Why Do Real Estate Agents and Home Professionals Need Online Reputation Management?

Real estate agents and other home professionals looking to attract new customers have to start engaging in online reputation management. According to studies, 9 in 10 prospective buyers look for information online about real estate agents and more than half of home buyers now find the home they want to buy on the internet.

Local Search is Powerful

This is why online reputation management becomes a powerful tool for realtors to leverage in doing more business. More and more people are using the commodity of the internet to find agents and homes. It is essential to engage in several techniques that increase the online visibility of your real estate agency or individual business.

In order to position yourself at the top, first thing you have to do is optimize your presence on Google. Local Search on Google is very powerful and real estate agents source their business mostly locally. Through Local Search Optimization, Google and other search engines can identify you, understand what you offer and most importantly, where you are located. Prospective customers need a local agent to help them and locality-based SEO efforts result in higher rankings for local searches.

Keep in mind that search engines strive to provide the most accurate and helpful information to their users. Since local searches are popular with users, Google will prioritize search results for local companies near the top of search results pages.

Consistent Information

Accurate and updated contact information is a basic requirement, but very important. Mess it up and all your potential leads will be lost. Furthermore, keep your information consistent across various profiles on the internet. Whether you have an account on Facebook, LinkedIn or Realtor.com make sure the provided information is the same on all websites.

Search engines will scan for all possible information — just having a contact phone number should be frowned upon. Your profile should be complete with a name, address, phone number, e-mail and if needed work hours. The more information search engines can associate with you, the more certain they’ll be of your presence online.

Once you have your online presence established and you appear in local search results, you can shift your attention to what customer say about you. This can be online reviews, social media posts, forum opinions or comments on your webpage. Having an overall positive online image is a great way to boost the number of deals as a real estate agent. This is the digital side of the word-of-mouth effect.