When it comes to digital marketing for real estate professionals, pretty photos and videos aren’t enough to capture your audience’s attention: you’re going to need some SEO best practices to ensure that your content is reaching the right people.

But more often than not, some people get it wrong. SEO for real estate isn’t all that different from other industries, but there are certain unique needs that you need to address. Here are some of the most common SEO principles that real estate professionals get wrong when creating digital content.

You Didn’t Do Enough Research into Your Keywords

If there’s one thing that makes digital marketing such a unique and powerful marketing tool, it’ll be the way it leverages readily available data points to provide comprehensive and exact insights that can help you determine the best way to reach your intended audience.

Unfortunately, too many people don’t use this aspect of digital marketing, which is why they come up with content that neither adds value nor entertains their intended audience. For real estate professionals trying to gain a foothold in the digital business space, you’re going to need to do as much research into your audience as possible, and that starts with determining the Big 3 data points for real estate: Location, Demographic, Interests.

If your research allows you to determine these 3 data points and use them to create content for your intended audience, you will be generating leads lists faster than you’ll know what to do with them. Miss out on this research and, well, you’re basically just on the internet yelling at no one in particular.

Your Keywords Aren’t Meaningful to Your Audience

When it comes to using keywords, you need to target keywords that actually mean something to your intended audience. This is why research is so important when it comes to deciding on what keywords to use. If you don’t know your audience’s location, demographic, and interests in relation to the kind of listings you have, then you’re publishing content that no one really cares about.

Use keywords that affect your intended audience directly. If your listing is in a location that allows for future homeowners to access hiking trails, then use keywords that relate to those activities. If it’s in a gentrified location with lots of bars and restaurants, use keywords that reflect that as well.

Your Keywords are Too Competitive

In digital marketing, “competitive” keywords are keywords that are being used and sought out by hundreds –if not thousands –of other websites. Often, websites will have a hard time ranking for competitive keywords because bigger, more authoritative websites are already ranking for it. A website is deemed ‘authoritative’ when search engines determine the site to be factual, value-adding, and visited by thousands of people on a daily basis.

For individual real estate professionals, competing with authoritative websites like Zillow is next to impossible, but worry not: targeting less competitive keywords means you have more of a chance to rank higher for that particular keyword. Often, people think that a keyword is competitive because internet users don’t search for it.

This isn’t necessarily true, and often times, a lack of content regarding that particular keyword is the reason why search volume is low. But once you build it, they will come, which is why targeting slightly less competitive keywords is often better than trying to compete with high-ranking keywords.

Your Content Doesn’t Add Value

There’s an old, marketing adage: Content is King. It’s true then as it is now, and actually more so in the digital age where people are oversaturated with all kinds of content, not all of which actually add value to their lives. Focusing on the quality of your content is a surefire way to make yourself stand out, and the best way to increase content’s quality is to make sure it does three things:

• Your content must address your intended audience’s pain points
• Your content must be factual and informative
• Your content should be entertaining

For real estate professionals, this means that your digital content has to address all those factors in order for users to interact with you. Do this by diversifying your media and making sure that everything you’re saying or showing in your digital marketing is addressing your audience’s wants and needs.

We Can Help You Correct These Mistakes!

As one of the most sought-after digital marketing agencies for real estate professionals, REI Toolbox prides itself of being subject-matter experts when it comes to both digital marketing and real estate. We take the time to do our research and help you correct digital marketing mistakes by providing you with the right tools and mindset you need to help you succeed in the cyber business space.

Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you! Our team of experts can book a one-on-one call with you so that we can better address your unique needs.