You know that your real estate website is an integral part of your business and is a key that unlocks success for you.
Your website is the online channel to let potential clients find you, learn more about your business, and establish a connection with you. If your website is not optimised, you might waste time, effort, and money, which can be one of the biggest mistakes you can make.
Aside from optimisation, other mistakes can kill your real estate business, so it is critical to know what these mistakes are and how you can avoid them.
Vague and unclear message
Your website must immediately convey the right message to your audience and tell them exactly who you are, what you can offer, and how they can benefit from it.
While this can be straightforward advise, you might be surprised to find out that many people can still get this wrong and even get the wrong messages to their target audiences.
Try to put yourself in the shoes of a potential client and think about what kind of messaging will resonate and create an impact on you. Remember that your message must be clear and understandable, coupled with consistent branding throughout your promotional and marketing campaigns.
Slow page load speed
Load speed is a critical factor for websites today, and those taking three or more seconds to load can be frustrating for readers and can get your page penalised by Google.
It is vital that you routinely check for page load speed and if it seems a bit slow, contact your website administrator or host to ensure that your page is up to speed.
Generic or incomplete titles and descriptions on your pages
Remember that when a person types in a search word or phrase into Google, it triggers the search platform to find you the most relevant website that closely matches your search query.
For instance, when your web page is merely entitled “home,” it does not give Google detailed information about your site and find it irrelevant to the reader’s search query.
A good practice for SEO is to provide a descriptive page title that contains 60 to 70 characters and a description page with a length of 150 to 160 characters.
Make fair use of keywords as it helps Google help readers search and find websites that can provide the most relevant information, and that can only happen when descriptive details are found on your website to help with the search.
SSL certificate or the lack of it
Security is an essential factor in websites and gives readers confidence that they can count on your website to be secure and safe for them to visit and browse information.
SSL certificates provide authentication to websites and are helps maintain the privacy and confidentiality of user’s information.
Without the SSL certificate, visitors may lose confidence in your site’s ability to preserve and protect their information and may cause them not to revisit your page.
Unclear call to action
Regardless of whether you have a very attractive website, without a clear call to action (CTA), you could stand to lose prospects for your real estate business.
Studies show that the primary thing people do when visiting a website is to find solutions or answers to their problems or concerns and how your website will offer them solutions or answers.
Make your CTA buttons stand out and not incorporate them in a space with crowded images or texts. Instead, place it in a prominent and visible area on your website so the focus can be drawn towards it.
Difficult to navigate
Readers want their information easy to find and content not hidden inside folders or pages with cryptic or strange titles that are not clear to the reader.
Remove any page that does not have relevant information lest you make it more confusing and frustrating to your readers. Also known as dead weight pages, these low-quality pages need to be taken out of your website to prevent your page from ranking lower in the search engines.
Do not also forget to make your search bar easily accessible and within plain sight of readers.
Technical issues and broken links
Broken links within your website can be harmful to your real estate business as well. It can give your visitors a bad user experience and negatively affect your SEO efforts.
This is one reason you need to consider routine website maintenance to ensure that your website is performing well and ensure that there are no glitches that can impact your site performance.
Missing sitemap
Your sitemap serves as your website’s blueprint that makes it easy for search engines to discover your pages. Don’t forget that Goggle also ranks site pages aside from the website as a whole.
Search engines can easily find your content with a sitemap, rank it accordingly based on a reader’s search query, and increase your chances of appearing on the search engine results page.