SEO for real estate agents is a practice that focuses on improving web and server performance. It aims to help search engine spiders crawl and index your site more efficiently (to assist with organic rankings).
A Complete SEO Checklist
The technical characteristics that a search engine values in the results pages include a secure connection, a responsive design, and a quick loading time. Technical SEO is the job you must undertake to guarantee that your website meets those criteria.
A checklist of crucial things you may do to guarantee that your technical SEO is up to par follows. You can assist Google to recognize and reward the security and structure of your site by following these rules.
Use SSL
A secure sockets layer (SSL) – often referred to as an HTTPS:// URL – is a security mechanism that builds an encrypted connection between a web server and a browser. You can immediately identify a website utilizing SSL: the website’s address begins with ‘HTTPS://’ rather than ‘HTTP://.’
In 2014, Google stated that it wanted to see “HTTPS everywhere,” and that secure HTTPS sites would be given preference in search results over non-secure ones.
So it’s only natural to try and make your website as safe as possible, especially when you’re dealing with sensitive material like credit card numbers. Using an SSL certificate on your website is one way to do this; however, most top website builders now include SSL by default.
Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly
A ‘responsive’ website design adjusts itself automatically to suit any device so that it can be easily browsed and comprehended.
Google states that a responsive site is an important ranking signal by its algorithms. With Google’s ‘mobile-first approach to indexing content, a flexible website is more essential than ever before.
So it’s only natural to make sure that your website is fully responsive and adapts to the best format for mobile, tablet, or desktop visitors.
Accelerate your site’s loading speed
Fast-loading websites are more desirable to search engines: page speed is considered a significant ranking signal.
There are a few things you can do to improve the speed of your website:
- Use a high-speed hosting service.
- Use a quick DNS (‘domain name system’) service.
- Reduce the number of ‘HTTP requests’ – use scripts and plugins as little as possible.
- instead of a number of CSS files or inline CSS, use only one CSS stylesheet (the code that tells the browser how to display your website)
- Make sure your picture files are as small as feasible while yet retaining clarity (without being pixelated).
- Compress your websites (this may be accomplished using a tool called GZIP)
- Remove any unnecessary spaces, line breaks or indentations in your HTML, CSS, and Javascript (see Google’s Minify Resources page for assistance).
Duplicate content issues are handled
Duplicate content may be perplexing to users (and, in fact, search engine algorithms) or it might be used to try to improve rankings or get more visitors.
Because of this, search engines are wary of it and Google and Bing have encouraged webmasters to eradicate any duplicate content problems they discover.
Duplicate content problems can be easily resolved by the following steps:
- To avoid your CMS publishing numerous versions of a page or post (for example, by turning off Session IDs unless they are absolutely required to the web site’s operation and removing printer-friendly editions of your material).
- Use the canonical link element to inform search engines where your content’s “main” version is located.
Create an XML sitemap
An XML sitemap is a file that helps search engines to comprehend your site while crawling it. It’s kind of like a “search roadmap,” telling search engines exactly where each page may be found.
It also contains important details about each page on your sites, such as traffic statistics and customer reviews.
When creating your site, you can also see how many distinct visitors are currently on the page; how long it has been since a page was last modified; what priority it has on your site; and how often it is updated.
Your XML site is generated automatically in Bigcommerce, whereas if you’re using another platform, you’ll need to use a sitemap generator.
Turn on AMP if you haven’t already
The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a Google-sponsored project that aims to improve the delivery of material on mobile devices by utilizing unique coding known as AMP HTML.
HMTL5 is light on mobile devices and doesn’t impact page loading speeds as much. This approach works because it strips your content and codes down to the bare essentials, leaving text, images, and video intact but disabling scripts, comments, and forms.
Because they load quickly, AMP-based sites are more likely to be read and shared by your audience, resulting in a longer time on site and additional backlinks pointing to your content – all great for SEO. Furthermore, Google occasionally features AMP sites in prominent carousels in search results, which provides a major boost to your search rankings.
Create structured data markup for your website
Structuring data markup entails adding code to your website to make it easier for search engines to understand the content on it. This information may aid in indexing and providing more relevant results by search engines.
Additionally, structured data improves search results by providing ‘rich snippets’ such as star ratings to reviews; prices to items; and reviewer information (example below).
These enhanced results may improve your click-through rate (CTR) and create additional visitors to your site because they are more visually appealing and clearly show vital information to searchers. It’s worth making the effort to include structured data on your site since sites with better CTRs generally receive improved treatment in search engines.
Use Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to verify your site’s presence
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are free services from Google and Microsoft that allow you to submit your site to their search engines for indexing.
When you’re ready to go live with your website, submit the XML sitemap (see above) to both Google Search Console and Webmaster Tools so that they may crawl it and begin displaying results for it in search engine results pages.
Another reason why you should consider hiring an agency to run your site is that they will provide a variety of services. These services also allow you to keep track of the overall performance of your website from a search engine standpoint, as well as:
- Update your site’s mobile usability.
- Viewing search analytics,
- checking backlinks to your site,
- disavowing spammy links,
- and much more are all available from Google Search Console.
