Creating THE BEST titles for real estate SEO (with examples)

[Morgan]

Exciting times here at Real Estate Webmasters… we have 2 brand new real estate SEO’s joining our team!

From what I can see on their CV’s, they both have quite a bit of experience under their belt, but nevertheless, I always want to take the time to personally teach search engine optimization “The REW Way” to all new team members.

And, it never hurts to revisit/update SEO techniques for the whole team as well.

So I thought, why not take this chance to educate our forum users at the same time and write some posts on specific SEO elements?

That way, you can learn best practices on SEO right alongside our SEO team members and up your game.

Title of this post is “Creating THE BEST titles for real estate SEO (with examples)”

Now I’m not going write a super long article on the basics of creating titles since there is an excellent article written by Joshuan Hardwick on how to craft the perfect SEO title tag.

So please start by going and reading that, it will save us lots of time.

waits patiently for team members to return…

Ok great! Are we clear now on how to write a great title for SEO? Awesome!

The challenge that most people find with writing great title tags is combining your most important keywords in the title alongside compelling hooks while at the same time trying to fit it into a 60-character limit. (it’s tough!)

So let’s start with a few quick hits:

#1: Your primary keyword + CTR matters more than extra keywords.
#2: 60 is what shows, not what is read so if you “must” you can stretch it a bit (but make sure there is a logical break/space at 60) < other search engines might show more
#3: Don’t be afraid to change them out (rankings with no clicks sucks)
#4: Look at SERPs, and find out what is working.

Ok so let’s eat some dogfood!

#1: Picking your primary keyword. There are lots of great articles on keyword research that can help you find the best keywords. My advice don’t go for the “highest searches” look for the “most targetted” (that also has decent search). So don’t go “area real estate” (more generic, nor competitive) when “area homes for sale” is still highly searched, and more targeted. Capiche?

#2: We’ll try

#3: We’ll get to that if it doesn’t work.

#4: This is where I actually wanted to start (I should have put this #1 or #2 heh)

[Morgan]

Ok so I’ve picked a keyword set (for primary pages) - in this case, it’s actually for https://www.listingsbylocation.com which is the public-facing portal we are building for the global MLS.

My plan is to create main pages for each country (for drill down) then counties or provinces and finally cities.

Now in our case, we actually WANT to do SEO for larger areas than a typical Realtor® would (Realtors should start at cities).

The reason why is - we cover everywhere, but also since most sites are not targeting “country + real estate terms” or “province + real estate terms” (because it’s too broad for most) we have an advantage in less competition.

So before I get into the “+ real estate” bits, I need to create a pillar page (Remember this graphic)

My pillar pages are more generic topically and will link out to the keyword-specific pages.

Let’s choose the “country” as the pillar page.

My main keyword (most competitive?) The country name.

I’ll start with England.

Now we all know, any search is going to give you Wikipedia (it’s about authority, not optimized titles)

So we need to look past Wikipedia to the 2nd + 3rd result.

This is what I get:

Not only is this telling me “what’s working” - it’s also giving me great ideas for the content on the page I need to write, as well as sub-pages and blog posts.

Notes I’m making are History, Map, Flag, Population, Cities, Facts, Days Out, and Tourist Information.

Also notice, the 2nd SERP exceeds 60 characters and has the for … again not the end of the world. (and in a weird way, I feel like it might pique a searcher’s curiosity… what is that … for??) What else didn’t I see?

Let’s pick another country: Ireland.

Not surprisingly Encylopedia Britannica is up top again. Same facts.

Then we have “tourism” and “plan” “adventure:” and “discover”

Checking a few more.

Costa Rica (because I want to go there)

What’s cool about this one, is a site is beating Wikipedia (rare for such generic SERPS)

Keyword is the primary name “Costa Rica” has “Visit” but also has “The official site…” << this is a good CTA as it builds trust with the searcher.

Interesting additional content - “Travel Advisories” (I’m going to make a special note about this given the prevalence of COVID concern which is a newer topic that many have not covered well.

You can do this same exercise with provinces/states as well - let’s do “Bali” (which most people think is a country, but it’s actually a province of Indonesia.

Appending the country (clearly a must) we have words like “best” “travel” guide" “hotels” “cillas” activities" “Asia”

This is the exercise. We’re building a global website, we need to do proper research on the competition and determine what is working for them. What commonalities are shared (if any) across all SERPS and look for patterns?

From this quick/cursory research, I would determine a title methodology (as a starting point would be)

Country | Most, Important, Facts, In, Order (max 70 chars)

Notice I didn’t pick which facts? The reason why is each country likely varies in what people care most about. Sure there may be some commonalities. But you should not look for “easy outs” by just creating an algorithm that doesn’t require research.

This is where research will come in for each country (and we’ll use AI as well!)

Prompts like “what are the most mentioned facts about costa rica in order of prevalence” (I’ll use REWPert for this)

Nice one REWPert!

Now I can pick some of these for my main title while making notes that others will be covered as their own topics on subpages and blogs.

So I might create a title like: Costa Rica | Cities, Beaches, Real Estate Facts (see homes)

Again, I can’t get everything in there (And I should not try) but I touched on a few critical ones (cities and beaches) but also I intro’d real estate and homes (since that is the eventual goal and I want contextual relevance throughout the site) and then I snuck the word facts in there since it was popular across all of my research (and is a promise of more information if you click).

I put (see homes) at the end in brackets as a further enticement for CTR - I mean, who doesn’t want to see the homes right?

Anyways, that’s a quick primer on titles. One of about 100 things you should REALLY care about when you’re doing SEO on your website.

Feel free to comment / ask questions below

[kim.blanton]

@Morgan wow! this is fantastic info. I did also read through the article you suggested that we read first, and clearly, a great SEO project to devote some time to and use the tools and your suggestions to improve my site. Your examples make the SEO mystery fall into place that much more. Love your posts and especially those that take us up several notches on skill level. Keep them coming! Is REWPert available to us yet? I may have missed that.