Indivdual Property Listings
-
In Missouri real estate once a home hits our MLS it sydicates out all over the world. The question is this: How do I help each listing rank high organically over trulia, zillow, realtor and nationally owned companies such as Remax or Bershire Hathaway. We are a local firm who dominates our market and our website is the highest ranked in the area. The listings are not.
Thoughts?
-
This is definitely a good answer and the way to be thinking about it. You're never going to outrank Z/T/HP/RDC based off domain authority if you're a small site. First you need to have your onpage SEO absolutely dialied (H1s/H2s/keyword mentions (in this case address)). Then as Matt suggested pull in other content that is related to that listing or area, such as pricing and information about other homes selling or being listed in that area. The more of this rich content you have, the more you will be able to compete. But as others have said, you also need to get more links. If I were you, I'd find aggregators that you can form partnerships with as the originator of the content.
Qualifications: I ran SEO at HotPads and Trulia Rentals for a while
-
You likely won't outrank them just with the MLS contents. But can you put unique content around each result?
If you can make your page look more like:
- Header
- Unique Content
- MLS
- More content
- Footer
then you can definitely compete. Using this formula and strategy I was outranking sites like Amazon, Ebay & Polyvore for clothing-related searches. It's fine to have some duplicate content. It's not fine to have ONLY duplicate content if you want to rank against some top sites. The good news is they aren't doing much in the way of unique content so if you do, you have a good shot.
-
Hi Charity,
Great topic. Unfortunately, in your industry, Google does tend to favor aggregators over individual businesses, and the ability of a business website to outrank these giants organically with temporary listings is going to be limited. They may simply have too much strength.
So, barnacle SEO is going to be important (ensuring that you are properly profiled on the major real estate aggregators that outrank you) but you may also need to resort to PPC and pay to be ahead of these huge competitors if it's essential to do so. Not ideal, but unless you can find a way to make your house listings somehow tremendously more relevant and popular, every time you list a house, than the same data appearing on the aggregators, chances are, the goal of outranking them is not realistic, and you might be better served by setting a different goal. At the end of the day, if your properties are at least appearing highly in the results of the aggregators and you are receiving conversions from that, you may need to shift organic goals to ranking other types of content well. This post from Bruce Clay is a couple of years old, but might have some good inspiration for your business: http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/real-estate-seo/
I hope you'll receive additional community feedback.
-
This is certainly a big issue for all of the real estate websites that pull in the MLS listings, since those are essentially duplicates of each other. It creates a lot of duplicate content.
There are a few things to keep in mind:
- The first crawled is considered the originator of the content--so you'll want to get those pages crawled as soon as possible or frequently.
- Pages that get crawled quickly tend to have more Domain Authority (you get DA from other sites, through links)- Links to pages typically help rankings, as well as social media mentions, as well.
So, in order to get your site crawled quickly or frequently, you'll need to get your Domain Authority to be higher than your competitors' sites. Also, new pages need to have links. So, if you can get those pages (new MLS listings) some links quickly then that will help, as well.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Business Listing with no physical office location
Hey, everyone! As a business owner who works from home and doesn't have a physical office location. Is setting up a Google business listing without location going to hurt my local search ranking? Should I get a virtual office so I have a physical location? Thank you!! 😃
Local Listings | | ichorstudios0 -
GMB 1 listing for store , multiple additional listings for outside sales reps
I am working with a business that has setup their google my business as: 1 main GMB for store location with its physical address and unique phone - ie business name "ABC Lumber" 1 GMB account for the business name followed by the city name ie. "ABC Lumber Santa Monica" with an address in Santa Monica and different phone than the store location GMB Account but points to same website. Another GMB account for called. "ABC Lumber Redondo Beach" with an address and same phone as the Santa Monica GMB account but points to same website. So basically there is a main account which is the store, and then the sales reps want to create multiple GMB accounts of their own that are service area only accounts. Do you see a problem with this?
Local Listings | | lkbackus0 -
Where does the small description on a business listing come from in google maps?
Hi All, Simple question, but I'm struggling to find the answer, so I hope someone is able to help. The business I run is Oakdene Forest Park; Google Maps URL: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oakdene™+Forest+Park/@50.8114372,-1.8598721,18z/data=!4m12!1m6!3m5!1s0x4873980ce90e4ef7:0x755579d631c25b33!2sOakdene™+Forest+Park!8m2!3d50.8114796!4d-1.8582842!3m4!1s0x4873980ce90e4ef7:0x755579d631c25b33!8m2!3d50.8114796!4d-1.8582842?hl=en Under the business name, it has a small description and for the life of me I don't know where Google is getting it from because a part of it is wrong. It looks like this: Oakdene™ Forest Park Rural Resort with Entertainment & a Spa I would like to remove the term 'Rural Resort' but where do I find it?? Thanks in advance for your help.
Local Listings | | Shorefield_Holidays0 -
Should I claim a non-local Google business listing?
If I have a business which is non-local, but has one location and is showing up with the address and directions already in the knowledge panel, should I claim the business? Eg: the company manufactures a single product and ships directly to customers all over the world. On the one hand, of course it seems I should claim it and get more control. On the other hand, part of that process is setting a service area and I worry that by doing so I may be making the company seem less relevant outside the service area in Google's eyes.
Local Listings | | PlusROI0 -
Deciding whether to list multiple locations
Hey Mozzers, thanks for your awesome help today. I have another related question to local listings. We're currently rebuilding our website and we have multiple physical locations across the UK. Is it beneficial SEO wise for us to display just one address on our contact page or should we list the 5 addresses that we have? I have also been checking out our local listings and it appears that we have inconsistent listings across the 13 sites that Moz local lists in the UK and then across various other directories. How important is it to get these cleaned up? Cheers in advance Leo
Local Listings | | Leo_Woodhead0 -
Fake Yahoo Local Listing
I've recently discovered a fake yahoo local listing for one of my clients. The listing uses the office managers name along with the business, and all the correct contact information. The listing is not verified. I've tried to claim it but it just forwards me to the yext service. Under yahoo help, it tells that if the listing is not verified I will need to contact the database provider to have the info removed (Localeze, InfoUSA, Yext, YP) Problem is there is no listing in any of these data bases. Any ideas?
Local Listings | | masonrj0 -
What to do with duplicate Listings for Business in Moz Local Tool?
Hi Everyone! Just another newbie Local SEO looking for a solution. I was searching my business listing in Moz Local and it returned two addresses.
Local Listings | | psuh528
Listing #1: 925 B Street #402 San Diego, CA 92101, 67623
Listing #2: 925 B St, #402, San Diego, CA, 92101 Do I need to remove the listing with two zip codes showing up? (I don't see any of my profiles showing up with two zip codes though.) Listing #2 is accurate yet the local moz tool tells me that my Google+ page is 69% complete. How is it possible that Listing #1 scored a 97% complete on Google+? Would you recommend putting the suite number in Address Line 1 or separated in Line 2? Does it even matter? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!0 -
Local Listing Question for Vet Office
We have done the off-page directory listings work for a veterinary office (submitting to the main data-aggregators, as well as sites such as CitySearch/Manta/Yelp) & now want to supplement those with submissions for each individual doctor. There are 8 doctors at their practice. The plan was to submit them to only 3 sites - the main data-aggregators of LocalEze, ExpressUpdateUSA & Factual. They only have one phone number (their main number) to use for listings. So can we submit the doctors all with the same number? Or is that a total waste of time b/c listings will end up being duplicated/merged down the road? What do you recommend that we do?
Local Listings | | JohnWeb120