SEO Secrets for Real Estate: Boost Your Business and Dominate Search Online

Brandon Leibowitz (00:00)
I started working at that first company, I saw that the organic traffic could help them get more business. They sold 3D lenticular products. They’re very niche and sold these like 3D covers that would go in movies or video games. So I saw that by doing the SEO they started getting more orders for some bigger movies and bigger productions, and that made me realize that SEO is— it gets you traffic but then also it helps grow your business if the website’s built properly, which is something that I’ve also learned over the years is I could rank you, but if your website is not optimized for conversions or easy to check out or contact you, then that traffic’s just going to disappear. So try to look at it more holistically and looking at the SEO to get you traffic and then looking at the website to make sure that it converts.

Scott Bursey (02:20)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Scott Bursey. And today we’re digging into the engine room of growth. We have Brandon Leibowitz with us as the founder of SEO Optimizers and a bestselling author. He’s been the digital marketing secret weapon for small and medium-sized businesses since 2007. Pros, if you want to understand how to dominate search and build real authority online, Brandon’s practical results-driven wisdom is exactly what you need to hear. Brandon, welcome to the show.

Brandon Leibowitz (02:57)
Thank you for having me on today.

Scott Bursey (02:58)
It’s awesome having you here. And to help our pros get up to speed, please give us the ninety-second highlight reel of how your career ignited and where you’re pouring your fuel now.

Brandon Leibowitz (03:09)
I just fell into the world of digital marketing after I graduated from college, got my business marketing degree. And one of the first jobs I was offered out of school was doing SEO, which I didn’t really know much about it— I told the company that. And, “We’re gonna learn with you and take you to different workshops and classes and seminars,” and did that for a few months and just realized back in 2007 that everyone is probably gonna have a website in the future. And back then I was helping out with social media and email marketing and paid ads and SEO, and it all works to get traffic, but I just went more towards SEO because I thought free traffic sounds pretty nice. And I feel like everybody wants free traffic. And that got me going on my journey working at different advertising agencies as a director of SEO, and before work, after work, and on my lunch breaks, I’d work on my own company and was able to eventually build that up to quit my job and been doing this ever since, helping people tap into that traffic wherever people are searching— on search engines, on AI LLMs, or even on Yelp or Amazon or wherever you’re looking to get visibility.

Scott Bursey (04:19)
Brandon, that’s an incredible journey. And what really caught my attention about you was the way that you’ve been able to constantly and consistently translate complex SEO algorithms into actual revenue growth for businesses for over nearly twenty years.

Brandon Leibowitz (04:39)
Been a while. It’s a lot of— took a while to figure out how to simplify things because SEO is complicated and gets a little technical. And I would teach classes— start teaching classes in 2013. And when I first started teaching them, it was just very technical, very confusing, too complicated. And then over time I had mentors that helped me simplify things down and make it less— less in the weeds and more higher level, giving analogies and just trying to make it less— less com— convoluted because there’s just so much and it’s ever-changing and it’s never consistent. Every day there’s new changes to the algorithms or new— now new platforms that emerge, new LLMs that we’re like, “All right, are we gonna focus on this one or where are people gonna be searching or asking questions in the future?” because it’s very dynamic.

Scott Bursey (06:17)
And curious to know what was the specific moment early on when you realized that organic traffic could actually change the trajectory of a company’s success?

Brandon Leibowitz (06:26)
I once started working at that first company, I saw that the organic traffic could help them get more business. They sold 3D lenticular products. They’re very niche and sold these like 3D covers that would go in movies or video games. So I saw that by doing the SEO they started getting more orders for some bigger movies and bigger productions, and that made me realize that SEO is— it gets you traffic but then also it helps grow your business if the website’s built properly, which is something that I’ve also learned over the years is I could rank you, but if your website is not optimized for conversions or easy to check out or contact you, then that traffic’s just going to disappear. So try to look at it more holistically and looking at the SEO to get you traffic and then looking at the website to make sure that it converts.

Scott Bursey (07:14)
And on that note, what do you consider the biggest strength in your current SEO methodology that sets you apart from the, let’s say, the cookie-cutter agencies?

Brandon Leibowitz (07:26)
Been around for almost 20 years and have seen what works, what doesn’t work. And I still get clients that are going on Fiverr and buying a gig to get a bunch of backlinks, and then I look at their website and I’m just like, “These websites that are mentioning you…” Backlinks are third-party sites that mention you, that they have nothing to do with you, and they’re just in other countries, and actually does more harm than good. So making sure we focus on pro— on strategies that work and are safe and are not gonna get you penalized because if you do the wrong thing, instead of ranking higher, you actually drop down in rankings, which we don’t want that to happen either, and I see that all too often.

Scott Bursey (08:07)
How do you maintain that edge, your edge, as Google’s algorithms update constantly?

Brandon Leibowitz (08:13)
It’s really just trying to figure out what your competitors are doing and doing a better job of than your comp— than your competition. ‘Cause if you’re— if you’re really trying to chase Google’s algorithm, you’re just gonna be going every single day down a rabbit hole of trying to figure things out when they’re not telling you what’s going on— they’re just giving you vague answers. But what we like to look at is your competitors— look at how they built their website out, what structure, what keywords, what topics are they writing about, and looking at your competitors’ backlinks. And pretty much everything is transparent if you look in the right places. You could see what your competition has done and what they’re currently doing, and then try to make sure you just do a better job than they have.

Scott Bursey (08:52)
Thinking about the current digital landscape, where do you see most businesses struggle the most when they first approach you to fix their SEO?

Brandon Leibowitz (09:03)
Usually they’re struggling with traffic is the issue, and either it’s they don’t have enough pages and we have to start building more pages out, more content for the different services or the different areas they’re targeting is usually a big issue where a lot of people want websites— they’re called parallax where it’s like one long scrolling website— but search engines like to have multiple pages and same with people for the user experience. So breaking up the website… and my website has 400 pages on it. I’ve had mine for a while, but I have 200 blog posts and 200 service pages. I just do SEO, but I have pages that target different types of SEO, like WordPress SEO. Someone searching for that, they don’t want to get to the page where I talk about Shopify and Wix and Squarespace— they just want to know about WordPress SEO. And making these pages really speaks to the end user, also speaks to Google and shows that you’re really relevant, and relevancy is really important.

Scott Bursey (10:35)
And looking ahead, what is one opportunity in digital marketing right now that real estate professionals are completely missing in your view?

Brandon Leibowitz (10:44)
I would say just building out a really good, robust website that they own, not using the ones that are given to them because you might be on RE/MAX or Century 21 or all these other ones, and they’ll give you a subdomain or they give you a website landing page, but you don’t really get full control. Whereas having your own website that you buy the domain name, you build it on WordPress or Shopify or Wix or Squarespace— maybe not Shopify since you’re not really selling, but that’s where you want to build on. Like WordPress is a great platform, it’s free and you get full control. Whereas when you’re just using websites that these real estate agencies give to you, you don’t get full control. And the backlinks you build are actually helping the agency, not your website— it’s helping yours, but it’s also trickling down and you want to have full control because also you might change agencies or you might change where you work, but having your website, you’re never gonna lose that. If you change companies and you lose that website… and a big part of SEO is how old is your website? Old websites have more trust because search engines just don’t trust you.

Scott Bursey (11:51)
Brandon, with AI changing how people search, what is the biggest threat you see to traditional SEO in the— in the coming year?

Brandon Leibowitz (11:59)
Just trying to figure out… well, I mean, the biggest thing with AI is it doesn’t really give you links. It will give you some mention, some links, but it really just gives you the answer right there and it takes traffic away from websites. It doesn’t matter where people are searching, people are always gonna have questions. So there’s always gonna be some search engine or answer engine or whatever it is that we’re gonna call in the future. But we just gotta figure out what these new platforms are gonna do. Are they just gonna give you the answer and then you don’t have to go to the website anymore? And what’s going to happen then? Because that’s the biggest issue— is a lot of zero search or zero-click searches now that are happening even more, which it’s been happening for a while when Google put like this featured snippet. I think in 2015, they put this little answer box at the top of the page. That started taking traffic away, but now it’s even more so with the AI overviews and Gemini and ChatGPT and Claude and Perplexity and the list just keeps going on and on.

Scott Bursey (12:57)
Brandon, when you analyze a business’s digital presence, what is the first thing you look for to determine if they’re— they’re scaling or they’re stalling?

Brandon Leibowitz (13:06)
For SEO, I’m looking at their backlinks. And I have tools that will let me look at backlinks— you have to pay for them, like Moz or Ahrefs— but they’ll show you your backlinks and your competitors’ backlinks. And then you could try to figure out what the disconnect is. If you have a hundred backlinks, but all your competitors have five thousand backlinks, let’s try to figure out why they have so many. Maybe they’re all spammy and they’re low quality and you don’t want them, but also you’re gonna find some hidden gems in there that you’re like, “If they’re on that website, I should also be on this website. And how can I pitch myself and get creative and get— get out there?” But that’s really kind of shows me if you haven’t been building backlinks recently, then your traffic’s probably gonna be stagnant. And I could see your velocity of how many backlinks you’re building each month and see that if you’re building more backlinks, your traffic should be going up if they’re quality backlinks. That’s the one caveat— is that has to be quality over quantity.

Scott Bursey (14:01)
Is that a quick fix or a— a long-term play?

Brandon Leibowitz (14:05)
That’s the part that never really ends with SEO— is building backlinks, building trust. Backlinks get your— get you trust because search engines just don’t trust you. And they’re like, “All right, we see that you— you say you’re a real estate investor, but we don’t believe you. Sh— prove it to us.” And if you’re mentioned on like Zillow, then Google’s like, “Okay, another real estate aid— or real estate company is linking out to you. We trust you a little bit more.” If you have mortgage brokers that mention you on their websites, little by little these trickle in as kind of like votes saying, “We vote for you, we trust you.” And that is the part that it never really ends. You’re always building backlinks or trying to build more than your competitors.

Scott Bursey (15:26)
Where do you see the vision, your company in 12 to 24 months down the road, SEO Optimizers?

Brandon Leibowitz (15:33)
Just continuing to help out with the organic search wherever you’re searching. And have been on a couple hundred podcasts, wrote a book about it, and that might be something where I lean more into that, which is guest podcasting. It’s called the power of guest podcasting and talks about how guest podcasting is great for lots of reasons that most people know— for like social media content, for making you a subject-matter expert. But I like guest podcasting because it gets me backlinks, because I get published on other people’s websites. Search engines and the LLMs see that as a trust signal and that helps me move up the rankings. And trying to maybe go more to that side of things since pop— guest podcasting is pretty popular, but I feel like it’s very underutilized, and a lot of people could be taking advantage of getting good quality backlinks and content for social and all other bonuses that come with podcast guest podcasting.

Scott Bursey (16:31)
And what’s one or two things that you would like our pros to know about your operation, your business?

Brandon Leibowitz (16:36)
That we focus on— everything is always quality over quantity with good quality content for your website, good quality backlinks, and just making sure that everything’s done according to what the best practices are. That way we’re not gonna get you in trouble. There’s lots of gray— or it’s called black-hat SEO— that can be done that will help move the needle, which I see a lot, but it’s not a good strategy and wanna make sure that you’re gonna be around for the long run and not just get a quick boost and then drop down, but keep you moving up in the right trajectory.

Scott Bursey (17:07)
And Brandon, you’ve literally written the book, if you will. What additional words of wisdom can you leave with our listeners here today?

Brandon Leibowitz (17:15)
I would say just little by little, little wins are gonna be big wins in the long run. And a lot of people just want that instant gratification of just seeing their traffic explode, but it takes time and don’t get discouraged if you’re not seeing traffic increase right away, or even after six months or a year. If you’re in Los Angeles and you’re trying to be a real estate— or rank for those keywords, it’s hyper-competitive. So then it’s trying to figure out what are some more niches or something that gets more granular or like, what are some areas in Los Angeles that are not really well served or have a lot of competition, and going for those keywords first. Because the more competitive it is, those cities, the more time it’s gonna take, and starting off smaller and then growing and growing and scaling is going to be the better strategy.

Scott Bursey (18:01)
Brandon, if you had to distill your years of testing down to one action a business owner should take this week, let’s say, to improve their authority, what would you recommend?

Brandon Leibowitz (18:12)
Are lots of parts of pieces of SEO— it’s like a giant puzzle. Some pieces are bigger than others. Content is a really important piece of it on your own website, having more text on each page. Search engines love text. Images and— images and videos are okay, but they struggle with it. With AI, they’re getting much better at reading images and videos, but they still would love text. The more text you put on each page, the better off you’re gonna be. Even having— like, that’s why blogging is important because blogs just add more text to your website. More content is what the search engines want.

Scott Bursey (18:47)
That is some sound advice. And Brandon, for those of our listeners that want to keep this conversation moving, stay in your lane or collaborate with you, what’s the best way for them to— to reach you?

Brandon Leibowitz (18:58)
I create a special gift for everybody. If you go to my website at seooptimizers.com/gift— that’s S-E-O-O-P-T-I-M-I-Z-E-R-S dot com forward slash gift— and they could find that gift there along with my contact information and classes I’ve done over the years I’ve thrown up for free. So you could see step-by-step how to do a lot of stuff that we talked about. And also if you do have a website, I’m happy to check it out from an SEO point of view and you can book some time on my calendar there for free as well.

Scott Bursey (19:31)
Brandon, thank you for joining us today on the Real Estate Pros podcast.

Brandon Leibowitz (19:35)
Thank you for having me on.

Scott Bursey (19:36)
This has been an absolute pleasure. And to our listeners, we appreciate you. If you receive value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ll be fueling your tanks with a lineup of elite guests, just like Brandon, who are accelerating and setting the pace for the rest of the industry. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.