Spoiler alert. I work in SEO, so I am always going to route for the importance of a great SEO strategy to help boost your estate agent’s visibility, brand awareness and, ultimately, grow your pipeline.

That said, my goal here is to write an informative article that can hopefully be useful and help you develop your own opinion and strategic marketing plan.

How I see SEO helping estate agents

For estate agents to continue generating leads for their business, there are two key ways to achieve this. Through referrals and repeat business or by visibility and brand awareness. When you look at ways to improve your visibility and, therefore, your brand awareness, a good SEO strategy can 100% help with that.

In one way, SEO will help your business generate more local traffic to your website and money-making pages through optimised content. When done correctly, this content can leapfrog your page onto page one of Google by ensuring it includes the right keywords and is optimised better than other websites within your targeted territory.

By building optimised pages within your website for each of your desired keyword types (usually locations covered or services), you can start to rank multiple pages on your site and get a specific audience to land on each one. This is great for content relevance, something of high importance in the eyes of Google.

A second way to use SEO to generate local traffic to your website is to write locally-focused blog posts. For example, “Things to do in Bath over Christmas,” “Best bars in Bath,” or “How to sell my Bath home?”

Even if the article isn’t property-related, you can still write a post relevant to your targeted community and add a serious amount of local traffic to your website. Who knows, some of these visitors could be looking for help selling or renting their property!

One example, despite the Woking football club being in one of the lower tiers of English football, they have a monthly search of 27,100. No disrespect to Woking FC, but I can’t imagine many people are searching for their club outside of the local area. I may be wrong.

Anyway, to make sure you haven’t missed my point. You can use tons of content ideas outside the typically targeted keywords to boost page visibility and local traffic.

Why you shouldn’t rely solely on SEO

I run an SEO agency that specialises in estate agents and letting agents, but I am also the Marketing Exec for eXp UK and, before that, Keller Williams. I have never told anyone to rely just on SEO. Unfortunately, SEO is just another content marketing channel. You need to focus on all content types to be top-of-mind as the local go-to property expert.

Why use various content channels?

Have you ever heard of Google’s 7-11-4 rule?

The 7-11-4 rule is a simple and effective sales and marketing strategy developed by Google that will inspire and empower you to engage more customers – and win more business.

It means; 7 hours of content consumed, 11 touchpoints and 4 locations.

So, for a local estate agent wanting to tap into their market and win over the hearts and minds within their targeted territory, your strategy could look a little like this;

7 hours of content: Social media, blog posts, sponsorship banners, YouTube videos, guest blogging, networking events, door-knocking, events, workshops, webinars, and charities.

11 touchpoints: Google search, social media and Facebook groups, leaflets, posters, boards, radio, a local magazine, and posters.

4 locations: Website, social media, newsletters, and direct mail.

The great thing about SEO is there is an excellent level of customer intent when searching for “best estate agent in (location)”, but, as shown with the 7-11-4 rule, content is king when looking to grow your business and secure more listings.

So, do estate agents need SEO?

There is enormous potential in SEO. You can get traffic to your site from visitors actively looking for a local property expert to sell or rent their property, and you can instantly generate that visitor into a lead when your SEO and website’s user experience are done correctly.

I get agents saying, “Paul, how many people really use Google when searching for a local estate agent?”

To answer that, I have included a few stats from Ubersuggest that contain the search term and its monthly search count.

estate agents in Bath – 1,900

estate agents in Halifax – 1900

estate agents in Poole – 1,600

estate agents in Truro – 1,000

estate agents in Hull – 2,400

This was just a quick keyword research, but it is clear that people use Google to find local agents.

This article was written to discuss whether or not sales and letting agents need SEO. There is a lot involved in getting your site onto the top 3 of a Google search, but the benefits of ranking and driving traffic to your pages which intend to call an agent are huge.

This article was written by Paul Neal, owner of Estate Agency Marketing