How SEO Can Help You Generate Long-Term Real Estate Leads and Achieve High ROI
Real estate agents cannot sell homes if they do not have anyone to sell to. Therefore, lead generation is an essential activity. But how to go about it?
There are hundreds of lead generation strategies. Some are short-term, such as buying ads and going door to door. Others are long-term such as building a brand and cultivating client testimonials.
In this blog, we will analyze SEO as a lead generation strategy. SEO is a long-term, low-cost strategy that, if implemented correctly, can help real estate agents achieve a high return on investment.
What Is SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the deliberate attempt to increase the number of visitors to a website through organic search results. Under SEO, real estate agents create content on their site that helps increase their visibility on search engines. If a lead launches a web search for a term that matches the agent’s content, that content appears prominently in the search results and the lead is more likely to visit the page.
An SEO strategy focuses on unpaid or “organic” search results and it excludes advertisements and other paid content that may appear in search engines.
How Does SEO Help Generate Leads?
Search engines evaluate content in predictable ways. They use algorithms to analyze the keywords, images, links and formatting used to generate a webpage. Then they give the page a score based on the strength of its content. Real estate agents that understand search engines can produce content specifically designed to rank highly. This can make their site more visible in the search engine results and help them attract more leads.
What Are the Advantages of SEO As a Lead Generation Strategy?
All lead generation strategies have advantages and disadvantages. It is up to you to find the best fit based on your website needs and plans. In the section below, we will outline some of the most important characteristics of SEO as a lead generation strategy.
Low Cost
SEO is extremely low cost. If you have a website already, adding content to it is essentially free (except in time and opportunity). SEO can help you get on search engines without paying for ads. As a lead generation strategy, SEO is sustainable.
Permanent
Unlike a web ad, SEO does not expire. As long as your content remains online and no one else has designed better content, yours will continue to rank highly and generate leads.
Targeted
Because you are generating your own content, you are able to make it super targeted. You can write SEO content based on industry, location, age, referral and other lead categories. This makes it easier for leads to find information that addresses their specific needs.
Higher Conversion Rates
SEO can also lead the higher conversion rates. Under SEO, agents “pull” leads to their site rather than “push” advertisements out. This has a positive psychological effect. Leads that research and discover content independently are more likely to value it more than content forced on them without warning.
Trust
The permanence and “pull” nature of SEO content makes leads more willing to trust it, which can have a positive impact on your business and brand.
What Are the Disadvantages of SEO As a Lead Generation Strategy?
As a lead generation strategy, SEO is not perfect. It cannot fix all your business woes, and it takes effort and planning to implement.
Time
The largest drawback of SEO is time. It takes hours and hours to produce the content necessary to generate content that ranks highly. And it includes many failures along the way. This is why SEO is considered a long-term lead generation strategy, or one to build up over several years.
Competition
Competition for keywords is fierce. You may find that you produce high quality content but cannot rank on the first page because of the plethora of other sites producing similar content for the same search term. Alternatively you may succeed in achieving a high-ranking page only to have it knocked down later by a new entrant in the market with equally high SEO skills.
With high lead generating capacity and high conversion rates, SEO provides some of the highest returns of all lead generation strategies. Now you just need to implement an SEO strategy on your real estate site and watch the leads come in.
Questions or feedback? Leave them in the comments. Or for more Realtyna content, check out What Is a Featured Snippet and Why Is It Important for Real Estate SEO?
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