How to Conduct Real Estate Keyword Research for Blog SEO and Traffic
In this article, you’ll learn how to conduct real estate keyword research to support your blogging, SEO, and broader marketing efforts.
Consumers use search engines like Google to research a wide variety of real estate topics. Most real estate agents know this. They also know it’s important to have good search engine visibility, so they can connect with potential clients online.
But what these agents may not know is that consumers search for thousands of real estate and housing-related phrases every day, covering a broad spectrum of keywords and topics.
This gives real estate professionals a chance to connect with a huge audience online, simply by publishing a steady stream of quality content.
And that’s where real estate keyword research comes into the picture. This is when you identify popular search terms people are typing into search engines like Google, and then develop high-quality blog posts or website content around those topics.
Benefits of Doing SEO Keyword Research
Real estate keyword research helps you in two ways:
- It can help you generate new ideas for your blog posts.
- It can help you maximize your traffic and visibility by focusing on topics that are most frequently used by your target audience.
If you master this particular skill, you’ll never be at a loss for blogging ideas.
Getting Into the Buyer or Seller Mindset
Step out of your real estate agent shoes for a moment. Imagine you are a home buyer or seller in your local area. Imagine you are going online to research the local housing market, homes that are available, neighborhoods, prices, inventory, etc. What words might you use when describing them?
Next, plug some of these words into a keyword research tool.
What you end up with is a list of phrases people are typing into Google, Yahoo and Bing to find the services you provide (or when researching topics that relate to your services). If you write about these topics, you’ll have a better chance of pulling in relevant traffic. You’ll attract the kinds of people who are searching for what you provide.
And remember to always include your city or town name when doing keyword research. Real estate is a local business. The modern consumer is tech-savvy enough to zero in on local real estate conditions when using the search engines. They’ll append their city or town to many of their internet searches, and sometimes the current year as well.
For instance, a home buyer might search for: Current housing market trends Las Vegas 2023.
Using Keyword Research Tools
I recommend that you start with the free keyword-research tool provided by Google. It’s called “Keyword Planner.” The benefit of using this tool is that it makes other suggestions based on the keywords or phrases you start with. So it can help you identify other topics to blog about, in addition to the ones you have in mind.
It will also tell you how much search volume is associated with each of those keywords and phrases. You’ll need a Google account to log in and use the Keyword Planner tool. But you can’t beat the price (FREE).
There are many keyword-research tools available online. Do a search for “SEO keyword research tools,” and you’ll find plenty (like Ahrefs, Semrush, etc.). They all do the same thing, basically. They help you identify keywords and phrases that people are searching online.
You can also use the search engines themselves to identify blogging topics. Google and Bing, for example, both have “auto-suggestion” features built into their search engines. You’ve probably seen this before. As you start typing a word or phrase, the search engine suggests search topics based on actual user searches (i.e., topics with real-world traffic potential).
The image below shows Google’s auto-suggest feature in action.
Check it out for yourself. Visit Google and start typing your city name, followed by “housing” or “real estate,” and see what you come up with. Try other phrases. Experiment and explore. This is a great place tow start real estate keyword research process.
Real Estate Content Tips and Strategies
Keyword research is an important aspect of search engine optimization and blogging. It will help you pull in targeted web traffic by writing around popular and relevant search phrases. It’s the smart and strategic way to run a blogging campaign.
Remember, the more topics you cover, the more visitors you’ll attract. The more visitors you attract, the more leads you could generate. There is no limit to how far you can go with blogging as a real estate marketing strategy. It’s a long-term strategy with endless potential.
And it all starts with keyword research.
Here’s something else to keep in mind. The most popular search phrases are also the hardest to rank for, due to having more competition. For instance, “Phoenix homes for sale” and “Dallas real estate” have high traffic potential. But they’re also extremely competitive from an SEO perspective. If you want to include them in your blogging strategy, do it! But you’ll probably have an easier time ranking in search engines for more specific topics.
Write for People … Optimize for Search Engines
Real estate keyword research is one of the first steps in a blogging campaign. Next, you’ll want to create high-quality content around those phrases — the kind of content that truly helps people.
With a basic understanding of SEO, a real estate blogger can pull more traffic through Google and other search engines. But at the same time, you have to remember that people are your primary audience. You want to create content that is useful and engaging for people. The search engines should be a secondary consideration.
Once you’ve written some good content, you can always go back and optimize it with certain keywords and phrases. But this kind of “optimization” should never interfere with the quality of the content.
It’s okay to write a blog post with a certain real estate keyword or phrase in mind. In fact, I highly recommend it. This is the first step to creating focused and purposeful website content. But you should never optimize your content to the point that it reduces readability or quality.
