SEO for real estate agents: local search and a website built around the areas you work in

How does SEO work for a single agent?

SEO for real estate agents puts one person, and the places that person sells, in front of the sellers and buyers searching there. In the UK the trade is called estate agency, so the same search there is SEO for estate agents; this page is about agents in the US, under California’s rules. Three things set an agent’s search work apart from a brokerage’s:

• You are the business: your name, your bio and your own Business Profile, where Google allows one, carry the work.
• Your areas are the subject: the towns, neighborhoods and property types you sell, and pages about those places.
• Your brokerage stays in the picture: your pages and ads name your responsible broker, and the work that covers every agent happens on the brokerage’s site, the subject of our real estate marketing page.

If you also manage rentals, that work has a page of its own, on property management. Leasing and selling business property is covered on commercial real estate.

What changed for buyers and sellers on August 17, 2024?

On that date, practice changes tied to the National Association of REALTORS’ settlement of litigation over broker commissions took effect. NAR’s settlement FAQs list what changed on each side of a sale:

• Compensation offers moved off the MLS: NAR describes MLSs as local marketplaces that buyer and seller agents use to share information about homes for sale. An offer of compensation to a buyer’s agent can no longer be shared there, though a seller can still make one off the MLS.
• The seller approves first: the listing agent discloses in writing, in advance, any payment or offer of payment to an agent acting for buyers, with the amount or rate, and gets the seller’s approval.
• The listing can still travel: the agent can advertise it on social media, flyers and websites, and the seller can still offer concessions on the MLS, such as help with a buyer’s closing costs.
• A buyer agreement must include four terms on compensation: a specific and conspicuous disclosure of the amount or rate the agent will receive, or how it will be determined; an objective amount, never open-ended; no payment from any source above what was agreed; and a conspicuous statement that fees are “fully negotiable and not set by law”.

So the pages that explain selling and buying with you need to describe the process as it now runs. We would write two plain guides, one for sellers and one for buyers, from your brokerage’s own forms and approved wording, never wording of ours, and your broker would approve both before they go live.

What do SEO services for real estate agents include?

Our monthly SEO plan, pointed at your areas and at the people choosing an agent in them, would cover:

• Your own Business Profile: real estate agents are individual practitioners in Google’s guidelines. If you deal with the public yourself and can be reached at your verified office during the hours you list, you can have a profile in your own name.
• The only agent at a branded office: Google’s guidelines say it’s best to share a single profile with the brand, named in its format of the brand first and then your name. In an office with several agents, the brokerage should have its own profile for the location, and yours should be titled with your name alone.
• Area pages where search and sales back them: a page for each area people search for and you sell in, written about the place, with its kinds of homes, its streets and parks and how far things are, inside the fair housing limits our real estate marketing page explains.
• Links, earned: Google ties prominence, meaning how well-known a business is, partly to the sites that link to it and the reviews it has, and says that “More reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.” We would earn links from local groups and sites, never buy them.
• AI answers, as a GEO layer on top: pages written and marked up to be easier for AI answers to find, read and cite; every month we check whether AI answers name you.
• Checks and reports: weekly site checks, a look at your links every month, and a one-page monthly report that puts the inquiries your pages brought in first.

Our real estate SEO page shows how the plan runs for a whole brokerage, offices and all.

What should a real estate agent’s website show?

Whatever real estate agent marketing you run, from yard signs to social posts, your website is where it can send people. In California, the DRE’s advertising guidelines shape what goes on it, and the site we would build supports them:

• A bio that counts honestly: a statement of years in the business has to show the experience actually gained in them. The DRE’s own example: five years as an assistant without a license plus five as a broker don’t make ten years as a broker.
• Designations that are current: a designation you have earned can appear while it is valid and current.
• REALTOR only for members: the term and the capital-R logo are registered trademarks associated with NAR, so a bio uses them only while you belong.
• A team name that follows the rules: the team has at least two licensees, and its name carries a member’s surname plus “team”, “group” or “associates”; its ads add at least one member’s surname and license number, along with the responsible broker’s name. Our real estate website design page has the full set of team rules.
• A business name of your own: a broker can allow a salesperson, by contract, to use a fictitious business name, which then goes to the DRE for approval. Ads under it show your name and license number, with your broker’s identity as prominent as the name, and your broker supervises its use.
• Your license number and your broker on every page: in the footer, with a link to the brokerage’s site.
• Measurement from the first visitor: Bing Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics and Search Console running before launch, and if you are leaving an older site, every address on it pointed to the matching new page.

How would leads reach you?

The pages bring in inquiries; the system behind them gets each one to the right person. For an agent or a team, we would build that system for you alone:

1. Routing: each inquiry reaches you, or the teammate who covers its area, with the page it came from recorded.
2. Tour requests: a buyer asks to see a home, and the request reaches you marked with whether a written buyer agreement is on file, so you can agree its terms with the buyer before the tour. Once you have, it goes out for e-signature.
3. Home value requests: an owner thinking of selling enters the address, and the request reaches you with it.
4. One record per person: every inquiry, tour and request lands on one contact record with its source, in the CRM you use now where it accepts a connection, or in one we build.
5. An AI first sort: an AI step can tag each new inquiry as a seller, a buyer or a general question, and draft a reply that you read and send yourself.

When a sale moves into escrow, title and escrow offices run systems of their own, which our title company automation page describes.

How should an agent choose who runs their SEO?

Google’s guide to hiring an SEO makes a point worth hearing first: if you run a small local operation, you can likely handle much of the work yourself, starting with Google’s own SEO starter guide. If you do hire, the questions it suggests cover how long the agency has been in business, whether it has worked in your industry and your city, and what results it expects, by when. Your SEO, it adds, should ask what sets your business apart, who you compete with, how search could help and how your customers find you. Two more of its points are worth knowing: paying for Google ads won’t change your site’s place in its search results, and a site redesign is a great time to bring an SEO in. For an agent, add four questions of your own:

• Your brokerage: whether the agency will work within your broker’s approval of every page and ad.
• Your profile: whether it knows Google’s rules for practitioners, including the one for an agent working alone at a branded office.
• Competing agents: whether it works for another agent in your areas, and how it keeps that work apart.
• Reports: what lands in your inbox each month, and whether inquiries come first.

Those questions apply to us as much as anyone, and the call is a good place to ask them.

How does working with us start?

A 15-minute call about your areas and your brokerage comes first. You talk with Nicolas Perez or Noah Alvarez, our co-founders. When our work fits, you receive a written proposal setting out the scope and the cost, and work starts only once you approve it; when it doesn’t, we tell you before the call is over. Midnite Systems, formed in 2023, works with businesses across the US, remotely and from our office in Valencia, California.