Why real estate 'how to' articles are your secret sauce for SEO

Have you ever looked at which pages on your website show higher on search engines than the other pages?

I tried it for my professional site, English-and-Russian.com (translation and marketing to foreign — Russian — buyers of international real estate) in 2008, soon after the site launch.

What did I find? The major search engines picked up and placed in their top 10 results a page about choosing the right translator for your project much earlier than the other pages — including the homepage (which has not been placed on the first page of search results at all).

Why is that?

Well, people visit the internet in search of information, right? So, the search engines respond to this quest by placing good, clean, informative pages higher to please their visitors, and thus increase their numbers in the future as the happy users will come back to the same search engine again.

Of course, your how-to webpage must have SEO (search engine optimization) applied.

One more important thing: You have to update your how-to page once in a while, as you are not alone on the internet and not the only one who knows how to boost rankings in searches. There are other companies publishing similar pages daily, and they might eventually push your page down more and more, robbing you of visitors.

I haven’t updated the page on choosing the right translator since 2008, as my business interests shifted more to marketing from translating during this time. Looking again today at how this page ranks, it’s still on the first page of Google‘s results, but it’s down to the third page of results on Yahoo and Bing.

This could also be because different search engines weigh age differently in their secret positioning algorithms. Google might prioritize a website’s age more than other search engines.

For a real estate professional, it means that for increasing your internet traffic, it makes sense to write pages on your site about how to choose a real estate agent or how to buy your first home.

All search engines prioritize such pages; buyers will find your site through these pages and then also see your properties for sale, use your services and buy your properties.

If you are looking for foreign buyers, then include pages about how foreigners can buy, own and maintain property in your country as well as how much registration of property rights, taxes and maintenance will cost to a foreign buyer or tips for traveling internationally to your city.

It is almost a must to have a how-to page on immigration to your country in the following case: Your government provides residency rights or citizenship to some real estate foreign buyers, and commercial or residential property that you are offering for sale fits the government’s definition of eligibility.

Then the internet searchers of those seeking such immigration opportunities will land on your site, turn into inquiries and thus potential buyers.

These are just a few of many how-to topics appropriate for real estate websites, and you can also create plenty of your own.

When you come up with a how-to article idea for adding to your property website, Google the topic and see what others (who are already on top of visibility for this inquiry!) have written.

This will allow you to better express your own thoughts on the subject. If you are not comfortable with writing marketing texts for the internet, hire professional help.

All of the above is true for the search engines in English as well as in any foreign languages in which you would like to be found on the internet.

This article has been adapted from the book How to Convert Foreign Internet Visitors into Real Estate Buyers, part of the Amazon e-series “How to Beat Your Competition Selling Real Estate to Foreign Buyers.“

Olga Kellen is an independent consultant in international real estate marketing, translator, internet researcher and author at English-and-Russian.com. You can find her real estate marketing to foreign buyers e-books on Amazon.