Venturing into the online arena and creating content can be scary for many real estate agents. “Where do I start? What type of content do I create? What do I say?” All of these are valid questions.

In my experience, agents want to be the No. 1 Realtor on the Internet for large areas, like cities or counties; they want their websites to show up high in a search for “homes for sale in Washington, D.C.” or “top Realtor in Northern Virginia.” Those search terms are generic and cover a large area, making it very difficult for an individual Realtor to rank. Competing online for a word or phrase that is very popular, and against companies that pay a lot of money to the search engines, can prove to be very expensive and difficult.

So how do you get to the top of a search engine and noticed by your ideal client? By creating consistent hyperlocal content.

What is hyperlocal content?

When consumers know what they want, they ask the search engines exact questions. Instead of looking for “homes for sale in Washington, D.C.,” a home buyer will search for neighborhoods and types of property, such as: “condos for sale in DuPont Circle.” If you know that your ideal clients are people who want to buy condos in the DuPont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C., then that should be the focus of your online content.  That online content can consist of blogs, YouTube videos, podcasts, social media pages and more.

Creating hyperlocal online content will help capture buyers and sellers who search specifically, vs. generically, for their real estate needs. Hyperlocal content will, in many instances, allow your website to rank ahead of large aggregates like Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com.

Where do I start?

You start by identifying who you are looking to attract with your online content. Buyers or sellers? Where is your marketing area? Cities are more hyperlocal than counties, and subdivisions  or neighborhoods are more hyperlocal than cities.

Wade Vander Molen is the director of sales/marketing for Stewart Title and has been in the title industry since 2005.

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