There's no point ranking for 'real estate'

The trick is to make sure you choose the right searches to rank in. There's no point trying to rank for "real estate" or "for sale" or "rentals". The competition for those searches is fierce. Check for yourself; they're completely dominated by the big players.

What's more, people who are searching for those words aren't really ready to buy (or rent). E.g. People Googling "real estate" might be after information on how to get a job in real estate. People Googling "for sale" might be looking for a new car, for all you know.

For real estate SEO success, you need to be a lot more strategic than that...

You need to go where the buyers are

You want to rank no.1 when they're actually ready to buy. And when what they want to buy is precisely what you're selling. That's what real estate SEO is all about.

We learn what people Google when they are ready to buy

At Aro, the first thing we do is a whole lot of research to identify 'buying' type keywords. The ones that suggest the searcher is towards the end of the buying cycle. They're ready to spend. They WANT to spend. You stand a much better chance of converting these people.

Plus, there's a critically important hidden bonus: People who are ready to buy tend to search for very specific things. i.e. They search for quite long and unusual phrases. "So what?", you ask? Well, actually, this is the most important point of all...

Not many of your competitors will be trying to rank for these long and unusual phrases. Usually because those phrases aren't relevant to what THEY'RE trying to sell. They're relevant to what YOU'RE trying to sell. And even if those searches ARE relevant to your competitors, chances are, they're not doing a very good job of optimizing for them anyway!

Translation? These long and unusual phrases are easier to rank for.

Next, we tune - or 'optimise' - your site for those searches

With the research out of the way, we turn to your website, and make sure the important phrases appear in the right places, at precisely the right frequency. This is how we tell Google you're relevant. We look at both the programming of your pages (the HTML that your web browser and Google de-code), and the copy on your pages (the words that visitors and Google read).

There's somewhat of an art to this stage. If you overdo it, Google will think you're spamming, and possibly ban you. If you underdo it, you won't rank. So it's not a job to be taken lightly. It takes a deft hand with years of experience to get it right — a genuine real estate SEO specialist.

Then we show Google you deserve to rank high

Once your site is perfectly optimised, we move on to the final phase of the SEO process: link-building. We get you hundreds of valid links on a host of sites, including blog posts, blog comments, articles, videos, forum posts, trackbacks and much more. And we make sure each link contains the words your target buyers are Googling (these are the most valuable sort of links).

Why are links important? Because when Google sees a lot of inbound links, it thinks, "All these sites are linking to yours, so yours must be good. I'm going to rank you high."

No.1 here you come!

And that's when you sit back and watch your ranking climb.