2018 was a year in which Google (The premiere search engine at the global level) decided to implement the policy known as “first mobile device” and although the policy sought to bring greater importance to searches made from mobile devices, this had already been a trend since 2016. It was in 2018 when the search engine took the initiative to prioritize mobile searches over those made via desktop.

These new directives do not pose more complications beyond the designing of our web with mobile phones in mind, and then adapting it to desktop, contrary to what has been common practice until very recently.

The novelty lies in the fact that each mobile phone has inside it a GPS device that lets Google know in real time the location in which searches are being performed. In order to attempt to optimize user experience (UX), Google will show search matches in a defined area to determine the origin of the search, depending on the nature of the user’s search. Another important detail is that the search engine knows from the tab “Google my business”, the IP from which updates are made to websites, or from that same GPS in the phone, the location of our company and the nature of our services. What poses a huge challenge…how to be relevant to a search for “buy house in Aventura” if my office is in Miami Lake?

To continue, some routines that I usually use for local positioning in Real Estate.

1: Respond to the questions of your users.
Think like your client. Though this may seem obvious, it is a principal point for any SEO strategy for Real Estate. Respond to the questions of clients in your particular target; and where are those questions? In Google.
Google’s auto complete: When you start entering a search into Google, the engine will usually automatically complete your query as you type it. This is the autocomplete, a series of keywords that are related to the subject you are searching for. These keywords are organized by relevance and if you look at the end of the page of that same search, you’re going to find a second list of searches, usually a little broader. These terms in the second list are known as “long tail” and in general they are organized from more to fewer searches from top to bottom. These are suggestions that the search engine offers you for free.

In responding to these searches, you have a way to connect with the audience that you are targeting. This point is applicable not only to on-page strategies, but also to the way it is written when we enter properties into MLS or in the platforms where properties are usually listed, Facebook and other social networks in general.

2: Google My Business, locating you on the map
Google my Business, formerly known as Google Places, is one of the principal tools of the local SEO strategy. Entering the correct name, address, and telephone number (NAP) in accordance with the data in the website is the most important part of correctly configuring the tool. Another part is the location from where services are provided. It is upon this information that the search engine bases its establishment of your location. In this part of the module there is a selection box: Over how large of an area do you offer your services? Here, it is possible to configure the scope of our services around our actual location. Be sure to remember that all of this information must be corroborated on the website.

3: Local SEO Tools: The CRM
The CRM are tools that permit realtors to organize the flow of leads and the way that properties are displayed. In this process, the lead is managed through the platform, which poses difficulties when designing a strategy of “Lead Nurturing”, a process that allows us to convert the marketing qualified lead (MQL) into sales qualified lead (SQL).
Another important aspect is that at the SEO level, these platforms are highly inefficient because they load our website with a large amount of unnecessary code, duplicate descriptions of properties, links that dilute the “crawl budget”, and a clunky user experience on mobile devices. All of these aspects are manageable if we are allowed (most CRM does not) to place tracking codes using labels.

How to use CRM for local positioning:
Far from inconveniences, the CRM are tools which can provide excellent benefits if configured properly within our website. The CRM permit the grouping of properties by search criteria: zip code, address, characteristics of the properties, etc. This detail in particular can be useful for showing “our properties in West Palm beach” for example, even when we do not have a local office there.
This is a strategy that begins on our real estate home page with the creation of a menu that says something like “properties in West Palm Beach”, “properties in Miami Beach”, “properties in Hollywood”, etc. Terms that match the searches and geolocate us. This menu points to a page called “properties in West Palm Beach”, so that the correct syntax of the URL would be:

www.yourdomain.com/properties-west-palm-beach/

On this page, you create 300-450 words that describe how great it is to live in this location (main accesses, the climate, demographics, types of schools, etc.) The page should have three images within which you have placed an EXIF tag, which is nothing more than a code that says where a picture was taken with your GPS coordinates, your description, and the name of your picture. This is what gives the search engine clear signals of where the photo has been taken and the nature of its content. You must remember that engines do not “see” the content of the images, only the quality of the pixels and their distribution with the data that we provide.

We then have the following results:

a: A page in our domain that has a name like the location where we want to position ourselves.

www.yourdomain.com/properties-west-palm-beach

b: Text (original) on this page with a description of the place…what is it like to live in West Palm Beach or in Miami Beach, etc. with words that can be connected with our target inside of this text. Property near the beach, ocean views, visit the canal, properties with access to the canal, etc.

c: Images taken here…(this the search engine knows by the EXIF file) or with EXIF files modified by us.

d: In order to finalize a selection of properties taken from CMR segmented by the physical zip code in which we want to position ourselves.
The sum of all of this is that the search engine understands our page as the most suitable to show before a search related to the site where we want to be positioned. The next step is to create a property file for each of the locations where we want to have a presence and link them to the homepage.

4- Schemes for local SEO

JSON Schema for local SEO:

Marketing schemes for local SEO:
The data market (schema) is a syndication routine for additional data that permits search engines to access information on certain search topics. These data are inserted into the web code through a specific routine and later on will be recognized by search engines to extract important information from the web and to satisfy search engine criteria more completely, focusing on user satisfaction. This way, if you were to perform a search such as “chicken and rice recipes”, all of the results contain a “recipe” schema. The search engine detects the schema within the web code and shows pages containing that schema first to better complement the user experience (UX). To sum up, these schemas function mostly as an extra element influencing the positioning of search results.

Back to Local SEO in Real Estate:
There are a series of schemas that function very effectively for the world of Real Estate. The first is the “Corporation Schema” (a Google-certified example is attached). This type of schema allows for the geographical location of the real estate company, an excellent SEO tool, since searches made within a radius of miles around the company will cause it to come up first in the results. In other words, if you search for properties with your mobile phone and you’re located in Miami Beach, nearby real estate companies that possess this schema will come up first in the search results.

The “Corporation schema” serves as a basis for another schema, the “person schema”. This schema is ideal for marking individuals. For example, with this schema you can mark yourself as a “realtor”. The “person schema” is connected to the “Corporation schema”. Subsequently, the “product” schema can be implemented (another example of which is attached). Properties can be highlighted as independent products in order to create a better user experience. For example, a search for a “small, two-bedroom house” would bring up a list of individual properties with these characteristics. This way of showing our data allows users to find you when they search for these kinds of descriptive terms that the schemas capture when users perform searches from locations within a certain distance from the property.

The marking of data as “person”, “product” and “corporation” satisfies user search criteria. If we combine them correctly, we can advantageously position ourselves in a local area while simultaneously reaching nearby areas, allowing ALL of our properties work in our favor. Every one of our properties is a kind of flag that indicates to Google, and by extension all other search engines, that we are there. One of our properties is shown, and is connected to a person, who is connected at the time to a company. This is the way in which, using indexing for mobile devices in 2019, we can optimize the experience of our users using mobile devices while simultaneously bettering our position in search results.

If someone needs it, someone will sell it. If there is even a minor demand in the market for your product or service and you are not selling, this means that at some point in the process of reaching your customer, you have failed. We can optimize SEO tools so that the investment becomes profitable in the shortest possible time. We can help you optimize your presence in search engines and on social media platforms so that you attain an online presence that generates a positive ROI (returns). We also help create a conversion funnel so that each dollar invested generates, at a minimum, direct contact routes to potential customers, and this in turn becomes another of your sales tools.