For real estate digital marketing, staying in the know about what’s happening in the world of search engine optimization (SEO) is key to crafting and adjusting your digital strategy. And, having a well-thought-out SEO strategy will help you rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) and give you more visibility to attract leads.

Keep reading to discover how real estate SEO has changed in 2022 and find our tips for creating an effective digital marketing strategy.

Real Estate SEO Trends in 2022

So far, 2022 has brought us several Google algorithm updates – the most recent and largest being the May 2022 core update. Google’s core updates are rolled out to improve search and stay up-to-date on how people are using search to find what they’re looking for. As core updates are rolling out, we tend to experience fluctuations in data and changes on the SERPs. And, though these core updates don’t specifically target any one kind of website, they give a good indication that your content needs a refresh if you see you’ve been impacted by a core update.

Another big update called the Page Experience Update finished rolling out in March 2022. This update was meant to elevate user experience by prioritizing search result rankings for websites and pages that offer fast load times, are secure, mobile-friendly, and have stable pages.

The Page Experience Update had an impact on some of the real estate websites that didn’t have a well-thought-out foundation. Real estate websites are very image heavy, meaning that load times have a tendency to be longer than on other types of websites. Additionally, because listings are constantly being added and removed from the MLS, the number of redirects tends to add up over time, also impacting the load time of a site in the long term. In other words, a lot of intentional thought needs to go into the building blocks of a real estate website to ensure that these issues are not compounding over time.

We’ve been thinking about page experience for many years at Union Street Media, even long before this update was rolled out. We continuously iterate on the foundational code of our platform to ensure that every single website is as strong as possible. And, because we’ve been hard at work ensuring that our sites are built as strong as possible, we saw little to no impact from Google’s Page Experience Update on our websites.

Building a real estate website with a strong foundation should incorporate SEO ranking factors. Below we break down some of the key SEO ranking factors to consider when creating a website for real estate. If you’re interested in building a new website, reach out!

Top Search Engine Ranking Factors to Consider in 2022

  • Page Speed & Mobile Friendliness. Websites with fast loading times deliver a better user experience. Google prioritizes mobile-optimized sites which is why it’s important for websites to be well-optimized on a variety of screen sizes.
  • Security & Accessibility. Ensuring a website is up-to-date with the latest security measures (such as HTTPS) and making it accessible will help your website show up higher in search results.
  • Technical SEO. This refers to the technical elements of websites to help them rank better. Some examples include header tags to show content hierarchy, optimized metadata, alternative text for images, schema markup, and canonical URLs.
  • Optimized Content. Providing users with useful, high-quality, and local content is a great way to optimize your website. Keyword-rich, well-optimized, and original content is ranked higher in search.
  • Domain Authority. The longer a site is live and is being refreshed with new content, the better it’ll rank on SERPs.

By taking into consideration SEO ranking factors, you can create a digital strategy that’s prepared for algorithm updates well before they start rolling out. Constantly testing approaches to SEO and coding, staying on top of SEO and website trends, and reviewing performance on a site-by-site basis and a global perspective ensures you have a site that performs well in search engines and that users want to use.

And, since Google is, well, Google, there’s another update called the Helpful Content Update that started rolling out last week. Though not much is known about it and how (or if!) it will impact SEO for real estate, we do know that we’ll be keeping an eye on it. Stay tuned as we look ahead to more SEO changes!

Looking to elevate your SEO strategy for real estate? Connect with one of our strategists today to discuss your goals!