If you’re new to SEO and still aren’t sure what to expect, check out the frequently asked questions below to learn more about our process and how our clients are benefiting from the services and SEO strategies we offer.
Every market poses unique challenges and every website is at a different stage in its development. As a result, it’s not uncommon for me to put together a custom monthly plan based on these unique factors, as well as a budget that allows you to invest consistently over the long-term. For reference, the majority of my long-time clients are budgeting between $2,500 and $4,000/month for a suite of SEO services and strategies that include leveraging IDX data, on-page optimization improvements, landing page formatting and content development, hyperlocal search query style blogging, strategic internal linking enhancements, and premium backlink acquisition.
The short answer is that if you’re new to real estate SEO or if you’re just starting a brand new website, you have A LOT of catching up to do, which means there is an extraordinary amount of work ahead of us. Moreover, SEO is an extremely competitive marketing space and there are no safe shortcuts when it comes sustainable organic success. With this in mind, a monthly investment around $2,500/month for high-quality SEO work isn’t considered expensive in today’s landscape. The reality is that many of the highest ranking websites in nearly every market are likely already investing double or triple this amount, especially when it comes to backlink acquisition and content promotion.
No. While anyone can simply “write content,” there is nuance and strategy to content development as it relates to SEO and ultimately driving relevant traffic and eventually organic leads. Further, publishing bad content with poor optimization can also be counterproductive to our efforts and eventually hurt SEO performance, which is why I only work with clients who let me be the sole person or vendor working inside their content management system (CMS) for as long as I’m your SEO partner. Simply put, admins and assistants don’t know SEO. Despite having the “ability,” real estate agents and brokers don’t have an assistant handle the negotiation of a complicated deal, and that logic applies to my business and what I do as well.
Note: If you’ve already published what I consider bad or low-quality blog or landing page content, I’ll likely recommend or require we delete it from your website entirely.
I will always try to target backlink and content promotional partners with a Domain Rating (DR) 30 to 70+, based on ahrefs ratings. You can learn more about what to expect from blogging and backlink acquisition work on my Why Us page.
There is no easy answer to this question. As mentioned, every market poses unique challenges and every website is at a different stage in its development, resulting in varying timelines for each individual client. Also keep in mind, search results aren’t constantly fluctuating, and if they were, we’d all use Google a lot less frequently than we do because that would effectively mean the best websites aren’t consistently ranking as highly as they should. As a result, progress won’t come as quickly as anyone would prefer. However, my SEO Results page details real examples of what some of my clients have experienced, and listed below are two recent data points:
Disclaimer: Each of these 2 clients are at the $2,500/month investment level but also provide both short term and long term examples of what is possible. It is worth noting, however, that Jeremy’s website was already on an established domain that was generating over 1,000 users per month when I started SEO work. Newer domains with much less existing search engine authority likely won’t see similar increases in this short of a timespan.
Finally, while it’s both irresponsible and dishonest for anyone working in SEO to guarantee a certain level of results or eventual performance, what I can say is that if you’re patient and we’re consistent in our SEO efforts, positive gains in organic traffic and leads will come eventually. But when that happens or what that looks like is impossible for anyone to project accurately.
As noted above, I have clients who have been investing with me for 10+ years and their websites are still generating 600+ organic leads per month in challenging market conditions; but it also took an extraordinary amount of time, work, and effort to this point (years, not months). And depending on the market, it takes just as much effort to maintain high levels of traffic and lead generation as it did getting to that point in the first place. In other words, SEO is a marketing strategy you should be “all-in” on long after you begin to see strong and consistent lead generation on a monthly basis — because as soon as you take your foot off the gas pedal, someone else in your market who isn’t slowing down will be right there trying to catch and overtake you. While it might be tempting to discontinue service or scale back on your SEO investment once you’re seeing organic success, the real ROI is having a legitimate business asset years from now that you both own and is driving SERIOUS organic lead volume each and every month. And you can’t get to that point without staying consistent and having a long-term approach.
