25 Point SEO Checklist for Improving Real Estate Websites

On Page SEO Factors

1. Meta Title

We use Meta Title tags to tell Google and people searching what any given page on your website is all about in the most plain and simply way possible.

This title will then appear in various places around the web, including the tab in your web browser:

Things to avoid:

Duplicate Tags: That is multiple pages with the same title.  It confuses the search engines as it can not know what is the most important page to show.
Missing Titles: Search engines and users understand from the title what a page is all about so ensure that you have a title for all pages.
Long Title Tags: Your Title should be no more than 65-70 characters long.

2. Meta Descriptions

It is the text that is written below the title in a search on Google, and describes what the landing page is all about. A well written Meta description will help the user to identify that your page is important to them and ensure that your page gets clicked on.  It should include all the targeted keywords. It should be 150-160 characters.

3. Keywords

Keyword research is the most important aspect, but including it in the meta tags according to recent updates is not essential. Only put 1-2 keywords in the meta tags.  Every page on your site should be trying to emphasise at least 1 major keyword, so that your site is easier to be found by Google.

4. Redirections

301- Moved permanently
A 301 redirect means that the page has permanently moved to a new location.

302- Moved Temporarily
A 302 redirect means that a page has been moved but the move is only temporary.

When a Search engine finds a redirect it needs to figure out whether to keep the old page, or replace it with the one found at the new location. If you set up the wrong type of redirect, many search engines may become confused, which can resulting in a loss of traffic to your website.

5. Keyword Density

This refers to the occurrence of a number of words per article and should be maintained around 2-3%.  Using a keyword too many times, also know as keyword stuffing will not help and potentially hurt the page.

6. Anchor Text & internal linking optimization

This is an always changing area, You want to have several links to other pages on your website as well as other websites. This is important and should not be missed. Check out this other great article on SEO for Real Estate websites. The Links or Anchor Texts should look like the link above and not be focused on the specific keyword or even the other page title.  Care is needed so as to not overly optimise your page in this fashion.

7. Broken Links

When a link doesn’t work and you see a 404 error page or an image has been removed, these are examples of broken links and need to be fixed.  It can hurt your SEO as Google will feel that the site may have been abandoned and therefore is not relevant.   These issues need to be fixed by removal or via a permanent redirection so that a good user experience is had.  Here is a free broken link checker to check your site 

8. URL

It is ok to use your keywords in the URL, but remember it is best to keep the URL readable by humans.  It is Ok to remove stop words like (and, or, but, of, the, a, etc.), and you should include the page title if it is appropriate.

9. Duplicate Content

When Google finds two pieces of content that is identical, whether it is on your website, or on someone else’s, it will only index one of those pages.  Your website could be creating duplicate content on your site without you knowing about it.

10. Robots.txt

It is a file used by search engine crawlers to index or non-index pages based on the allow and disallow feature. There will be pages on your website that you do not want to be found in a google search.  This pages can you blocked from being crawled when you use the Robots.txt file.  It can also be used to help avoid duplicate content on your site.

11. The image – ALT tag

Every image on your website should take advantage of the image title and image alt title tag.  This is a place to include the keywords that the page is targeting, it is a great way to help google understand what you page is about.
As an aside when talking about your images make sure that they are as small as possible to help the site run as smooth as possible. It is recommended that  the size of most images should be less than about 100 KB.

12. Heading Tags (H1 /H2 /H3)

There are 6 heading tags h1 through to H6 which are used to designate the section headings on a page.We recommend that you only use H1, H2 & H3 which are the most important from an SEO perspective, using H4, H5 and H6 tags will provide no real SEO benefit but may hurt you is you use a higher number but without lower numbers on the page.The most important is the H1 tag and every page should have 1 H1 tag, the H2  tag can be used for sub-headings & H3 for normal text or a smaller heading.

13. Speed Test

Your website should open as quickly as possible and should be under 5 seconds, preferably under 2 seconds, otherwise you will need to  look at finding ways to speed up the site like minify javascript and css scripts. You should test your website speed at the gtmetrix.com free tool.

14. Tracking Codes

Google provide a heap of information about your site like who is visiting and what they are looking at, so it is important to add all the tracking codes related to event tracking. Google Analytics is used for checking traffic and the Google Search Console is great for identifying the more technical issues and resolving errors these errors like 500, 404 etc.

15. Mobile Friendly Site

Your Website should be mobile friendly, that is it will display your content in an optimised fashion for any given screen size or device? It is important to remember that Google has told us that responsive design is its preferred method of optimisation for mobile devices, and these days more than 50% of visits to our clients real estate websites are from mobile devices.  So it just makes sense as well.

16. Schema Mark up Implementations

Schema markup is code that can be included on your website, which allows google to better understand what is happening, and to display these results just beneath the page title.  There is clear evidence that pages that use Schema will rank higher in the results than a site without schema.

For User Experience

17. Load Speed

Did we mention previously that website speed was important, well it is.  Users will click off of a site that takes too long to load, especially on a mobile device with speed is even more important.  Google want to deliver a quality user experience so will not recommend pages that load slowly.

18. Site Navigation Menus

From a users perspective they want to be able to find what they are looking for easily.  Your menu should allow for all of your important pages to be found by the use of drop downs when required. It is generally considered a negative from an SEO perspective to have a drop down on a drop down so avoid this situation if possible.  This can be a highly technical area so you may need to chat with us about this.

19. Call to actions

You want to generate leads, or calls from your website, so it makes sense that your call to actions are easily found, and then easily filled in.  I have seen real estate websites where they are offering a free appraisal and the form as the client to fill in 15 to 20 fields about the number of bedrooms, construction etc.  Research shows that the more field that you ask for the less likely it is that a person will fill it in.  Just get there name and email or phone and that will do.  then talk to them.

20. Mobile friendly

We mentioned this previously, but it is a massive consideration from Googles perspective.  We know that over 50% of visits to real estate websites are done on mobile devices, so ensure that people can click to call you, or can use the directions feature to find a property.  You just have to make is as easy to use as possible.

For Content

21. Website should have blog and press section

Your blog is a great place for all of you fresh content, and that is exactly what Google are looking for as well.  Fresh content means that a site is remaining relevant  (more relevant that a site with no fresh content).  It is also a good way to demonstrate your expertise as a real estate professional, whilst adding keywords to your site.  Every new page helps to build the site out  which also helps from an SEO perspective.

22. Static Pages

You should have some static pages on your website for your main services or departments.  These pages should have at least 300 words so that you can seed the keyword naturally,   the search engine Crawlers also need a minimum of 300 words to determine the viability of a page.

SEO Checklist for Link Building or Off page activities

23. Link Building

Previous you could go and buy a heap of cheap of backlinks to your website, no days that will hurt you more than help you as Google gets better at identifying spammy links.  However links pointing to your website from an authoritative domain will still help boost your Search ranking.  Google are looking for natural links, those from places that you would expect them come from

24. Social Media Optimization

Shareing a link from your website on social media regularly is an excellent way to increase visitors.  It can also help to increase Social Signals as people will share and like the content if it is good.  Google pays attention to these social signals when it come to SEO.

25. Reputation Management

Reputation Management is an excellent way to boost your standing especially in the Local Search Results.  Check out our Reputation Management service here.

Now that you have read all of that you need to review :- What is SEO and How do I do it Right for my Real Estate Website

Tools for performing SEO activities and for checking above points.

1. GTMetrix.com for checking page speed
2. brokenlinkcheck.com for checking for broken links
3. Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress.
4. testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com to check how Google sees your site from a mobile friendly perspective.
5. http://www.copyscape.com/ to check for duplicate content elsewhere on the internet (does not work on your site)