• Home
  • SEO for Real Estate Agencies in Dubai: a Complete Guide on Ultimate Website Optimization in 2023 by SEO Expert

SEO for Real Estate: a Step-by-Step Guide and 13 Top Tips to Get Huge Traffic

Real Estate SEO Case Study from Big Lab digital agency

The Dubai real estate market is incredibly hot and super active. Agencies and agents spend tons of money on advertising and literally fight for every client.

SEO in real estate makes this spending understandable. The website owner can easily calculate how much money they have invested in search engine optimization and how much they received from customers obtained via the website. 

Should you use this traffic channel for your real estate agency? It seems that you already know the answer. 

But still keep on reading to find out:

  • How Real Estate SEO is better than CPC or PPC (P.S. — it’s MUCH cheaper)
  • Which keywords and keywords phrases will bring in more new clients 
  • How to become Google’s favorite and gain a firm foothold at the top of SERP step-by-step (with simple and effective methods)
  • And most importantly — 13 Top Tips on search engine optimization for real estate agency websites from an SEO expert. 

So, here’s everything you wanted to know about real estate SEO marketing. 

But first things first — an overview of the main points of this guide.

Highlights and Key Tips

You won't become a leader if you use only 10, 50 or 100 keywords and keywords phrases. You need thousands of keywords in the languages of your target audience in order to get maximum amount of customers.
Your real estate catalog should be much larger than the one of your competitors (we will tell you how to achieve this).
Not only clients want to know about your employees but also Google assessors. Do not make life difficult for them.
Your services will drive traffic too. It is not a “nice-to-have” marketing strategy, it’s an absolute “must-have” for your business.
Blog articles are not just about SEO and traffic. It’s about image and credibility of your company. Do not skimp on the time you spend on writing texts for the blog of your website.
Structured data can become your secret weapon against your competitors. Use all of its varieties that suit you.
Do not be too serious - use emoji in snippets.
Engage not only in sales but also in the reputation of the agency and its employees.

Why is SEO important for real estate agencies

We have analyzed Google search results for the “real estate Dubai” query. Take a look at these results.

Dubai real estate agencies on Google Maps
Dubai real estate agencies on Google Maps (Photo: screenshot)

There are very few real estate agencies in Dubai on Google Maps. What does that mean? There is no competition here? Not really. It is just that not all realtors care about being present in a local search!

If you scroll down to the end of Google SERP, you get 19 pages of results. Each page has 25 agencies (large and small) and private agents. There are 475 companies in total. The competition among real estate agencies in Dubai is huge!

There are at least 475 real estate agencies in Dubai
There are at least 475 real estate agencies in Dubai (Photo: screenshot)
SEO or PPC for Real Estate Agencies in Dubai

Agencies engage various traffic channels in order to attract clients. The main ones are:

  • organic traffic from Google
  • paid traffic from Google Ads and advertising from social networks.

The real estate advertising market in Dubai is overheated. CPC rates are higher than in other types of businesses. Here is the Google Keyword Planner data.

CPC according to Google Keyword Planner data
CPC according to Google Keyword Planner data (Photo: screenshot)

If you want to rank for at least 200 keywords and be in the first place of SERP, the estimated cost would be $930 for the entire query group (per day? per hour? It may vary).

CPC costs in Dubai real estate sphere are significant
CPC costs in Dubai real estate sphere are significant (Photo: screenshot)

SEO does not require a daily spending of $930. This marketing channel also requires investment but it will be dozens of times lower than for CPC ($2,000-3,000 per month is a sufficient budget for promotion). 

TOP SEO keywords for Real Estate

Keywords and keywords phrases are an important ranking factor for Google. They are what drive customers to your website. But you might be saddened to learn that there is no list or ranking of best SEO keywords for real estate. 

You need thousands and thousands of keywords and keywords phrases to rank for them and bring in customers who are already looking to buy or are only planning to buy. 

Here are all the groups of keywords you need to promote a real estate agency website.

Commercial

They include the word “buy” and show the user’s direct intention to buy. They also may include the words “price”, “promotion”, “sign up for a viewing”.

Example of a commercial keyword for a real estate agency
Example of a commercial keyword for a real estate agency (Photo: screenshot)

Local

They include an indication of a city, neighborhood or street. If the user knows where they want the property, they are more likely to become a buyer.

Example of a local keyword
Example of a local keyword (Photo: screenshot)

Catalog

Keywords for the catalog of products and services. We gather semantics for each commercial page (categories, filters, objects). We work through the existing demand, for example, the names of residential complexes. Then we work for the future: even if the house is not finished yet, we already need to understand how it will be searched for via Google in the future and already optimize the page on the website. 

Example of a query for a real estate agency products catalog
Example of a query for a real estate agency products catalog (Photo: screenshot)

Branded

With the name of the agency and all its brands. It’s important not to allow competitors to rank for your branded keywords.

Example of a branded query (Photo: screenshot)

Image

They include the word “reviews” and show the reputation of the company in the SERPs. Such queries also need to be promoted and keep the search results for them under control. 

Example of an image query
Example of an image query (Photo: screenshot)

General

Queries with a high frequency without a clear user intent. Obviously, the user is still only gathering information but they already can interact with the brand.

Example of a general query
Пример общего запроса (Фото: скриншот)

Informational

Needed for boosting the brand awareness, building its reputation with users and search engines.

Example of an informational query
Example of an informational query (Photo: screenshot)

If keywords are being collected only in these groups of queries then you can already have several thousands queries and several hundred clusters. 

But since real estate agencies (especially in Dubai) often work with buyers from different countries and speaking different languages, you need to collect queries for different languages: 

  • English, 
  • German, 
  • Arabic, 
  • Russian… 

In each case the semantic core will be unique.

Key Takeaway: Top SEO keywords for real estate is thousands of queries in different languages which lead users with different intents, ready to buy now or over some time.

How to make a real estate agency website a Google Favorite - a Step-by-Step Guide

At this point you are about to say, “OK, but where am I supposed to put all those thousands of queries on my website? And where do I start?”

Here is a step-by-step process for implementing an SEO strategy for real estate in 7 steps.

Compile a powerful real estate objects directory.
Prepare a separate page for each realtor in your agency.
Prepare a full catalog of your agency’s services.
Post a first cool article on your blog.
Work on the technical bugs of the website (you definitely cannot do without an SEO specialist here).
Make your snippets the brightest ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and the most visible 🥰 in Google SERPs.
Make sure your website meets Google’s requirements for YMYL websites.

STEP #1. Compile the real estate objects directory of the highest volume in order to get the most traffic

This may seem too obvious to talk about but still…

Customers visit your website to see what you are selling. They are looking for real estate, and you need to solve their problem in the best way possible. So make sure that they are comfortable and the number of offers is ahead of the competition. 

Here is a sample structure for your real estate objects directory.

  • By type of property. Residential — apartments, villas, penthouses; and commercial — offices, industrial plots, stores.
  • By geography. With a search of properties by country, city, region or other location.
  • By the object parameters. Area, number of floors, number of rooms, number of bathrooms, planning. 
  • By the purpose of an object. For living, for investments…
  • By price. The economy objects, middle class, elite, luxury. 
  • By the status of development. The object is completed or under construction.
  • By the payment method. Mortgage, in installments from the developer, without prepayment…

Also let’s add tag pages to the structure , such as “large apartments”, “with a pool in the house”, or “with a large bedroom” and we will get an extensive catalog. It will have pages for many queries clusters and each page will drive targeted traffic. 

Key Takeaway: The real estate objects directory is the most important section of the website. You should gather here all of the agency’s lots, open and closed, that have been, are and will be on sale. Turn each page into a voluminous listing with all sorts of intersections of parameters (filters).

Your directory must be larger than the one of your competitors
Your directory must be larger than the one of your competitors (Photo: screenshot)

Step #2. Introduce your employees to your customers (and Google assessors 😉)

Have you heard something about YMYL websites before? In a nutshell, your website is exactly that. 

It’s about Your Money (very big money!) and Your Life, and this is where you should know that you will become the subject of intense scrutiny by Google’s assessors. They will be studying you! Show them your company’s face and do not give Google a single chance to doubt you. 

Your realtors are the faces of the company. Prepare a separate page with a biography, achievements and what you are proud of about the company for each of them. 

By the way, clients often share the names of good brokers with friends and family. That is why the names of such realtors eventually become “branded queries”.  

Key Takeaway: Gather traffic for queries related to the names and specialties of brokers. Agency employee cards will help you with this. 

Prepare a personal card and a photo of each employee
Prepare a personal card and a photo of each employee (Photo: screenshot)

Step #3. Tell clients about all your services (and get even more traffic)

It’s often the case that real estate agencies focus on a single service. They say, “Okay, guys, we only sell apartments and do not do anything else”. 

But that’s not true. Realtors know how to sell not only apartments but also other real estate. Moreover, they know how to sell apartments on mortgage, how to prepare contracts for sale and lease, how to accompany the property after the sale. 

Include all these services in an additional directory of the website. Here is its approximate structure.

Services:

  • Purchase and selection of real estate by parameters and types
  • Sale of different types of real estate — apartments, villas, land…
  • Rentals — short term, long term
  • Property management
  • Legal support of transactions
  • Mortgage
  • Real estate insurance
  • Assessment of real estate
  • Property transfers…

For sure, you do all (or almost all) of these things. Expand services and your directory will become larger. The number of pages for key queries will increase but even that is not the most important thing. 

Key Takeaway: Showcase your services and your competencies to earn credibility in the eyes of Google. Demonstrate your expertise and watch your traffic and leads from search grow.

Expand the number of services in the catalog
Expand the number of services in the catalog (Photo: screenshot)

Step #4. Prepare an article for the blog that you will be proud of

You do not always need a copywriter for this. You need your knowledge, experience and time. 

Do not turn your blog into a “graveyard” of irrelevant SEO texts. Make it an object of pride for your agency. Make it a platform for publishing the coolest expert articles in your niche in the country (and maybe in the world).  

What is it all about? Informational queries drive traffic and good articles also work powerfully for your image. 

Invest time and resources into your blog so that after a while you could close sales with clients who once read your super helpful article and decided to work with you specifically. 

Key Takeaway: A blog is not just about traffic, it is about reputation and image. Become the leading real estate agency in the eyes of potential clients with the help of quality and useful content.

Post only expert and useful articles on the blog
Post only expert and useful articles on the blog (Photo: screenshot)

Step #5. Get rid of the technical bugs of the website (they take you very far away from the top)

It is hard (and even impossible sometimes) to swim with ballast. Technical errors are a burden that can derail all your website optimization efforts. 

The right structure and clear navigation are especially important for a website with a large directory: work on it very carefully.

Another technical secret that greatly affects the position of the website in Google — CTR (clickability) of the snippets. Implement all the structured data that fit the type and content of your pages. 

Key Takeaway: Technical optimization of the website should be entrusted to an SEOs and a programmer because working with code requires special skills. And if you involve an SEO specialist even at the stage of directory (or website) design, many errors will not be there at all. 

For technical optimization of the website you need special tools such as Screaming Frog for errors searching
For technical optimization of the website you need special tools such as Screaming Frog for errors searching (Photo: screenshot)

Step #6. Make your snippets even more visible (P.S: everyone loves emojis 👍)

Let your competitors bite their nails on the sidelines when all the traffic goes to you. Emoji within snippets is not a magic wand, of course, but they are great for attracting attention and increasing clickability. 

By the way, Google realized this once and started cutting out emoji from snippets. But it didn’t go all the way to the end. Emojis and special characters still appear where SEOs remember to place them.  

Key Takeaway: As long as emoji are not banned by Google, keep using them and make your snippets more visible in the SERPs.

Without emojis all snippets look the same
Without emojis all snippets look the same (Photo: screenshot)

Step #7. Get back to YMYL again

YMYL is about a search engine’s trust in a business and a specific company. If Google trusts a brand, it will allow it to get the most organic traffic. And if it does not… You surely would not want to check it out.  

Registering your company with Google My Business is an easy way to show the search engine that your company exists and operates. Fill out your Google My Business profile responsibly: include all contact details, working hours and upload photos. Do not forget to ask your customers to leave feedback on your Google profile. 

Fill out your Google My Business card responsibly
Fill out your Google My Business card responsibly (Photo: screenshot)

Everything should be clear and transparent on your website too. 

  • Your licenses and offer agreements
  • Cookie files notifications 
  • Full contact details
  • All info on your company — with history and photos 
  • All info for your customers — about guarantees and your obligations
  • A little bit if technical nuance — the Last Modified meta tag on each page (with content update dates fixing) 

When filling your website with content, prioritize E-A-T factors — expertise, authority and trustworthiness. E-A-T factors define expertise and authority of content authors. For example, if your blog is written by famous experts or realtors published in big media. While trustworthiness is determined by links to authoritative sources or official documents.  

Key Takeaway: The time for “dark horses” in YMYL websites sphere is long gone. Create “stars” out of your agency’s employees: get published in the media, maintain groups in social networks, work on popularity and in a couple of years your competitors, who have been doing nothing but sales all this time, will not be able to reach you.  

13 TOP SEO Tips For Real Estate Agents

1. Do not worry about the website’s age

Sure, if the domain is new, it will have to “sit in the Google’s Sandbox” for about six months and only then the first positions and traffic growth will come. But that does not mean it is better to get an old domain. Its history may include not the best episodes in the “relationships” with Google and lead to unexpected penalties from the search engine.

2. Select priority clusters of keywords at the start of works

When working with huge semantics, the main thing is to refuse useless keywords and not to waste time and resources on them. Therefore, divide all queries into clusters, prioritize each cluster and use resources to work with the most important clusters. 

Make lists of the most profitable and most traded lots and work with these clusters first. Work out the commercial semantics (“buy”, “price”, “what to choose”) before using the informational one. 

3. Expand the geography of objects to minimal locations

Do not focus only on cities and individual neighborhoods. Prepare landing pages for individual streets and even projects. The more narrow and low-frequency keyword queries you use, the more specific intent the user will have when coming to you. 

4. Remember about synonyms

“Penthouses” can also be called “apartments on the top floor” and “apartments with access to the roof”. While “villas” can be called “cottages”, “private houses”, “mansions” and “country houses”. Use all synonyms for each property to gather all the targeted traffic in the niche.

5. Use low-frequency queries

The queries including the size of apartments and the number of rooms are a real “goldmine” of relevant traffic in the real estate sphere. “Small”, “large”, “100 sqft/sqm”, “whole floor”, “1 room” — they drive the hottest leads.

6. Work with objects for perspective

It is not uncommon for buyers to choose an object based on a handover deadline from a year to a month. Therefore, plan landing pages for queries with the handover year (e.g., in 2023, in 2024 and even in 2025) and the smaller time periods (e.g., handover in Q1 2023 or December 2023).

7. Push the banks down in the SERPs

There were more than 31 billion AED worth of mortgage transactions in the UAE in 2022. Traditionally, people search for banks and lending institutions when planning to buy an apartment with a mortgage. By creating quality and powerful pages for such keywords, you can drive traffic from banks’ websites to the real estate agency and close mortgage deals yourself.

8. Think about “parameters” of buyers

Citizens of other countries can plan to buy an apartment with a mortgage. While there may be special conditions of state support for young families. Creating pages about different buyers groups with a detailed description of the solution to their problem will not only bring traffic but also increase the number of leads. 

9. Establish your own ratings

Buyers are often looking for information about the best developers, popular neighborhoods, reliable agencies and the best buildings. Give a full response to every such query and get abundant informational traffic. It will not lead to an immediate purchase today but it will work for the agency’s image and credibility tomorrow and a year from now.

10. Promote databases of objects

In order to be at the top for high-frequency queries, you need to make the most informative content, so post all open information, statistics, ratings, reviews, documents. Ideas for databases are ratings, Wiki and reviews about:

  • cities;
  • neighbourhoods;
  • projects;
  • communities;
  • residential complexes;
  • developers.

That is, about all the locations and projects in which you sell real estate.

11. Keep creating powerful content

Fill the website’s blog with:

  • Market reviews with analysis and expert’s comments 
  • New project releases from developers
  • Reviews of popular locations for buying real estate
  • Guides — on how to choose, how to buy, what taxes to pay…

A large blog filled with expert content will drive not only real estate buyers but also sellers who will be glad to work with you.

12. Think about language versions

Who is buying real estate in your city and your country? Are your potential buyers comfortable with the information on your website? Or the language barrier is robbing you of hundreds of customers?

If the audience potential is large, plan language versions of your website. But do not just translate the texts into other languages but also collect keywords queries for each language, each service, each page and adapt the offers for customers from different countries.

13. Work on getting links

The best sources of high-quality links are authoritative media that will want to refer to your content. Complement your topic profile with links from topic blogs, industry websites and reviews websites.  

Yes, all this work requires time and resources but…

It takes you to leadership 

Not only in Google but in the market, in the minds of buyers and sellers. Also, it lays the groundwork for brand growth to the national scale.

Автор -Written by Iurii Nemtcev

SEO Expert, Founder and CEO of Big Lab Digital Agency