We’re building an international real estate portal in order to have a way to allow users globally to add their real estate listings (so we can build out our international MLS)
Exciting right? (We think so)
Since everyone is so interested lately in learning about REW’s Pillar Page SEO concepts, I figured I might do some of the content planning for our team right here so that our customers can also follow along and understand how to do real estate SEO properly using REW’s real estate websites.
First of all - a reminder on Pillar Pages for Real Estate SEO (epic infographic courtesy of @AmyPye)
In reality, it’s even a bit more complex with that (in terms of how we do dynamic linking from listings to supporting pages) but for now, let’s just go with that 
Ok so let’s start with understanding our first Pillar’s: Countries
Now a lot of folks get this first bit wrong. They think just because there is a logical navigation structure ie: Country > Province > City > Neighborhood > Property that it means all of the navigation elements after country are sub pages or supporting pages.
This is not correct:
The pillar page (Country) is supported only be “related” sub pages, blog posts and listings.
For example: Let’s take Canada (where I live)
/canada-real-estate/ is my pillar (a main page)
My subpages would be things like:
FAQ’s When Buying Real Estate In Canada /canada-buying-faqs/
Statistics of Canadian Real Estate /canada-stats/
Photos Around Canada /canada-photos/
Videos Of Canada /canada-videos/
Note all of these things are relatively fact-based or static (they don’t rely on a point in time to make sense and are not opinion based)
That is where blogs come in:
What it’s like to live in Canada in 2022 (blog) /canada-what-its-like)
How much house can you afford in Canadian cities in 2022 (blog) /canadian-cities-affordability/
Notice how these are time-based? So they should be blogs
What I love about living in Canada (blog) /canada-what-I-love/
How my family came to Canada (blog) /coming-to-canada/
Notice how these are personal stories and/or based on an opinion? Also blogs
And finally, of course - we’d have our listings which are automatically tagged with the country they are on, and so every listing will in some contextual way link back to our main pillar page
/canada-real-estate/ as well as the supporting pages (blogs, sub pages, other listings in Canada) etc
Now it’s time for my SEO team to start planning our “Countries” content for this first version of the portal.
Countries to start with:
- Canada
- United States
- Ireland
- South Africa
- Portugal
- Aruba
- Germany
- Italy
- England
- Wales
- Scottland
The first step is to decide on a layout for the countries so that once decided we can quickly replicate and add content/listings.
Let’s start with Canada since we know it so well…
Some additional context:
Prior to replication of model, Canada main page must:
#1: Have all images (including listings) be served in compressed webP Format
#2: Pass ADA / AODA screening (AODA specifically for Canada)
#3: Have a mobile page speed score 85+ and a desktop speed score 95+
Do it right before you replicate and you end up with done right replicated