Before we get into more details, there is something I need to insist on: you need to care about delivering great content. That means several things.
I recommend keeping a customer centric approach when writing an article or creating content on your website. Ask yourself: "What do my clients need?" Answer that question and create your content accordingly. Now that we got that through, let's dig into the optimization of your content.
We already covered keyword research in the first part of this guide. If you haven't read it, head back to part 1. For each page or article, I recommend finding one or two long tail keywords your want to target.
"Long tail keywords are keywords or key phrases that are more specific – and usually longer – than more commonly searched for keywords. Long tail keywords get less search traffic, but will usually have a higher conversion value, as they are more specific." - Marieke van de Rakt for Yoast
For example, for your "About Us" page you don't need to target "about us". People are just not going to search for that. Instead, you might want to target long tail keywords like: Best Realtor in Madison (if that's your city), Realtor in Madison, Real Estate agent in Madison, etc...
Let's review exactly what you have to do to make sure your content is SEO friendly. From image descriptions, to h1 tags and keyword placement - follow these steps to ensure you optimize your content for search engines.
As you can imagine the title of your page or your blog article is crucial. I am not going to get technical and talk about the HTML structure of a page but you need to include the keyword your want to target in the h1 tag. It is not to be confused with the page title tag (we talked about optimizing your page title tag in the first part of this guide).
"The header tag, or the h1 tag in HTML, will usually be the title of a post, or other emphazised text on a page." - Pear Analytics
Let me show you an example. For this blog article you can see that the h1 tag is: "The Step-by-Step SEO Guide for Real Estate | Part 2". The keyword I want to target is "SEO guide for Real Estate", therefore I included it in the h1 tag.
If you want to know more about headings, title tags and h1 tags, I recommend watching this short video. It's a good summary of what we covered so far.
Images are an important part of your page. They convey emotions, illustrate your content and are crucial for your branding. But did you know they can also play an important role for your SEO?
This might seem logical, but you would be surprised by the amount of people who use bad quality or irrelevant images on their website. If you can, I strongly recommend taking your own pictures.
Unfortunately, that's not always possible. Stock photos can be a great alternative. If you decide to pick this option, I recommending using Unsplash. It's a free library of ultra HD pictures. You'll easily find what you need for your articles or background images for example.
You need to reduce the size of your pictures to optimize the loading speed of your web pages. When the size of the image is too big it can have a negative impact on the loading speed and therefore on your SEO.
Here is what you have to do:
Compressing an image allows you to reduce the size of the file without impairing the quality of the image. I use TinyJPG, it's free and incredibly efficient.
As you can see in this example the file size was reduced from 3MB (which is way too much) to 430KB. You'll also make the panda happy, which is always a big plus.
Unless it's the cover photo on your home page or a very important background image, you might need to re-size your pictures.
For example, most pictures on Unsplash are in 4K. That means a resolution of 3840 pixels × 2160 lines. 1920 x 1080 is usually more than enough. This is how you can re-size them:
You have to change the name of the file accordingly to what it represents. It's important to have a file name that contains one of the keywords you selected. Be careful, the file name has to correspond to the image. There is no point in stuffing keywords. Here is a bad and a good example for this image of a 3D Floor Plan:
Bad Example: sh12017-02-209906.jpg
Good Example: 3D-Floor-Plan-Apartment.jpg
"The alt attribute helps search engines understand what an image is about. Alternate text is also very helpful in case images on a page cannot be found. " - WPBeginner
Here are a few guidelines to keep in mind when writing the descriptions for your images:
Adding image descriptions is very easy if you used a Website builder like Wordpress, Wix, Squarespace or Weebly. Simply use the CRM they provide to get the job done.
If you built you website with a web development company, simply ask them. They should be able to provide you with a solution (and it should be free).
As it is the case with everything else when it comes to SEO, it has to make sense. There is no point in stuffing you page with keywords - and there isn’t a set number of times you should place them either. At the end of the day, what matters is the quality and readability of your content. Here is how I go about it: If it makes sense to add a keyword, I do it - but if it doesn’t, I don't force it.
URLs are very important for your SEO. Unfortunately, they are often forgotten. Here are a few guidelines to follow for your URLs:
Here is an example of an optimized URL for a realtor’s blog article.
https://www.joedoerealty.com/blog/five-beautiful-places-in-madison
We created this guide with the intention of making things as simple as possible. If you have any questions regarding the different things we covered in part 2, leave a message in the comment section below. Make sure to stay tuned for the third and last part of this SEO guide for real estate.
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