Optimizing Real Estate SEO Helps Company Earn 2X Backlinks
Success in the real estate industry is all about attracting potential homebuyers and converting them into leads by collecting their contact information.
In this case study, we’ll examine how HOTH X helped a real estate investment company to double its backlinks, increase its ranking keywords, and get more conversions.
HOTH X is our best-selling, fully-managed SEO program that allows businesses of all industries and sizes to put their digital marketing on autopilot.
This particular company is different from traditional realtors yet the same SEO strategies helped them to grow. They specialize in paying cash for homes to help sellers unload their properties quickly and bypass the lengthy purchasing process.
Keep reading below to learn about what we did to help their SEO!
Background
This real estate investment company contacted us at the end of 2021 wanting to increase its web traffic and reach more potential customers.
They specialize in paying cash for homes. It’s a helpful service for homeowners who want to sell their properties quickly without needing to worry about buyer financing.
As a company based in Ohio, they seek single-family homes, multi-family homes, duplexes, and apartments.
The client’s website revolves around a contact form asking interested homeowners to convert into leads by providing their name, email address, phone number, and address. Visitors can also contact them directly over the phone.
Our SEO team knew it was important to get this client more online visitors and to make sure they were requesting cash offers or contacting the sales team for more information.
Optimizing their real estate SEO would help achieve these goals by increasing their ranking keywords, backlinks, and content.
The Real Estate SEO Audit
The HOTH team’s first step was to conduct an audit of the client’s site. We need to identify where their real estate SEO is working, as well as places where things could be improved.
We use sophisticated SEO tools and years of hands-on experience to determine what this client needs to come out on top.
First, we looked at the site’s traffic between 2016 and when they reached out to us. The client’s traffic had been low, averaging about 100 monthly visitors.
There have been a few points over the years when their traffic spiked to over 1,000 monthly visitors after publishing a particular guest post, but the traffic failed to remain at that level for long.
At the end of 2021, the client’s site was averaging about 200 monthly visitors.
Backlinks over this same period had spiked to 100. These are links leading to the client from an external site and they’re also a top-ranking factor on Google.
The last thing we looked at was the client’s number of ranking keywords. They ranked for approximately 140 keywords.
Our goal was to increase all of these metrics by implementing a comprehensive real estate SEO strategy.
“Easy Wins” Keyword Analysis
Increasing a client’s ranking keywords is important to secure them more traffic. That’s because keywords are what people use when they search for something on Google.
Ranking for the right keyword can bring a ton of new traffic.
One thing we do at the beginning of every SEO campaign is to identify “easy win” keywords for our clients. These are keywords the client already ranks for in positions 4-30.
The trick is to pick out the highest performing keywords in those positions and make them appear more prominently across the client’s site.
Here are some examples of the “easy win” keywords that we found:
- “ohio discounted properties”
- “sell my home fast columbus”
- “cash for houses”
- “company that buys houses”
- “ohio real estate guys”
There were dozens of others and we made sure to pick the ones that would deliver fast traffic to our client.
Looking at each keyword’s search volume helped us figure out which ones in positions 4-30 would connect with the most users. For example, the keyword “selling house in divorce” ranked 29 but is searched over 300 times per month.
“Easy win” keywords are great because they give our clients a quick boost of traffic at the beginning of a campaign.
Competitive Gap Analysis
Our next step was to analyze what our client’s competitors were doing. It’s always important to understand what the competition is doing.
In the world of SEO, our competitive gap analysis revolves around keywords but we’ll also keep an eye out for anything else that could help our client boost their online presence.
We identified 50 websites that were considered direct competitors to this client in real estate SEO. Some of these sites were nearly identical to our client while others shared some of the same keywords but had very different operations.
One competitor shared 120 keywords with our client, for example, and others only shared less than 10. Another competitor ranked for 10,000 unique keywords.
Even in the world of real estate SEO, every business is different so we needed to focus on operations that were the most similar to our client.
Keywords like “how long does it take to close on a house,” “closing costs for sellers,” “cash offer on house,” and “selling a house without a realtor” would all work. These are the types of searches potential customers would make.
Once we created a list of new keywords, the HOTH team would boost their real estate SEO by adding those terms or phrases into content or web copy.
The SEO Campaign
While this real estate company had some past successes with its SEO, we knew they wanted to see consistent results. That’s why we encouraged them to enroll in HOTH X, our fully-managed SEO program.
With HOTH X they’re assigned a dedicated campaign manager and gain access to all of our effective, best-selling products.
Once we created a successful real estate SEO strategy, our team would be able to continue managing that strategy for the long term. That way the client’s SEO would remain consistent.
Here are some of the HOTH X services they accessed:
We started the client’s new SEO campaign by developing their content with HOTH Blogger. Our team of professional writers craft SEO-optimized blogs ranging from 500 to 2,000 words, and they even post them on behalf of the client.
These blogs help boost their ranking keywords but also educate online visitors on their business and what they have to offer.
At the same time, this client took advantage of HOTH Guest Post, our powerful link-building product.
Guest posts are similar to blogs but they’re posted on external sites with a link back to our client. Clients choose whether to focus on external sites with higher traffic or higher domain authority (DA).
Getting more traffic is great but getting a backlink from a site with high DA can catapult your rankings.
Did you know you can take your highest performing content and syndicate it to over 300 websites with a high DA? HOTH Syndication does exactly this!
The real estate SEO client used our syndication service to boost their online presence across the web and earn some new backlinks from bigger sites with plenty of “link juice” to spare.
HOTH Boost is another popular product for clients focused on link building. We use it to jumpstart backlinks that aren’t as strong as they could be.
And, finally, this client understood the importance of converting their online visitors. That’s why they worked with our HOTH Web Copy team to optimize each page for SEO and conversions.
Their business depended on visitors requesting a sales offer or reaching out for more information.
So we used our expertise in copywriting to write killer copy and ensure it was easy for prospects to enter their personal information.
There are tons of other HOTH products that can help any type of business with expanding their SEO or attracting new leads with paid advertising. Learn more about our services here.
Results
Ready to hear about how their real estate SEO campaign performed?
*Drum Roll*
Our client saw tremendous growth in organic traffic. Check it out below.
They averaged about 100 visitors per month at the beginning of our HOTH X campaign. As you can see above, traffic spiked to over 2,000 in the middle of the campaign thanks to our link-building efforts.
Although their traffic is gradually increasing today, It would take some more time to make those record numbers more consistent.
Good SEO is all about being patient and sticking to the plan.
The client’s keywords experienced ups and downs over the years, but our campaign managed to double them from around 100 to over 200 in 12 months.
That includes a healthy increase in high-performing keywords in positions 4-10 and 1-3.
And here’s the last big test of any SEO campaign—backlinks!
As you can see above, their backlinks nearly doubled from 100 to 200 during our campaign. Not only do these links bring more referral traffic to our client’s site but they also improve their overall rankings.
Google sees backlinks as a vote of confidence so the more a site has the better its rankings will be.
Takeaway
No matter what industry you’re in, our SEO products can help you gain more traffic, higher rankings, and expand your brand across the web.
As a real estate company specializing in paying cash for houses, this client saw the need for more traffic and a conversion-optimized website.
That way they could attract more prospects and convert them into leads when they entered their personal information for a sales quote. We even offer PPC services to help clients track down brand new leads while the real estate SEO takes effect.
Everything this client accessed was available through our fully-managed SEO program, HOTH X. They got to work side-by-side with a dedicated campaign manager to design an SEO strategy that aligned with their business and goals.
Want to hear more about how HOTH X can help your business?
Book a call with one of our SEO experts to get started!
