SEO can be a complicated topic for marketing and sales professionals. It can also be fairly simple. If you are new to search engine optimization, we've introduced the basics, along with resources to learn more. If we were to sum up SEO in one sentence: "SEO is all about being found online when someone is looking for answers." What's the secret to winning SEO for CRE? Original, high quality, helpful and current content is more likely to show up in search results.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the discipline of designing a website so people using search engines like Google can discover your business or your content. Google is the search engine most commonly referred to when discussing SEO. Roughly 90% of global searches take place on Google (Semrush), which includes about 83% of desktop searches and 95% of mobile searches. Google uses complicated algorithms to display results based on the words or phrases that users search for.
When users Google things, they see a series of website links displayed in their search results.
Users will most often click the first, second, or third links they see in the results (also known as the “ranking” of the pages). The further down the search engine results page (SERP), they less likely they will scroll to find an answer.
First Page Sage monitors click-through rates by ranking positions in Google, and in 2024 reported:
The first organic position gets about 39.8% click-through rate
The second position gets 18.7%
The third position gets 10.2%
Therefore, the highest ranking web pages are the most desirable spots for businesses and content creators. You can now see why the better a website’s search engine optimization, the more traffic, brand awareness, leads and sales they’ll likely generate.
SEO requires a lot of research and knowledge, but if you follow a few basic principles, it is relatively easy. Incorporating organic SEO strategy in your online marketing is a lower cost than a paid advertising campaign, as it leverages online assets that you own.
This post scratches the surface of SEO for commercial real estate business. If you really want to learn about SEO, you'll find countless online courses, books and webinars, but these free resources are good starting points:
Google Search Central: SEO Starter Guide
Google Search Console: Make sure your site is set up for GSC
Google Analytics training: GA4 training for beginners
Why SEO Matters for CRE Professionals
Increases visibility to relevant users on Google and other search engines
Helps level competition in the digital space
Reveals how potential clients search for your solutions (through their queries)
Leverages your owned media (mostly through your website) to generate traffic and leads at a lower cost
Establishes and builds your brand’s digital presence and reputation
Keywords & CRE SEO
A term often used when discussing SEO is “keyword”. What is a keyword?
Keyword
A word or phrase used by people on search engines to find information
An example of keywords related to CRE professionals may be:
commercial real estate or CRE
office building
cre developers
investment property
income property
commercial cleaning leads
These keywords are very general, however, and will likely have a lot of competition with other businesses. Therefore, you need to find other strategies to discover new keywords.
Google users will often build on keywords with phrases like “near me,” “what is” or “meaning of” so they can get specific answers to suit their specific needs.
Interestingly, keyword searches are typically all lowercase and lack punctuation and grammar. We have simple questions and want straightforward answers.
commercial real estate companies near me
how to find owner of property by address
what does multi family home mean
commercial zone meaning
Of course, we didn’t pull these keywords out of thin air, and neither did Google. There are data available estimating how many people search for these keywords every month, as well as what keywords certain pages “rank” for (how far up in Google’s search results a web page is displayed when someone searches for the keyword). A number of SEO-related tools help content creators find keywords and estimate their search volume. Some popular examples are:
Once you’re equipped with an SEO tool, you can discover more specific keywords that have higher opportunities for you to rank. You'll start to understand the different types of keywords out there:
Transactional keywords — These search queries suggest that users are looking to make a purchase or take action. In other words, a lead that’s ready to convert to a sale. Examples: best landscape architects, email marketing platform for cre, find a cre data provider, property insurance quotes, best search engines for real estate
Informational keywords — These are keywords that users who are looking to educate themselves use; in other words, the search intent is something a cold prospect might use. Examples: what are commercial zones, how much do real estate agents make, where do you find who owns a building
Local keywords — Keywords related to a specific area are considered local, and include a much smaller pool, but they are more likely to be stronger leads. Examples: landscape architects near me, structural engineers in houston, private equity firms in minneapolis
Industry-specific keywords — Keywords related to your business’ assets. In CRE, this could be asset classes like office, retail, or industrial keywords; CRE industries like builders, operators, brokers and investors; or any glossary of CRE terms.
SEO Techniques for Growing Your CRE Business
Content optimization
This is the practice of creating high-quality, informative content related to common CRE queries and keywords. High quality web content generally adheres to Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines. These standards are guidelines for creating helpful, relevant web content that’s likely to rank well. E-E-A-T stands for:
Experience — Content is trustworthy, and the author demonstrates experience with the field, product, or service that it discusses.
Expertise — Content is informative and high-quality, with the author displaying knowledge about the topic in question.
Authoritativeness - The author is an authority or has verifiable credentials to be speaking about the topic. Their content is trustworthy and has cited sources from other sites.
Trust — Web page feels legitimate and trustworthy. The site owner has a visible “about” page and high reviews across the web.
More specifically, high-quality CRE web content will seek to address questions or concerns about CRE. It may also incorporate some keywords into titles, headings, and the body text to be picked up by Google’s algorithms.
Meta tags
Web pages also have meta tags, which is data that provides information about data. In simpler terms, it’s data not viewable to the average user, which helps Google’s algorithms understand what a web page is. Metadata is used by search engines to quickly understand and display content based on how relevant it is to a users’ search.
It’s also necessary to have meta descriptions, which is the piece of text displayed below the title of a website in the search results.
Most CMS platforms (WordPress, Wix, Drupal for example) have built-in fields that allow you to create content your meta tags. If you don't create your own meta tags, search engines will use their algorithms to pick them up.
In this example, the description is also optimized to contain relevant keywords that web users may search for.
Finally, it’s vital to update content regularly to not fall behind any new keywords or changes in topic relevance. For example, if a web page is not ranking well after a few months, you might want to revisit the quality of the content and update it.
All the SEO tactics aside, content that is original, well-written, helpful and relevant tends to do well.
Technical SEO Tips
Technical SEO refers to the things that happen "behind the scenes," typically managed by your IT or web manager. There are technical factors that can hinder SEO, including mobile-friendliness, page speed, crawlability, schema markup, URL structure and structured data. Those are all advanced topics that we won't cover in this post.
These factors are important to test and address, as visitors will quickly click away if they find that content is not quickly loading for them. Search engines, likewise, will ignore your content if it doesn't make logical sense or if it seems of low quality.
If you suspect you have these issues, you might consider working with an SEO professional, who can conduct an SEO audit, which should include a crawl of your site. Crawls simulate what search engines do, and they reveal technical SEO issues.
Local SEO for CRE
Local SEO means improving your brand’s visibility and traffic on a local scale, whether it be your community, city, or state. Although a lot of SEO is measured on a national scale, local SEO can generate leads more likely to convert to a sale.
To improve local SEO, one of the most effective techniques is to claim your Google My Business listing. This allows your business to appear in Google Maps and register as a local result for ZIP-code specific search results. You will also need to clean this page up so that your website and phone number, for example, are displayed on your business listing.
Also consider having your existing customers leave reviews for your business to build up a positive reputation. If you have existing negative reviews, consider making polite responses to the customer’s concern or reaching out to the disgruntled customer to try to resolve their issue.
Finally, take stock of popular local keywords and create location-specific content to areas that you want to advertise to. There may be opportunities in adjacent communities for your business.
Measuring and Analyzing SEO Performance
Key SEO Metrics
There are many metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) that SEO uses to measure the success of a campaign. Here are some examples:
Organic traffic — When people visit your site through searches, rather than paid advertisements that you’ve created, this is a type of earned media. These are the people who find your business through search engines, rather than paid campaigns that you run.
Bounce rate — This measures the percentage of users who leave your website without taking any other action. In other words, they click the link to your website and then immediately click away without clicking another link or making a purchase.
Conversion rate — Another percentage of visitors to your website that have taken some type of action, such as a purchase or download. This rate is usually divided by the total visitors to your website during the same period to determine what percentage of users have converted to a “sale”.
Keyword rankings — Your website’s position in search results for a keyword is how it is ranking. Each keyword will have its own ranking (we hope). Each page will rank (we hope) for one or many keywords, if it is well-written, original and optimized.
Tracking SEO performance through tools like:
These tools will help you identify and target keywords, as well as optimize your website to rank better for relevant keywords. You can also analyze the metrics of your website and performance of different pages to create (and refine!) an SEO strategy. SEO analysis may also help you identify opportunities in your marketing that you didn’t know were there. For this reason, you always need to be ready to adapt your strategy based on the data you collect.
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