Location is a crucial element of the real estate industry. This is true for all types of real estate, including residential, commercial and industrial. Therefore, to achieve success, the importance of location also needs to be reflected in the marketing strategy of any organisation operating within the industry. Local SEO for real estate gives the perfect opportunity to include and improve how your online presence targets your geographic audience.

Local SEO for real estate is the process of optimising the online presence of an organisation to perform better in searches performed by local users. Whereas normal SEO simply looks at improving organic performance (and therefore the location of the users is not important beyond a national level), local SEO focusses on the geographical component of a search more than on the total traffic generated.

As an example, a chartered surveyor based in the East Midlands might be interested in ranking for queries around “commercial property survey”, as user queries containing this element will most likely have an intent that can be met by the chartered surveyor’s services. Usual real estate SEO efforts will attempt to place our chartered surveyor at the top of searches containing the phrase “commercial property survey”, without necessarily paying attention to the location of the users. This strategy can generate increased traffic and leads, however these leads may not be of use if they are coming from an area the surveyor firm does not operate in.

On the other hand, Local SEO will focus on improving performance for meaningful queries that account for the location and span of the business. For example, a good real estate local SEO strategy for the same surveyor will attempt to achieve good organic positions and traffic from queries such as “commercial property survey Leicester”, “land valuations Derby” or “rent reviews Nottingham”.

There are many elements that make up a real estate local SEO strategy, which need to coherently work together to localise the business and its offering, giving the right signals for search engines.

Google Business Profile is a tool designed to display organisational information within the Google suite of products, specifically on Google Search and Google Maps.

This tool provides an unmatched ability to showcase your business to users looking for information either about your organisation or the services you provide.

There are three main ways in which Google Business Profile can help with real estate local SEO:

The Google Business Panel is presented to users when they perform a “navigational” search. When users search for your company name on Google, they are most likely interested in your website , contact options or opening hours. All this information is available in the business panel, usually displayed to the right of organic results, making it easy for users to find what they are looking for without the need for additional clicks.

Other than the usability benefit, the business panel also confers a level of legitimacy, as it shows that the business is real and established. Another factor that can positively contribute to increased legitimacy is reviews, which are also part of the business panel.

As part of the business panel, you can configure the following information about your business:

One of the most important features of the Google Business Profile is the Google Map Pack.There is an increasing number of searches focussed around local businesses. These searches target a service rather than an organisation, as the users are looking at finding the best fit for their need. Google answers these queries by providing a comprehensive map of businesses that provide the service the user is looking for.

The Map Pack displays the location of nearby businesses that offer the service the user is searching for. It also provides other information about the businesses, such as contact information, opening times and reviews. The Map Pack is designed to help users find businesses relevant to their searches.

The Map Pack is displayed at the top of organic results, and therefore it can be a very easy way to outrank your competitors, and become the first answer local users see.

Lastly, Google Business Profile also gives the advantage of a Google Maps pin. With this, users will be able to easily find your location and use all the features of Google Maps to find their way to you. Furthermore, the Google Maps pin also displays business information, such as opening times or links back to your website. This is a really useful feature for businesses both in cities and in more rural areas, as this makes your business very easy to find.

Furthermore, the Google Maps platform has a search functionality, which displays local businesses for any queries. For example, if users are searching for “surveyor”, all the local surveying business will be highlighted on the map. This is another great opportunity to target local traffic that searches for a service rather than for a business.

Generating as many positive reviews as possible is paramount to a successful Real Estate Local SEO plan.

Reviews are user generated content that rate the interaction between the organisation and the reviewer. These interactions can be both B2B and B2C, making reviews relevant to all the niches within the real estate industry.

Reviews are a great way for new users to get to trust your business more, as they can see how other people feel about your business. Therefore, generating reviews on your Google Business Profile listing can attract more customers to your business.

Each review on the Google Business Profile platform can include the following:

Any potential responses from other users or the business (business replies are highlighted as “response from the owner”)

The number of users who found this particular review helpful

Attracting a larger number of positive is a great way to increase your legitimacy. Furthermore, to show other users that you value customer feedback, make sure to reply to all your reviews, both positive and negative. Where possible, try to use this opportunity to present more facts and give more insight into your business and its success.

Local SEO isn’t just about your Google Business Profile listing. Although GMB will be a crucial part of your local SEO for real estate strategy, there are more actions you can take to improve the local performance of your website in search results.

For some local queries (query + location, e.g. “houses for sale Leicester”) the map pack provided in Google Search Results may not fully meet the user intent. For queries that are highly research focus ( for example, queries around buying a house), users will most likely scroll past the map pack and use organic search results as well to find what they are looking for. Therefore, it is important to have good organic rankings for local searches as well, as this might generate more traffic than the map pack for some queries.

Ranking organically for local queries is no easy process, and careful consideration is required as part of a real estate SEO strategy to make sure your website has the best plan to achieve this. Common tactics used in local SEO for real estate websites include using location modifiers in title tags, meta descriptions and the content of the page. For example, instead of using a meta title that focuses on just the services you provide (e.g “ Real Estate Agent | Company Name”) , try incorporating the areas where the services are provided as well (e.g. “Real Estate Agent in Leicester & Nottingham | Company Name”). This will be a clear signal to Google that your website should be pushed to users in these areas, and as a result can improve your organic positions for local queries. Other elements that can benefit from having a location modifier introduced are meta descriptions and the actual content of the pages.

A common tactic used in the real estate niche to generate local SEO results is the use of dedicated landing pages. By creating an individual page for each location (e.g. Homes for sale in Leicester, Homes for sale in Nottingham etc.) a clear distinction and journey can be planned for each geographical location. This will also allow for bespoke title tags and meta descriptions that will include the location modifier. However, the problem with this approach is duplicate content. Depending on how your website is built and what you display on these pages, Google may not be able to understand the difference between your content. If it finds that the content is similar or identical, this could be detrimental to organic performance, as Google will most likely not index any pages it suspects are duplicates of others. Introducing unique, meaningful content on each page that is able to differentiate the intent of each page is a solid strategy to maximise real estate local seo efforts.

A great example of this is the US based real estate agency Miami Real Estate. They have created individual pages for each area of Miami they operate in. However, to avoid duplicate content issues, each page has a dedicated content block, thoroughly covering each area. Because of this, they can signal the difference in intent on their pages, even for very similar locations, such as Miami and South Miami.

Directories are websites featuring information about places, people and organisations. They are a great tool to find the business you are looking for or a list of businesses in your area. Apart from their benefits to users, directories are also important for search engines, as they provide crawlers with a vast amount of links to different websites.

Citation building should be considered as a real estate local SEO tactic, given the ability of this process to generate links back to your website. There are numerous property specific directories as well as general ones where real estate organisations can be visible to users and search engines.

Citation building should always be carried out by someone with a strong understanding of local SEO and your organisation. This is because, if done wrong, it can have devastating consequences for your website’s NAP.

NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone Number.

Your organisation’s NAP should be identical throughout your citation building efforts. Having a consistent NAP is imperative to a successful real estate local SEO strategy, NAP is a strong signal for Google, as they will be able to use it to better understand your business and serve it to local users.

Google also uses NAP to identify different businesses with the same name. In the example below, Google is aware of two organisations named “Reach Marketing”. So when a user searches for this, the search engine has to decide which result will best satisfy the query. Based on NAP, Google understands that the organisation Reach Marketing Communications is geographically closer to the user’s location, and therefore serves this result first. The same search query performed from New York will yield a completely different SERP, as Google will most likely associate the intent of the query with the Reach Marketing organisation based in the USA.

Recently, NAP has been extended to NAP-W, which also includes Website. This addition aims to bring your attention on the URL you use when creating citations. Especially if your business operates multiple domains (such as different domains for residential and commercial real estate), it’s important that your citation building points all links to the same domain, preferably to the same page as well (usually the homepage). This will act as an extra element that identifies your website and organisation from other businesses with a similar name.

Furthermore, including a website link as part of your citation building efforts can have wider positive impacts to your 

, as backlinks to your website are a strong ranking factor for Google.

Local SEO for Real Estate – Get Started Now

Creating a good plan for real estate local SEO can be a daunting first step. From making sure your Google My Business is set up correctly, to effectively conducting citation building and optimising your website for local searches, it may be hard to figure out where to start and how to approach the process. Our digital specialists are always on hand to discuss your needs and lend a helping hand in getting your local SEO for real estate started.

Real Estate Local SEO 2023 Guide

Real Estate SEO is the sum of search engine optimisation tactics that can be used to increase the organic performance of a website for real estate related searches. The purpose of real estate SEO is to generate more organic traffic from search engines (as opposed to generating traffic through paid channels, such as Google Ads).

There are many elements that make up real estate SEO. As well as having a strong technical basis, a real estate website should also be populated with quality content and have many links from other real estate websites.

Performing real estate SEO is a long term process that will involve a very varied set of activities. A good real estate SEO strategy will encompass technical elements such as improving site speed and optimising images, as well as more creative elements such as writing blogs, creating assets, or running campaigns.

The real estate industry benefits from the technological progress made over the last decades. People interested in real estate property no longer have to find their local estate agent to see available products on the market. The initial stages of the real estate buying / letting process are now a lot more transparent, as users are able to find most of the properties available on the market by using search engines.

Therefore, SEO does work for real estate. By optimising a real estate website for search engines, users will be able to easily find the products available and start their journey. Without visibility in search engines, it would be very difficult for a business in the real estate sector to showcase their products and attract traffic to their website.

Search engines are such an important part of the real estate industry they have become a staple for initial research. Search engines dedicated entirely to real estate (Rightmove, Zoopla, Onthemarket etc.) attract millions of users each year. These platforms have proved so popular that they have expanded from residential real estate to cover commercial and industrial real estate as well. Today, search engines form an established channel within real estate marketing, and ensuring your business performs well in search engines is the main outcome of real estate SEO.

When putting together a real estate SEO plan, a great starting point is analysing what other businesses in your real estate niche are doing. Keep in mind that your business competitors (the ones you compete with for work) might be different from your digital competitors (the ones you compete with for online visibility).

A fast and effortless way to find your competitors is to Google the phrases you would like to rank for. For example, if you are a commercial or industrial developer based in Leicestershire you might want to rank for searches around the key term “new warehouse Leicester”. Google the phrase you want to rank for and select the top websites you see in the organic results section (make sure to disregard ads). Repeat this process for several searches, and see what website come up consistently on the first page. These will be your digital competitors.

Once you have identified your digital competitors, visit their websites to understand why they are ranking well for the queries you also want to rank for. Pay attention to their site structure, the keywords they use in their content and what topics they are mentioning. Also look out for how long their content is. These are the things that will give you an idea of what you need to do on your website to achieve good rankings.

As you navigate through the websites, also try to notice the Call to Actions they use. Ask yourself:” What are users expected to do on this website?”. It may be that some websites push their users to product pages, where they show real estate products and their sale / lease price. This is especially common on estate agency websites. However, less commercial websites might push their users towards their services pages, or an e-book with informational content. Try to identify these main elements and decide which align best with your business objectives. This will be important in creating a website that converts.

Google takes the security of their users very seriously. At all times during their journey on a website, users should be protected from any harmful content or action.

A great safety indicator is using an SSL certificate. This will validate the connection between the user’s device and the server and ensure that the content of the website is safe to interact with. Furthermore, this allows for the use of the HTTPS protocol, which is a safe way of moving data between the website and the user’s browser.

Checking whether a website uses HTTPS is quite easy. As in the example below, if a lock appears next to the web address, this shows that the connection is secure.

Installing an SSL certificate on your website is a quick process, as there are many organisations that provide this service. There are further security measures that can be taken to protect the website and its users, especially when the website has an e-commerce component.

Another important aspect of user security is privacy. Every website manager needs to ensure that if they are using cookies, users have the option to opt in and out. Without good cookie management, Google will not display any websites in their search results. Cookies are especially important for tracking users and understanding their behaviour to further improve the website, however all data collected on users needs to adhere to Google policies and 

With the rise of smartphones, more traffic is generated on mobile devices than ever before. This is equally true for the real estate industry, as more users are expecting to be able to search for residential, commercial, or industrial property while using their phone.

Google recognises the importance of a good mobile experience and introduced mobile site speed as a ranking factor. The faster the website loads, the higher the chances of the page ranking at the top of Google results.

A fast mobile experience is not good only for harnessing traffic, it is also good at retaining that traffic and improving conversion rates. The graph below shows that with increasing load times, the probability of users leaving the website 

To ensure your website loads as fast as possible, consider the following:

If you are using a theme to build your website, ensure it is mobile friendly.

Real estate websites rely heavily on images to showcase their products. Unfortunately, having a large number of images on a page can significantly increase the load time of the page.

To avoid problems, ensure you only upload meaningful images and don’t display any images that are duplicates or very similar. Secondly, ensure the size (height and width) of the image is appropriate for the page you are uploading it to. Lastly, make sure the weight (kb or mb) of the image is as low as possible. Be careful when running images through a compressor, as these can drastically reduce the quality of the image, which will ultimately have a negative impact on your user experience and your real estate SEO performance.

Make sure you are only using effects, animations, and stylings you need.

Effects and animations such as fade-ins, cascades, overlays etc can have a strong visual impact on the user, however these can drastically increase your load times. Keeping these effects to a minimum can be key in improving site speed.

Check your code is as efficient as possible.

Bloated code – with lines that are read by browsers and crawlers but have no impact on the page’s functionality – adds unnecessary weight to your site. This can be removed to improve mobile site speed. Checking for scripts generated by plugins which are not in use on the page you’re optimising is usually a good starting point in identifying speed improvement opportunities.

One of the main tools that can be used to identify a website’s site speed and potential areas of improvement is 

. This can be accessed either from its own website or from the Google Chrome console.

Keywords are the essential part of real estate SEO. Keywords are words and phrases used in Google searches. By understanding what keywords are being used in the real estate industry, you can optimise your website’s content to show that it has the answer to a user’s search.

Identifying the right keywords for your website is not easy, as you have to account for the volume of searches using that keyword, as well as the difficulty of ranking on the first page. For example, a keyword such as “property land for sale” has a relatively high search volume of 480 average monthly searches, however it also has a very high difficulty.

Keyword difficulty is a metric used to establish the digital competitiveness of the keyword. Popular keywords will usually have a high difficulty, because there will be lots of websites trying to rank for that query. When there are lots of websites competing for the same keyword, more real estate SEO efforts are required to outrank the competition. For example, for the keyword below, a brand new website will be unlikely to rank for this keyword without a very high investment in real estate SEO. However, other opportunities may be available that have a lower volume, but also a manageable difficulty.

Some of the tools that you could use to begin keyword research are:

Google Keyword Planner (if you use Google Ads)

Once you have selected your list of keywords you want to rank for, you need to create content that targets your keywords. This isn’t simply using the keyword as many times as possible in your content. Rather, it starts with understanding the intent behind the keywords you selected and thinking about what the users who search for the keyword are expecting to see.

This will allow you to understand the content type you need. You could efficiently target some keywords with landing pages, however, other keywords (usually more informational intent keywords) will be better targeted with longer forms of content such as blogs, articles, e-books or infographics.

Once you know the type of content you need to produce, you can start doing your research, writing and publishing pages. Writing content should be a consistent process, making sure your content is relevant and up to date with changes in the industry.

Great real estate SEO content isn’t just copy. Adding images, graphics and videos is a great way to expand your content, provide more information and improve your engagement.

Google considers links to be one of the most important ranking factors, and therefore a strong link profile is a crucial step in creating a strong organic presence. Links are seen as votes of confidence and signal that your content and website are appreciated. If another website found your content so useful that they added a link to it on their website, then Google will be enticed to believe that your website should also be seen by users searching for queries around your topic, and therefore increase your ranking in search results.

Google values links from authoritative websites more. For example, a link from the BBC website is extremely valuable, as BBC is known to be an important authority. Similarly, links from other websites in the real estate industry will also be extremely valuable, compared with links from websites that have nothing to do with real estate.

There are many strategies that can be used to increase the number of links pointing to your website. Some of these include:

Because of the importance of links for real estate SEO, some organisations have tried to bypass the system and gain links in ways that Google disapproves of. For example, paying to have a link placed on another website goes against Google’s policies as this is considered 

. Google penalises websites that engage in link spam and this could have disastrous consequences to your website’s organic performance.

Real Estate is a very geo-specific industry. Location forms a crucial part of the real estate product and is usually a major factor in determining value. The location of the real estate business itself is also paramount.

Google rewards local businesses for local searches. That’s why, for a localised query such as “new homes Leicester” the multinational website Rightmove will not be part of the map pack that shows up at the top of the page.

By introducing local SEO as part of your real estate SEO strategy, you can bypass organic results and show up in the map pack sitting just under the ads, which can lead to increased organic traffic as the map pack allows users to click through straight to your website, from where they can search through your property stock.

Local SEO is done through taking action on your website as well as properly managing your Google My Business profile.

Once you have deployed your real estate SEO strategy it’s important to monitor the performance of your website to learn what worked and could be scaled as well as what didn’t work and what additional steps can be taken.

Using Google tools is a very simple way to monitor and track results. Google Analytics is the most popular website tracking solution. Once installed on your website, Google Analytics collects user data live, and stores it in easy-to-understand reports. Using this tool, you can easily track how many users accessed your website, as well as how much time they spent in their session, and follow their actions through the website (scrolls, clicks, form submissions etc.). Google Analytics is an immensely powerful tool with lots of advanced features that provide a holistic set of analytics which should form the basis of your website monitoring.

Google also provides information about how your website performs in search results. Using Google Search Console, webmasters can see how many pages of their website are in the Google index. Furthermore, Google Search Console provides information on the performance of these pages in the Google Index, showing which user queries they appeared for, in what positions, and how many clicks were generated. Google Search Console is a vital tool for a successful real estate SEO strategy, as its performance report provides key metrics for appraising SEO performance: the queries ranked for, the position, and the traffic generated as a result.

There are other tools that can be used in conjunction with the Google suite to understand the SEO performance of a website, as well as give you insights to further improve your SEO efforts.

It is important to note all third party tools rely on proprietary algorithms which will be different from the Google algorithm. Therefore, when using third party tools the data will never be 100% accurate and the findings from these tools should be correlated with more reliable sources such as Google Analytics or Google Search Console before acting.

A real estate SEO Audit is a deep dive in all the elements that make up your website to understand how SEO performance can be improved. An SEO audit should be conducted by an SEO expert, as the audit should comprehensively analyse how all the areas of SEO are performing, as well as the best roadmap of action to improve performance and achieve your goals.

The audit should be performed with the real estate industry in mind, as all recommendations need to be fit for purpose within this sphere of activity. A real estate SEO audit can be a great tool to start your SEO journey, as this exercise will provide an all-encompassing list of actions to increase the volume and quality of organic traffic generated.

If you’re unsure about how to proceed with a real estate SEO audit or strategy, get in touch with our expert SEO team to unleash the potential of your website.

Real Estate SEO Guide: 8 Tips to Start Ranking

We have strengthened our digital marketing team with three new hires who are already proving popular with colleagues and clients. Our new digital lead is Segun Daniel Ogundipe, an award-winning brand, marketing, data, and corporate communications specialist. He is ably supported by Alex Russell, a junior web developer with a passion for pushing the boundaries. The third new member of the team is George Sfintescu-Niculescu. His particular specialism is SEO, but he also covers PPC, social media, and email marketing.

Over the last 13 years, Daniel has worked in 24 country markets across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and North America. His experience encompasses strategy, visual, interface and experience design, web development, digital marketing, social media, data mining and analysis, research, activations, print management and customer experience enhancement. In other words, all forms of digital and non-digital marketing and comms. At Reach, Daniel will be putting his considerable management experience to use overseeing our digital projects while expanding and liaising with our network of trusted suppliers.

Alex is only a year and a half into his career, which he started writing web interfaces for drone telemetry for a tech star up. He loves learning and constantly pushing the boundaries of what he knows and what can be done. His energy, ability and intellectual curiosity make him a great asset to the business. He is already having an impact on key accounts and is contributing beyond his coding specialism. 

George has worked with a big range of clients, from start-ups to FTSE 100 companies. His background is marketing and Data science, and although he has since specialised in SEO he loves all aspects of digital marketing, relishing the challenge of making a measurable difference for our clients.

One day, he hopes to host a BrightonSEO talk, or even a TED talk. And that may not be about digital. George has a very wide range of interests. For now, however, he is winning admirers amongst our client base by getting the most out of their online presence.

A New Digital Era for Reach

The industrial logistics real estate market today finds itself at a crossroads. 

With vacancy rates at historic lows, occupier demand remains fierce. Investor sentiment has hardened, however, with the result that the flow of new space coming to market is slowing.

For industrial logistics real estate developers, the opportunity is clear. But to attract capital in this difficult market, a financial proposal must be clear, credible, and above all, memorable.

With over 25 years of experience in industrial logistics real estate marketing, Reach has a peerless track record of producing eye-catching and successful investment proposals for our clients. Additionally, our research, graphic design, and copywriting is all produced internally, ensuring your confidentiality.

So, if you’re an industrial logistics developer on the hunt for investment, there is no better time to talk to Reach. 

Industrial developers unlock investment with Reach

Every year, a special reception is held to launch the Leicester Comedy festival brochure. This document, tantamount to a canon of contemporary comedy talent, has yet to be ‘launched’ from an actual cannon; an obvious comedy miss to which the festival organisers seem tragically oblivious.

Missed opportunities for mirth notwithstanding, the launch was a tremendous success according to the Reach colleagues who attended. These were, in order of importance: Gary (Director), Lucy B (Account Manager and Gary’s right-hand woman – what she does with her left hand has never been publicly divulged), (Big) James, a professional Brummie who does something clever with video, and James (the Second (NOT little James)) a small but perfectly formed web coder.

We’ve been the festival’s main creative partner for 28 of its 30 years and created the ‘Comedy’s grown up in Leicester’ campaign for this year, celebrating both the festival’s longevity and its role in helping to launch the careers of so many comedians who are now household names.

As well as a creative partner, we are members of the Business Partner’s Club, a networking club run by the festival to raise funds for each year’s event while supporting businesses in the city. There are Silver Members. There are Gold Members. We are Platinum members.

Our commitment to be the shiniest type of member was recognised at the launch with the presentation of a certificate. Our team were very proud and drank champagne to prove it.

The certificate was presented by soon-to-be superstar comedian Patrick Monahan. He then joined fellow comics Louise Young, Sajeela Kershi and Tom Lucy to perform their best material in a ‘Pick of the Fest’ comedy show. Our happy few departed after a great night out. They had witnessed yet another successful brochure launch, for the nation’s longest running comedy festival.

Leicester Comedy Festival 2023 Brochure Launch

Reach have built an intuitive, easy to navigate website to support architects Stephen George + Partners’ Better Buildings initiative.

Better Buildings is a programme designed to introduce children aged 10 and 11 to the issue of carbon and the built environment. It grew out of SGP’s commitment to delivering long term sustainability and social value. Better Buildings is delivered through their Stephen George + You agenda. This is the academic programme through which they make strategic investments in local communities.

The brief was to produce a website that teachers used in class to guide children through the three stages of the Better Buildings programme. Stage one introduces them to traditional, high carbon materials, stage two to modern, sustainable alternatives, and the final stage gives them tips and advice as they produce designs for their own carbon neutral building.

Unfamiliar terms and industry jargon is explained by cartoon avatars of the SGP staff who run the programme. They also appear in a short video to explain the purpose of Better Buildings.

Because the first iteration of the site is to establish proof of concept and has been tested with just one school in Leicester, it is not responsive. It was developed on a tight budget and designed for use on a classroom desktop or for projection. It was always intended to be part of a teacher led group activity.

However, it has proved a great success and following its further roll out at a school in Brentford, budget has been released to make it fully responsive. This will enable children, in groups or individually, to make use of it on tablets in a school setting.

SGP are delighted with the level of engagement the site has generated amongst children who have completed the programme and see is a model for taking forward other initiatives in future.

You can visit the Better Buildings website here: 

Building an educational website for SGP

The latest news from the minds of the Reach team.

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Real Estate Local SEO 2023 Guide

Real Estate SEO Guide: 8 Tips to Start Ranking

A New Digital Era for Reach

Industrial developers unlock investment with Reach

Leicester Comedy Festival 2023 Brochure Launch

Building an educational website for SGP

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