Real estate SEO built on the seller searches the portals leave open

Which property searches are taken, and which are open

Open a private window and search “homes for sale in” plus your city. Count how many of the first ten results are portals or national brands. That count is your answer on whether to chase the search. The real estate marketing page makes the wider case for working on sellers. Here is how the searches divide.

Check each row in your own market before building anything. Results differ from city to city, and the table is a starting list. Our content strategy guide shows how to choose which pages come first.

What goes wrong on an agent’s website

The site is a search box. A template with an IDX feed, which is the shared listing data from your MLS, and little else. Every listing on it also sits on the portals, with more photos and more history.

Nothing is written for a seller. The person who decides your income is the homeowner thinking about listing. A site with no page on pricing, timing, costs or what you do in the first two weeks gives that person no reason to call.

Neighborhood pages are filler. A paragraph of census facts and a school list copied from elsewhere. Google names pages built for specific regions that add nothing of their own as doorway abuse in its spam policies.

The agent is invisible. A headshot and a license number. Sellers choose a person, and they look for sales near their own street.

The Fair Housing limit on what you write

Property copy has a legal edge that other trades do not. HUD’s regulation covers any notice or advertisement about the sale or rental of a dwelling (24 CFR 100.75). It is unlawful for one to indicate a preference because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin.

That reaches neighborhood pages and blog posts as well as listings. Write about the house, the street, commute times and what sold nearby. Leave out who the area is “perfect for”. This is a summary of the rule and not legal advice, so ask your broker or attorney about wording you are unsure of.

The work, month by month

Month one. You get a list of every seller and neighborhood search in your market, with who ranks today. The site is checked for what Google can and cannot read. The valuation request form is tracked as its own event, apart from buyer inquiries.

Months two and three. The seller pages are written first: what a home is worth and how you price it, the cost of selling in your state, and the situations in the table. Each one uses your own closed sales as evidence. Your profile page is rebuilt around recent sales by area.

Months four to six. Neighborhood pages follow, one per area you can write about from the inside. Each carries recent sale ranges, the housing stock, and what buyers there ask you. Quarterly market notes give each page a reason to be revisited.

Google’s SEO starter guide says some changes take effect in hours and others take several months. With a sale cycle on top, read results by the quarter.

What real estate SEO costs

Mavix gives no price on this page. We quote after a free review of the site and your market.

For context, Ahrefs surveyed 439 SEO providers and reported an average of $2,917 a month, with agencies at $3,209 and freelancers at $1,348 (Ahrefs SEO pricing survey). The survey covers all industries and says nothing specific about real estate. Our post on how much SEO costs breaks down what sits behind a quote.

For an agent, the cost moves with three things. How many areas you work. Whether the site can be edited or is locked to a brokerage template. Whether you or a writer supply the local detail. The sum is simple to test. Put your average commission and the number of listings you need into the SEO return calculator.

How it is counted

• Valuation requests from organic search, by the page they started on.
• Listing appointments held, where you record them.
• Listings signed that began with a search visit.
• Calls from the site, with buyer and seller calls separated.
• Rankings for the seller and neighborhood searches, as supporting detail.

Buyer registrations on the IDX search are reported apart. They are plentiful and they are a weak sign of income.

When SEO is the wrong first move

A new agent with no closed sales has little to write from. Start with the Business Profile and reviews, covered under local SEO for real estate agents.

If you need listing appointments this quarter, search ads on seller terms reach people sooner. See Google Ads for real estate, including the targeting limits that apply to housing.

If your brokerage controls the website and you cannot add pages, ask what you are allowed to publish before paying for anything. Once you can publish, our SEO service starts with the seller pages. Send the site and we will tell you which three we would write first.