SEO & Real Estate: how to do real estate SEO on Google in 2023?

Natural referencing (SEO) has always been crucial for a real estate site. In 2023, many real estate sites are developing a more or less profitable SEO strategy. This article aims to present to you the 4 priority actions to put in place to be best ranked on Google in 2023.

The objective is therefore to make your real estate agencies, your advertisements for

houses and/or apartments more visible, but also to bring future sellers to your agencies

by working on your SEO on specific requests.

Summary of this article:

• The contexts and challenges of real estate referencing in 2023
• Optimize the structure of your real estate site: store locator and geographical thematic silo
• Optimize the content of your real estate pages: semantic cocoon and internal networking
• Develop your local ecommerce seo firm: reviews, Google Maps and Google Business Profile
• Create themed external links: good Net linking practices

The challenges and contexts of real estate referencing in 2023

The main challenge of natural referencing in real estate in 2023 is to be visible on local queries on the first page of Google results when an Internet user types for example the query “individual house Rennes”, “real estate agency Rennes” or even “Rennes apartment estimate”. 

In addition, the ever more frequent use of Google Business Profile sheets by Internet users

requires the continuous improvement of these establishments in order to obtain positive

comments from customers and ever more stars for a real estate agency.

Depending on your geographic area, these requests are more or less competitive. However, assume that this sector in natural referencing as in SEA is very competitive.
Since the end of 2022 until today, the overall real estate market is still declining . However, as you can see below with our SEO search trend analysis tool ” Yamens Trend “,book marketing services queries around real estate are much less searched by Internet users on certain themes. Other themes benefit from significant increases such as “Professional search”.

With this graph, we could say that there is no point in working on your SEO in real estate and waiting for the return of a very strong increase in search trends. Do not be mistaken! Remember that implementing an SEO strategy takes time. It is therefore good to start now to develop concrete actions to gain positioning.

Find below the top 4 elements to work on in SEO for your real estate site.

1- Optimize the architecture of your real estate site: store locator and geographical thematic silo

As mentioned above, the main objective of a real estate site is to highlight local queries with commercial and transactional search intentions which have high conversion possibilities. Indeed, queries

or keywords like “purchase new Nantes apartment” or “new Angers house” typed into search

engines by Internet users mean that a person is in the active research phase. This active search demonstrates strong purchasing potential.

To be positioned on the first page of Google for these queries, you must correctly structure your site in geographical thematic silos. That is to say, create a logical sequence of directories and subdirectories of your URLs according to geographical consistency (Region > Department > City > District). This method applies to the creation of a store locator in order to store your agencies and to classify your different advertisements and real estate.

Why do this? Quite simply to simplify the life of Google robots which pass through your site by providing a logic of storage and internal networking according to your activities in this or that geographical sector. The robots will like your site more by recognizing its good architecture and powerful internal linking to your strategic pages linked to the queries mentioned above. The most complicated part of this work is obtaining the best internal linking on all the pages of your site in order to increase positioning on your strategic queries. Yamens SEO teams can help you with this process.

2 – Optimize the content of your real estate pages: semantic cocoon and internal networking

Once the technical structure of your site is perfectly optimized in geographic thematic silo. You now need to implement a content strategy to make your local pages stand out more. In 2023, due to a very competitive real estate sector in SEO, the best solution is the creation of a semantic cocoon targeting the cities that you most want to favor for your business.

A semantic cocoon differs from simple content by the fact that you seek to achieve the top results on a particular page. For example, on the page where you target the keyword “purchase Bordeaux apartment” which has a very interesting and therefore very competitive average monthly search volume of 1600. The objective of the semantic cocoon will be to position this page in the top 5 Google results by creating related topics based on semantic proximity linked to the page you want to highlight. 

How to do this? At Yamens, we rely on a lexical audit allowing us to define the most promising geographical themes and then identify the strategic keywords to highlight. Next comes a lot of research work for keywords related to the page at the center of the semantic cocoon. We pass all this data into our semantic proximity tools which allow us to select the most relevant topics in the eyes of Google. It is not finished! We can then write this content optimized for SEO. Understand by this that we place other relevant keywords in your texts based on the analysis of your competitors’ content in order to obtain an appropriate SEO optimization percentage.

A semantic cocoon in real estate corresponds to an average of 15 to 30 pieces of content to integrate on a website and to mesh together strategically in order to bring the most power to your target page.  

3 – Develop your local SEO: reviews, Google Maps via Google Business Profile

The natural referencing of your real estate agencies should not only be done on your website. The other essential tool is Google Business Profile(formerly Google My Business) which allows you to add the location of your agencies on Google Maps and in the results of the local pack (see screenshot below) for free. There is still work to be done on the complete optimization of your files, but also making them attractive by posting news on them like a Facebook page. The biggest job to do is collecting opinions on your files in order to make them as visible as possible. At Yamens we carry out optimization, reporting, publication of news and we offer a system for collecting opinions in collaboration with Avanti (a subsidiary of MV Group, like Yamens) based on the analysis of your customer data.

Why do this? In 2023, the choice of an Internet user when actively searching for an apartment or house will depend enormously on the quality rating of your agencies, even if you are positioned in the Top 3 of Google. On average, we notice that a real estate agency that has less than 3 stars in reviews 

on Google Business Profile loses a considerable number of contacts. It is therefore essential

to work on these reviews so as not to let the competition steal potential customers from you.

4 – Create themed external links: good Net linking practices

The last step is to make your real estate website gain popularity and authority. We recommend doing this step last once the previous three recommendations are in place.
In 2023, in order to do quality net linking , it is essential to set up themed backlink campaigns 

to your site. At Yamens, we can therefore select sites in the real estate sector and recognized as

such by Google in order to link to your website.

Why do this? Themed links will provide you with powerful semantic logic that will boost the most important pages of your site. This strategy is very promising, especially with the establishment of a semantic cocoon as explained in point 2. The objective is to further increase your pages which

are already positioned well, but which could dethrone your competitors and thus surpass them.

In summary

In 2023, real estate sites are often already more or less optimized for SEO. But, in a sector as competitive as this one, we need to look further and develop more advanced SEO strategies in order to

stand out ahead of the competition in search engine results. The priority is to work on

local requests related to the purchase of an apartment or house in a specific geographical area. To do this, the following elements must be worked on:

• Site technique: create a store locator and geographical thematic silos to promote the learning of your pages by Google robots,
• Content and semantics of the site: develop semantic cocoons targeting strategic queries linked to specific cities in order to reach top positions,
• Local SEO: improve your agency network on Google Business Profile to strengthen your visibility on Google Maps. Work on your reputation in order to give Internet users confidence by displaying as many stars as possible,
• Net linking: boost pages losing positioning speed with themed links in the real estate sector in order to get ahead of competitors.