I wrote previously about why I think real estate blogs will be worth money one day. Quality hyperlocal content is still in short supply.

The portals like Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com dominate the real estate keywords. But there are still numerous opportunities online for real estate blogs to earn clicks, views, and customers with content marketing.

How do I know? Because I’m doing it!

This last month, I earned just shy of 8000 organic visitors to my website. That is a relatively modest number, but in a market of 250,000, that’s not an insignificant fraction of the local real estate related searches.

And I don’t spend a dime except what it takes to maintain my website. No paid leads. No Google ads. No Facebook leads. Those visitors all come to my website for free.

Part of the key is getting local. I won’t rank for “HOAs”. But I can (and do!) rank for “Killeen HOAs”.  Whatever keywords you’re targeting, it will probably look like [local city] + [keyword].

Local SEO

Real estate search engine optimization (SEO) faces some unique challenges. Instead of national websites that target a population of 300,000,000, your local market may only be a few hundred thousand. The search volume for any given real estate keywords might be only a few a month.

That also means traditional keyword tools like Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, and SEMRush aren’t always helpful.

But that also means that the competition is lighter. Portals and big brands can’t effectively scale content to the hyperlocal market. That means there are still plenty of opportunities to rank on organic search.

If you want to use your blog for lead generation, know what is reasonable to expect from challenges and benefits of SEO for real estate. The experts in local SEO are Moz and BrightLocal, both of which have great resources worth reading.

Below are some of the best-performing keyword categories for which I’ve successfully ranked #1 as of this writing.

Neighborhood Names

A great first start to creating a presence on Google is creating neighborhood pages for all your market’s neighborhoods.

My own market has over 300 subdivisions according to the tax record, but I focused on the 100 largest or most important to me to create pages for.

You’ll also want to make main city pages for each city in your market, probably with the neighborhood pages beneath. Example: hoodhomesblog.com/killeen/bridgewood-estates.

Above is an example in which my website’s neighborhood page is #1 for a local neighborhood in my market, Deorsam Estates.

Local Builder Names

These are some of the easiest and quickest keywords I’ve managed to rank for.

Some smaller local builders may not even have websites for themselves, meaning that your page for them can possibly rank #1!

If the builder has their own website, you probably won’t knock them off #1, but it’s very possible to snag the #2 or #3 result on Google, which can lead to traffic and exposure. There are over 40 builders in my market, each of whom have a page on my website.

I rank #1 for “Denver Tippit Homes”, a local home builder in the Killeen area. It’s an opportunity to get contacted by a homebuyer interested in local new construction.

Local Real Estate Categories

Think about the categories of real estate in your local community. Below are a few examples I can think of, but I’m sure there are dozens if not hundreds more.

• Townhomes
• Condos
• Gated Communities
• Pool Homes
• Age Restricted Neighborhoods
• Vacation homes

These are common keywords that can drive traffic.

For example, I rank #1, #2, #3, and #4 (!!!) for “Killeen HOA neighborhoods”. My page is literally just a list and brief summary of the local HOAs (there aren’t many in my market). It’s one of my most popular pages.

Contract Names

Every single promulgated contract from your state’s real estate commission or association can make a great blog post! That is well over 50 solid article ideas in my own state of Texas.

Write an article about mineral rights using the mineral rights addendum. Write an article about mold using the mold addendum. Then do the Third party addendum, HOA addendum, etc. Everything can be turned into useful information that can rank on Google!

I rank #2 for “texas sellers disclosure”, only after TREC’s own official seller disclosure.

These aren’t likely the most profitable keywords. Often someone looking up “sellers disclosure” might either be an agent themselves or is already in the process with another agent. It’s also not specific to my local market, so someone in Tyler, TX reading about the Texas sellers disclosure on my site doesn’t help me a lot.

But it is still a neat way to earn traffic, domain authority, and exposure.

You can also dive into the contracts themselves. Each paragraph of the purchase contract is probably an entire article in itself. Even “Properties and Parties”, paragraph 1 of most contracts. You could easily write over 1000 words on legal descriptions, exclusions, legal names, etc.

Local City + Loan Types

Each loan type deserves an article explaining the pros and cons.

The generic keywords like “fha loan” are obviously extremely competitive and will feature affiliate sites and bank sites at the national level.

But if folks look up loan types with a local keyword like your city, you have an opportunity! This is probably especially common for loans like the USDA loan which are available depending on the location.

I rank #1 for “fort hood usda loan” in the first organic result after a single paid ad from a local lender. You should be able to get about half a dozen articles just based on the major loan types.

Local MLS Information

This is one of the best sources for hyperlocal and relevant articles – the data in your MLS.

What percentage of homes sold last year were VA homes in your market? What percentage were pool homes? Foreclosures?

Almost every field in your MLS could become an article: year built, home-style, square feet, number of bedrooms, and acreage. Writing articles like these also help you know your own market better, and impress your audience with your market knowledge.

I write quite a few data-based articles and create graphs. I collect those graphs on a market statistics page that ranks #1 for “killeen real estate market”. Anyone (like a seller) who is investigating the state of the market would have a decent chance of making their way to my website!

Local Places and Events

These are popular blog ideas you’ll see in other articles about creating blog posts.

Unfortunately, they often aren’t the most commercial keywords. Someone looking for sushi in your city is not necessarily the same people looking for a house.

But there are a lot of opportunities to network and build relationships with local businesses when profiling them. If you are all about building a personal brand and social media, these posts can both rank and will play well with your other marketing initiatives.

There are almost limitless numbers of articles you can create from this. I created a list of over 50 of the top local restaurants to profile. Other than restaurants, you could do:

• parks
• museums
• things to do for kids/singles/outdoorsy
• annual events
• shopping

If you are writing about events, I recommend annual events and not one-off occasions. You want your content to be evergreen and useful in future years.

My article on things to do for Christmas in the Fort Hood area is ranking #2, only after Facebook.

Transaction Steps

Every step of the transaction, from signing up on a website to moving into your new home, is an article.

Then, you can do the whole thing over again for each step from the seller’s perspective.

I wrote a series with the “9 Steps of Buying a Home”, so that is 9 separate articles. Similar from the seller, side, that so that is about 18 easy articles about something you as a real estate agent should be able to crank out in no time.

Are you curious about what to expect from the option period in Killeen? My article ranks #1 for “Killeen option period”.

Local Niche Buyers

Investors, military buyers, college kids (or parents), landlords, renters, and others all have special housing needs they are eager for a unique perspective on. There are probably a dozen different niches you can probably think of.

My article is #1 for “killeen fourplexes”, targeting buy-and-hold multi-family investors.

Local Vendor Keywords

Look at your vendor referral list.

Every vendor is an article!

Lenders, title companies, roofers, garage door installers, pest inspectors, general inspectors, foundation companies, renovation companies, well companies, electricians, plumbers. They’re all articles! I have about 30 vendor categories, so that is about 30 articles.

You can leverage a high ranking search result into a closer relationship with your preferred vendors as well.

I rank #1 and #2 for “fort hood lenders”. You can bet the three lenders I profile on my page appreciate that kind of organic traffic!

The Results

Here is my organic traffic for my website from its inception in 2015 through March, 2019.

And, if I’m being honest, a lot of my content needs a freshening up. I haven’t published a new post in about six months. Once I get that back into gear, it’s very likely my results will further improve.

You can also see there is a bit of seasonality to a real estate website. September through December are slower months with less traffic. Don’t let that discourage you!

And which pages earn me the most traffic? Here are my most trafficked pages through the past 30 days.

A lot of my traffic is from investor content, which is just fine as that is a major pillar of my business. But as you can see, most of my content is not earned from my top ten pages, but many more pages of long tail keywords.

Conclusion

“The riches are in the niches”. And there isn’t much more “niche” than hyperlocal real estate.

This isn’t just 10 keywords. These are ten types of keywords, each with dozens if not hundreds of permutations. I calculated that these keywords would produce about 750 pages or posts on my website for my market.

Is my market an easy one? Yes, I suppose. But it’s not a small market with over 250,000 people in our MSA. You may have bigger competition in larger markets, but I know for a fact there is still some low hanging fruit in those markets for which you can be #1 on Google.

And picking the right keywords is just the start.

Then you need to create great content, as well as build authority for your site with local SEO best practices like guest blogging, meta descriptions, and airtight Google My Business listings.

But hopefully mine is a helpful case study of how it is still possible for a real estate blog to earn business online with organic SEO.

And if SEO is a major pillar of your real estate business and you are looking for a website, consider these website providers who have strong SEO experts behind the wheel.