Just SEO Will Starve Your Real Estate Website

You're working hard at SEO, Search Engine Optimization, for your real estate website, so why can't you get on that first page of Google results for any of your major keyword phrases?

You can't quit on the SEO, but you can add some SEO related activities to boost your positioning and traffic to your site. There is also one strategy you can use to boost your search engine positioning, so let's talk about it first.

Strategy 1: Use Different Key Phrases - The Old Long Tail

There is one thing Google has done that makes key phrase research more difficult. Google quit publishing search phrase statistics the way they did before. However, they are still discoverable if you set up a Google Ads account. You don't have to run ads or spend any money to do so, and it gives you access to the tool that suggests key phrases related to your input. You still will not see how many searches, but if Google suggests it, then you know there is activity for the search terms.

Action: Set Up Adwords and Trial Campaigns

Remember that you don't have to run campaigns or spend money, but you can use the tools. Who knows, you may decide to give ads a try later anyway. Go into the tools to set up an ad campaign in the Ads tools. Enter different search phrases, especially phrases you and your competition are using now. Google will immediately make suggestions of related phrases, and you know they must generate some traffic. Also, if you do a few searches on them outside of the tool, as if you're a buyer or seller, do you see some difference in the first page results when compared to the common phrases? If so, then there is an opportunity.

Now take those key phrases and work them into content on your site, even if you need to write some new pages, articles, or blog posts. You know that these phrases change the results order somewhat, so why not grab off some positioning using phrases your competition doesn't use?

Strategy 2: Boost Incoming Traffic from Other Sites

Backlinks have long been a part of SEO. That's those links from other sites back to yours. You may be working to get more of those by working with non-competing sites and blogs. It's likely too that you have a Facebook business page, business Twitter account, and a business LinkedIn presence. If not, you need those to proceed with these strategies.

Action: Develop Your Social Strategy and Put it to Work

Though Google has released information that social site links are not used directly in SEO site ranking, they definitely benefit a site's traffic and positioning. From the Search Engine Journal article titled How Social Helps SEO (Final Answer]:

The more shares on social media you have, the more opportunities people have to see your content and link to it.

In this case study, a company achieved over 130,000 Facebook shares to a web page and shot up the rankings for keyword phrases that were competitive. It still ranks #1 (as of this writing) and is a really good example of a good content creation and promotion strategy.

What the article makes clear is that it isn't the number of times something is shared on social sites, but there is significant value to links in those shares. In other words, if you place content on Facebook that is of interest to people, and in it is a link to your site, you can gain SEO value from the link when it is shared and appears elsewhere. Of course, nobody knows exactly what is in Google's algorithms, but studies like these suggest things you can do to build SEO ranking for your real estate website.

To view the original article, visit the WebsiteBox blog.