Organizing a Home Builder SEO and Content Strategy

One of the first things you'll hear as you research content marketing is that it's a long-term game. The domain authority of brand new sites is slow to grow — content won't build up a strong readership in less than six months. But all of these apparent obstacles are strengths for your home-building business.

When you're building homes in a community, you start the branding early on, and you have the time to build a rich, precise marketing strategy. You can set milestones that measure seemingly minor fluctuations in interest and then create content that addresses the needs you identify. While the market moves fast, you can build momentum and find the right home buyer leads with a content-rich site that outlasts real estate fluctuations.

If you're still on the fence about creating a home builder SEO and content strategy for your community or business, consider these facts from the Construction Marketing Association:

• "SEO is 85% more likely to improve site traffic than PPC." Search engine optimization leads to more organic traffic, more interested leads, and more traffic over time. PPC is a valuable tool, but once the PPC campaign is over, you stop getting leads. With a good SEO plan, you keep the value you've invested in your site.
• "66% of companies are outsourcing SEO, or using some combination of outsourcing and internal resources." You don't have to manage the process in-house. Many of your competitors and partners are getting strong results while using third-party services and support. 

In this guide, learn why SEO is so important for home builders and how you can use our five-step process to execute an SEO and content strategy. By the end of this article, you'll know what steps to take as you begin marketing your next project.

Why Is SEO Important for Home Builders?

SEO, or search engine optimization, is made up of the strategies marketers take to make a website or piece of content rank highly in search traffic results. According to Search Engine Journal, the first organic Google search results have a 28.5% clickthrough rate. That drops precipitously to 2.5% for the tenth result on the page, and next to no users go to the second page of results. The closer your site ranks to the top of Google searches — especially for multiple keywords — the better you capture readers' attention. Not only will visitors be exposed to your content, but they are also more likely to believe your business is reputable: being the first organic result (not just an ad) means that Google believes you have value.

More than that, an increasing number of homebuyers are researching homes and neighborhoods online. Both COVID-19 and the growing convenience of looking up listings or communities online have converted millennials — one of the fastest-growing consumer groups in the United States — into digital home shoppers. When you choose SEO strategies over short-term paid campaigns, you can build a compelling site with lasting growth and appeal.

5 Steps to Home Builder SEO and Content Execution

Now that you have a brief glimpse into why SEO is so important for any business, let alone home builders, it's time to get started with your own strategy. Follow these five steps:

1. Target Audience Identification

Audience identification sets the stage for every other phase of your strategy. You need to know which markets will find your homes and communities most appealing. Once you zero in on your target audience, you can also research what factors drive their decisions (like income, neighborhood features, or schools), how they make decisions, and more. Failing to take this step will leave you wasting money speaking to the wrong audience and give your homes or planned communities an incohesive, unclear brand. 

Follow our guide here to research and develop detailed customer personas.

2. Keyword Research

Now that you know who you're marketing to, you need to identify what searches they're making and what keywords you're using. Your customer personas are critical here, as you can determine what long-tail keywords, questions, and unique property details are in demand. Keyword research through a high-quality tool like SEMRush can give you details about the keywords themselves, such as:

• Difficulty: You don't necessarily want to fight for competitive keywords. But with keyword search tools, you can check out the competing sites and determine if it's worth your time.
• Search volume: SEMRush can tell you the number of monthly searches a keyword has. Aim for keywords with a search volume of 100 to 1,000 searches per month. 

Pro Tip:

Modify competitive keywords with geo modifiers, or geotags, to focus your SEO efforts on local audiences. "Home builder" may have a high difficulty, but "Denver home builder" has a lower difficulty while still having a high search volume.

3. Keyword Organization

Once you have a list of keywords, it's time to organize them into a list of content ideas. HubSpot's famous content strategy is a pillar and post strategy: create long-form articles about core keywords (such as "Denver home builder") and then create a list of shorter keywords related to the specific aspects of a pillar topic.

4. Content Planning

During the content planning phase, your team will take your keywords and flesh out engaging topics.

For example, you may have a pillar article, "How to Build a Custom Home With a Denver Home Builder." Smaller posts around that pillar may include "How to Find the Right Denver Home Builder," "The Timeline for Building a Custom Home in Denver," and "How to Design Your New Kitchen With a Denver Home Builder."

Once you plan out a few pillar and post ideas, you can also schedule out time to create the content, what order you want to go in, and how you're going to publish it.

Pro Tip:

Good SEO requires consistency. Plan out your content so you have a content calendar stretching a least a quarter in advance so you're never without fresh, valuable content.

5. Content Execution and Linking

This is the writing stage! Here, your team or strategic marketing partner will create the content. This can include articles, videos, ebooks, and even social media posts. 

As you add more content to your website, make sure you're creating internal links between articles. If a visitor is reading your Home Builder in Denver pillar piece and they want to learn more about choosing the right service, having that link available makes it easier for them to keep reading (and stay on your site). Internal linking is also a best practice for teaching Google's bots more about your site and improving your ranking.

A Complete Home Builder SEO and Content Strategy Is Essential

Real estate markets always fluctuate. But the value of a good SEO and content strategy is that your site's authority and traffic won't fluctuate based on your paid advertisement budget. When you invest in SEO and content, you've strengthened your website for long-term rankings and consumer confidence. Milesbrand is here to help get you started and provide the marketing expertise and assistance you need. We specialize in branding and digital marketing for home builders, so our services are built to complement your goals.