Google’s latest update: Estate Agents secure your ranking

 

 With Google’s last update, many Estate Agents websites have seen their rankings drop and their website traffic dry up. With this in mind, I would like to discuss why this may have happened and how to rectify it.

It’s not all about content farms

Most people believe that the last Google update was all about content farms, but don’t be fooled the algorithm change was in fact to target low quality websites.

This is what Google defines as a ‘low quality website’:

• A website with little relevant content
• A website with poorly written content
• The content on the website has been duplicated from another website
• The content on the website isn’t useful to the user

So just because your website has unique content doesn’t necessarily mean you are safe. If the content is deemed to be not useful to the user the website stands a chance of being penalised.   

High quality pages aren’t safe either

If you were thinking you are safe because you also have high quality, useful content as well, think again. Low quality content on the website can have a negative impact on the rankings as a whole.
All pages on the website have to be considered and evaluated to make sure they are up to the right standard.
You can remove the low quality pages if you are unsure and this could help restore your ranking.   

Avoid Google’s wrath

To avoid being penalised by Google try to follow this:

• Start with improving all the pages on your website that you consider poorly written, duplicated or not useful to the user. Try to improve them by making them more useful, informative, clear and unique.
• Check the usability of your website. Is it easy to navigate around? Does it have clear call to actions? Is the design modern and professional?   
• Don’t use black hat search engine optimisation. When optimising consider both the user and Google.

SEO for estate agents is about ranking high for the right keywords and meeting the needs of the website user. Don’t try to optimise for everything, focus on what’s important and your website will deliver and if you give Google what they want, your rankings will go up.

By Luke Stanley
SEO Consultant