Local SEO for Real Estate

Speed23 said:

Actually, suggestions or answers are based without result. If anyone is making money from rank and rent, just add screenshot of calls. At least, I can believe your low search volume works.

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Basstrackerboats has 81k reaction score and is the most trusted member on this website. I don't need any proof to know what he says is true.

Speed23 said:

Actually, suggestions or answers are based without result. If anyone is making money from rank and rent, just add screenshot of calls. At least, I can believe your low search volume works.

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And why would we want to make you believe in stuff? No one is selling anything here. Should you decide to go for it, no one here is impacted. Likewise, should you choose to not do something, no one cares.

You're free to believe what you want. Disaccord can be a beautiful thing - it's the Internet.

There is money in real estate. And realtors around the world (not just in the US) are trying anything and everything they can do get more clients/leads.

Rank and Rent is a proven methodology. And most keyword volume data is a mix of prediction models and scraping keyword planner. And is definitely not extremely accurate for hyperlocal searches. This is true not just in real estate - but in every hyper local niche.

Also, the world develops rapidly and more and more projects pop up in variant cities. It does not harm to rank for them.

Let out the pessimism. Breathe a little. And stop being so presumptuous.

looks like pretty simple trick.

I'm working on 4 sites to test somethings out. Big thank you to @BassTrackerBoats for providing content to help with two of the sites. Here's what I'm testing:

• 2 Neighborhoods - Test different variants of keywords out and fill blog with PAA queries.
• 1 City
• 1 National site - Targeting a specific style of home, site planning on this gonna be big...
  • State
  • City
  • Neighborhoods - if warranted

Holzr said:

I'm working on 4 sites to test somethings out. Big thank you to @BassTrackerBoats for providing content to help with two of the sites. Here's what I'm testing:

• 2 Neighborhoods - Test different variants of keywords out and fill blog with PAA queries.
• 1 City
• 1 National site - Targeting a specific style of home, site planning on this gonna be big...
  • State
  • City
  • Neighborhoods - if warranted

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How long do you wait before you start building links on this type of sites?
Do you use EMD or expired domain?

Speed23 said:

How long do you wait before you start building links on this type of sites?
Do you use EMD or expired domain?

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EMD
IDK, I'm not even sure I'll build many links outside of maybe some social profiles etc. I'm more interested in getting pages indexed/ranked to get impression data. If the data is good I'll put some effort into ranking.

Holzr said:

EMD
IDK, I'm not even sure I'll build many links outside of maybe some social profiles etc. I'm more interested in getting pages indexed/ranked to get impression data. If the data is good I'll put some effort into ranking.

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Your other local sites, not this one. Do you build links to rank them or just citation? How long did you wait before you started building linkings?

Speed23 said:

Your other local sites, not this one. Do you build links to rank them or just citation?

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Foundational links first (social profiles and citations) then move onto power links. Depending on your risk tolerance:

• PBN
• Niche Edits
• Guest Post

One can also build white hat links (I'm talking about building linkable assets etc.) and even sponsor local events etc. if one wants to get highly relevant links but tbh unless you're targeting long term competitive niches I think that's overkill.

Holzr said:

Foundational links first (social profiles and citations) then move onto power links. Depending on your risk tolerance:

• PBN
• Niche Edits
• Guest Post

One can also build white hat links (I'm talking about building linkable assets etc.) and even sponsor local events etc. if one wants to get highly relevant links but tbh unless you're targeting long term competitive niches I think that's overkill.How long do you usually wait before you start building links/citation?

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Since you use EMD, how long do you wait before you start building links/citation?
I’m thinking of launching and ranking within 2 months. Is that possible?

Speed23 said:

Since you use EMD, how long do you wait before you start building links/citation?
I’m thinking of launching and ranking within 2 months. Is that possible?

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I use PMD also. I like keeping sites natural as possible though so I don't go overboard with EM/PMD if it doesn't look great. Launch sites with a good amount of content is the advice I'd give. You can build foundational links after few weeks if that.

You probably won't be able to rank a site that fast unless you launch with some good topical authority, your picking a very easy keyword or you've got a very good budget for link building or a combinof all of the above.

Holzr said:

I use PMD also. I like keeping sites natural as possible though so I don't go overboard with EM/PMD if it doesn't look great. Launch sites with a good amount of content is the advice I'd give. You can build foundational links after few weeks if that.

You probably won't be able to rank a site that fast unless you launch with some good topical authority, your picking a very easy keyword or you've got a very good budget for link building or a combinof all of the above.

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How will you choose EMD for long keyword? Example: newyorkmainlandmetalironroofing.com
How do you deal with something like that?
Would you do;
metalironroofing.com/new-york-mainland/ instead, then work on other cities like /Dallas etc?

Speed23 said:

How will you choose EMD for long keyword? Example: newyorkmainlandmetalironroofing.com
How do you deal with something like that?
Would you do;
metalironroofing.com/new-york-mainland/ instead, then work on other cities like /Dallas etc?

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In your example are you talking about a roofing site targeting the state of NY? If so I'd do something like NY Roofing .com (check for trademarks and brandnames first) I know some people like using pros and experts etc. in domain. I've also used other domain extensions like services, so one could do NY Roofing .services

If you've got a big budget and experience, then you can target states and nationwide. I'd say in terms of complexity and budget required you're looking at (easiest/cheapest):

• Stand alone small city or small metro (not part of larger metro/city)
  • Grand Rapids
  • Sioux Falls
• medium-large sized city or metro
  • Minneapolis
  • Corpus Christi
  • Nashville
• Large city or metro
  • Austin
  • San Diego
• State
• Nationwide

Holzr said:

EMD
IDK, I'm not even sure I'll build many links outside of maybe some social profiles etc. I'm more interested in getting pages indexed/ranked to get impression data. If the data is good I'll put some effort into ranking.

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How do you know if the impression data is good? What are the things you look at?

light and bolts said:

How do you know if the impression data is good? What are the things you look at?

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So you've got to consider a few things (I'm talking about IM/lead generation in general, but you can apply it to anything really):

• How will you monetize leads?
• How much you'll earn per lead or customer (one could also think of this as a per-traffic value once you know conversion rates etc.).

Of course, the more impressions the better, but if you're getting paid $1,000 per customer you send vs $1 per lead for a high volume, low revenue service like handymen, you can then see why it's not as clear cut as saying more is better. So I'd say know the 2 points above first. Sometimes, a few impressions a day could be enough to land a solid lead or job. If you're partnering with a local company who's going to revenue share on job value, then that one job could be worth a good amount of money to you. One thing to consider is you'll often find a lot of junk impressions that are probably from bots and impressions will be lower until you hit page 1 (which is where actual users will be).

What you can do is reverse engineer. and work out a rough monthly earnings value based on a few metrics:

• CTR
• Conversion Rate

Both of these will be dependent on the niche and urgency of the job. BrightLocal did a study a few years back on local CTR (25-27% #1). As for conversion, you could use a 10-20% range.

OK, so let's say you get paid $100 per qualified lead. You are seeing 300 impressions per month. So how much could you earn at #1?

300 * 0.25 = 75
75 * 0.1 = 8 leads (let's be generous).
75 * 0.2 = 16 leads

8 * $100 = $800 per month.
16 * 100 = $1,600 per month.

There are a lot of assumptions I've just made, but I hope this helps somewhat.

So for this example of the real estate test sites I'm working on, I want to answer a few questions:

• Are people searching for specific long tails (3 bedroom, 2 bathroom for sale XYZ, homes for sale near XYZ airport, brownstones for sale XYZ, etc.)
• Is there enough traffic/earnings potential to make these worth trying to rank?
  • How will I monetize? How much will I earn, etc.?

If I can find long tails that have good enough impressions, I can rank well on that. If competitors aren't bothering with it (and SERP is not matching search intent), then I've possibly found a lucrative keyword. One that I could scale across a city, metro, state or nationwide. I'm pairing this with testing on one particular site where the median home value is $1,000,000+. At that price point, I'd imagine there's a lot of value to a real estate agent to get a buyer for.

Rj268 said:

I'll throw in another tip. It's hard competing against the big RE sites like Zillow, Realtor, Redfin and so on when it comes to city searches. Instead, niche down harder and rank pages for specific neighborhoods.

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That is a good tip. I found this to be true for buyers (the big players have them locked up) but not the seller’s side). Weird to me because if I was an agent I wouldn’t want to be representing many buyers. Not in this market anyway.

Speed23 said:

Actually, suggestions or answers are based without result. If anyone is making money from rank and rent, just add screenshot of calls. At least, I can believe your low search volume works.

Click to expand...

I get leads and close deals every month from real estate searches that have a 0 traffic volume according to similar tools. It works.

Aioli said:

That is a good tip. I found this to be true for buyers (the big players have them locked up) but not the seller’s side). Weird to me because if I was an agent I wouldn’t want to be representing many buyers. Not in this market anyway.


I get leads and close deals every month from real estate searches that have a 0 traffic volume according to similar tools. It works.

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What type of leads do you sell? What businesses do you target?

bottingisfine said:

What type of leads do you sell? What businesses do you target?

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I don't sell leads. I generate them in my friend's markets and split the profits.

If anyone is interested, I made a journey thread testing this method.

BassTrackerBoats said:

Do this for the win:

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BTB how would you recommend setting up your site structure if you were starting a project like this from scratch on a fresh domain?

Would you register a domain like chicagorealestate.com and then use all inner pages for targeting the actual long tail search queries? For example:

• chicagorealestate.com/3-bed-2-bath-homes
• chicagorealestate.com/homes-for-rent-near-airport
• chicagorealestate.com/best-studio-apartments
• Etc...

(I know Chicago is a massive metropolitan area, so substitute that for any city; I'm just using it for purposes of this example.)

Or would you get hyper-specific with the domains such as:

• 3bed2bathhomeschicago.com
• chicagohomesnearairport.com
• and so on...?

I'm also curious to hear your thoughts on another idea I've been formulating to target local industries on a larger scale (this isn't anything new or unique by any means, but I never really see people taking this approach; it seems like most people usually opt for targeting specific verticals in each city instead):

I was thinking of setting up an "authority" style site on an entire city and then targeting a multifarious amount of industries and long tail search queries including all of the real estate ones I can think of. So instead of chicagorealestate.com, I'd build out something like thebestgoddamnsiteforchicago.com and have inner pages for every vertical and local search query I can think of.

thebestgoddamnsiteforchicago.com/restaurants/top-3-italian-restaurants
thebestgoddamnsiteforchicago.com/real-estate/3-bed-2-bath-homes
thebestgoddamnsiteforchicago.com/real-estate/most-affordable-studio-apartments
thebestgoddamnsiteforchicago.com/entertainment/best-music-venues

I feel like this latter option would allow me to build up the most domain authority over time while giving me the freedom to target literally any industry and keyword I want in that city without having to start a new site from scratch every time. From an outreach/link building perspective, I think I would have way more success getting people to link to an authority site built around a whole city than I would with a hyper-focused site about 1 bedroom apartments in that city.

I see pros/cons to every option though, so I'd love to get your thoughts BTB (as well as anyone else here who wants to jump in and share their ideas).

Thanks all.

@coolsheet just did a nice pr daisy chain that would go nice with this, nothing says pr like right nows housing and rental market