If you want to rank your real estate website high in search engine results, you will need to target some specific keywords.
How much efforts you need to put in to rank high will depend on how competitive your target keywords are.
Your first step will be to know the competition. Read this article to know the step-by-step process for a keyword competition analysis.
[optinform]You will have to perform a keyword competition analysis, and verify your target keywords with Google Keyword Planner tool to get an idea about the search volume for each one of them. Only then you will have a final stable of keywords that you can target in your real estate content.
But the question is: should you target only low competition keywords? Should you ignore high competition keywords completely?
Absolutely not!
The best keyword strategy for real estate professionals is to use a healthy mix of high competition and low competition keywords.
The reason is that if you start ranking for a few low competition keywords, it will improve your real estate website’s domain authority. In other words, your website will be more authoritative in the eyes of Google. As you build backlinks, you will start ranking for high competition keywords also. It will take time, but you will get there if you are consistent and have patience.
So how should your keyword strategy look like?
Well, you can use a keyword pyramid in order to be consistent with the usage of your target keywords in the content.
You can break down your target keywords into three types:
- Primary keywords
- Secondary Keywords
- Long tail keywords
Let’s understand this with an example:
Let’s say you are a real estate agent in Brooklyn, NYC.
The primary and most competitive keywords for you to rank for will look something like this:
‘Homes for sale in Brooklyn, NYC’
The secondary keyword could be something like this:
‘Family apartment for sale in Brooklyn, NYC’
And the long tail keyword:
‘2-bedroom apartment for sale in Brooklyn, NYC under $300K’
Now, you can easily guess which keyword is the easiest to rank for.
If you type ‘homes for sale in Brooklyn, NYC’, you will most likely get results on the Google front page from websites like Zillow, Trulia, Homes.com, Realtor.com, century21.com etc.
The easiest keyword for you to target is obviously the long tail keyword.
The search volume will be really low, but since it is a low competition keyword, you would need to come up with just a couple of detailed pieces of content to rank high for this.
So, you need to create a list of primary keywords, secondary keywords and long tail keywords and use them in a planned way throughout your website.
Anatomy of Primary Keywords and how to use them
It could be a list of 4-5 keywords that you really want to rank for in the long term. Use these keywords on each of your website’s most important pages. These are basically very short and most competitive keywords. These are broad keywords similar to the one in our example: ‘homes for sale in Brooklyn, NYC’.
Don’t expect to rank high for these keywords immediately. It may take a lot of time, so don’t pursue them aggressively. Just let them sit there on your website for a few months until you start ranking for secondary and long tail keywords.
Anatomy of Secondary Keywords and how to use them
A set of another 4-5 keywords. But these will be more specific keywords than the primary keywords. They will be a bit longer too. Contrary to ‘homes for sale in Brooklyn, NYC’, we are now targeting searches for family apartments in Brooklyn. Family apartments are more specific search so the person typing in these words in Google would be a more qualified lead because she knows what exactly she is looking for.
These keywords would be a lot easier to rank than the primary keywords, but they are still high competition. Use them in your primary pages apart from blogs, landing pages, listing descriptions etc.
Anatomy Long-tail Keywords and how to use them
Long-tail keywords are very specific keywords. Leads you will generate through these keywords will be highly qualified. The person searching for ‘2-bedroom apartment for sale in Brooklyn, NYC under $300K’ has a clear idea of three things:
- He or she wants to buy a 2-bedroom apartment because it can accommodate him and his family easily
- He or she knows he can only afford $300K, so the budget is quite clear.
- He or she has a clear idea about the preferred location. He or she wants to buy in Brooklyn only, not in any other NYC borough.
You can come up with several long-tail keywords and use them in blogs and listing descriptions frequently. You can target these keywords in the new content that you produce on a regular basis.
Conclusion
If you have a clear keyword strategy, you will find it a lot easier to implement it as you produce new content every day. Your search engine rankings will improve with time, even for high competition keywords.
Just keep in mind that you should use primary keywords on the most important pages of your website, the secondary keywords in the most important pages as well as the content that you produce on a regular basis. You can use long-tail keywords in the content that you produce every day. A few detailed pieces of content targeting your long-tail keywords will be enough to rank high for those keywords in search engines.
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