How to do SEO for real estate website?

I’ve been working on several SEO projects, including websites for real estate agents. While there’s a lot of information out there on SEO, I often found it generic and lacking in practical advice. That’s why I’m here to share my experience and the insights I’ve gained from working on real estate websites. This guide will provide you with a clear, step-by-step approach to SEO that’s specifically tailored for the real estate industry. Let’s dive in and learn how to do SEO for real estate website and get more traffic!

Key Points You Might Ask.

How to do SEO for Real Estate Website in 8 steps.

Technical SEO for Your Real Estate Website

Step One: Audit Your Website Manually or With Tools

When starting your SEO project for a real estate website, you need to first audit your site completely. Each webpage should be examined and identified. Real estate websites often have hundreds of pages created automatically by themes, such as area pages, city pages, property types, agent profiles, etc. Because of the theme you purchased, these pages are already created without you doing anything.

You can use tools like Screaming Frog or SEMrush to crawl your website. For example, if you have a real estate website in Karachi, you might find pages for various neighborhoods like Clifton, DHA, Gulshan, etc. Make a list of these pages and categorize them based on their relevance and current SEO status.

Step Two: Optimize and Fix Each Webpage

Now, you need to optimize all these webpages to ensure they are clean and well-structured. This includes:

• Content Optimization: Ensure each page has unique, relevant, and engaging content.
• Heading Structure: Properly structure your headings. For instance, H1 should be your main title, followed by H2 for subheadings, and so on. I found that several pages were not properly formatted, with H2 defined as H1, which needs to be corrected.
• URLs and Navigation: Make sure your URLs are clean and descriptive. Improve the navigation to ensure users and search engines can easily find what they’re looking for.

Step Three: Save Crawl Budget

Optimize your crawl budget by disallowing unnecessary pages. This includes pages like terms and conditions, privacy policy, enquiry forms, and other less critical pages. You can do this by adding these pages to the robots.txt file.

Example:

In your robots.txt file, add:User-agent: * Disallow: /terms-and-conditions/ Disallow: /privacy-policy/ Disallow: /enquiry-form/

By doing this, Google will focus on indexing your more important pages, enhancing the efficiency of your SEO efforts.

Step Four: Submit Your Site on Google Search Console

If your website is already submitted on Google Search Console, you can skip this step. If not, follow these steps to submit it:

Dive deep in How to submit your website on Google search console for free

1. Go to Google Search Console.
2. Sign in with your Google account.
3. Click on “Add Property” and enter your website URL.
4. Verify your site ownership using the recommended methods (HTML file upload, domain name provider, Google Analytics, etc.).

Step Five: Get Google Indexing API for Fast Indexing

You might already know real estate websites has hundreds of webpages, and we want them to be indexed quickly. That’s why it’s time for you to use the Google Indexing API to speed up the indexing of your site. Here are the steps:

1. Access Google Cloud Console: Go to the Google Cloud Console.
2. Create a New Project: Click on “Select a Project” and then “New Project.” Name your project and click “Create.”
3. Enable Indexing API: Navigate to the API library, search for “Indexing API,” and enable it.
4. Create Service Account: Go to the “Credentials” tab and click “Create Credentials,” then “Service Account.” Fill in the required details.
5. Assign Roles and Permissions: Grant the service account the necessary roles such as to notify Google of updates, new pages, and deletions, ensuring faster indexing.
6. Download JSON Key: Create and download a JSON key file for the service account.
7. Set Up API Access on Your Website: Install a plugin like “Indexing API” on your WordPress site and upload the JSON key file. Configure the plugin with your service account details.

This is particularly useful for a real estate website with many dynamically generated property listings.

Learn more about Difference between on-page, off-page, and technical SEO

Step Six: On-Page SEO for real estate website

Now that your website is clean and the crawl budget is optimized, you can start with on-page SEO methods. This includes:

• Competitor Analysis: Identify what your competitors are doing and find opportunities to improve your site.
• Keyword Research: Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Moz, or SEMrush to find relevant keywords.
• Content Creation: Create high-quality, keyword-rich content that addresses the needs of your audience. Use semantic SEO techniques to create related content that supports your main topics.
• Multimedia Optimization: Ensure images and videos are optimized with relevant keywords in the alt text and descriptions.

Example:

For a page on “Luxury Apartments in Karachi,” include keywords such as “luxury apartments Karachi,” “high-end apartments in Karachi,” and use high-quality images with descriptive alt text like “luxury apartment living room in Karachi.”

Step Seven: Off-Page SEO on real estate website

Build high-quality backlinks to improve your site’s authority. This can be done through:

• Guest Posting: Write articles for reputable real estate blogs and include links back to your site.
• Link Building: Reach out to other websites to get backlinks to your content.
• Directory Submissions: Submit your site to relevant real estate directories.

Example:

Write a guest post on a popular real estate blog in Pakistan about “Top 10 Home Staging Tips” and include a link to your site’s staging services page.

Step Eight: Local SEO for Your Real Estate Website

If your website targets specific local markets, focus on local SEO:

• Google My Business: Create and optimize your Google My Business listing. Include accurate information, photos, and customer reviews.
• Local Listings: Submit your site to local business directories and real estate listing sites.
• Local Keywords: Optimize your content with local keywords like “homes for sale in Karachi.”

Example:

For a real estate agency in Lahore, optimize your Google My Business listing with photos of properties, customer reviews, and keywords like “real estate agent in Lahore.”

What is Real Estate SEO?

Real estate SEO refers to optimizing and structuring your website to attract more traffic from users searching for real estate-related queries. It’s about converting your website from an unstructured state into a properly organized and structured one so that search engines can understand the hierarchy and relevance of your content. By targeting specific keywords relevant to the real estate industry, you can improve your website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) and attract more qualified leads.

Benefits of Real Estate SEO

Real estate SEO offers several benefits for your website and business:

1. Increased Visibility: By optimizing your website for relevant keywords, you can improve its visibility in search engine results, leading to more organic traffic.
2. Higher Quality Leads: SEO helps you attract users who are actively searching for real estate properties or services, resulting in higher quality leads and conversions.
3. Cost-Effective Marketing: Compared to traditional advertising methods, SEO is a cost-effective way to market your real estate business and generate leads over the long term.
4. Builds Credibility and Trust: A well-optimized website with high-quality content signals to users and search engines that you are a credible and trustworthy source in the real estate industry.
5. Competitive Advantage: By outranking competitors in search engine results, you can gain a competitive advantage and attract more potential clients to your website.

Challenges in Real Estate SEO

Honestly, there are several challenges you might face in your real estate website:

1. Number of Webpages and Time for Optimization: Real estate websites often have hundreds or thousands of pages, including property listings, city pages, and feature pages. Optimizing and structuring such a large volume of content can be time-consuming and labor-intensive.

• Solution: I have faced this challenge too, but hey, there are solutions! You can use AI tools like generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT or Gemini to speed up the optimization process and efficiently handle large volumes of content.

1. High Volume of Competition and Saturation: The real estate market is highly competitive, with many websites vying for the same keywords and audience. Standing out from the competition requires strategic planning and patience.

• Solution: Honestly, you need to be strategic here. Focus on long-tail keywords, local optimization, and unique value propositions to differentiate your website from competitors.

1. Frustration in Slow Indexing: With a large number of webpages, Google’s crawler may take time to index all your content, leading to frustration and delays in ranking.

• Solution: I know this can be really frustrating, but you can use techniques like the robots.txt file to control which pages are crawled and indexed, prioritize important pages for indexing, and leverage Google Cloud Console’s Web API indexing key for quicker indexing processes. This way, you save Google’s crawler budget and ensure that essential pages are indexed promptly, improving the overall speed and efficiency of the indexing process.

A word from Shahnoorblogger

Nailed your real estate SEO with this guide, right?

This article breaks down everything you need to know about SEO for your property website – like a total roadmap!

Got any other Real estate related SEO tips? Leave a comment below I’d love to hear them!