5 Mistakes You’re Making on Your Real Estate Website

If you’ve created a real estate website for your agency, chances are, you’ve heard the statistics that say how a real estate site significantly increases your chances of selling properties and growing your clientele. After all, statistics do show that nearly three-quarters of homebuyers begin their search and connect with real estate agents online, and 92 percent will search online for real estate at some point. As a result, successful real estate agents often claim that online interactions are a huge part of their high performance.

If you’re a savvy real estate agent, you’ll follow the success trends outlined by those who have gone before you and create a well-designed real estate site. However, a website doesn’t guarantee leads, and when you don’t see success, you might begin to think those statistics were fabricated.

But they aren’t. Thousands of real estate agents all over the nation have seen incredible success from their websites. If you aren’t having any luck, it’s probably because you’re making some classic mistakes.

5 Mistakes You are Making on Your Real Estate Website

1. Poor Content Management

Content marketing is a huge part of real estate success. Through blog posts, images, and videos, you can share your listings, relevant information that attracts clients to your site, and promote your personal services. However, proper management of your content makes up the majority of success in this area.

A huge mistake that many beginning realtors make is posting duplicate content on different webpages. This is done in an effort to save time and money without leaving pages blank. However, this turns into a waste of time and money, and it will actually hurt your SEO, as Google sees this as duplicate content and can penalize you.

2. Keyword Stuffing

Another majorly outdated form of SEO is keyword stuffing. This is done when real estate agents load web pages with keywords in tags, meta descriptions, and blog posts in an attempt to bring more organic search traffic to their site. However, this is a big no-no.

Not only is keyword stuffing entirely ineffective when it comes to SEO, it can also hurt your website’s SEO. Google has updated its algorithm to recognize keyword stuffing and penalizes websites that use this tactic. Keywords can still be used for websites to improve search accuracy, but it must be done appropriately.

3. Broken Links and Other Low-Quality Features

Real estate sites are full of linked content that goes from one page on your site to another page - either on your site or elsewhere. However, as listings change and websites get updated, these links can become "broken,” which means they lead to a page that has been taken down. It’s a huge knock to the credibility of your site.

Successful websites run regular audits in which they search for broken links and take down anything that’s no longer working. Owners will either replace the broken links with working ones or update the content to better match the current needs of web visitors.

4. Irrelevant Headlines

Headlines and text should be specific and meaningful to clients. Vagueness is not your friend. The value proposition should be clear from the very beginning, and it should make people want to continue reading.

Let’s put this into practice. Instead of writing a headline that reads: "10 Moving Tips” you’ll want a title that says "10 Stress-Free Moving Tips for Families with Young Children.” Suddenly, we have a headline that perfectly introduces the text, provides a clear value proposition, caters to a specific audience, and isn't boring.

5. Obscure Call to Action Buttons

In landing page 101, you would have learned all about the importance of using calls to action on your website. Your call to action should encourage visitors to make some kind of definitive action on the page, whether that’s contacting you for services or browsing your listings system.

Now, you need to know how to make them stand out so people will click. Research shows that call to action buttons perform best when they feature bright colors, uniquely shaped buttons, and engaging copy. A boring call to action is one of the biggest mistakes businesses make, and avoiding this problem with simplicity and good design will set your website up for success.