How to Increase Rankings for Your iHOUSE Website through SEO

SEO is important. It can make or break your real estate business. According to the National Association of Realtors, almost all homebuyers start their home search online. Only a small percentage (approximately 10 percent) starts their search offline. Since most clients are searching for homes online, that’s where you need to be most relevant. The secret to staying relevant is SEO. Here’s how you can use SEO to increase your website’s ranking.

Optimize Keywords

Keywords help you to achieve a strong web presence. Choose the ones you want your site to show up for and focus on them. You can select keywords targeting homebuyers and sellers in a certain city, state, or school district. Carry out research to find out how many people are searching for the specific keywords online. Go for niche keywords with less completion and also integrate similar keywords. Bear in mind that relevant keywords are better than popular keywords. Also focus on the end users and don’t spend too much time trying to please search engine spiders.

Use Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are usually made up of many keywords or a particular combination of keywords that users enter into search engines. Such keywords may be more beneficial than short keywords. For example, you can use “condos for sale in Palm Beach Florida” instead of “Palm Beach Florida Condos.” Optimizing your site for long tail keywords usually yields targeted traffic. When people type the keywords into search engines, they are sent directly to your site.

Don’t Forget Meta Tags

Use different tags on all your webpages if you want search engines to favor you. Search engines usually have a hard time trying to figure out the subject or relevance of individual pages with similar tags. Meta Tags have two important fields:

Adding Title Tags

This is a very important SEO tag for your iHouse website. Google allows you to enter up to 60 characters while yahoo permits 110 characters. When writing the title, focus on the most important keywords. Also ensure that each page has a unique title.

Adding Meta Description Tags

Some search engines display your specific description while others don’t. Some use the content in the Meta description tag to rank your site. However, major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing do not give much weight to description tags.

Add Fresh Content Regularly

If you want to stay relevant online, you must add fresh content to your iHOUSE site regularly. When search engines realize that your site generates fresh content frequently, they will begin to crawl your webpages more. Content is an important part of SEO that most realtors overlook. Don’t make the same mistake. Add regular content to your website’s blog to update people on what is happening in the real estate industry. Focus on your local real estate industry as this will work to your advantage.

There are many ways you can add fresh content to your blog. You can write about the local market statistics or focus on real estate events in your area. You can also interview locals and write about your findings. From time to time, you can include non localized content like DIY projects, real estate news, and real estate FAQs. As you write blog posts, always keep in mind that a combination of text, images, and video is ideal.

SEO is important for your real estate business as it helps you to get noticed online. If you want to generate leads, increase traffic, and boost your website’s rankings, focus on optimization. Use keywords, Meta tags, and add fresh content regularly to make your site stand out from other realtors.

Ready to get started with an iHOUSE website? We invite you to take a free test drive to see the versatility!