The SEO mistakes made by 90 % of real estate agencies

seo mistakes real estate agencies: behind this expression hide revenue leaks that most agency management teams don’t even see. You spend on window displays, portals, flyers, social networks… but your competitors get the seller calls and the viewings thanks to Google, often without being better than you in the field, simply because they avoid a few traps that 90 % of the industry still makes.

1. Believing that SEO is dead … or that it’s not for real estate

One of the worst mistakes isn’t technical: it’s a belief. Many agency owners sum up SEO as some IT guy thing that no longer works or as a luxury for big networks. Result: zero strategy, a few sloppy pieces of content, and total dependence on listing portals.

In reality, specialists regularly remind that, contrary to some common misconceptions, SEO remains a powerful lever in real estate. Google has never sent so many qualified visitors to agency websites. What has changed is the level of requirements: it’s no longer enough to repeat real estate agency + city on every page.

Agencies that continue to ignore organic search leave the door wide open to solo agents, national networks, and even portals that capture the customer relationship in their place.

2. Not treating the website as a real channel for acquiring mandates

Most agency websites are designed like an online business card: a homepage, a listings feed, a contact form and that’s it. Yet, a real estate website must be designed as a sales tool that generates valuations, viewing requests, seller calls, and appointment bookings.

Concretely, several symptoms come up often:

• no highlighted block to encourage valuation or making an appointment; ;
• no pages dedicated to selling, buying, property management, investors; ;
• a confusing menu, with generic sections like Our services without details; ;
• showcase pages that don’t answer any user search intent.

A site that converts poorly sends a negative signal to Google (high bounce rate, low time on site, few interactions), which also hurts SEO. The SEO mistake here is strategic: you work on keywords… toward a site that doesn’t convert, so it can’t perform sustainably.

Before even talking about tags or link building, you need to ask yourself: if an owner who discovers your agency via Google lands on your site today, how many clicks does it take them to understand what you bring them, see your proof, and request a valuation?

3. Focusing only on listings at the expense of service pages

Many agencies think their SEO boils down to ranking property listings well. It’s important, but that’s not where the battle for exclusive mandates is won. Listings have a short lifespan, descriptions that are often similar from one site to another, and enormous competition from portals.

On the other hand, service pages (selling, buying, valuation, property management, condominium management, life annuity sales, rental investment, etc.) are permanent and can rank for highly strategic queries, for example value apartment + city, sell house quickly + city, property management + city. .

Common mistakes:

• a single Our Services page that mixes everything together, without depth; ;
• no optimized page about valuation, even though it’s the core of your seller acquisition; ;
• very short texts, not very specific to your area, with no concrete answers to homeowners’ or buyers’ questions.

A winning architecture consists of creating a dedicated page for each service, then rolling out, when the market justifies it, variations by property type, by neighborhood, or by profile (investor, first-time buyer, etc.). That’s where the difference is made between a site that lives only to the rhythm of listings and a site that builds sustainable qualified traffic.

4. Ignoring the specifics of real estate SEO

Real estate isn’t a sector like the others in SEO: search behaviors, competition from portals, the local dimension, the strength of the agency brand… everything is specific. That’s why it’s useful to rely on industry resources, such as this file dedicated to real estate SEO, which explains precisely the levers suited to your profession.

Among the specifics ignored by 90 % of agencies:

• the huge importance of local SEO (Google Business Profile, reviews, consistent NAP); ;
• the weight of queries related to valuation, capital gains calculation, taxation, notary fees; ;
• the need to manage duplicate listings with portals and avoid content that’s too copy/pasted; ;
• the role of offline signals (signage, local notoriety, word of mouth) that extend online.

An effective SEO plan for a real estate agency cannot be a simple copy-paste of what’s done in e‑commerce or SaaS. It must integrate these specifics, otherwise you spend a lot of energy to remain invisible.

5. Content marketing: writing like in a listing instead of writing for Google and for the user

Agents know very well how to write listings, but often transpose the same reflexes onto the pages of their site: descriptive descriptions, vague adjectives, lack of structure, little quantified information, no consideration of users’ queries.

Effective SEO content follows a different logic: answer a specific question, remove obstacles, provide proof, guide toward an action. To avoid falling into the usual pitfalls, it can be useful to draw inspiration from analyses of bad practices, such as these 10 writing examples to avoid for a real estate agent.

Recurring mistakes on content pages:

• not using the real vocabulary of sellers/buyers ( how much is my house worth , agency fees , time to sell ); ;
• producing generic blog posts with no connection to the catchment area; ;
• forgetting to include concrete examples, real-life cases, local figures; ;
• not including a clear call to action (valuation, appointment, guide download).

Good real estate SEO content sits at the crossroads of education, social proof, and local marketing. It must give the internet user the impression that they have found the area expert and not yet another copy-paste of a national article.

6. Underinvesting in site analysis and SEO performance

Many agencies go by feel: We must be well positioned, I typed the agency name and we come up first . That’s not a strategy. You can be first on your own brand and completely absent from important searches (valuation, sale, management, neighborhood, property type).

Without a regular audit, it is impossible to know:

• which pages really generate leads; ;
• which keywords bring qualified traffic; ;
• which technical errors are blocking progress; ;
• where your competitors stand on key queries.

That is precisely what a structured analysis approach makes possible. If you have never taken stock seriously, it may be relevant to take advantage of an analysis of your current site in order to identify the most serious obstacles before producing new content or changing your site.

Not measuring is like valuing a property off the top of your head without looking at the neighborhood’s comparable sales: sometimes it works, often it costs very dearly.

7. Copying the strategies of big brands… without the resources or consistency

Another common mistake is to model a digital strategy on big brands or sites whose business has nothing to do with yours. For example, some agencies try to imitate the communication of retail giants like highly visible fashion players or even the massive presence of groups like big home equipment brands.

The problem is that these brands have:

• of incomparable budgets; ;
• of national or global name recognition; ;
• of colossal volumes of content and backlinks.

Trying to do the same locally often leads to:

• spreading your efforts across too many channels; ;
• producing superficial content; ;
• neglecting the core of the local strategy (ranking for the city, neighborhoods, services).

For an agency, the right approach is to start from its real playing field: its catchment area, its strongest areas of expertise, its property types, its positioning. Only then do you choose the formats and channels. It’s not by trying to play in the giants’ league that you’ll win the mandates in your city.

8. Neglecting basic on-page optimization

Technically, many agency sites are clean (modern CMS, responsive, https). Yet the basics of on-page SEO are often poorly leveraged:

• identical or not very descriptive title tags ( Home , Our properties ); ;
• missing or automatically generated meta descriptions; ;
• lack of structured text on category pages and the home page; ;
• unclear or overly technical URLs; ;
• weak internal linking (few links between pages, no highlighting of priority pages).

Yet these are the signals that allow Google to understand what your pages are about, which queries to rank them for, and how to connect them together. Without these optimizations, even a good editorial strategy loses a large part of its potential.

A methodical effort on titles, meta descriptions, H2/H3, the first paragraphs of text, internal links, and anchors often makes it possible to gain significant rankings without adding a single additional page.

9. Producing content without an editorial strategy or brand consistency

When an agency starts doing content, it often publishes erratically: one article about decor, another about the Pinel law, then nothing for six months. Or it jumps into all formats at once (articles, videos, social media posts) without a guiding thread.

An effective editorial strategy starts with a clear vision: which messages, aimed at which profiles (sellers, buyers, investors, landlords) on which channels, and with what tone. That’s what makes it possible, for example, to take advantage of new communication formats, like the rise of short-form video and live streaming, without spreading yourself too thin.

Without this consistency, we observe:

• a blurred brand image; ;
• content that doesn’t reinforce each other; ;
• difficulty building perceived expertise on a topic (valuation, rental management, investment, etc.).

Yet, for Google as well as for internet users, the notion of authority is essential: the more deeply you cover a topic, the more likely your pages are to rank for it.

10. Forgetting the human element: online reviews, expertise, and putting a face to it

SEO isn’t just about pages and code. In real estate, trust is central: some of the signals used by Google (and by internet users) come through reviews, mentions of your agency, human presence (team photos, speaking out, participation in local life).

Common mistakes:

• not collecting reviews, or letting them concentrate on a single portal; ;
• not responding to negative reviews; ;
• hiding the team behind an impersonal brand message; ;
• not linking on-the-ground actions (events, local partnerships, sponsoring) to your online presence.

Yet, a well-filled-out Google Business Profile, recent reviews, structured responses, and a consistent presence on the site (team page, photos, testimonials) are powerful signals for local SEO and for conversion.

11. Not aligning SEO, writing, and the sales message

Finally, a subtle but common mistake: the mismatch between what the website says (designed for SEO), what the listings say, what salespeople say in the field, and what other communication materials convey.

So we see:

• pages that talk about 30 years of local expertise while the storefront highlights a low-cost positioning; ;
• articles that promote personalized support while automated emails are cold and generic; ;
• seller-oriented content even though agency teams are mainly organized to deal with buyers.

This lack of consistency harms both SEO (shallow content with no clear direction) and prospects’ perception. For the visibility strategy to work, SEO, content writing, the sales pitch, and the in-agency experience must tell the same story.

12. How can you correct these mistakes and regain the advantage?

The good news is that most of the mistakes mentioned are reversible. Even if you feel like you’re behind, the local market still allows plenty of room for improvement: your competitors are very likely making the same mistakes.

A realistic action plan can be summed up in a few areas:

• clarify your target: what types of mandates and clients do you want to be the go-to for? ;
• audit your website and your current positioning on the key queries in your area ;
• structure your service pages (selling, buying, valuation, property management, etc.) with genuinely useful content ;
• optimize the technical and on-page basics (titles, descriptions, internal linking, Google Business) ;
• define an editorial line: topics, formats, frequency, tone ;
• connect your field actions (events, partnerships, campaigns) to your online content ;
• measure results regularly and adjust.

To go further and implement a structured approach, you can rely on resources dedicated to the profession, for example by consulting a complete guide on optimizing organic SEO for a real estate agency, in order to turn your website into a true engine for acquiring mandates.

Agencies that make the effort to identify and correct these mistakes now will gain a lasting edge in their local market. Those that continue to rely on portals and window displays risk realizing too late that the visibility battle was fought on Google… without them.

Bonus: make your online presence consistent with your positioning

One last point, often underestimated: your online presence must clearly express who you are and who you are addressing. For example, an agency specializing in a specific segment can embrace a strong identity, like a men-themed brand would in its market, similar to a dedicated marketing page for a male audience such as a universe centered on a male audience.

In real estate, this could translate into:

• a specific message for investors, or for families, or for seniors; ;
• content focused on a type of housing (urban, rural, premium, second home); ;
• tailored proof (client cases, figures, sales examples) consistent with the positioning.

The clearer your positioning is to the internet user, the more Google understands which topics and queries you are relevant for. This is often where the difference is made between an agency website lost in the crowd, and a player that becomes the local reference in its segment.