5-Step Strategy For Real Estate Investor SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process that helps a website or piece of content rank higher on Google.

Why should you care about strategies for real estate investor SEO?

Can it help you as a real estate investor?

Here’s just one example of the many deals that came from visitors to his website in 2022 thanks to his outstanding SEO efforts:

Jordan knew he was onto a good deal when he bought the property.

But then it got even better…after he bought the property and after some other properties in the area sold, the value of the property went up by $50,000 more than he had anticipated.

How SEO can benefit YOUR real estate investing business

So why should you think seriously about strategies for real estate investing SEO? What are the benefits?

That’s not to say that SEO services come cheap. According to webfx.com, “The average cost of SEO for small businesses is $750 to $2000 per month or $5000 to $30,000 for one-time projects. Smaller companies that invest in SEO consulting services can expect to pay $80 to $200 per hour.”

Both are challenging processes, but if you are prepared to invest funds in your SEO strategy and get it right, you could see good results. Your website will gradually rank higher on Google.

Your goal is to get to the point where a motivated seller or a cash buyer will type a specific set of words into their web browser, and one of the first options they will see in the search engine is a link to content on your website.

There are five steps you should take right away.

Set up your website so that the content is search engine optimized to help you rank high on search engines so that hot leads find you. Your site should have a blog section so that you can add content to rank higher on search engines and showcase your real estate knowledge.

If you don’t already have a website, you have a few options. You can create it yourself if you have the expertise and plenty of time. Another option is to hire someone to do it for you. In either case, this can be frustrating, time-consuming, and expensive.

To press the easy button on this step and to avoid falling into a money pit, check out Done Deal Website. You can have your professional real estate investor website set up in minutes. Once you have a site, you can focus on creating content like blog posts that cover topics your prospects are searching for.

Step #2 – Research keywords

Ensure you include the right keywords in blog articles and other content on your website.

Keywords are the words the individuals in your target audience are typing into Google or whatever search engine they’re using. It is essential to do your research to discover what people are searching for so you know which keywords to use in your blog posts.

For example, they might be using simple phrases such as:

• Sell my house fast

Or

• We buy houses

Whichever keyword, phrase, or question your blog article focuses on, it would be good SEO practice to put that phrase in your blog article’s first sentence or paragraph. You should also make sure those keywords appear in the title of your article (H1) and the sub-headings (H2).

Use those keywords in a natural way throughout your article. Search engine algorithms are more advanced than ever, so more than writing a poor piece of content stuffed with keywords is needed. Content on your website must be good quality and provide real value to the reader, and the keywords must make sense within it.

Step #3 – Create quality content

What makes content quality? It is content that answers the question your reader typed in their search. When your content addresses the actual needs of people visiting your site, it can be called quality content. This content can take many forms, from a blog article to a podcast episode.

Is it necessary for a blog article to be a certain number of words in length? The short answer is no. The length of your content is not directly related to the ranking of your website, but interestingly, many posts that rank high on Google tend to have a higher word count.

For example, blog posts that are 1200 words plus often do better than those of 500 words. This higher ranking is given because Google’s search engine algorithms favor content that satisfies the searcher’s intent. In many cases, this is easier to achieve with longer articles which provide more value for the reader.

When I typed the following in the search bar on my browser, “What do I need to know if I have inherited a house in the US” (your keywords there would be “inherited a house,” the top organic search article that came up was on Experian and is approx. 1,500 words. The second highest ranking article was one on Zillow at approx. 1,350 words.

A 2021 HubSpot study claims that, for SEO purposes, the ideal blog article length is between 2,100-2,400 words.

So as well as being an article that genuinely provides value, ensure you have an introduction that grabs attention. You want your content to get the reader’s attention immediately so they stay on your site and respond to your call to action.

Two good ways of writing an attention-grabbing introduction are to either highlight a problem the reader has or show the benefits. In either case, the reader will want to keep reading because they want to fix that problem or they want those benefits.

Step #4 – Make good use of outbound, inbound, and internal links

These are:

• Outbound links (external links) – Links from your website content to an external source
• Inbound links (backlinks) – Links to your site from other websites
• Internal links – Links that take the reader to another piece of content on your site

Outbound links should link to respected sources. Those sources should also be directly related to your content. In other words, they should not link to a completely unrelated topic. The source you link to should enhance the reader experience and give genuine value.

Inbound links or backlinks boost the credibility of your website. Logically, if others refer to your articles, Google will view your content as valuable and rank it higher. However, the quality of the website linking to your site is important. If the website linking to you is known by Google to be a low-quality site or is unrelated to your site, these links can actually do more harm than good.

Internal links are helpful because they help your readers to navigate quickly and seamlessly through your content to find the information they are looking for. It also makes it easier for Google to find your other content.
Using links properly will align your brand with other quality publishers.

Outbound links and internal links are easier to create than inbound links or backlinks because you can create them. Inbound links require the owner of another website to add your link on their site. There has to be a valid reason and benefit for them to do so. So how can you get started with getting backlinks to your content?

One great way to do so is by writing guest blog posts on outside sites. Make sure reputable publishers host the blogs. Some of the top publishers in the real estate sector include Zillow, Trulia, and Bankrate. The point is to focus on writing quality content for quality publishers.

A backlink is a hyperlink from a different website to your website, often called an inbound link or incoming link. High-quality backlinks help search engines like Google find and index the content of web pages.

Most importantly, search engines also use backlinks as indicators of high authority. Each link that comes back to your site is like a vote for your site from another. A word of caution, you can pay for backlinks, which may seem tempting, but if they are not linking from high-quality sites, this will do more harm than good in the long run. Google is smarter than people think and they have ways of detecting when the links are not authentic. If they suspect you have paid for links, you will be penalized.

Quality backlinks are critical; they will boost your website’s SEO.

Step #5 – Give attention to user interaction

Each time someone clicks to visit your website from the search results, that indicates to Google that your article may be a good result for that keyword phrase. But what happens after they get to your website is also important.

Google is paying attention to how long people stay on your website after they visit your site and what they do once they get there. If people land on your site and immediately hit the back button, that lets Google know your article isn’t a good match for that keyword phrase.

“User interaction” refers to a visitor’s action when browsing your site’s content. Some examples of user interaction would be if the reader clicked on a link, pressed play on a video, or entered their email.

Finding ways to increase user interaction is a strategy that will boost your website’s SEO. The greater the user interaction, the more Google will categorize your site as valuable and rank it accordingly.

Google measures your site’s click-through rate (CTR). The CTR is the number of times your link was listed in the Google results, divided by the number of times people clicked to visit it.

When a visitor leaves without interacting with your site, this is not good for your SEO. It is referred to as a high bounce rate.

Your goal should be to have a low bounce rate. One good tip to increase the time visitors spend on your site and their user interaction is to provide calculators and tools on your website. Engaging videos will also keep your visitors on your site longer.

The more time visitors spend on your site, the higher your page ranks.

Start with an SEO-friendly, lead-capturing website

We have discussed several strategies for boosting your real estate investing SEO, including:

• Effective use of keywords
• Using outbound, inbound, and internal links
• Paying attention to user interaction

All this needs to be built on the proper foundation. For that, you need a high-quality real estate investor website. Do you remember the fix and flipper Jordan mentioned in our intro?
Jordan’s real estate investing SEO strategy led to a deal that made a six-figure profit for him. Your SEO success story begins with your REI website.

Done Deal Website can have your website set up in minutes. Get started today!