Generating leads is the lifeblood of success in real estate.
But did you know that over 90% of today's home buyers now use online search during their journey?
According to a recent market trends survey, 96% of home buyers search for their dream home online, and almost half of home buyers (47%) begin the house hunt with an online search.
The question is, are you getting found?
With the web becoming the primary resource for finding homes and agents, mastering search engine optimization (SEO) has become mandatory for real estate professionals.
Your website visibility, authority, and search rankings have an immense influence on connecting with motivated buyers at exactly the right time during their research process.
That's why realtor and optimizer extraordinaire Justin Havre has focused obsessively on dominating SEO in real estate for over 15 years.
By comprehensively optimizing his online assets and domains for maximum visibility, Justin has built an SEO engine that delivers over $8 million in organic leads annually.
That's equivalent to the mammoth cost of over $8 million dollars in Google Ads each year!In this comprehensive guide, we'll share the most valuable SEO strategies and principles from Justin's journey that can help unlock similar success.
We'll also explore some additional tips to help real estate agents master local SEO opportunities, create high-converting content, build authority-reinforcing backlinks, leverage emerging technologies like AI, and boost leads through organic search.
But first, a quick rundown of the best lead generation methods every realtor should have in their toolkit in 2023:
Let's dive in and uncover the immense power of search engine optimization in transforming real estate websites into nonstop lead generating machines.
The Takeaway:
Implementing SEO strategies can help real estate agents increase visibility and attract more clients. Focus on optimizing keywords, creating quality content, and building backlinks to boost search engine rankings and drive organic traffic to your website.
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Chapter 1: The Cost and ROI of SEO for Real Estate
Justin notes that there are many moving parts when it comes to SEO, but out of the many factors that you need to implement your SEO strategy, the main ones are time and patience.
The Real-World Costs of Real Estate SEO
Many go into the task of improving their SEO thinking there’s and quick and easy way to dominate the competition.
Justin says no, and adjusting your expectations to the reality that you need to pour in a lot of time and patience into this gargantuan task to get things to where you want them YEARS down the line.
"It can take two, three, four years before you really see the result of the work that you're doing today."
“The reason why many people fail, in my opinion, is because they hire the wrong company and quit too soon because they don't see an ROI," Justin continues.
Justin is very candid about the investment required for effective SEO. He shares,
“I remember my very first website... I went all in on SEO, and at that time I was paying four thousand dollars a month for SEO and this was back in 2007.”
He emphasizes that the cost of SEO can vary greatly depending on various factors such as the competitiveness of your market, the size of your market, the size of your website, and what your competitors are doing.
He suggests, “A healthy budget should be minimum five thousand dollars a month, and it can go up from there. You could be spending 10, 15, 20,000 a month per website.”
The Big Question: Hiring an SEO Agency vs. Doing SEO In-House
We’re all aware of what this kind of budget means for your bottomline.
That’s why from big brokerages to the smallest boutique agencies, one of the most common debates is whether to outsource SEO to an agency or handle optimization in house.
Honestly, there are good arguments on both sides.
Outsourcing to an established SEO firm with proven success optimizing real estate websites can provide valuable expertise.
Their experience implementing effective tactics across hundreds of sites gives them keen insight into what truly moves the needle. An outsourced agency also allows your internal team to focus on core operations.However, outsourcing SEO does relinquish control.
In-house SEO lets you oversee strategy and align optimization tightly with business objectives.
An internal resource can also develop a deeper understanding of your listings and market over time.
Cost is another consideration. Outsourced services require significant monthly investment, while in-house is more fixed.
But an in-house expert provides ROI through long-term continuity versus relying on an outside vendor.
My personal recommendation is a balanced approach based on resources. Small teams can benefit tremendously from an outsourced pro.
But larger brokerages have the budgets to justify internal SEO experts guiding strategy.
The best solution is to view external SEO partners as an extension of your team.Maintain clear communication, share insights, and align efforts for maximum visibility. A true partnership model, rather than simply outsourcing SEO as a service, ensures the best results.
On that note, Justin has experienced both sides of the coin - doing it himself and hiring professionals. He shares,
"At the very beginning, I was doing some of the work myself but where my business is at today, I work with a professional agency."
He says that it’s all about guaranteeing that you’re putting focus where it’s needed; if you find that you no longer have the time to do SEO yourself, then it makes sense to hire a professional agency that can handle it for you.
However, you should also be involved in the process and monitor the results.He also emphasizes the importance of hiring the right SEO agency. He warns about the dangers of hiring the wrong people, likening it to "driving down the freeway with your window open and just throwing wads of cash out the window."
He also stresses the importance of testing different agencies by giving them the same tasks and seeing who brings the better ROI, that is, if you have the means to do so.
“I think it's important that you work with someone that has a good reputation, a proven track record, and somebody that you can trust."
If you want to do SEO properly but still don’t know whether to outsource or do it yourself, take a good look at where you are and what’s at stake. Evaluating the costs, control and capabilities involved will help you find the right balance for your team.
With the proper partner and approach, you can unlock immense competitive advantages through SEO, whether outsourced or handled internally.
Is SEO Worth It?
I hear you ask, is it all worth it?
If your only option is to shell out a comparable amount of money to portals, where you get little to no branding and list homes with a cluttered ad space where you’re just another face in the crowd – I’d say yes.With SEO, you’re building a space that has 100% of your branding, 100% of your offers and competitive edge on display, and you don’t have to share it with thousands of other realtors.
And the ROI? Infinite.It’ll keep going so long as you’re doing the necessary upkeep for your site. And it will build up overtime so long as you’re putting out the right content. And you’ve heard us say it countless times already: if you’re fishing for leads, you need a fishbowl, as Howard Tager always puts it.
So not only are you funneling in leads from Google and Facebook and everywhere else, your site is also organically pulling in people who are searching for keywords that your site is ranking for.
How do you get your site to rank for keywords?
Justin says that by investing in domains and applying the appropriate SEO techniques, you can create a robust online presence that acts as a lead-generating machine for you and your organization – just as he did with his.
Justin Havre’s Real Estate Agent Website Optimization Strategy for SEO
Choosing the right approach to SEO is critical for success, and what you do can be the thing that makes or breaks your entire lead generation project.
Below we take on the real estate SEO strategies that brought Justin from being a rookie agent to generating over $8 million in leads annually through SEO.
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Chapter 2: Unlocking Long-Term SEO Returns on Domains
Justin stresses the importance of domain names. He views domain names as valuable marketing tools that can contribute to organic rankings.
And he’s right.
One of the most critical but most overlooked elements in SEO revolves around selecting the optimal domain names. As he explains from experience, domain names themselves can contribute enormously to rankings and lead generation.
Domain names like city names, neighborhood terms, and other geo-identifiers carry tremendous local SEO value for real estate. Justin views premium domain names as digital properties with immense potential. He says,
"I believe there's some aspect to that location that is also important when you're looking at websites as well. Domain name is location, location."
His success with assets like justinhavre.com and calgaryhomes.ca prove the power of choosing strategic, keyword-rich domains. He explains that acquiring these domains, which were underutilized for years, allowed him to transform it into an SEO goldmine.
With the right optimization and content strategy, the domain quickly began driving significant organic traffic and leads. He explains,
"I do believe that there is some impact on having specifically the city name or the marketplace in the domain name for the sake of organic rankings."
He also notes that a domain name can be used as a marketing tool and can be built into a brand, especially if it's easy to remember or a catchy phrase.
Justin says that the domain itself confers trust and authority with search engines and recommends investing in authoritative domains aligned with your target markets and optimizing them comprehensively to unlock immense SEO value.
Be Strategic With Domain Name Investments
On the other side of things, a poorly optimized domain with a thin history, on the other hand, can actually hinder your efforts.
A domain with limited history and optimization can hinder real estate SEO efforts.
Trying to build rankings on a domain with thin content, spam links or penalties makes gaining visibility an uphill battle.The domain itself confers little trust or authority.
It's often better to start fresh with a strategic, keyword-rich domain vs attempting to reinstate a low-quality one.
This also means that you should NEVER try to settle with expired domains that have no bearing to your brand or business – no matter how cheap they are.
It’s a common temptation to buy expired domains that seem to have high authority or traffic, hoping to benefit from their previous reputation.
However, this can backfire if the domain has a history of spamming, violating Google’s guidelines, or being penalized by search engines.
You may end up inheriting a domain that is difficult to rank, recover, or rebrand.Overall, Justin strongly emphasizes being selective and strategic with domain name investments and preventing having to overcome hurdles later.
With the proper due diligence and optimization, domains can become digital assets that continue contributing to your SEO visibility and lead gen for years to come.
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Chapter 3: Highly-Local and Optimized Site Content
Justin is careful to emphasize the immense value of unique and local content in his SEO strategy, and how he collaborates with his agency for specific blog topics or updates. He explains,
"Because I have such a long-standing relationship with the company that I use, they're handling it all now."
Content is one of those areas that he believes is better done by tapping into the expertise of SEO professionals while maintaining control over specific blog topics or content updates.
"If we have a specific blog topic that we want to push out or anything like that or we have ideas of like hey we want to update this, add this, we will then collaborate with them and then they will push out the content."
This allows him to leverage skills that are not necessarily in his toolkit and focus on other aspects of the business where his attention is better needed.
Today, Justin’s SEO-optimized websites have highly-local and targeted pages that signal his coverage, as well as topically authoritative blog posts that establish him as an expert in his field.
But before Justin learned to walk, he had to learn how to crawl: back when he was doing SEO by himself, he had to do all the writing on his own – just as you would if you want to do this part yourself.
And if you’re a smaller team, why wouldn’t you?
At the end of the day, these aren’t just words on the page; they’re a crucial part of your branding.
And who’s better suited to write your brand other than yourself?So if you want to create your own content for your real estate website, you need to follow some best practices and guidelines that will help you rank higher on search engines and attract more leads.
Below we break down what makes Justin’s site the organic lead gen behemoth that it is today.
Building on Profitable Local and Topical Lead Keywords
We’ve already established how important certain words are for domains. The same rings true for the rest of your site.
When architecting your SEO strategy, the foundation must begin with thoroughly researching target keywords and optimizing your website content accordingly.
Keyword research is essential for SEO, as it helps you identify the words and phrases that your potential clients are using to search for real estate information, services, or properties.
Focusing your efforts on profitable local and topical lead generating keywords allows you to maximize visibility for the searches that drive qualified traffic.
Conduct Comprehensive Keyword Research
The first step is brainstorming an extensive list of relevant keywords and long-tail variations that homebuyers are likely searching for across their journey.
Justin’s sites target these specifically, as well as informational queries and even more transactional phrases when buyers are ready to connect.
Justin’s agency uses tools like Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush to uncover these high-potential targets and understand their search volume and competitiveness. He wanted to identify keywords with substantial search volume that aligned with his offerings in the Calgary real estate market.
The key for him was diving deep into keyword research to compile a comprehensive target list to serve as the foundation for optimizing content on his site.
Optimize Website Content Extensively
With his core Calgary real estate keywords identified, Justin ensured that his website content targeted these terms naturally and effectively throughout.
When creating pages and writing copy, his agency focused on crafting compelling content that provided value for visitors while working in relevant keywords judiciously.
They did it all this all the while avoiding awkward over-optimization (i.e. they made his content for humans, not search engines!).Instead, Justin’s sites seamlessly use keywords in titles, headers, image names, metadata and content.
Creating locally-optimized landing pages targeting individual Calgary neighborhoods allowed Justin to significantly boost localized traffic and leads. His agency optimized these pages for surrounding city names and geo-terms.
After all, most real estate searches include location terms like "Denver real estate agent" or "30305 homes for sale".
Targeting these geo-specific, high-intent keywords connects you with ready-to-buy customers.This has allowed Justin to continuously pull in highly qualified traffic searching for real estate services in precise geographic areas for years now.
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On-Page Optimization Tactics for Real Estate Websites
But targeting is only half the battle. You also need to make sure that your content is better than what your competition already has out there.
With that in mind, optimizing your real estate web pages with targeted SEO helps search engines understand and rank your content for relevant queries.
Here are some of the most important on-page optimization tips followed by Justin’s sites:
1. Interactive and Engaging Content Formats
Incorporating interactive content elements has become a staple of the modern content strategy process. Static text alone is no longer enough. That’s why Justin and his team always brainstorms creative ways for visitors to engage with content.
Justin found great success by setting up custom calculators, quizzes and data-driven tools that provide buyers personalized insights (just like Ylopo’s Homebot-powered Market Trends tool).
Seeing the popularity of his interactive neighborhood finders and mortgage calculators proves visitors appreciate getting tailored results instantly. The high sharing rates interactive content generates speaks for itself.
On an SEO level, this interactive content satisfies searcher intent by delivering specific user-generated results. Note that a webpage’s ability to end a searcher’s journey contributes to SEO in such a big way that it’s considered as one of the highest-ranking SEO signals that you can get today.
I repeat – this is important!
2. Format Content for Scannability
Justin’s sites has content that is formatted using bold headings, bullet points, images and videos to make it more engaging and scannable. This improves consumption and shareability.
3. Optimize URLs
URLs are structured with just keywords when possible, like "calgary-real-estate-listings". This enhances click-through rates vs ID numbers.
4. Accelerate Page Speed
Optimizing page load speed by minimizing requests, enabling compression, reducing server response times and leveraging caching enhances his SEO.
5. Use Synonyms Judiciously
Justin incorporates synonyms and related keywords to reach a wider range of search phrases without overt keyword stuffing. This guarantees that his content is never over-optimized, which can earn you harsh reach penalties from Google.
6. Link Out Sparingly
Including some external links to quality sites boosts authority and crawlability. But Justin avoids over-linking to prevent diluting equity.
7. Streamline User Experience
By making key information and calls-to-action easy to find, Justin minimizes bounce rates and encourages conversions. Enhancing user experience is pivotal.
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Helpful Long-form Blog Content
Justin’s site also regularly publishes long-form, guide-style blog posts optimized around core Calgary real estate topics. He taps into valuable informational searches during buyers' initial research.
Posts like "Calgary first-time home buyer programs" provide readers with actionable information and insights they appreciate.
Through comprehensive optimization of long-form assets targeting profitable local and topical keywords, Justin connects with buyers early on and when they’re ready to contact an agent. His team also continuously optimizes new blog content as emerging keywords are identified.
The key is to persistently provide helpful information Calgary home seekers want to read across their full journey, and especially during their research.
By ensuring content directly answers information home seekers in Calgary were searching for, Justin tapped into qualified traffic.
And I believe his sites’ phenomenal organic growth over the years speaks for itself.
Don’t Forget to Optimize for Featured Snippets!
Another overlooked aspect to blog content creation is featured snippet eligibility.
A featured snippet is a brief excerpt of content that displays at the top of Google’s organic search engine results page (SERP).
It is intended to provide a brief and concise response to a user’s question. Featured snippets are usually displayed above other search results and are the most relevant answer to a search query.
They are short, usually fewer than 60 words, and are not a form of plagiarism because they link directly to the original article.Featured snippet content is automatically pulled from web pages in Google’s index. Common types of featured snippets include definitions, tables, steps and lists.
Done right, it can pay enormous dividends by increasing your visibility, traffic, and conversions. According to Ahrefs, featured snippets get about 8.6% of all clicks on the SERP, while the first organic result gets about 19.6%.
This means that featured snippets can steal clicks from the top-ranking pages and boost your CTR significantly. Featured snippets can also help you establish your authority and expertise on a topic, as well as build trust and credibility with your audience.
When writing compelling content, you need to keep the goal of featured snippets in mind.
Structure sections and paragraphs to clearly and concisely answer the questions that homebuyers are likely asking at different stages of their journey.
Breaking down complex topics into easily scannable sections makes the information extremely consumable. This works out well for search engines, too.
Highlight unique data or insights upfront using stats, lists, or overview summaries. This grabs attention while establishing expertise around the topic.
Using Schema.org and FAQ markup is also essential to signal to Google that your content contains the answers searchers are looking for.
I've seen firsthand how featured snippets can double or triple traffic from high-value searches. There's no better feeling than knowing your optimization directly answered a homebuyer's question at exactly the right time in their research process!
Strategically Complement Your SEO Thrust with Ylopo
Justin Havre’s success with SEO sheds light on the transformative power of SEO in the real estate industry.
It’s also not a fluke. SEO isn’t guesswork; it’s a science. And today we’ve discussed at great length everything that you need to do to achieve it. But Rome’s SEO wasn’t built in a day.
It takes patience, consistency, and the willingness to see your strategy through.
Through his own experiences and achievements, Justin highlighted the significance of organic traffic, strategic domain investments, and the long-term commitment required for SEO success.
But what if I told you there’s a way to make it just a tiny bit faster?That’s right: a well-targeted pay-per-click ad can complement your SEO efforts quite well.
It does so by doing the following:
Increase visibility for your brand - Paid ads give you a presence on page one immediately while SEO ramps up over months.
Reinforce your listings - Displaying PPC ads for your listings across search and social reminds home buyers of your properties.
Retarget engaged visitors - Use remarketing ads across channels to keep your brand top of mind with potential clients.
Test content - Run paid traffic to new content and listings while SEO rankings increase to evaluate performance.
Promote seasonal opportunities - Launch paid campaigns to get visibility for open houses, holiday listings or hot markets.
Conduct competitive research - See what keywords competitors are bidding on and how their ads are converted via split testing.
Generate more calls and clicks - Use call extensions and location extensions in ads to drive more phone calls and map clicks.
And you know what? Ylopo's innovative PPC 2.0 approach can provide all of these benefits and more through advanced targeting, optimization, and dynamic ads that dramatically outperform traditional PPC.
Our micro-targeted ads, algorithmic keyword and inventory analysis, and refreshable creatives deliver next-level performance, complementing ongoing SEO efforts and generating highly qualified leads immediately.
Strategically leveraging both PPC and SEO is a winning combination.
Book a demo and maximize your SEO ROI today!
About the Author
Aaron “Kiwi” Franklin
Head of Growth
Aaron "Kiwi" Franklin is the Head of Growth at Ylopo and an innovative technologist and serial entrepreneur who has over 25 years of experience creating digital solutions for major brands and pioneering companies at the intersection of technology and real estate. His depth of expertise stems from leading development of the first website for Apple to founding a global community of over 1,000 elite athletes. Connect with me