How Is The New Google Update Shaking Up The Real Estate SEO?
Starting from the 7th of November, Google`s SERP results started fluctuating across various industries — some reporting even 30% down in traffic.
There were a few which saw a significant rise, like the travel and fashion industry, but most of them were left confused about what they have done to provoke google in this matter.
When asked about it, Google had a very diplomatic answer stating that the updates (which means something definitely changed) were regular weekly updates they were doing.
Without any further comments.
How will this affect further traffic rankings and positioning in the Real Estate Industry?
Content Optimisation
Details and Visuals.
It all comes down to this.
The more details you give to Google, the more signals the crawlers will send back.
Right now Featured snippet info is getting most of the organic search click together with paid ads — so make sure to optimise your website for it.
Google may even plan to put its fingers on this industry and take over the search altogether, so some predictions and planning ahead would be the best thing to do.
Context + Emotions
When it comes to visuals in this industry right now, context, alt text, and descriptions are helping your website rank.
However, if people come to your page and then bounce right back — this will be a clear signal to Google that you are ranking for the wrong keyword and your positioning will drop.
The best way to keep people on your website is for your visuals to be charged with emotional triggers.
We come back to details here as well. It is imperative to showcase the visitor of your website, the best and most out of your online property.
People research properties.
They compare competitors.
Some 87% of buying decisions begin with research conducted online, usually on famous brands or Google.
By providing them with emotional experience you are directly influencing their cognitive fluency and enhancing the possibility of having a purchase made by them.
Find out how did the biggest French Real Estate platform SeLoger accelerate their website with image optimisation?
Click this link for a detailed Case Study.
Property Images Optimisation
The content base of the Real Estate Platforms worldwide, are still good old HQ images.
Combining esthetically pleasing images on your website and speed demand made by google can be challenging to address.
Images can increase website loading time up to 10% but are imperative to the consumer journey and conversion.
In order to comply with the google standards, here is the checklist you should follow in order to optimise your images:
- Generate all images server-side and deliver the right image size at the right moment of customers’ journey
- Leverage JPEG compression to reduce image size
- Deliver WebP to compatible browsers, and JPG/PNG to non-compatible browsers
- Leverage the HTML5 <picture> element to make images responsive to different screen sizes
Learn how to optimise images and get fresh new insights and Real Estate industry statistics with our white paper!
Download on this link.
The New Google update is still favoring speed, but is, based on the research of websites that got hit by it, now looking at the holistic picture of Content +Speed +User Experience, more than ever.
Future Predictions
Real Estate is an extremely saturated, feed-based market. Zoopla, Seloger and On The Market are all dominant players in the industry, and many of their house and apartment listings are duplicated across the different property portals.
This may convince google to go into this industry’s search more aggressively and take over the results as it did with flight bookings and job hunt recently.
This is a mock-up of how possible real estate search results can look like in the future:
As a marketer in this field, it would be necessary to think ahead and prepare for a possible Google takeover.
Real Estate industry is still holding its independence, but the new update is showing that the disruption may come soon.
