One of the top ways to market your website and business as a real estate agent is through SEO or Search Engine Optimization. This online marketing strategy can help you gain more leads, prospects, and ultimately, more commissions.
When you want to start using real estate SEO, it’s best to understand some of the common terms. Let’s look at some of the most common terms you will run into as you start using this marketing strategy.
Alt Text
As you work with an agency providing real estate SEO or you research doing it yourself, you will run into the term Alt text. This stands for alternative text. It’s used with images as a way to describe them.
If you’ve ever visited a website where the image failed to load, you likely saw alt text instead. In the SEO world, this will provide a way to better tell the search engines what a blog post or web page is about.
Anchor Text
Most of us see anchor text every single day online and we don’t even realize it. Simply put, anchor text is the phrase that you click on to go to another website. For example, if you were to click on LLC Sponsorship, it will take you to our page about LLC Sponsorship. The anchor text is “LLC Sponsorship” because it’s the linked text.
Backlinks
Another type of link you will need to understand when using real estate SEO is called backlinks. These are also known as inbound links. Anytime another website links to your website, it’s called a backlink.
For example, if you write a guest blog post someone else’s blog and they allow you to link in the profile at the bottom of the post. That link will become a backlink to your website.
Header Tags
Every page or blog post will have header tags if it’s properly optimized for the search engines. Header tags are simply the tags used for sub-headings. Commonly, you will use an H1 tag for the title of a page, H2 tags for sub-headings, and even H3 tags for sub-headings under a sub-heading.
Internal Links
The opposite of backlinks, an internal link is a link from one page or post on your website to another page or post on your website. For example, if we create a link here to our Agent Sponsorship page, it’s an internal link.
Keywords
Of course, when you use real estate SEO, you will see plenty of talk about keywords. A keyword is simply the word or phrase someone enters into Google or another search engine.
For example, if someone was searching for a home for sale in Round Rock, they might use the keyword “home for sale in Round Rock“. Keywords can be a single word, but they are often phrases ranging from three to five words or longer.
Long-tail Keywords
A specialized type of keyword, long-tail keywords are longer and more specific. These types of keywords tend to provide the searcher with more specific results. From the side of marketing, they provide a less competitive phrase to target.
For example, if someone was to search simply for “homes for sale” that is a pretty basic term. They will likely get lots of websites from all over the country with homes for sale.
However, when they turn this into a long-tail keyword, they will search something like, “homes for sale in McKinney with acreage”. This is a very specific term and a long-tail keyword.
Meta Description
You will certainly become familiar with the term Meta description when you use real estate SEO. This term refers to the description of a page or post that will show up on Google or another search engine after the clickable title.
There are many other real estate SEO terms you might need to learn. However, these are some of the common terms and will give you a head start when you start looking for the right SEO agency to help with your real estate website.
