How many real estate company Websites are there in the United States? There are around 1.4 million licensed agents in the US so you can guess that the number is pretty high. Ever notice that these real estate company websites rarely (if ever) are ranked on the 1st page of Google for any type of searches…broad or hyper-local? Does this mean that the Google algorithm doesn’t like real estate company websites completely? No…that’s not it. The issue is far deeper than that. I get it…Realtors are not in the website game. They are in the game of helping people buy and sell homes. The issue is that “marketing and branding” is HUGE in real estate. How do you get clients? Where do you send them to get more information about you? HOW do you get discovered on the platform where most people go for information? Your real estate website is your HUB for all things real estate and you. Learning how to use this amazing tool is a must to stay relevant to the consumer in the present and future. Here are the top 5 reasons Google doesn’t rank that company given website.
1. Copy of a Copy-Poor/Cheap Design and Hosting
The website that is provided to each agent is essentially the SAME SITE. Yes, you can add your own bio, head shot, information and some other things, but it is a copy/template. Keep in mind these sites are given to the agents for FREE (mostly). The construction of these websites is poor with little SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and cheap design. With poor SEO abilities it is very difficult to rank in SERP (search engine results page) against custom WordPress sites and others with far more capabilities. Who would win in a race with a Ferrari vs Toyota Corolla? Think in those terms.
These sites are usually hosted (cheaply) by the same service on the same server. Why does that matter? It matters because this can cause your website to have slow loading times and it increases the server downtime with a crash. Google wants its users to come back to its search engine and wants to create the most positive user experience possible. If a site is slow to load or has poor performance it won’t rank it on the 1st page where most people click for search results.
2. Has Very Little Engaging Content or Blog Page
Many real estate company websites have much of their content already filled in. Company listings, set website headers at the top, etc. Having very little content with no SEO keywords makes it very hard to rank in Google searches. Not having a blog with engaging content is also a problem. A blog is great way to create content that keeps readers on your site longer. Using keywords, meta-descriptions, pictures, and videos in these blogs is super important as well. If consumers lands on your site but clicked off right away, that is bad. Google won’t rank a site in search that people feel isn’t worth spending time. Get a blog and write content/add videos…this will help.
3. Lacks User Engagement
This ties a little bit into the paragraph above. Realtors like to have their website be these massive “lead generation” machines…and they can be, but making it too lead gen focused vs creating engaging content is bad. People go to websites to get information. If your site is all about collecting “Leads” when the person on your site is still in the information gathering phase, they will leave your site. If your website “bounce rate” is high (how quickly someone leaves your site) that will cause Google to not rank it in search.
4. Not Well Maintained–Falls Down the Index
When I meet with Realtors and they ask me about website help, I ask them when is the last time they updated their real estate company websites? Added content/videos? Checked their monthly analytics? The answer is they rarely do this. Google ranks sites in search that are well maintained with fresh content. Content is like gas to your car. Your website won’t run or rank in search without it. If a website is not maintained, after a while any ranked content in Google will fall down the index to the 2nd or 3rd page where consumers hardly ever go.
5. No Outbound or Connected Links
This is probably the biggest reason why Google doesn’t rank real estate company websites. Not only do they have poor site structure, and poor SEO, but they lack any links that connect them to other well visited mediums like YouTube, other high-ranking/visited sites, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
An example is I write articles for Inman.com. Inman has over 1 Million viewers a month, many more than my site. When they post a blog to their site, Inman usually creates a back link to my site(an arrow)…that is HUGE to Google. A site with huge monthly traffic is telling their readers to go to my site and check it out. That adds value to my site from a search engine perspective and an increased ranking.
Your website is a stand alone platform at first. Your job is to take the engaging content and push it out to consumers on social media sites. More page clicks, more time on your site, will help your ranking. Also, posting videos on YouTube (Google owns it) and then linking your YouTube videos to your website and vice versa is SUPER important for Google rank. Not doing these things will cause your site to not rank in SERP and get outranked by sites that do.
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Need Website Help–for Free?
As the Director of Sales/Marketing for Stewart Title in Northern Virginia/Washington DC, I help Realtors with all facets of their real estate marketing…including their online presence. Does your Title Company help you grow? If not, take a moment and fill out the form below. I will contact you for a marketing appointment!
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Interested in growing your real estate business with Pruitt Title? Please fill out the form below and I will contact you shortly. Thanks, Wade "DCTitleGuy"
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