I recently took on a client to build up some ranking for real estate keywords. I know how valuable it is to get a good lead for buying or listing a home for sale. I’ve never worked with a real estate agent client before, but I was up for the challenge.
I started to dig for all the best keywords. If you’ve ever had to deal with local keywords, you’ll know just how little data there is out there. Local keywords are hyper-specific and tend to show very low search volumes. Because of the nature of local search engines, you can’t use SEO tools to get accurate data.
With local search, there is a search engine for every major area on a map. In any state or province, you can expect to work with at least a dozen search engines. Although they all operate similarly, they spread and dilute the data.
Peter Krysik
Finding The Right Keywords
Where my client was, I had to find local keyword search volumes that would work in Ontario.
I quickly found the best keywords to target were:
- Homes for sale
- Houses for sale
- Houses for rent
- Homes for rent
and added the city name before or after the keyword.
- Homes for sale Ontario
- Ontario homes for sale
Working From The Top Down
When dealing with local searches, you want to focus on the larger geographical area first. If I’m trying to get local searches in a city, I’ll make sure to target the entire region surrounding that city. If your services or products can spread beyond that region, I’ll target neighbouring regions as well. Before targeting regions, I’ll go after the province. “Homes for sale in Ontario” is targeted right from the beginning. Then I’ll target Halton Region, a region within Ontario. Next, I’ll target Milton, a town within Halton Region.
This guarantees a healthy profile of geographical data for Google to understand exactly which area I’m looking to find customers and target the keywords they’re searching for.
Results
Below you can see a screenshot of the keywords I have targeted and their new position rankings. With some additional work, I can get these keywords on the first page of Google. My client will begin receiving tons of calls and emails with inquiries about buying and selling homes in these geographical areas.
Conclusion
So, would you say SEO works for Real Estate? I would say absolutely! It’s all about understanding the right keywords and how to get ranked for them. I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of results I can get for this client, and down the line, the raving referrals that will follow suit.