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How Does Google Rank Web Pages and Search Results for Real Estate Companies [2019]

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Do you struggle to nail down your top local positions in Google? Are the search engines having a hard time trying to find a place for your real estate website, jumping from the 1st to the 2nd page of results, and back again? These issues could stem from one simple, yet often overlooked SEO metric: Dwell Time, says Liam Abbott, an SEO/SEM specialist & web designer from Calgary, Alberta.

But that’s only a small part of the whole SEO strategy, right?

One thing is certain: if you own Google, then your #1 goal as a global corporation is to make your users happy, by providing them with exactly what they are looking for as quickly as possible. That’s the primary reason why Google constantly improves their algorithms and ranking factors.

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Before fixing any SEO issues or enhancing an SEO strategy for local city domination and lead generation, all real estate firms should properly understand how Google ranks web pages, and how their search results are listed – today, not yesterday.

Besides content relevance and links, do you know which is Google’s third most important ranking signal?

Rankbrain, and it dates back to 2015. It appears that this is the only live Artificial Intelligence (AI) that Google uses in its search results.

SEO blogger, Brian Dean, suggests that the way in which RankBrain will increases or decreases the importance of backlinks, content freshness, content length, and domain authority depends on the keyword, while fluctuations will be evident where your webpage appears in their search results (SERPs).

Here’s how RankBrain works and why it’s important to your website ranking success:

  1. It’s first main job is to ‘understand’ search queries (keywords)
  2. It’s second main job is to ‘measure’ the way people interact with the results (user satisfaction)

Previously, Google would try to match the words in your search query to words on a page. Many years ago it was 10x times easier to dominate their search results and not necessary bang your head against the wall, trying to figure out an efficient SEO game plan.

Today, RankBrain tries to actually figure out what you mean, like a human would. Also, it tries to determine how search engine visitors interact with the search results, including those denoting user experience signals (UX signals):

    • Organic Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

If your real estate buyers guide (or blog post) appears 100 times in a search, and users click on it 20 times, your CTR is 20%. Your goal is to write highly-engaging, click-worthy page titles to attract search users.

Avoid writing click-bait headlines for the sake of getting clicks. Your entire page/article should be worth reading, not just the title, otherwise your dwell time will be much lower, and the bounce rate exceedingly higher.

In the end, your rankings will suffer, and instead of ranking #3 on page 1, you may get downgraded to page #2, or even lower.

    • Dwell Time (the higher the rate, the better)

The ‘secret’ to increasing your Dwell Time: provide highly-appealing and long form content to keep visitors fascinated, and make it easy for them to get what they want. This way, they won’t feel the need to return to other search results or Google listings.

    • Bounce Rate

This term refers to the percentage (%) of visitors leaving your website after viewing only one page on your domain name.

“Interlinking” is the solution to resolving a high bounce rate. This approach requires you link to other pages and articles on your website, and provide readers with additional and relevant information.

    • Pogo-sticking (a factor that seems even more important than bounce rate)

When was the last time you clicked on a SERP result, saw that it was not relevant to your search query or intent, and immediately hit the back button to inspect other search page listings?

HubSpot claims that 43% of readers skim blog posts.

That’s why pogo-sticking is crucial. You have to ensure that each page and article on your website is highly-relevant and extremely engaging.

How to perform RankBrain-friendly, Keyword Research:

According to Brian, long-tail keyword optimization is obsolete, and you should optimize your page or blog post using a medium tail keyword instead (and make sure that the content you provide is awesome).

RankBrain will ‘automatically’ rank you for that term… and thousands of similar keywords (provided your page is meaty enough, and does not contain minimal information).

However, this advice is ideal for international search rankings, and holds less relevance for local real estate websites. In my opinion, you will have to consider all keywords, including LSI key terms. Long-tail keyword optimization is still important for local real estate SEO approaches. Before you decide on specific keywords, you may want to run a local Keyword Difficulty check using a keyword research tool like SemRush or Ahrefs.

How to Optimize Titles and Description Tags for Sky-high CTR

1. Use Brackets

HubSpot and Outbrain analyzed 3.3 million headlines a few years ago, and they discovered that brackets outperformed bracketless titles by 33%, and even boosted conversions.

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2. Be ultra specific, use numbers.

Buzzsumo reviewed 100 million articles on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, and revealed their findings in a widely shared headline study.

Examples of top starting headline phrases you can use in your real estate website content (articles, guides, blog posts, newsletters, and ads).

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The most engaging numbers derived from the headline findings. It looks like bloggers and marketers aren’t blindly using “10” just because it’s the trend. It also gets clicks!

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Here are some eye-catching real estate headline examples I’ve found online to demonstrate what is mentioned above:

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Next. How to transform your real estate web pages into traffic, leads and revenue and rank your real estate company in Google, Bing and other search engines.

Content Marketing on Steroids. Blogging.

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Brian, a real estate agent from Killeen, TX, shares how he ranks #1 on Google by blogging about 10 real estate keywords and topics.

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A lot of my traffic is from investor content, which is just fine, as that is a major pillar of my business. But as you can see, most of my content is not earned from my top ten pages, but many more pages of long-tail keywords.

BRIAN E. ADAMS

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He’s not the only savvy real estate blogger who understands the power of fresh, relevant and lengthy content.

Check out this post:

101 Real Estate Rockstars to Follow on Twitter

Most of these guys run real estate blogs, and some of them are quite active in the content marketing arena.

Here are some real estate blog ideas that rank on Google in 2019. You will find these useful during your SEO and digital marketing efforts to capture your target audience, and provide them with valuable insights, tips, and time-sensitive information:

  • Local Places and Events

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  • Neighborhood Pages

Check out some of the best examples of real estate website neighborhood pages.

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  • Contract Explainers

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  • Builder Pages

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  • Steps of the Transaction

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  • Niche Real Estate Buyers and Sellers

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  • Loan Types

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Use these ideas and adapt them to fit your particular real estate SEO strategy and blogging calendar.

Don’t forget: content frequency is as important to your blogging as content quality.

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Focus on both short and lengthy blog posts and articles, as well as publishing the latest available industry news and stats.

Further blog posting ideas to consider:

Ultimate Guides for Buyers & Sellers

Create a long-form written resource comprehensively explaining the steps in the buying/selling process, as well as insider tips & tricks pertaining to each step. Use this resource as a framework for a video, and embed the video on these pages as well.

Buying & Selling FAQ

A “Frequently Asked Questions” page can be extraordinarily helpful in attracting more qualified prospects to your website. If you answer the most popular questions from buyers & sellers on your real estate website, Google could highlight your responses at the top of the search results.

Thank you so much for reading How Does Google Rank Web Pages & Search Results for Real Estate Companies [2019]. We really appreciate it! If you have any questions about our article, or can suggest any other topics you think we should explore, feel free to let us know.

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Written by Robb Fahrion

Robb Fahrion is a Co-Founder and Partner of Flying V Group. Robb has helped over 350+ companies build their businesses online and is responsible for building Flying V Group into one of the premier marketing agencies in the United States. Robb and his team have managed over $10M in marketing budget and continue to accelerate the growth of clients' businesses. A love for business and competition is what fuels Robb to create dynamic marketing plans to help his clients grow exponentially.

October 7, 2019

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