ‘buying a home’ or ‘selling a home’. It is basically useless for two reasons: you can’t compete with major brands like Zillow which dominate these keywords (if you want to see results quickly) and the traffic you will get from these keywords will be generic so it won’t necessarily result in leads.
In order to get your content to show up in search engine results quickly, you should target local keywords in your content. You can use the name of your city or neighborhood frequently in your content to make it relevant to your audience. An example of local keyword is ’10 budget homes to buy in (neighborhood name)’.
If you are active in only a few neighborhoods and communities in your city, you should use those neighborhoods and communities as keywords rather than using the name of the city.
You can also write content on specific properties (long property descriptions) that you are most motivated to sell.
Make your content visually appealing
Always remember the phrase – ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’. When people search for homes online, they want to look at pictures of homes in their target neighborhoods. Photos and videos are key engagement objects on all websites, but this is especially true of a real estate site.
Make your site mobile responsive
People should have a great user experience while browsing your site on mobile. Text, pictures and images that you use on your website should be responsive, or in other words they should resize according to the width of the device screen. This device can be a mobile phone, laptop or a tablet. Keep in mind 89 percent of new home shoppers search using a mobile device during the home buying process.
Promote your content
Writing great content is not enough. If you wait for the traffic to kick in as soon as you post a new blog, you are going to be disappointed. You should actively promote your content on platforms where your target audience hangs out. Make sure that you are active on popular social media platforms and regularly post your site’s content on them.
