A Beginner’s Guide to SEO for Real Estate Investor Websites

If you’re a real estate agent or investor looking to work with more clients, it’s time to start investing in SEO for real estate. By optimizing your website and content for search engines, you can attract more qualified leads, improve your online visibility, and ultimately grow your business.

SEO for real estate ensures that your website ranks higher when potential clients search for homes or investment properties, giving you an edge over the competition and helping you connect with more motivated buyers and sellers.

According to Google’s Keyword Planner, there were 12,000 monthly searches for “sell my house fast,” 1,900 for “realtors in my area,” and 27,100 for “how to buy a house.” That’s a lot of potential clients searching for solutions to their problems.

By spending a little time per week creating and optimizing content and using keywords wisely, real estate professionals can rank themselves highly enough without additional paid marketing efforts!

That means they’ll be able to do 2-3 more deals per month while, eventually, only doing half as much work.

How much additional revenue would that mean for your business?

If you average $5,000 to $10,000 per deal, 2-3 extra deals mean $10,000 and $30,000 monthly!

SEO has a 6% conversion rate and drives over 13,000 leads monthly…

Real estate SEO is perhaps the most powerful (and underrated) marketing strategy to drive traffic to your real estate website. Thousands of Carrot members use Search Engine Optimization to generate passive traffic to their websites (i.e., free traffic) — and not just any traffic. SEO traffic is almost always higher quality than paid traffic.

We believe every real estate website needs SEO to maximize success.

Guide to Real Estate SEO

Strategies, Tips & Examples

What is SEO and Why is it Important for Real Estate Investors?

SEO for real estate investors is the process of increasing your website rankings by improving on-page and off-page factors such as keyword content, page speed, descriptive URLs, and backlinks. SEO is inbound marketing, meaning your target market finds you rather than you finding them.

How amazing would it be if YOUR TARGET LEADS consistently visit your website, give you their contact information, and ask you to contact them? All without you spending a penny on paid ads?

Amazing, huh?

That dream is a reality for real estate investors and agents who focus on building their website’s SEO — they attract motivated leads and close more deals than their competitors.

SEO is a surefire way to beat the competition, grow your business, and create predictable income and lead generation.

Why Is SEO Crucial for Generating Real Estate Leads?

The first 10 search engine results get the clicks. 75% of searchers never scroll past the first page!

According to recent data, 93% of home buyers use Google as their primary source of information during the home-buying process. Furthermore, a study by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) found that 44% of new home buyers begin their search online.

These statistics highlight SEO’s crucial role in generating real estate leads. By optimizing your websites for, you can increase their visibility and reach more potential buyers, leading to more successful lead generation and sales.

How Search Engines Work

Search engines are like libraries. They store web pages instead of filling shelves with books.

When you type a query into a search engine, the engine looks through all the pages in its index and tries to return the most relevant results for you. To do this, they use an algorithm.

Search Engine Ranking Factors

You may know that Google uses 200 plus ranking factors in its algorithm.

Don’t let that intimidate you. You don’t need to master all 200 plus to be successful. You’re better off learning the small ranking factors that impact most significantly. With just a little SEO knowledge, anyone can start building their rankings.

If you want to maintain your rankings after earning them, staying up to date with the latest best practices is essential.

Choosing a Domain Name

Your domain name serves as your website’s digital address and a crucial first impression. While it can influence SEO to some extent, it’s not the sole factor. Here’s a breakdown of key considerations for choosing a domain name:

Personally Branded Site

• Brand Identity: Choose a domain name that reflects your brand identity and resonates with your target audience.
• SEO Benefits: Incorporate relevant keywords strategically within your domain name. However, prioritize readability over keyword stuffing.
• User Experience: Keep your domain name concise, ideally under 15 characters.
• Local vs. Global Reach: Consider your target market.
• Availability and Extensions: Check for domain name availability across popular extensions like .com, .org, and industry-specific extensions.

Real Estate Keywords

When we talk about SEO, we’ll often mention “ real estate keywords” a lot. You can’t talk about SEO without mentioning keywords.

What Are Keywords?

Simply put, a keyword is a word or phrase that defines the content on your page or post best.

Your goal is to drive organic traffic (non-paid) to your website from the SERPs. The keywords you choose to target with your content will determine the type of traffic you get.

How to Find Keyword Ideas for Your Real Estate Website

Keyword research is discovering words and phrases people use in their search.

Guiding Principles

Do’s …

• Look for long-tail keywords.
• Pay attention to volume and difficulty.

Don’ts …

• Simply go for the highest volume.
• Don’t go too narrow or too broad.

On-Page SEO

What is On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO focuses on elements you can directly control.

Google’s EEAT Principle For Content

Here’s what it stands for.

• Experience
• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

Craft Compelling Title Tags for Maximum Impact

• Conciseness: Strive to keep your title tags under 60 characters while still conveying the essence of your content.
• Keywords: Incorporate target keywords naturally.

Focus on User Intent, Not Keyword Placement

The first 100 words of your content should grab the reader’s attention and address their specific needs.

Craft Clear and Descriptive URLs

Strive for URLs that accurately reflect the page’s content and are easy for users to understand.

Leverage the Power of Images for SEO

Images are strategic SEO tools. Ensure they relate to your content and improve user understanding.

Off-Page SEO

What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO factors like backlinks and reviews carry up to 50% of the ranking factor weight.

What Are Backlinks?

Backlinks, also known as “inbound links,” link from one website to a page on another website. Earning high-quality backlinks is a cornerstone of SEO success.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO involves optimizing your website’s setup to be easily crawled, indexed, and understood.

Video SEO – Optimizing YouTube for Real Estate

What is Video SEO?

Video SEO is search engine optimization for your YouTube videos rather than written content.

How To Optimize Your Real Estate YouTube Videos

1. Use Video Transcription
   Ensure videos have a title, description, or transcription.
2. Create an Engaging Thumbnail
   Helps determine whether viewers will watch your video.
3. Pay Special Attention To Your Video Title
   Develop a title to entice your target market to click.
4. Optimize Your Video’s Description
   Include your target keyword phrase a couple of times.
5. Optimize Alt Text On Images
   Add alt text to your images with your target keyword phrase.

SEO Keyword Tracking Tools: Optimize Your Real Estate Website Rankings

What is Rank Tracking?

Keyword trackers check the rank positions of your content in Google’s SERPs.

Tools to Check Your Keyword Rankings

1. SEMrush
2. Ahrefs
3. SmallSEOTools Rank Checker
4. Carrot Keyword Ranking Tracker

High-Level SEO Strategy for Real Estate Websites

1. Choose a Website Builder That’ll Get The Tech Stack Right

2. Optimize For Conversions

3. Create a Google Business Profile

4. Choose 3-5 Keyword High-Value Keywords

5. Create Optimized Content For Each Of Your Chosen Keywords

6. Monitor the Results

7. Build Links If Necessary

8. Rinse and Repeat

What To Do If You’re Not Ranking Like You Thought You Would

1. Is your tech stack optimized?
2. Are the keywords too competitive?
3. Is your content the best it could be?
4. What other actions could you take to rank the page?

Want To Build a Bigger, More Sustainable Real Estate Business?

Carrot offers agency-style SEO services that set you up for success following the foundations laid out in this guide, then keeps you optimized month-to-month with additional improvements.