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
-
Best Practice to Claim a YP Listing with a Wrong #?
What are everyones best practices to claim a YP listing that has the wrong number listed? It isn't one of our numbers so we can't answer the verification call? What have you done?
Local Listings | | PSLab0 -
Google Map Penalty or Odd Filter? Listing Goes Missing
Hello Moz. We have a law firm client who practices criminal defense law. Historically, he has been ranked for _years _in the map pack and first page of search for a variety of phrases. This is a law firm with twice the number of reviews of the next competitor, solid back links, and open 24 hours a day. Over the past 30 days, he now appears inconsistently in the map packs. Sometimes he is in the C slot and sometimes he does not appear at all. Most of the time he is not listed for specific legal phrases for DUI, DWI and criminal defense. When he is not listed in the A, B, or C slot, then he is actually gone completely. You click on More Places and his listing for the map is just completely gone. You can scroll down from listing 1 through 20+ and not find his firm in the Map listings. You would think he would just be further down on the list at 5 - 10. But it is just missing. However, when you change the filters for either rating or reviews, he suddenly will appear. In fact, he will be near the top of the list, but only on filtering. You can even clear the filter and he stays listed in typically the C slot too. However, if you refresh the page, he is gone again. My question is simple: Do you think there is some type of data issue or penalty in place? Or is this just how the filters work - suddenly showing a list that should appear in the main area. PS: If I am not clear on the above, I can send video evidence of this oddity.
Local Listings | | peteboyd0 -
Google Business listing algorithm when listing the top 3 locations in Google Search
Hi, awhile back I decided to make separate website contact pages by location and Google Business listings(some being just a service location with no address displaying) for Greenshield Pest Control Inc to help better target per city key term searches. Please refer to screenshot A http://puu.sh/qxWjH/6153c0edf2.png and B http://puu.sh/qxWfJ/bff7ad02cf.png. A) Searching "pest control belleville" brings up the Belleville Greenshield business listing in the top 3 as desired. B) Searching "pest control brockville" brings up the Kingston Greenshield listing in the top 3. While they do provide service for the Brockville location we don't have a dedicated Brockville service location and listing setup. I'm happy the Greenshield listing shows up in the search for case B but my question is does anyone know why Google decided for two out of the top 3 listings(Greenshield and Enviro Guard Plus Inc) to use a non-Brockville business listing? Kingston is 45mins away from Brockville and Harrowsmith about 1 hour away. Is there a certain distance range a Google business listing has to be for it to have a chance to be included in the search besides the actual city I'm searching for?
Local Listings | | FPK0 -
Multiple Business Listings at the same address - Negative or Positive?
Hi everyone Does anyone have any experience of working with multiple business listings at the same address? It's making me itch my head! I work for a travel agency and we have multiple websites for different holiday types/destinations. I want to add business listings for the businesses but I'm concerned that it could have negative effects from the businesses sharing the same address and sometimes the same phone number. Has anyone got any pointers on this, if will effect rankings or my SEO strategy. Thanks!
Local Listings | | Steve-Witt0 -
Connecting multiple locations under one Google business listing ?
I am working for a client with multiple locations across U.S. and trying to add multiple locations under one Google business listing ? Is there a any way to add multiple locations in one listing, or every location needs to have its own business listing ?
Local Listings | | singhk0 -
Google map listing
Hello Moz Frdz, My website Is Ranking Very Well Overall, also in Google Map Listing too, it is also Verified Listing , But The problem is someone has added My website domain TO there Address with 3 different places Because of That My Customers Not getting Proper Direction to my correct place, They R misleading to other 3 Places Listed By someone else, I Have Also Marked That Places As Permanently close, But Google Has Not accepted, How should I Remove That wrong Locations which Used My website ? Please Please any Expert Help? Thnx in advacne
Local Listings | | falguniiepl10 -
Removing website from search while you have Pending Google Places Listing
Hello, If you have assign a website in Google places that is in Pending mode, and you removed the website in WMT, from the searches. Will be denied in google places? Thanks for your help.
Local Listings | | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT1 -
Help with Google Places, local listings & Google+ please!
Hi all, I work for enterprise app development & mobile consultancy, Mubaloo. I recently asked a question around getting better rankings for London-based search results. One answer was to set up a local listing for Mubaloo's London office. I thought I had done by setting up our London office up on Places for Business - is this the same as a local listing? In addition to this, I can't connect our existing Google+ page to our local Mubaloo Bristol & London listings as Google has created separate pages for each! Is anyone else having this issue? Can it be resolved?
Local Listings | | donaldsze0