Real estate agents have no chance appearing in Google searches; how, then, can they get noticed?

We all dream about appearing prominently in Google searches, about being present on that first page and generating thousands upon thousands of clicks for our site; the sad reality is, that’s probably never going to happen.

Trust us, we’d love to give you the ultimate Christmas present – greater Web traffic – this Christmas season, but as a great new study by the geniuses at Real Geeks found, the odds are stacked against agents when it comes to search engines.

The Dream of Prominence in Real Estate Google Searches

As Real Geeks found, real estate Google searches are tales told by the big chiefs:

• Generic real estate searches, such as “Chicago real estate,” or “Miami real estate,” or “Houston real estate,” will very rarely display individual agent websites on the first few pages of the search, mainly because the big time, national brokerages dominate those segments of the search with their large traffic and search volume.
• To quantify that, Real Geeks performed Google searches for the nation’s top 50 metropolitan markets, searching for “[City name] real estate,” and noting the websites that showed up on the first three pages of the Google search (typically, that’s how far a Web user will journey when searching for something).
• Of the 1,691 sites that Real Geeks record, just 30 percent of the results on the first page were for local, independent sites.
• To give you some perspective, 10 websites appear on a Google search page; so this means, among the thousands of agents you compete with in your market, only three will appear on that first page!

As AG Beat summarized, “this is a challenge for individual real estate professionals, because when you consider the number of independent agents in a given city, of the three local listings on page one … the odds are stacked against a single agent making the cut to be one of those three on page one.”

The Hyperlocal Real Estate Agent

So what’s an agent to do, amidst such dire statistics? Go hyperlocal. As you can tell, the chances of appearing in a standard Google search for “Chicago real estate” are slim, but “Lincoln Park real estate”? Or even better, “60614 real estate”? Those chances are much better. So when crafting your website, writing blog content, sharing videos, you name it, focus on your individual real estate market, and be as specific and pointed as you can to reinforce your relationship to that market.

And though we can’t give you extra Web traffic, we will leave you with a delightful present – a clever infographic Real Geeks designed to share their study’s findings:

The State of Real Estate SERPs created by: Real Geeks IDX Providers