One of the simplest ways to bring awareness to your real estate services is through online business directories. More than ever, potential home buyers and sellers are researching online for reputable agents to work with, and they are turning to these online directories to look for highly rated and well-reviewed agents.
As a real estate agent looking for more customers, it’s critical to not only get listed on these directories, but to also bolster your profiles there.
In this article, we’ll go over some important reasons why you need to be listed on these directories, and tips on improving your profile there. We’ll also share direct links to sign up on each of the 4 main online business directories, Google, Yelp, Zillow, Nextdoor, and Bing. So read on and create your free agent profiles immediately!
Why You Need Profiles on Theses Directories
As we stated above already, more than ever, potential customers are researching on these directories to find reputable agents to work with. There are 2 more reasons why you’ll want to list your business on these directories.
The first reason is to capture customer intent. When people are searching on various directories and search engines for real estate agents, it means they are in immediate need of finding a real estate agent. In the marketing world, this is called intent-based marketing. In layman’s terms, it simply refers to marketing efforts that try to engage people while they are showing explicit intent on solving an immediate need. Contrast this with social media marketing, like Facebook, where those strategies focus on finding consumers who fit a certain profile or demographic…but they might not express any immediate intent or need. When your business is listed on these online directories, there’s a higher chance that your business profile can engage prospects at the precise time they’re looking for an agent.
The second reason why online directories are important is for SEO (search engine optimization). The reason these online directories can help in your SEO, is that you’re directly telling search engines that you’re a real estate agent, and exactly where to find you on the web. In the world of SEO, link-backs (which are other websites linking to your site) are super important. Link-backs are especially important when taking into account where that link-back is coming from. When that link-back is from a source that categorizes you as a real estate agent, it helps your website rank for search terms pertaining to “real estate agent”.
Types of Directories
There’s a plethora of business directories you can get listed on. We categorize these business directories into 2 main types: general business directories and real estate specific business directories. If you have the time, feel free to get on many of these different types of directories, as they can only help you with the benefits listed above. Keep in mind though, some of the more specialized directories are paid directories, so you’ll have decide whether those are worth your investment.
Practically speaking, we suggest practicing the 80/20 rule here. Focus on the 20 percent of the directories that will get you 80 percent of your returns. In this case, we’d recommend focusing on Google, Yelp, Zillow, Nextdoor, and Bing. Fortunately, these 5 are all free to get listed on, which we’ll provide signup links to below.
Sure, they each have some paid options to attract more visibility to your listing, but even the free listing can be hugely beneficial to your business. The free option is a great place to get started. We recommend you use the free listing to get organic leads for at least the first several months. Then if you so desire, you can experiment with some of the paid options each of the platforms offer, so that you can compare your paid vs free results.
The Review Game
When listing on the various directories, most of them have customer ratings and reviews. One of the reasons why online business directories are so appealing to consumers is because of these reviews systems. They turn to these directories to research reviews from past customers who’ve worked with these agents. Consumers want to make sure they’re choosing a reputable professional with satisfied customers.
So, as an agent listed on these directories, you need to put some work into bolstering your reviews. Now to be clear, we don’t recommend doing anything unethical, like buying or soliciting reviews. But, because reviews are so important, we do recommend having some strategy around increasing review quality and quantity.
The first thing you can do is to encourage both current and past clients to give you feedback. It’s best practice for any business to request feedback from their actual clients. If the feedback is good, you can remind your client that you have these public profiles, and that you’d greatly appreciate if they share their positive experience on those platforms.
Invariably, you’ll get feedback that’s less than perfect. In this scenario, we encourage you to acknowledge that negative feedback publicly if appropriate, but refrain from having a public dispute with that client. Whether you’re right or wrong, you’ll lose in the public eyes if you argue with the client at all. At most, offer a very short explanation, apologize for a bad experience, and move on. If you handle a negative situation gracefully, most people will read that review as a net positive.
Links to Create Your Profiles and Get Listed
Without further ado, here are the 5 directories and direct links to create a business profile for each one:
Google (Google My Business)
Sign Up Here: https://business.google.com/
Yelp (Yelp For Business)
Sign Up Here: https://biz.yelp.com/
Zillow (Agent Profile)
Sign Up Here: https://premieragent.zillow.com/
Nextdoor (Nextdoor Business Account)
Sign Up Here: https://business.nextdoor.com/local/
Bing (Bing Places For Business)
Sign Up Here: https://bingplaces.com/