25 Tips That Will Improve Your Website in No Time

As a real estate agent, one of your most important assets is your website. It is the foundation for your brand, your services, and your listings. It is the common denominator across all your marketing campaigns, and it's the best way to collect more leads.

Having a website that converts to leads is no easy feat. While having a team of marketing professionals on your side is certainly a plus, it is understandable that you may want to learn how to improve your website on your own.

Below, we have outlined 25 tips to improve your website. From something as simple as cleaning up your plug-ins (if you have them) to something as complex as ranking organically on search engines, these tips will enable your website for success.

Tip 01. Include Social Sharing Buttons

The ultimate goal of your website should be to communicate real value to a targeted niche of prospects. With your website defined in that area, your organic traffic will increase. However, it is still up to you to make sure there are plenty of ways to create referral traffic.

One of the best ways is to include social sharing buttons throughout your website. These buttons can stick to or float on different website pages, encouraging your audience to share your value with others in their network.

Tip 02. Make Contact Easy

It isn’t enough to only have a link to your contact page on your navigation menu. It is crucial to have your contact information at the forefront of each page. You can do so by clearly stating it, or you can have various buttons or call to actions that link back to your contact page.

Tip 03. Invest Time in Maintenance

Website maintenance can be a beast in and of itself. There are many updates, particularly with SEO, that need to be made every month, if not every week. Some marketing agencies offer solutions for continual and consistent website maintenance, but if you are doing things on your own, then you should keep these few things at the forefront of your check list:

• Find and address technical issues with tools like Google Pagespeed, Google Lighthouse, SEOptimer, and Woorank.
• Find and fix any broken links or 404 pages.
• If you are using a CMS like WordPress or Joomla, then keep track of your plugins and get rid of any that may be unnecessary.

Tip 04. Have a Blog

On the internet, content is king. If you really want to stand out as a thought leader in real estate, then you should consider starting a blog (just like we have). Not only is it a great way to establish brand authority, but it can also be a source of passive income if you manage it consistently. With an overwhelming amount of 77% of Internet users regularly reading blogs, it is in your best interest to try one out for your brand.

Tip 05. Use Keyword Research

While keeping track of all SEO best practices is ideal for optimal website performance, one of the best ways to help improve your website rank is to do keyword research. You can implement keywords across your website content to make your website more searchable online.

Fortunately, there are some great tools out there to aid in your keyword research, such as Soovle, Jaaxy, and Google Search ConsoleSEMRush. These tools allow you to do a competitor keyword analysis and find real areas for growth on your website. Studying up on keyword research and implementing keyword across your website can help you rank higher in search engines, which brings you greater organic traffic.

Not sure how to get started with SEO? Try these solutions.

Tip 06. Get Listed in Listing Directories

According to hyperlocal business monitor Street Fight, over 92% of internet users utilize online directories to find local products and services in their area. By joining certain listing directories such as Google My Business, Yelp, Yahoo Pages, etc... specific to your industry vertical, you give your website greater visibility.

Tip 07. Create a Conversion Funnel

Your website is all about lead generation and converting those leads into real prospect for your real estate business. If you want to improve your website conversions, then you should take time to set up a proper conversion funnel.

Essentially, a conversion funnel or sales funnel is a distinct pathway or journey your ideal client takes when they find themselves on your website. Sometimes, this means developing landing pages for targeted conversions, speaking to specific subjects of value to your ideal clients.

Tip 08. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

These days, most people use their phone to access the internet and get information on a daily basis. So, it is critical that you enable your website to responsive for mobile devices. In fact, up to 70% of web traffic happens on a mobile device. You should discuss with your website builders, today, about converting your website into a more mobile-friendly option for your visitors.

Tip 09. Use Lead Generation Forms

It is absolutely essential to capture your leads when they land on your website. The best way to do so is to provide opt-ins or lead generation forms. Typically, this is when you offer something of value to your leads in exchange for their contact information.

You can place these forms everywhere on your website. It’s okay to have them, for example, on your homepage, your blog posts, and even as a widget on a sidebar. The more places you have your forms, the better chance you will have of capturing leads.

Tip 10. Consider Doing Live Chats

Another great way to improve your website is to begin doing live chats. You can do so using social media networks, such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram. You can also host them directly on your website and continuously promote them via social media.

Hosting a live chat is a great way to present yourself as a relatable and valuable network connection to both leads and other real estate agents.

Tip 11. Create Neighborhood Pages

If you are looking to improve your website in relation to your actual listings, then you may want to consider developing a landing page or multiple landing pages for the neighborhoods you tend to sell within. This is a great way to boost your SEO results, as it is more likely a lead will search something like “available real estate in Manhattan” rather than the actual address of your listing.

Keller Williams does a fantastic job of explaining how to create a niche market neighborhood page in this blog post.

Tip 12. Let People Schedule With You Online

People love being able to get into contact with you without needing to go through several steps or clicks. You may want to consider adding a way for leads to schedule a call or meeting with you using an online scheduling tool, such as Calendly or Hubspot. This will improve your website in that it will show you are readily available to assist your prospects.

Tip 13. Learn and Use Your Analytics

Studying your analytics is the best way to know just how well your website is being received. Top sites like Google analytics are perfect for seeing which of your landing pages are performing best, who is actually staying on your website, and where your leads are coming from. Data can be overwhelming, which is why many agents employ a marketing team, but it is still worthwhile getting to know everything it has to offer you.

Tip 14. Have Clear CTAs

A great way to improve your website’s conversions is to have clear, concise call to actions or CTAs across your site. A CTA is essentially a short phrase or a call-out that compels your target audience to take some kind of action. That action could be to contact you or your business. It could be as simple as taking your lead to your new blog post or another landing page. No matter the CTA, it is a good idea to have several throughout your website to increase clicks.

Tip 15. A/B Test Your Content

If you are unsure of what kind of content to include on your website or how to properly engage your target audience, then you may want to consider A/B testing. This marketing strategy is essentially the act of trying out different content pieces, analyzing their traffic over a set timeline, and using the winner to design a more focused marketing campaign.

Tip 16. Have More Than a Navigation Menu

Your navigation menu is an absolute must, but so is having multiple links throughout your site to what exists within that menu. Just by changing a couple of words or rephrasing how you titled a link in your navigation menu can make all the difference in whether a lead clicks or not. Some leads won’t click through your navigation menu at all. Instead, they may just start scrolling. So, if you don’t have any other way for them to move about your site, then you end up losing leads rather than capturing them.

Tip 17. Give 3D Tours a Try

Technologies like Matterport and Transported have given real estate agents a proper way to creatively display their listing through 3D tours. If you are searching for a way to give your audience a more interactive experience of your listings, then giving 3D tours a try could be the perfect way to improve your website.

Tip 18. Understand Best Typography Usage

When you set out to improve your website, typography is likely the last thing on your mind. But, it can make a world of a difference. It is important to have large enough images and fonts that can withstand the 10-foot test, meaning if someone can’t take a decent step back and still get an idea of what your content is about, then you’re failing them.

Tip 19. Add Social Proof to Your Website

Many entrepreneurs have found that adding social proof to their website is a great way to gain the trust of their leads and turn them into prospects. Marketing professionals can create social proof for you through a review generation campaign, garnering testimonials and case studies from your previous clients and plastering them to your website.

Tip 20. Have a Team Page

Even if your real estate business in a one-man team, a team page can greatly improve your website and its search engine rank. It allows for someone to simply search your name and get straight to your about information without needing the name of your business or your social media handles.

Tip 21. Don’t get spammed by bots!

One of the biggest sources of spam is from contact information scraped from your website. If you need to have your contact information visible, then consider adding Google ReCaptcha to prevent bot access your website, or take your spam-defense to the next level by uploading any contact information as images instead of text so that bots cannot scrape it easily.

Tip 22. Make Great Use of Images

Having great visuals on your website accompanied by detailed alt image descriptions that include keywords can not only be more appealing to your website visitors but also boost your SEO ranking.

Tip 23. Make Use of White Space

“When a website flows well and guides the user down a page to a conversion point (call-to-action, form, etc), this is an excellent example of active whitespace. Active whitespace is an intentional use to create structure and flow of a page,” explained Jr. Strategist, Ashleigh Respicio, of Impact.

Having a website that utilizes active white space is a great way to create a better user experience for your visitors and to improve your website.

Tip 24. Include an FAQ

Having an FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions section on your website is a great way to build rapport with your potential clients by getting the easier questions answered and out of the way. By taking time to add in keywords and valuable information, such as long form blog posts, to your FAQ can aid in your conversion funnel.

Tip 25. Invest in Professionals

As you begin to improve your website, you may find yourself feeling too overwhelmed by all your options and steps. While the previous 24 tips will surely help you expand your website traffic, our last and final tip is possibly the most important.

Investing time and money in real estate marketing professionals is the absolute best way to stay on top of all your marketing needs, including the creation of your website and its long-term maintenance. You want to partner with a marketing team that has your best interests at heart, and who understands that lead generation is where real value starts and ends.

For more information on taking your real estate career to the next level, we recommend this additional article. For any questions you may have about real estate marketing services, we encourage you to visit our FAQ and/or shoot us a quick call or email.