You may love them, you may hate them, you may not entirely understand them: SEO keywords. While your SEO team likely has everything under control, there are ways the marketing and sales teams can improve their SEO strategy by leveraging the most up-to-date, trending terms, as well as the tried and true keywords.
Search term basics
SEO, or search engine optimisation, has a shroud of mysticism around it, not helped by the fact that it’s constantly in flux. Essentially, SEO is about improving your website and online presence to increase its visibility in organic search. Here at Prospect Generator, we like to use ‘SEO’ and ‘organic search’ interchangeably, with ‘organic search’ having a direct emphasis on natural and free online growth.
So, how can housebuilders maximise the latest – and the most sturdy – keywords for organic search?
Search terms for the housebuilding industry
There tend to be many locations attached to “new builds” and “new homes” that have a high search volume. The cities you’d expect to see are in there: Birmingham, Manchester, Essex, London and Glasgow. However “near me” tends to be the go-to term as Google is smart enough now to locate the user’s search location and deliver location-specific results. That said, you still need to optimise for local SEO to appear in the search results.
As you can see, the primary keyword “new builds” have many variations that are highly searched, year upon year. The breakout terms are terms that have seen a significant increase in searches over the year in that category. Using Google Trends as well as your SEO keyword planner tool of choice can help you identify the latest search terms that are gaining traction. Google Trends is a free tool that shows search patterns for different terms over the last five years. Pair this with your social listening strategies, and you can stay in the know.
As you can see, terms such as “mortgage calculator” are included in the category. This is because more and more home buyers are wanting to calculate their budget and determine how much they can spend on a new home. With that in mind, are you addressing the latest needs of home movers?
Trends taking shape
While the term “new build houses” had a serious slump December 18 to 24 in 2022, that’s because we expect to see fewer searchers and buyers over the busy festive season. The term was picked back up again in the time between Christmas and New Year, with many looking for their next exciting endeavour while waiting to see in the New Year. At the time of writing, April 2023, the trend maintains consistent traction, currently at 85% interest volume.
Warning: Over-optimising will result in a penalty
It’s easy to think it’s best to optimise left, right and centre. However, Google doesn’t respond well to that. Over-optimising, or keyword stuffing, is going to tell the algorithm that you’re spam. You can recover from it, but it’s going to be an uphill battle. Besides that, your customers won’t trust you if you’re constantly stuffing keywords into every sentence in each communication.
Optimise and deliver
SEO is shrouded in mystery. While having a great SEO lead or team on board will certainly steer your content and tech tasks into the Google rankings, it’s important that all areas of the business know which terms to include in communications.
In addition to that, it’s important for the user to have a good experience when visiting your website. By offering them tools that will aid them in their home-buying journey, you establish your brand as supportive and knowledgeable.
Add Prospect Generator to your toolkit
Along with SEO support, finding the right tools to add to your kit is just as important in lead generation. From tools to campaigns and more, we can help connect you to warm leads ready to convert. Contact us today to see our solutions in action.
