The National Association of Realtors states that 97% of homebuyers use online search for buying a home. This means that if you are neglecting your online presence and taking it just as a secondary thing, you are missing out on 97% of your potential clients.
However, many people partner with an SEO real estate agency for a strong online presence. But are you aware of the consequences? Partnering with them results in minimal leads after paying hefty amounts. Especially if you are at the scaling stage of your real estate business, hiring an SEO agency will leave you with empty pockets.
Many of the agencies also ask you to sign a long-term contract, which restricts you from working with them for a long go. Furthermore, they usually use a one-size-fits-all approach, not one tailored according to your goals and needs.
So, if you are a real estate agent looking forward to getting leads without breaking the bank, there are alternatives to hiring an SEO agency. What are they? Let’s find out more about them together in this blog.

1. Use An SEO SaaS
Key Benefits of UpSEO for Real Estate:
- Automates SEO Tasks: UpSEO addresses the unique needs of real estate websites and property listings. After a thorough analysis, it performs basic tasks like link building, on-page SEO, and traffic generation itself to improve your search engine rankings.
- No Technicalities Required: UpSEO is basically designed for non-technical users. This means that even if you are not aware of the technicalities of SEO, you can still make the most with this tool. Its easy-to-understand and intuitive interface makes it easy for agents to enhance their SEO without the steep learning curve.
- Cost-Effective: Compared to traditional SEO agencies, UpSEO is quite affordable and offers effective solutions to improve your rankings, which is beneficial for those real estate agents who work with tight marketing budget
- Offers Scalability: UpSEO’s features even allow you to scale your business to new heights. Whether you are a solo agent or a part of a large real estate firm, UpSEO allows you to scale up according to the needs of your business.
.jpeg)
How Does It Work?
- Initial Setup: Let’s suppose you are listing a new luxury home on your website and aiming to attract high-end buyers. Now, you head to UpSEO and create a new project for this specific property there. As soon as you do this, the platform quickly analyzes the webpage, identifies relevant real-estate-focused keywords such as luxury homes in [city], and suggests an optimization plan.
- SEO Optimization: After initial setup, UpSEO then helps you with checking whether the targeted keyword is in the right density or not. It also ensures that the title tag, meta title, and subheads are optimized for SEO. Moreover, UpSEO helps improve the readability of the content so that potential buyers find the content engaging.
- Organic Traffic Boost: Once you live the page, UpSEO promotes the property listing through real estate-specific channels such as directories, local listing services, and forums to drive traffic to your website. When organic traffic drives to your website, it signals Google that the listing is relevant, which helps secure a higher spot in search rankings.
- Link Building for Real Estate: UpSEO’s algorithm identifies authoritative real estate directories, blogs, and local websites that are relevant to the property listing. The platform automatically reaches out and secures backlinks to direct valuable traffic that ultimately boosts your property’s domain authority in local searches.
Results:
- Increased Visibility for Listings: With the targeted approach of UpSEO, realtors experience a significant uptick in traffic, which helps you reach more potential buyers in search results.
- Improved Domain Authority: UpSEO proficiently secures backlinks from high-authority websites, increasing the credibility of the realtors’ domain and helping all future listings rank better.
- SEO-Optimized Property Listings: With UpSEO, you don’t need to bang your head on optimizing your webpage. UpSEO ensures that the content of each property page is fully optimized for search engines. With the right keywords in the right density, engaging content, and meta descriptions that drive traffic, UpSEO boosts your visibility on platforms like Google.

UpSEO vs Real Estate SEO Companies: Which One Is Better?
2. Hire A Freelance SEO Expert Instead of A Real Estate SEO Agency
3 Benefits of Hiring a Freelance SEO Expert for Real Estate:
- Affordability: Freelancers generally offer lower rates than full-service agencies, allowing real estate agents to get specialized SEO expertise without breaking the bank.
- Personalized Attention: Freelance experts develop SEO strategies after analyzing your business's needs. Their suggested strategies perfectly align with your marketing goals, and no one-size-fits-all approach shows faster results.
- Flexibility: You can hire a freelancer based on the project's needs, or you can often hire them for any specific service, like On-page optimization. By doing so, you pay them for what they are doing instead of a fixed amount every month.
3 Potential Risks:
- Inconsistent Quality: Quality of the work is the biggest concern when hiring a freelancer. The level of expertise and quality of work they provide vary, due to which you can get inconsistent performance, which can have an adverse effect on your SEO.
- Availability: Most freelancers have multiple clients onboard, due to which you may face delays or unavailability. Especially if you are looking for immediate turnaround on any property listing or campaign, this might be a problem.
- Trust and Security: Another threat to working with freelancers is the lack of security. As you need to give them access to your website, there’s a risk that they will misuse the access or harm your online presence and reputation.

Freelancers vs. Real Estate SEO Companies:
3. DIY SEO With Online Tools and Skip Real Estate SEO Companies

3 Advantages of a DIY SEO Approach for Real Estate:
- Control: When you do SEO by yourself, you have full control over the SEO strategy. Due to this flexibility, you can tweak and adjust the campaigns as they seem best to you. You can also experiment with different keyword optimization tactics and property listings to see what works best for your specific market.
- Flexibility: DIY SEO allows you to cope with market shifts instantly. It lets real estate professionals make changes quickly without getting into the hassle of signing a contract with an agency or hiring a freelancer.
- Budget-Friendly Option: One of the biggest advantages of DIY SEO is the cost savings. When you handle all the tasks by yourself, you don’t have to pay the agency cheques. This gives you a margin to spend your SEO budget on other areas, such as property marketing or digital advertising.
3 Potential Risks:
- Time-Consuming: If you manage the SEO of your website, you have to allocate a specific time as well. Managing multiple tasks such as listing, lead management, and SEO single-handedly may exhaust you.
- Learning Curve: SEO is not as simple as just inserting keywords into a listing. Real estate agents must learn about algorithms, SEO best practices, and Google updates, all of which can be overwhelming without prior experience.
- Ineffectiveness: Poorly executed SEO strategies—such as keyword stuffing, low-quality backlinks, or misusing meta tags—can do more harm than good. If not done correctly.