Consumers love to search for real estate – especially on the Internet. In fact, according to a joint study by the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) and Google, approximately 90% of home buyers are searching online as part of their home buying process, and 52% are turning to the web as their first step. Google alone has seen searches for real estate grow by over 253% in the past four years.
Without further ado, here are five ideas to improve the searchability of your website and properties:
- Search engines rank sites that have popular content higher so use social media, email, etc. to spread the word and get other sites to link back to your content.
- Write property descriptions that are complete and ensure listing data is as comprehensive as possible to improve the searchability of your listing and the perception the listing receives by those viewing it.
- Be consistent when creating property titles and descriptions across all media (your REALTOR.ca listing, social media, feature sheets, etc.).
- Ensure photos are properly tagged when posting to other websites so they come up in search results.
- Ensure images you post to your site are named in an intuitive way (e.g. “111elmstreet_front.jpg” as opposed to “image1.jpg”).
What other tips can you think of? Post your ideas in the Comments, below.
