SEO: Getting your real estate website to rank better is trial and error.

Written by Posted On Tuesday, 10 October 2017 19:38

Real Estate SEO is a challenge until it is not. After using the same custom cms for 10 years we were forced to make a change even though our dated real estate site had amazing rankings. It was a tough decision. We stalled for years because we knew the change would impact our organic seo rankings across all search engines.  We believe the reason for our original solid SEO rankings had to do with great real estate content, site architecture, smart code and to some extent url structure.  Obviously, we can't be 100% sure, but the new site just doesn't rank as well as it once did. Sure rankings change but our new site is much better than anything ranking above us.  Although we truly believe the new site is 1000x better than the last, the search engines don't think so. It's still too soon to tell but we felt the need to make changes this weekend. Our rankings still have page #1 status but being number #1 vs #6 on the first page of Google or Bing is significant especially since Google now show 4 sponsored links at the top of competitive keyword search results. With less organic spots SEO has changed but there's no use in crying.  We just need to get back to basics by making the new site more awesome.  They say this is the key to SEO rankings.  We agree. 

Going back to basics is what we did this weekend.  We went back to using subdomains like this and this. When doing SEO trying a lot of things is necessary, but doing too much can make things worse because you need to wait a while before you see result page rankings shift when talking about real estate related websites.  In other words, it takes time (several weeks- several months) to see SEO rankings move.  We have a few different sites with varying real estate content and we look at each to see which one is ranking better. Once we have reviewed the data and analytics we put more effort into the best websites and improve them for customer aquisition. 

We test the following sites for our real estate flat fee listing services:

  1. InstaMLS - the listing site we changed.

InstaMLS New Hampshire - the New Hampshire version of the above site. 

InstaMLS Massachusetts - the Massachusetts version of the above site.

Mass Flat Fee MLS - Random flat fee listing site used for A/B testing which has helped us figure things out.

MLS Entry Only Listings - the original Entry Only MLS website that we also recently redesigned. 

We have a lot of work to do in order to improve our real estate websites.

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Drew

Been in this game a very long time. Have sold landmark properties around the city of Boston. Also, dabble in residential to keep sharp and knowledgeable. My biggest assets are my instincts and ability to negotiate so my clients are put in the best position to succeed.  I was trained by the best and there's not much that I haven't seen.  

https://instamls.com

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