Get More Real Estate Leads with This Simple SEO Plan for Beginners

Before we dive into the strategy, let’s first understand why SEO is so important. SEO stands for search engine optimization, which helps your website or online content appear at the top of search results when people are looking for services in your area.

When people search for real estate agents, properties, or housing advice in your local market, you want to be the first name they see. This method not only generates leads but often results in higher-quality leads compared to paid ads or even your network (which may not always convert).

SEO has the potential to generate 1,000% more traffic than organic social media marketing. Considering that 90% of online experiences start with a search engine query, being present in these search results is critical to your business’s success.

Unlike paid ads where you push your marketing message onto a cold audience, SEO is a form of “pull marketing,” where potential clients come to you. By creating relevant, valuable content, you attract an audience that is already searching for your services—essentially warming up leads before they even contact you.

One thing to remember about SEO is that it’s a long-term strategy. Unlike social media posts or paid ads that can deliver immediate results, SEO takes time to gain traction.

Depending on your market and its competitiveness, it could take 3, 6, or even 12 months to see significant results. But once your SEO strategy gains momentum, it can generate a steady stream of leads with minimal ongoing effort.

The first step in this process is to develop a solid keyword strategy. Keywords are the words and phrases people type into search engines when looking for real estate services in your area.

To begin, focus on long-tail keywords—phrases that contain more than three words. For example, instead of trying to rank for “Houston real estate agent,” which is highly competitive, try “best real estate agents in Houston for first-time homebuyers.”

You can find popular keywords by simply typing in your city and state along with “real estate” into Google and seeing what auto-completes in the search bar. You can also scroll down to the “People Also Ask” section to get ideas for the types of questions and phrases people are using. From there, create content around these questions and key phrases.

I’ve created a downloadable “city script” that includes commonly used keywords for your city or local areas. This can be a helpful tool as you start to build your keyword strategy.

Once you have your keyword list, the next step is to create content. This can be in the form of YouTube videos, blog posts, or both. For example, you can record a video discussing the history of a particular neighborhood, the local lifestyle, the real estate market, and what it’s like to live in that area.

This type of hyper-local content tends to rank well in search engines because it’s directly relevant to what people are searching for.

If creating a video feels intimidating, start small. You can use tools like Loom or Zoom to record yourself talking over a slideshow—no fancy editing is required. Once you’ve created your video, you can also repurpose it by using the transcript to write a blog post.

After recording your video, upload it to YouTube and make sure to include the keywords you’ve researched in the title, description, and throughout the video itself. YouTube is the second-largest search engine after Google, so having your video optimized for SEO increases the chances it will rank highly in search results.

Once your video is uploaded, use YouTube’s transcript feature to grab the transcript and copy it into a tool like ChatGPT to help format it into a blog post. When turning your video into a blog post, make sure the content is optimized with your keywords for SEO purposes. Include an introduction, a conclusion, and a call-to-action to keep readers engaged.

Additionally, link your YouTube video to your blog and vice versa. Embedding your video in the blog post helps lower your website’s bounce rate, keeping visitors on your site longer while also giving you a boost in search rankings.

One of the great things about creating videos and blog posts is that you can easily repurpose the content across different social media platforms.

Tools like Opus Clip can help you quickly trim your long-form video into shorter clips optimized for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts. This maximizes your content’s reach and helps drive traffic back to your original video or blog post.

Finally, don’t forget to update your Google Business Profile with the content you’ve created. Adding regular updates, videos, and blog posts to your profile will help your SEO efforts by keeping your profile active and engaging.

Many real estate agents overlook the importance of maintaining their Google Business Profile, but it’s one of the fastest ways to generate leads in your local area.