As a real estate professional, you probably already know that having a clean, modern website is key to getting business. But are you making sure people can find it? In addition to building a website for your business that you can be proud of, following good SEO practices is crucial to bringing traffic your way.

What is SEO?

While SEO or "Search Engine Optimization" can sound intimidating, you don't have to be in a technical position to optimize your web pages and drive results. In fact, there are various things every real estate website owner can do to help improve their online visibility and search rankings. And just in case the importance of this isn't clear, consider the fact that 68% of all online experiences begin with a search engine. There are quite a few ways you can make your site more SEO friendly, some of which are mentioned below.

Create Good Content

Once upon a time, websites were able to rank highly in search engine results simply by jamming in top-searched keywords anywhere they could. Unfortunately, this tactic often meant poorly written content. Now, Google frequently updates its algorithm to weed out poor results. While keywords are still important (more on this subject in a bit), search engines now place greater importance on well-formatted, original content. In fact, 72% of marketers worldwide say creating relevant content for your business is the most effective SEO tactic.

To ensure you're regularly creating content that can be found and indexed by search engines (which will also help with SEO), you may want to keep a real estate blog. This can be its own section of your website, and many WordPress, Wix, and other website builder designs already provide options for them. To improve your visibility in a wide range of real estate-related searches, you'll want to publish a combination of posts that are evergreen (timely year-round), seasonal, and trendy subjects. Word counts can vary, but according to Backlinko, long-form content receives 77.2% more visibility and backlinks (links from other websites) than shorter blogs and articles.

Use Practical Keywords

Each of your posts should be its own original content focused around a specific keyword phrase (Google often does not index duplicate content). And as mentioned above, previous SEO tactics included 'keyword stuffing' that is now frowned upon and outdated.

To achieve modern SEO results, use phrases people are actually Googling rather than just general words. For example, being more precise and optimizing an article around the phrase 'houses for sale in x city' will yield higher search rankings than just 'housing market.' A good tool to use is Google Trends, which allows you to search for real estate-related keywords and phrases that will help improve your rankings.

Shorten URLs and Meta Descriptions

Both search engines and users can be confused and turned off by URLs that are too long and complicated. The URLs for each of your pages should be relatively short and straightforward about what the content is about (a good example is websitename.com/articletitle).

Likewise, meta descriptions (the little description that shows up below each search engine result) do not have a direct effect on SEO, but well-written ones are often key to getting web users to click on your site. Keep the meta description at 160 characters or less, or it will get cut off in most search engines and won't be as effective. The same goes for meta titles, which should be no longer than 60 characters.

Use Links

Both internal and external links can be highly effective for SEO. To keep your audience on your website and increase conversions, add internal links (where they make sense) to help them discover other pages. Likewise, linking to authoritative outside websites can help make your website more established with Google.

In addition to the links on your own website, building backlinks from other websites to yours will help establish your site's authority. If you are quoted about real estate in a local news article, for example, ask them if they can link to your website in the article.

Even the most experienced SEO professionals cannot boost a website's rankings in just days. In fact, it often takes months to start seeing real results. Don't be afraid to use tools like Google Analytics to track your progress. Above all, remember that your website exists to provide useful information to both current and prospective real estate customers. When you have great content and are using good SEO practices, success is just around the corner!