How Long Does Real Estate SEO Take to Work?

It's no secret that SEO is not an overnight solution to growing your business. If you need leads TODAY, I'll be the first person to point you in the direction of someone who can help you with Google or Facebook ads.

But it's also a mistake to think that SEO takes "years," as I've seen some real estate agents claim.

Take a look at this graph from Ahrefs of a brokerage that I worked with in 2203. It shows how many pages from the client's website are ranking in Google.

In December 2022, the client changed to a new real estate website platform. I'm not super familiar with the old platform, but they switched to a new platform that's not very friendly where SEO is concerned. I would assume that SEO was not a big concern last December, so combine those and you can see why the site basically disappeared from Google. (And why they got in touch with me! 😅)

We started working together in July 2023 on a limited # of hours each month. The first couple of months were spent auditing the client's site, doing keyword research, and developing a plan of attack to turn things around. (This would normally happen faster, but as I said, the client had a limited budget.)

The SEO work begins...

I first touched the client's site in mid-September. All I did was update five pages. I added the phrase "real estate" and the client's location/market in various places like the title tag, page copy, internal links, and so forth -- really basic stuff.

The results were immediate:

• Within one week, the site was ranking for double the number of keywords.

• Within a month, it was ranking for 4X the number of keywords. (You can see that in the orange and gray in the bottom right corner of the graphic.)

Now, I'll be the first to say these new rankings don't involve keywords that are gonna bring in a ton of new leads and make this brokerage a lot of money overnight. Most of them are outside the top 20, so we're not over here throwing parties and patting ourselves on the back.

But this is progress. A step in the right direction. You have to walk before you can run. We can build on this going forward.

So how long does real estate SEO take?

The answer to the "how long does SEO take?" question isn't cut and dry. In SEO, we often say 3-6 months. But it depends on things like

• the current state and strength of your website

• the keywords you're trying to rank for

• the competition you're up against

• how much time and/or money you're going to invest

• etc.

If my client, who was essentially starting with a blank slate last summer, wanted to outrank the portals for "LOCATION homes for sale" keywords, that would take a while. But even in that blank slate situation, you can still see quick results after making the most basic of on-page SEO changes.

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