Complete Redesign of Your Realtor Website: A Guide

Is your realtor website underperforming? Are you not producing nearly enough leads to justify what you paid/ are paying for it? Is it largely ignored by both people and Google?

Time for a fresh start. As you redesign your website, there are a lot of really easy things you can do from the start to help it succeed, as well as a lot of new habits you can start to build now.

Let’s take a look at how to build a realtor website the right way.

Be Mindful of the “Next Step”

Every single page should have a purpose. Otherwise, why is it there? And, more specifically, each page should only have one purpose, and one purpose only.

That single purpose could be one of a number of things. It may be:

Schedule an appointment
View Listing/ find out more about this house
Sign up for our newsletter
Download our real estate cheat sheet

Most service, product or blog pages don’t convert very well because you’ve either given too many next-steps, or you’ve given none.

One Goal: One Button

A key principle of web design is attention ratio. That means for every call-to-action for the page, you have one button or link. And if you only have one goal that means something very simple that most people struggle with: One goal: One button

Let’s say your desired outcome is to drive people to look at your current listings. If you have a button on the page that says “Browse our homes” it’s now getting 100% of the attention it deserves.

But if you add a “Sign up for our mailing list” button or link, that first button is now only getting 50% of the attention it needs to convert. And a third button means you’re now down to 33%.

Take a look at your layout and design and ask yourself how many clickable outcomes for the customer you have. Trying to accomplish too many goals means you will actually get nothing done.

What’s Next?

It’s even more dangerous to have no next step whatsoever.

Do you have a blog with good traffic and good social performance, but no leads? Odds are good that you aren’t giving the reader a clear next step.

Some people will leave their blog open-ended at the end, as not to come off too pushy or overwhelm people with a hard sell.

If you’re not going to try to help them graduate from your blog to a contact form or listing, at least encourage them to comment or read more blogs. Otherwise, with nothing to do, they just leave the site and leave your sales funnel.

Do Keywords the Right Way

To build this site the right way, you need a really solid keyword strategy. That means you need to know what keywords to focus on, and you need to know the right tactics to optimize them.

Google is getting smarter and more in tune with how a searcher wants to find businesses. Which is actually good news for you for two reasons.

1. They’re less focused on exact match keywords these days. That means you don’t have to ruin your website copy or blog with awkward syntax and exact match keywords, like “Best Realtor New York.”

You can use them in a more organic way. There is no need to “stuff” them in anymore.

2. They’re less focused on keyword density. That means you don’t have to worry about if you’re hitting 2.5% or 2.7% and constantly checking your word count.

Again, they’re looking for organic usage. So that means you can focus on quality instead of quantity. Which is good news, because now your copy and blog can have a nice flow, without obvious keyword adds mid-sentence.

Longtail Keywords

You also need to be aware of what longtail keywords your would-be customers are looking for. These are most often questions or concerns that your searcher needs an answer to.

If you’re a realtor, those may be:

How much of a down payment do I need to buy a house?
Is now a good time to buy a house?
Should I buy a house or a condo?

People are now typing complete questions into a Google search and expecting a complete answer. Google will reward the sites that can provide these answers.

Find out what these questions are. Pull from your own experience, and take a look at what questions are being asked on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Quora for some free market research into your target audience’s pain points.

Now take those points and turn them into blog titles and headings on your service page.

Don’t Forget About Off-Page SEO

You can ignore all of those emails from people asking if they can exchange links. or to post your link for a cost. Those are called “link farms” and the Google Penguin update will put them completely out of business soon.

Google has classified those links as spammy, because your links are appearing on sites that have absolutely nothing to do with homes, being a realtor, or real estate.

Build quality backlinks to your site. That means focusing on building relationships, writing guest posts, or being featured/ profiled in the media.

This is what the world of digital PR has become. You need to focus on earning links instead of buying them.

Bonus tip: If you have any of those links pointing at your domain right now, have them taken down or “nofollow” them. You’re being punished for them as we speak. But the Penguin update works in real-time, so you’ll be rewarded immediately.