For a lot of real estate websites, the majority of landing pages are simply listing pages that have been indexed by search engines. These provide many entry points into the site. However, since MLS data is shared with every other website on that MLS feed, including big players such as Trulia, and Zillow, the competition for visibility is high. Sellers want to get as many people viewing their property as possible so that it will sell. This puts agents and brokers under pressure for good search rankings, where the majority of people begin their property search.

So How Do I Get My Listings to the Top?

For the reason mentioned above, your listings can appear on other competitor sites as syndicated listings. While there is no silver bullet in getting your listing on your website to rank number 1 for a property, there are several ways to increase the chances of leap-frogging the pack. In no particular order, here are 10 ways to improve search engine traction to your listings.

1. Share Your Listings on Social Media

This seems like a no-brainer for a business page on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram since your network can easily share these listings through links and do a lot of work for you. Watch out, however, that you don’t overuse these mediums and come across as overtly commercial. Simply posting listings with no context can have the reverse effect and the Likes and Followers you have slowly built, will quickly disappear. If there is a listing with an appealing narrative, then make sure to comment about the listing and explain why you think your network needs to see it.

2. Promote on Real Estate Aggregator sites

If you can’t beat them, join them. Sites like Trulia, and Zillow receive millions of visitors a day and so the potential visibility for your listing is significant. This comes at a cost since most of these sites will require a Premier or Pro account, essentially a fee for promoted listings. A good tool to measure the quality of traffic from these sites is Google Analytics. If these traffic sources consistently refer visitors that stick around on your site and convert into leads, then working this traffic source a little harder can be worthwhile. Keep in mind that you are not the only broker receiving promotions on these sites, so loyalty to your brand has not been established at the point someone views your listing.

Google Analytics showing the quality of these types of visitors

 

3. Create a video tour of the property

The benefit of video tours is that you can gain search engine traction since videos are indexed. Be sure to optimize the video title and description by including the address, MLS number, and some keyword-rich copy. Include a link to the property detail view page on your site rather than just a link to your home page, so you are directing visitors to the relevant page instead of forcing them to search again for it on your site. Property video tours can be inexpensive or highly produced. If you’re selling a luxury property with a favorable commission, it is worth spending upfront to market the property in its best light. If you put yourself in front of the camera to tour the viewer, then this can build even more trust, demonstrating to people that you know the property inside and out. It’s also a good marketing strategy to capture other sellers looking to find a listing agent.

4. Enhance the listing with additional information

One of the many benefits of having a real estate website with Union Street Media is your ability to further optimize your own listings beyond what is shared in the MLS. This can include customizing the title of the page other than the address. Other ways to enhance your listing are to include a video tour, customize the URL for a better click-through rate in search engines, and provide more keyword-rich copy. This will send more signals to search engines to help your rankings and make the listing more link-worthy. Not all Content Management Systems will have this feature, so this is a way to gain much more control over your listings. Vermont broker Geri Reilly is a great example of taking advantage of these features.

5. Blog about your listings

Similar to using social media, your blog is a way to communicate less formally with site visitors, so avoid an overtly commercial blog strategy. Pick out listings of interest each week to blog about in addition to posting other types of content on your blog. Listing spotlights encourage subscribers since there is care behind the choice of properties and a unique description separate from the MLS description that has been provided on the standard listing page. The SEO benefits of blog posts can help contribute to the listing’s search ranking and, in conjunction with a video tour or listing video and images, can add value that pushes up your rankings, reaching number 1 in Google and beating out all the big real estate websites.

6. Feature your listing on your home page

Sometimes you need to put content in front of existing traffic to get noticed, and there is no better place than your home page to do this. Our websites offer clients a variety of featured listings options that funnel traffic to your listings quickly. We also track visitor metrics such as conversion rate, and this is on average a higher rate for site visitors that have viewed a featured listing. In some cases, 1 single listing can be the featured listing, which for an individual agent with only a few listings, does a great job of shining a light on a property.

Visitors drawn deeper into the site via featured listings, are highly engaged.

 

7. Be Smart, have a Mobile Responsive Site

Considering how much time is spent outside when looking for houses, providing a great mobile experience to your website visitors is crucial in order to check out information online about a property. Growth in mobile device adoption has continued to skyrocket. Our websites enable visitors to save their favorite properties to their accounts and access them from a smartphone. The mobile device experience is all about simplicity, making pertinent content easy to find. We offer some useful features such as click-to-call, which allows visitors to click on your company’s phone number and automatically dial it from their phone. The auto-locate feature is great for real estate because it helps users find properties in the area they’re living in without typing in their addresses.  A map of your company’s location might also be helpful so that visitors can find directions to your office easily.

union street media wins the most in best mobile in the 2022 realtrends website award rankings

QR codes may not be a major driver of traffic but they’re an opportunity nonetheless. Utilize these on any off-line marketing such as newspaper ads and yard signs. The effort to actually create a QR code is minimal, so if you are capturing leads from it, the ROI is high. Remember to shorten your URLs and then create the QR code, since these are easier to scan for mobile devices.

8. Create a single property website

This requires more effort and is more suited to luxury real estate. The idea behind these is to create much more content around 1 listing to improve its search engine visibility and market a property to its fullest capacity. While this has many benefits, this will not necessarily outperform a listing page on your website. For our clients, enhancing the listing, and leveraging their blog and social media combined can have the same effect. A single property website might earn more inbound links due to its URL and can be marketed in print more professionally. Recently, a real estate team created a custom landing page for the luxury end of the business, to promote their listings and how they market their properties. It also serves as a place to direct visitors from offline sources such as magazines and brochure materials. They also used pay-per-click ads to drive qualified online traffic to this page with great success.

9. Use paid search advertising

If you have a list of your own listings on your website, you can use a pay-per-click ad to drive traffic to this page. If your listings are similar in price and type, then this makes it easier to create ad copy that targets a particular audience e.g. luxury waterfront homes. If you have a wide range of listings from mobile homes and condos to single and multi-family listings, it becomes more problematic, since your audience is more diverse and will not want to be directed to a property type they are not interested in. In this case, opt for a few ads targeting these different types and create multiple landing pages for these types of properties. This is a great way of guaranteeing page 1 placement to help drive traffic when you need it the most.

10. Use email marketing and drip campaigns

Last but by no means least, is email marketing. This is a great way to nurture your current leads, keep them in the know, and deliver them targeted listings. At Union Street Media, we provide our clients with a tool that enables site visitors to register for property updates they can control. Site visitors can save their favorite searches by town, price, style, or feature and receive a regular email of new listings that come onto the market first. We then track these visitors who have arrived at our client’s site by clicking from a listing update email. Our data shows that these visitors who have come back to the client’s website have a repeat conversion rate of up to 15%, much higher than the average conversion rate of all other site visitors. If they save a search that is exclusively your listings, this helps to keep your listings at the front of their mind. Whether or not you use our real estate content management systems and/or digital marketing services for real estate, nurturing your client list with regular opt-in email updates is a great way to drive high qualified traffic to your listings.

Data measuring visitors that came back to a site from an email property update and then converted again.

 

Interested in elevating your digital marketing strategy for real estate to drive leads? Contact us today!