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Starting with 3rd party SEO – Real Estate Niche
Looking for serious input from fellow freelance SEO strategists who have been in the game for a while and have a strong marketing background.
Okay, so I am trying a bit of an outside-the-box approach here and want to make sure I’m not crazy.
Boutique SEO firm (team of 3 with a writer but no dev/designer), usually work on retainer-based contracts with agencies. So basically, used to having a full suite of creators and marketers to execute work.
I’ve been doing this for a while and this is how I prefer to work for a variety of reasons, but all companies/freelancers have their lulls, and we are in one now.
We are between agency contracts at the moment and I was approached by an adamant single-person real-estate agent.
They are in a highly competitive local market with and even more competitive keyword landscape.
His site is DIY’d (wix) and only a couple of pages so the lift to get him to compete is massive and expensive. And honestly, I’m not going to play dev, designer, strategist, and writer for him on the cheap. Nor am I interested in him doing it and me directing (disaster vibes). That’s not what I am nor what I want. He can’t afford everyone either.
Normally I’d walk from something like this because he doesn’t have the budget to create a content machine and I’m not in the business of taking people’s money that I don’t feel good about delivering results on. It’s always messy and someone always gets upset/stressed. (Again, why I usually work for agencies).
I explained this and he wants me to help him regardless.
I spoke with a few Relator friends and they highlighted focusing on 3rd party SEO. (Their answers translated to this).
Usually this is a third step kind of thing for me.
My thought is if we get his website up to best practices, tighten up the messaging, add a service page or two so it’s a clear funnel when you get there. Then look towards leveraging SEO on listing profile pages as well as his google business profile, he will at least have a consistent messaging platform and maybe generate more leads.
After that I’d love to outline a PR campaign to help him get a few quality back links and mentions in relevant local platforms.
It’s a bit of a reverse engineering project for me, but am I thinking the right way to get this to work?
It feels that way, but it’s newer territory. I’m no stranger to 3rd party SEO, but I’ve never used it in a chicken before the egg kind of way.
I don’t expect him to show up top of SERPs, but if we could get higher in 3rd party ‘SERPs’ with a clear funnel, then at least he will get some value here.
I plan on being clear that this is a unique plan and results are never guaranteed.
Am I crazy or on to something? Anything I might not be thinking about?
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1 Reply
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Your plan could work but my biggest concern is the agent not paying you because it’s usually a self-employed work unless they part of a real estate team. That plan could work but it’d take much longer than you expect. I’ve done work for real estate agents and most outlets with authority will take tid-bits of the agent’s word and never link back to the agent’s website.
For me I avoid working with individual agents now a days. Q3 and Q4 is gonna be a bloodbath in the real estate market and almost nothing is being purchased atm (canadian RE market). I see the same for US as they have said they won’t rule out the ideal of raising interest rates higher
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