How to optimize your real estate blog posts for SEO?

Optimizing your real estate blog posts for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is crucial to improving your blog's visibility in search engine results. There are some steps you should follow:

1) Site Speed and mobile-first 

Before you start optimizing your blog posts for SEO, you need to check the "Core Web Vitals." It is a set of specific website performance metrics Google considers important for a good user experience. These metrics measure how quickly a webpage loads, becomes interactive, and is visually stable. Google uses Core Web Vitals to rank websites in search results as part of its algorithm.

Nobody wants to wait for a page to load longer than a few seconds. Most people look something up on the phone (not a laptop or a desktop) because they’re in a hurry and need to know right now! Mobile speed is a search ranking factor, but it’s also important because more than half of users will abandon a website that takes longer than three seconds to load. You’ve no doubt experienced yourself a website that looks gorgeous laid out on a desktop might not load as quickly or look as clean on a tablet or a smartphone. 

When we talk about mobile responsive websites, a number of different variables come into play, but it is fairly easy to check how responsive your website is on mobile devices. There are different ways to test it. The two most popular are described below:

1. Google’s mobile-friendly test 

This test will generate your site's overall “grade” with a list of possible errors to fix. If you put your website into this tool and see a few “problem” areas, don’t panic! This is pretty normal and doesn’t necessarily mean anything is wrong with your website; the overall assessment is the most important thing to consider.

• Go to: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
• Enter your website URL.
• Click “Test URL” and view the results.

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2. Page Speed Test:

Start by using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or Pingdom to analyze your website's performance. These tools will provide specific recommendations to improve your site's speed. 

Google Page Speed Insides: 

• Go to: https://pagespeed.web.dev/
• Enter your website URL.
• Click “Analyze” and view the results.

Run the test and read the results. You should get a report, where critical points are indicated at the top. After implementing changes, re-run the page speed test to see the improvements.

Remember that page speed optimization is an ongoing process. As you make changes, regularly assess your website's performance and make necessary adjustments. By addressing the recommendations provided by page speed testing tools, you can significantly enhance your website's user experience and potentially improve its search engine rankings.

2) Content

You probably heard it before: content is king (Bill Gates made this assumption in 1996), so choosing blog post topics is very important. Not only the things you write about should be relevant to your target audience, but attractive and original, answering common questions in easy-to-read and understandable language. After the keyword research, you are much wiser, but if you are still unsure what to blog about, where can you find inspiration?

• Answer The Public

Answer The Public provides insights into the questions people are asking and the topics they’re interested in related to a specific keyword or phrase. By entering a keyword, it has the ability to uncover search queries in the form of questions. These questions can help you understand the specific information users seek and create content that directly addresses their needs. The bonus: answers are presented in form of colorful circles (organized by question type, prepositions, CPC, alphabetical order).

• Topic suggestions from Google

Keyword research takes up way a lot of time, so if you want an easier way to find fast topics that real people are searching for, let Google do the work for you.

Google currently compiles frequently asked questions on topics and other searches conducted by users around specific topics:

• Check the content gap between your blog posts and competitors.

If you use paid keyword or SEO tracking tools, you can find the words your competitors rank for, but you don’t. For example, Ahrefs has a special Content gap bookmark, where from all the keywords your competitors rank for it subtracts the keywords that your own website ranks for. What you get is a list of keywords that you should be targeting. It is a perfect inspiration for your blog post topics.

3) Blog post body and key elements

A typical blog post should be at least 1000 words, but it is recommended to stick to 2000-3000 words in length. Of course, be practical: it should be less of a waffle and more of a nitty-gritty. In other words, keep it short if you have nothing to say.  

Best blogging practices:

• Plan your blog post: craft concise paragraphs, use H1/H2/H3, 
• Optimize your blog post: add meta descriptions for each blog post
• Use relevant keywords
• Reduce the size of your images
• Add internal and external hyperlinks throughout your blog
• Publish new blog posts consistently
• Update your content

Headline

Let’s get some things straight to avoid confusing title and headline tags.

Title tag: It’s the first thing that appears in Google search results, and it works like the title of a book: it tells the user what the article (or website) is about. It doesn’t have to be the same as your headline. 

Heading tags: The heading tags are labeled H1 – H6. They will have a different font size, proportionally enlarged (h1 is the largest) to stand out. 

Your H1 tells Google what the article is about, so it should be clear and catchy. It’s also your opportunity to draw readers in when they first land on the page. You want to use your primary keyword in your H1 but don’t want to stuff keywords. Your H1 tag should:

• Include a long-tail keyword
• Be short (20-70 characters)
• Give the user a clear idea of what the article is about
• Use only one H1 per page

Your content may be valuable, but if your headline is mediocre and your text is difficult to read, your click-through rate will be low, and you’ll waste valuable SEO copy. 

Subheadings

They help structure your content, making it easy for search engines and users to read. Subheadings also give you an opportunity to add keywords to your content to boost your rankings.

One example of a subheading would be your H1. This is your article's title, displayed at the top. While it might seem like any other heading, Google places the most importance on it.

Subheadings will help you to divide your text into more manageable sections or chunks, and when you write content, it should be well structured for readers.

Go down from H2-H6: the lower the number of subheadings, the more detailed your paragraph is. Most users only scan the text to see its structure (stopping on H2-H3). They won’t necessarily read your blog post. That’s why you need to make it attractive: use bold, italics, numbers, and bullet points to distinguish elements, as well as infographics, images, and videos.

Meta Description

When your post is written, it is time to prepare a meta description - a short description of your blog post topic, which will be visible below the title tag in the search results. For SEO purposes, the meta description should be 150 – 160 characters and usually appears like this in Google:

When you prepare your blog post for publishing, it should be one of the first fields to complete, after the basic SEO title and Slug. 

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Good Meta description practices:

• Keep it under 160 characters (including spaces). For mobile, it’s better to keep it under 113 characters.
• Include target keywords. They will be bolded if they are in the user's search query.
• Don’t duplicate your meta descriptions across your sites- they should be unique.
• Apart from the topic, you can include a short call to action in your meta description. 

Avoid stuffing keywords or over-optimization. Ideally, put the keyword in your headline, but ensure it reads smoothly for your readers.

URL

The URL slug is the part of the URL that tells Google what the content is about. It’s a great way to tell both humans and Google the essence of content before they read it. Your URL should be user-friendly, easy to read, and about 6-8 words long. Use hyphens instead of underscores, and stave off clear complicated constructions, stopping words (a, in, with, etc.). 

Keywords 

The number of keywords you should target in a blog post can vary based on factors such as the length of the post, the topic's complexity, and your overall content strategy. However, there's no fixed rule for an exact number of keywords. Instead, focus on your content's quality, relevance, and user experience. 

Try this 3-step plan when deciding on keyword frequency in your content.

1. Include the primary keyword in the headline. For example, if my keyword is: “property management,” my headline may be “10 Property Management Tips For Real Estate Investors.”
2. Use alternative keywords in the introduction, meta description, and title tags. For example, “Optimizing Property Management: Advice for Real Estate Investors"? or "Investor's Guide to Successful Property Management in Real Estate."
3. Write naturally to please your readers, then deliberately include the primary keyword in the conclusion.

Overloading your content with keywords can lead to poor user experience and potential penalties from search engines. Aim for a natural flow of content. Consider the intent behind the keywords you're targeting. Are they transactional, informational, or navigational? Tailor your content to address the intent effectively. 

A good rule of thumb is to focus on one or two long-tail keywords per blog post. What are long-tail keywords? These are longer, often question-based keywords that keep your post focused on the specific goals of your audience. For example, the long-tail keyword "how to redesign a real estate website" is much more impactful in terms of SEO than the short keyword "real estate" or “website”.

Instead of fixating solely on keywords, focus on creating comprehensive, informative, and valuable content that covers the topic thoroughly. It's better to have a well-written blog post with a few high-quality keywords than to stuff it with many keywords that don't contribute to the reader's understanding.

4) Page Links

Link to relevant pages within and outside your site in your introduction: more in-depth guides or content on your page or other sites.

External vs. internal linking

External links point to pages on a different website. You can buy them, i.e., sponsored blog posts or link insertion, or follow guest posting practice. What’s important is that quality domains should link to your resources and the opposite. Don’t get a cheeky idea of climbing to the top ten by buying a bunch of doggy links on Fiverr. It doesn’t work, and Google can penalize you. 

Internal links are links from one page to another within a single domain. Every website with more than one page should be connected through internal linking. Proper internal linking can help improve navigation, distribute link equity, and enhance the overall SEO of your website. 

Good linking practices:

• Before you start linking, clearly understand your website's structure and hierarchy. Identify key pages, categories, and the flow of information.
• Link to related content that provides additional information or context for readers. The linked page should offer value and be logically connected to the current content.
• Link deeply, not just link to your homepage or top-level pages. Link to deeper pages within your site, spreading the link equity and making more of your content discoverable.
• Use relevant anchor text (a word or words that link to another page). They typically appear as blue text to the reader.

• Don’t create an exact match between the anchor text and the link target. Today’s search engines are sensitive to the regular use of exact match anchor text because it wouldn’t frequently happen in regular content. 
• Do not use phrases like “click here.” This adds no value. Anchor text needs to be related to the linked page in some way.
• Don't overload a page with too many links; maintain a natural flow or link to more than one sentence. An entire hyperlinked paragraph is unsightly and makes for a poor user experience. Just stick to a few words or phrases when using anchor text to point to an internal link.
• Check if the link is correct - it seems to be an obvious thing, but there is nothing more annoying than clicking on the broken link.
• If you link to an external source, check if the information is there and the site is trusted. 
• Periodically review your older content and add new internal links to more recent and relevant articles. This keeps your content interconnected and up to date.

5) Alt text and images

Alt text is used to describe the images in your article for search engines, so they can verbally describe the image. When you write alt text, you want it to say what the image is about, but you can also use these for inserting keywords. 

You should use plenty of images, graphics, and videos to make your blog post interesting. How to prepare an image to use on your website?

• Before you add the photograph or graphics to your website, ensure it is saved not just as a generic file, i.e., DSC_9876. Use descriptive filenames that reflect the image's content, i.e., boston_loft_rent. 
• Use hyphens or underscores instead of spaces to improve compatibility with web URLs.
• Next, adjust the compression level to balance image quality and file size. Suitable image resolution for web viewing is usually 72 dpi. 
• Add Alt Text before uploading the image to your website. Prepare meaningful alt text, as discussed above. This is essential for accessibility.
• Compress the image further using tools like TinyPNG, JPEG Optimizer, or Squoosh. These tools reduce file size without significant loss of quality.
• Implement lazy loading for images, especially if your page has many. 
• Check how your images appear on various devices and browsers to ensure they maintain quality and layout consistency.

6) SEO Copywriting Tools

When you optimize your blog post, don’t forget to check it for misspelled words, grammar, and use of synonyms. Luckily, you don’t need to pore over books and dictionaries, as numerous tools make your daily blogging a piece of cake. Check out SurferSEO, Ahrefs, Yoast, Moz, Ubersuggers, Clearscope, and StoryChief, to name just a few. Most work on a similar basis: you set your focus keyword and get recommendations. They include:

• Related or missing high-potential keywords to include
• Key phrase usage in subheadings
• Keyword density and distribution
• Meta description length
• Any missing image alt attributes
• Keyphrase in title and title length
• Number of links

Other tools, such as Grammarly,, will ensure no mistakes, and Quetex, ProWritingAid, or Copyscape will help you avoid duplicate content and plagiarism.