Let's get real – is your real estate website actually delivering more leads, or could it use an overhaul? Recognizing the power of real estate content marketing is the first step to transforming your strategy.
Content marketing presents challenges on the path to success. A major roadblock is creating content that truly connects with your audience - a whopping 57% of people surveyed by Content Marketing Institute said they struggle with crafting resonant content.
Gone are the days of relying on overtly promotional content to attract customers. Modern consumers seek genuinely helpful information that addresses their specific concerns. The key lies in offering valuable insights right from the start, thereby naturally fostering trust and recognition over time.
But even the most insightful content won't make an impact if it remains unseen. A strong content marketing strategy using SEO is what you need to reach your target audience. This principle holds true across the real estate sector, whether you're an agent, a broker, or a property management company.
So what's next? In this article, I'll provide an insider's look into the technical tools supporting effective real estate content marketing, including specifics on SEO keyword research, writing optimization software, analytics configuration, and more. The goal is to showcase what goes on behind the scenes for high-quality, visible website content.
What is real estate content marketing?
Content marketing for your blog means that you provide valuable information that directly addresses the questions your ideal clients have as they search the internet. By offering genuinely useful information, you can set yourself apart and gradually build trust.
Consider this scenario:
Imagine a family relocating to your city, searching online for "best neighborhoods for children," "leading schools," or "child-friendly activities." Suppose your website appears in these searches with insightful articles you wrote months ago. This family begins to view you as a knowledgeable authority in your field.
Notice what happened? First, they didn’t know you existed. Then, they start to see you as an expert because you seem to be answering all their questions.
Your site visitors now regard you as a trusted resource on local real estate matters, without any sense of sales pressure, purely on the basis of being helpful. The beauty of content lies in its evergreen value, continuing to engage and attract visitors long after you’ve published it.
Now, when this family decides it's time to contact an agent, your brand stands out as a familiar and trusted choice. They may subscribe to your newsletter for further advice, interact with your site's chatbot, or request a consultation through a contact form.
This is the power of real estate content marketing in action!
By consistently answering their questions, you transform strangers into leads and, ultimately, satisfied clients, all without resorting to cold calling. Instead, you rely on providing valuable insights and that personal touch, which is what sets content marketing apart as a truly effective tool.
Write for your customer
Before you create your content marketing strategy or pay someone to do it for you, take a bit of time to think about your target customer and what kind of content you can provide to address their needs. For example,
Home buyers: Do you help first-time buyers? Downsizers? Out of state buyers? Or even investors? Their needs could be basic education content about buying a home or more in-depth information about the real estate market or investment opportunities.
Home sellers: This group may want to learn how to increase their home’s value, how to get ready to sell or market trends.
Renters: Do you help find tenants? This group might be interested in information about the rental process, neighborhood options and moving tips.
What type of content?
Now, what type of content should you add to your blog? Here are some types
Informational articles: Cover a range of topics like “How-to” guides, tips for buying/selling and details on your local market.
Social media: Incorporate your social media content into your blog. This could be quick video updates on the market, video tours or live Q&As.
Email marketing: When my husband was actively doing commercial real estate we set up Constant Contact and he’d get information from his broker like market reports and then email out to his list. I think that was OK a few years ago but I think clients want more in today’s world. If you are adding new blog posts, you can include this content to increase the value of your email content.
Webinars and workshops: There’s so many possibilities here. As a real estate investor, the first thing that comes to my mind are workshops to help new investors get started with their first property. Then, take the content from the webinar and add to your blog so that prospective clients can watch in the future. You can easily add an email sign up so you can collect potential leads that way.
How to create content
Ok so now how do you create content? You can hire a real estate content agency to do it for you which is helpful if you don’t want to learn how to do SEO and you don’t have the time to consistently create new content. But if you don’t have the budget for this, there are DIY options. Let’s go into those:
Keyword research
I like to use a software like AHREFS for keyword research. What you want to look for are keywords that are easy (green) and have a higher search volume. Using the AHREFS Chrome extension, I can see search terms that meet these criteria.
Here’s a screenshot of this:
After the initial ideas from a basic Google search, I go into the actual software to plan out an overall strategy. Here’s how:
When I hit “search” here are my results:
Content creation
Once you create a list of several keywords to write for, now is the time to write an article for each individual one. I use a software called Surfer SEO to do this. As you write each article, the software tracks the term you want to rank for so that you are hitting the right keywords for hte purpose of that article. This reduces the guesswork by connecting your writing to the content strategy.
Here’s what it looked like for me when I created this article.
Now, you’ll repeat this process over and over to keep producing content for your potential clients. There’s a lot more to the articles like how they are structured, linking within the articles and other SEO details but I’ll save that for another post.
Ideas to spark your real estate content
A good place to start is to use ChatGPT to help you brainstorm idea. Here’s the list I got from my prompt “brainstorm a list of content ideas for a real estate agent website.” Any of these can be good to run through keyword research and see if they are a good fit for your market.
Home buying guide for first-time buyers
Tips for selling your home quickly and for top dollar
Local market trends and analysis
Home staging strategies that work
Financing your home purchase: What you need to know
The benefits of pre-approval for a mortgage
How to choose the right neighborhood for your family
The impact of school districts on home values
Renovation ideas to increase your home's value
Understanding home inspections and appraisals
The role of a real estate agent in your home search
Navigating the closing process: A step-by-step guide
The pros and cons of new construction vs. existing homes
How to prepare for an open house
Real estate investing tips for beginners
The importance of curb appeal and how to enhance it
Measure progress
Once you publish your content it’s not “set it and forget it”. You need to see how it’s doing and make changes to keep it updated and performing as you need. The best free tool for this is Google Search Console. In this tool you can see trends in your traffic growth and the top-performaning pages. You can take your best content and find ways to write related articles or continue to enhance it.
What about pages that aren’t performing? Revisit them and see how you can improve or revise.
What’s next for your DIY content marketing strategy?
The key next step is to pick one content marketing tactic covered today to focus on improving. This could be analyzing your website metrics more closely, researching target keywords to optimize for, or trying out a writing optimization tool.
Start small by identifying one area to learn that interests you. Over time, consistent skills development transforms the performance of your real estate content.
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