SEO for Estate Agents: Why it Matters

Agents that Rely on Zoopla and Rightmove Fall Behind the Rest

Estate agents operate in an evolving and competitive market. Exploit an effective SEO strategy to stay ahead of the pack.

The relationship between estate agents and digital marketing has always been a somewhat unusual one. On the one hand, property websites like Rightmove and Zoopla were seen to take care of the online side of the property business – to a certain extent, Rightmove in particular forced the industry towards early adoption of e-business.

On the other hand, sites like these have caused estate agents to be left behind when it comes to digital marketing. Some have fallen into the trap of questioning whether there is any point in SEO for estate agents and working to promote their own sites, assuming that all they need to be is registered with Righmove and Zoopla.

Establishing your web presence

These days, when you are looking for anything, the first place you generally go to is Google. This may be true even for people looking to buy or sell a house. A google search and subsequent visit to the web page of service providers could give enough information to decide on whom to approach for their services. Therefore, relying on the internet holds as true when you are looking to buy or sell a house as it does if you are searching for a competitive car insurance quote, or looking for the best Chinese restaurant in an unfamiliar town.

So what happens when someone needs an estate agent? Chances are, they will Google the words along with the town that they are interested in. So if someone is looking to buy or sell a house in Chelmsford, they will probably type “estate agent Chelmsford” into Google which is why you need to use something like this real estate website builder to help you get set up.

Once you have, try it for the town where you are based, and see what pops up. Are you at or near the top? If not, you need to get to work on your SEO. You can choose to work on the SEO of your real estate site yourself, or you have the option to look into marketing agencies similar to Victorious to work on the optimization of your website and its various web pages too.

But I’m on Rightmove……

As we mentioned earlier, there is still a belief that if your properties are listed on Rightmove, the job is done. Unfortunately, that is simply not the case, for a number of reasons. First and foremost, Rightmove might be the website of choice for buyers, but what about sellers?

For those seeking to sell their home, they will be straight on to Google, looking for a choice of local agents.

The second point is that even when it comes to attracting buyers, Rightmove and Zoopla can, at best, keep you on the same playing field as your local competitors. These days, being there or thereabouts is simply not good enough in the modern competitive environment. By building up your own web presence, you can leverage that all important competitive edge to push your business ahead of the pack.

How can an SEO agent help?

The best SEO agents use a combination of factors to boost your web presence. These include helping you create interesting and engaging content that will attract more traffic, researching the best keywords, building links between your website and other trusted sites and, not least, analysing and learning from what your competitors are doing.

These measures will serve to enhance your position in the search engine results page, and will also bring benefits in their own right, by improving conversion rates and brand reputation.

With such a tangible return on investment, a professional SEO strategy is something that no estate agent can afford to be without.