How To Find Valuable Real Estate SEO Keywords
As a real estate agent, you have a lot on your plate: you must find clients, develop a comprehensive understanding of the local real estate market, and present houses for sale that best match a prospective homebuyer’s needs.
The real estate business is highly competitive, so you have to be highly ranked on your area’s search engine results pages (SERPs). Otherwise, other local real estate agents will be snagging the best commissions right under your nose. Today, we’ll discuss how to find real estate SEO keywords that help you rank high so you can beat out your local competitors and see your Real Estate SEO efforts bear fruit.
Factors Influencing Keyword Usage
Real estate keywords are terms buyers and sellers plug into search engines to find real estate professionals who suit their needs.
As search engine optimization is all about improving your online visibility, finding the right keywords is a cornerstone of any SEO strategy. Keywords are a way for your target audience to reach you.
However, incredibly popular real estate keywords will be harder to rank for, as you’re jockeying for position with millions of real estate agents.
Keyword difficulty (KD)
Keyword Difficulty (KD) is determined by monthly search volume on Google; this keyword search volume is then used to develop keyword rankings that tell you how difficult it is to get the top SEO real estate for this term.
Rankings go from 0 to 100, with 100 being the hardest to rank for. You can think of anything above 50 as luxury real estate that comes at a high price. High search volume words — generally those that don’t refer to a specific service area — will be very hard, while lower search volume keywords will be easier to get.
There are a few different companies that develop rankings, with the most popular and respected being Ahrefs: it released a guide explaining how it calculates keyword difficulty. In short, Ahrefs looks at the number of backlinks the top-ranking pages have.
How to Use Real Estate Keywords
Before we move on to the top keywords that real estate websites use, you need to understand how to apply them.
The first step is strategically placing them on your website and any real estate agent profiles you have in local directories. Sprinkle them onto property listing pages, landing pages, blog posts, and guest articles — meaning articles you publish on other sites.
Also, you can add them to your Google Business Profile or add them as hashtags to social media posts.
It’s vital that you use real estate keywords in the right ratio: keyword stuffing will harm your score, as it’s seen as deceptive. At Stellar SEO, we use powerful SEO tools to find keywords and determine the right keyword density to drive organic traffic to your site. In other words, we want to make you, your users, and Google happy all at once.
Search Intent
Search intent matters just as much as search volume when considering how to optimize SEO real estate keywords: you need to know why someone is using this keyword so that you can tailor your real estate marketing to meet their needs.
There are four types of search intent, each of which needs to be considered when crafting your content.
- Informational: The searcher is simply trying to find information about something. For real estate keywords, this could be “how to get a mortgage” or “home buying process.”
- Commercial: The user wants to find a specific product or service. This is where you really need to shine, as these users are motivated to find real estate agents in their area. These searches could include “real estate agent near me” or “real estate agents [Location].”
- Navigational: This is for users who are trying to get to specific real estate websites. This is generally a very targeted keyword related to your business that you will rank highest for — as long as your name and address are clearly visible on your website.
- Investigational: These users want to compare their different options. Real estate keywords with this search intent will generally be something like “top real estate agents in [Location]” or “real estate agent reviews.”
Keeping user intent in mind will help you develop content that meets the needs of different users and ensure that your content is valuable to them.
Most Popular Real Estate Keywords for 2024
While this isn’t a comprehensive list of real estate keyword ideas, it can help jumpstart your keyword research and get you on the right track to supercharge your realtor SEO.
We’ve divided this list into three components that reflect the main target audience in the real estate industry: generic real estate terms, which can refer to either buyer or seller; buyer terms; and seller terms.
Generic Real Estate Keywords
- Real estate agent
- Real estate agents reviews
- Commercial real estate agent
- Real estate listings
- Realtor realtors finding
- Top real estate agents in [Location]
- Realtor
- Realtors
- Best realtor in [Location]
- Find real estate agent
- How to find a realtor
- What do realtors do
- Benefits of working with real estate agent
SEO Keywords For Real Estate Buyers
- Real estate listings near me
- Real estate listings in [Location]
- Houses for sale near me
- Houses for sale
- Houses for sale in [Location]
- Town houses for sale
- Townhomes for sale
- Condos for sale
- Condominiums for sale
- House for sale no HOA
- House with land for sale
- Tiny houses in [Location]
- Tiny houses for sale in [Location]
- Real estate foreclosures
- Foreclosed home
- Foreclosed houses for sale
- Renting versus buying a home
- Owner selling real estate
- Sale cheap houses near me
- Cheap houses for sale [Location]
- New listings houses
- Sale townhomes
- Lake home near [Location]
- As is homes for sale
SEO Keywords For Real Estate Sellers
- Selling a house
- Cost of selling a house
- Home house staging tips
- For sale by owner
- How much do realtors charge to sell a house
- Closing costs when selling house
- Selling a house as-is
- Home selling tips
- Short selling your home
- FSBO
- Marketing home for sale
- Listing property for sale by owner
- Property listing process
Best Tools to Find Real Estate Keywords
If you’re just starting your hunt for real estate keywords, you may feel overwhelmed by the many options for keyword research out there. But don’t worry — there are a few top-rated tools available that will boost your real estate marketing efforts.
Google Keyword Planner
If you plan to run Google Ads, Google Keyword Planner is a powerful keyword research tool that will ensure the right people are seeing your campaign. Here, you can search for the right keywords, explore different keyword options, and develop an action plan to get the best value for your Google Ads campaign.
Ahrefs
As we’ve mentioned, Ahrefs is one of the top companies for search engine rankings; its keyword research tool is thorough, intuitive, and easy to use. Better yet, it will provide commonly asked questions that go along with these keywords, making it much easier for real estate agents to prepare content that meets their users’ needs.
Moz
Moz was one of the first companies to develop search rankings, and it continues to be an invaluable resource. Here, you can compare the search difficulty for different real estate keywords and see who your competitors are being linked by to see what types of backlinks you should strive to acquire.
Semrush
For competitor analysis, it’s hard to beat Semrush. The platform will show you SEO keywords other real estate agents are ranking for, the backlinks they have, and audit your website to develop an improvement plan. Better yet, you can set alerts so you know exactly what your competitors are doing and where you might gain a competitive edge.
Social Media
An underestimated component of keyword research is checking out social media. For this, you need to have a list of keywords you’re interested in, which you’ll plug into the social media site of your choice to see what comes up.
You can then review the posts utilizing these keywords and consider how you might be able to improve upon their template. For example, they may have used the keyword “houses for sale” but failed to provide a call to action for those reading the page, like clicking through to their website.
Best Practices for Keyword Usage
Now that you’ve analyzed keyword difficulty, come up with a list of phrases you want to rank for, and brainstorm some ideas on how to use them, it’s time to put them into practice. For the best results, follow these tips.
Use SERPs to Analyze the User’s Search Intent
You need to know what people actually want when they search for a term. Plug your keyword into Google or another search engine and review the top-ranked pages. What questions are they answering? What are they geared toward? What additional information might you add?
You want to be a one-stop shop for those reviewing these terms, so pay close attention to what all the competitors are doing and strive to combine all of their information into one comprehensive page.
Place Keywords in Titles and Headings
It’s not just the keyword that matters, but the placement, too: Google reviews metadata in addition to the content in order to determine relevancy. This means that putting a term with high keyword difficulty in headings or subheadings will improve your chances of ranking, as it is weighed more heavily this way. Be sure to place it in a way that makes sense to the average person, not simply to an algorithm.
Write For People, Not Machines
In the old days of the internet, it was enough to jam as many keywords as possible into a given page, even if it didn’t make any sense. This is called keyword stuffing and it’s now highly frowned upon by search engines.
Nowadays, Google and other search engines use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to ‘read’ a website and see if it actually sounds fluent rather than just written to jam the same keyword into the text as many times as possible. You want your information to be coherent, helpful, and well-researched, with reputable sources and a natural flow.
Speaking of machines, Google now penalizes pages that use artificial intelligence like ChatGPT to churn out content, as it considers it low quality. Most AI programs have a “fingerprint” that, while not always discernable to the average reader, will be identified and punished by Google.
If you don’t have the workforce to produce content, don’t worry: Stellar SEO can craft high-quality SEO content for your website and other sites.
Use Long Tail Keywords for Blog Post Inspiration
Long tail keywords are keywords that are longer than a few words, for example, a whole sentence. These often make excellent fodder for a well-researched, informative blog post that answers the question posed by the keyword.
For example, if one of the specific keywords you want to target is “how to find employees relocation realtor,” you can develop a post that discusses the specific challenges of finding an employee relocation realtor and how this service differs from other real estate services.
Update Regularly
Freshness is one component of SERP rankings, but it’s only relevant to certain inquiries: specifically, those about recent trends or time-sensitive information.
A page that hasn’t been updated in years can rank high if it’s still optimized, but it will gradually drop off in Google search results if the information becomes outdated or irrelevant. For example, if someone is searching for “real estate trends,” the newest websites are likely to show up first because it’s clear that they want the most current details about the real estate industry.
Even if your information is relevant years later, you still need to go back and assess your page to ensure that it’s still optimized: that the links aren’t broken, contact information is correct, and the CSS is displaying correctly. Fortunately, Stellar SEO can provide an SEO audit to check if your site has any issues that can keep it from ranking well.
Social media is an entirely different beast when it comes to freshness. With so much content updated daily, you need to have a strong and consistent updating schedule in order to compete. You’ll have to post regularly on all your social media sites for the algorithm to choose you as something that users want to see.
Link Your Current Posts
Google wants websites with great internal linking systems that help users find what they need, as well as links to reputable organizations with high domain rankings. If you’re not sure where to get started with new content, you can work on updating your old content with the new information you have learned since then.
Include links to new content on old posts and vice versa. You can also include new links from well-respected agencies, such as governmental agencies and professional media outlets like Forbes or CNN.
Stellar SEO can provide niche edits, where we find existing content that ranks high, update it, and include a backlink to your work. This is a good way to boost your rankings if you’re not yet ready to develop new content or are working on revising your content strategy.
Recognize Keywords as Just One Component of Great Content
Keywords are great, but they aren’t everything: they are guideposts to the information that you need to develop rather than the content in and of itself. It’s essential not to rely on keywords to tell the entire story of your agency. Instead, optimize your content to include them.
Write good articles, develop an excellent website, and remain active on social media in addition to finding and utilizing quality keywords. The more value you provide, the more your clients — and Google — will appreciate you.
Final Thoughts on Real Estate Keywords
Implementing keywords can feel daunting, but there are various tools to help you leverage them correctly. As times are always changing, the keywords that ranked well before may no longer be relevant. That’s why it’s essential to see keyword development — like all things SEO — as an ongoing process. With patience, practice, and the right magic words, you can get your real estate website to the top of the rankings for your area.
