SEO: Why It Matters in Today’s Market

Real estate agents are always looking for ways to take their business to the next level. One strategy you can try that will help you get better rankings with Google and exclusive leads to your specialty: SEO.

SEO, otherwise known as Search Engine Optimization, helps Google recognize your website, which can drive traffic directly back to your website. To help explain what SEO can do for your business, Kevin Piechota and Danny Jessop came together on our Secrets of Top Selling Agents webinar to share how SEO can help your real estate business.

What Is SEO and How Does It Work?

If you have a website for your business, you might not be getting as much traffic or exposure to your site that you would like. That is where SEO comes into play. Optimizing your website by changing out generic keywords for more specific keywords, and updating images and videos with specific titles or descriptions, will help to draw potential clients back to your website when they are searching on Google for their next agent or home.

SEO also plays a role into how your website functions within a Google search. When you have visitors coming to your site and interacting with it, Google looks at that site and moves it up. Google likes to see that a site is performing well and gaining visitors. The more visitors and interactions from Google, the better your site will perform.

When potential clients are visiting your website, Jessop states that you should be prepared to offer them something in exchange for their information. He also stresses that you should make the website easy to use and navigate.

How Google Views Your Website

You want to have a website that Google likes and will want to send traffic to. If your keywords are updated and specific, and your website is easy to use and shows up on the first page of Google, then you are already doing something right. The more actions, traffic and content on your site, the more Google will be willing to send traffic back to your site. Google chooses websites by their relevance.

“Relevance is what’s on your actual website” says Piechota, The more relevant your content and titles are, the more relevant Google will find your business.

Tips for What You Can Do Now

There are numerous ways having a website can help your business. However, for your website to generate business for you, you have to be prepared to put in the work to make sure that it is doing the best it can do for your business. Check out some of the tips below:

– Update your keywords. Update your keywords to be specific to what you do. If you focus mainly on luxury listings or a specific neighborhood, make sure to update your keywords to reflect those specific words.

– Images and videos need titles and descriptions. When you have images and videos on your website, make sure to provide proper descriptions and titles for those images. This will help ensure that when people are searching on Google for specific keywords, your images and videos show up in the results.

– Check your website’s performance. Checking your website’s performance with tools such as SEMRush and Spyfu can be good for discerning where your website is showing up on Google.

– Hire a company. If managing a website’s SEO isn’t quite your thing, hire a company to manage it for you and watch your business take off. If this is something that you’d like to try, check out Homes.com SEO Fuel.

Making sure your website’s SEO is up and running properly ensures your website is prepared to increase your online presence and draw in clients from your website. Understanding SEO can be challenging; if you’d like to watch the recording of Piechota and Jessop’s webinar, head over to our Secrets of Top Selling Agents Facebook Group here.

Joe Sesso is director of Sales and national speaker for Homes.com. For more information, please visit marketing.homes.com.