Online reputation management has become a crucial aspect of maintaining a positive brand identity for real estate agents.

With the Internet being the first point of contact for home buyers and sellers of all ages, it has become imperative for realtors to manage their online presence and offline reputation.

This is particularly important for real estate agents who must establish a strong online brand identity to stay ahead of the competition and attract potential clients.

According to NAR, 97% of all homebuyers used the internet in their homebuying journey.

Unlike the days of printed ads, these homebuyers and sellers look to real estate agent reviews to find the most trusted agent. 

That’s why you, as a realtor, have to be keen on building your online reputation.

Online reputation is the overall perception of a real estate agent or business based on the opinions and the information available in the digital space.

While building an online reputation for your real estate business can take months or even years, things can go south in hours.

So, how does online reputation management work?

This article will elaborate on online reputation management for real estate agents, why it’s important, and ways to protect your brand identity online and offline.

Keep reading to discover the hidden secrets of online reputation management for realtors.

What is Online Reputation management?

Real estate online reputation management focuses on creating and maintaining a positive perception of a business or a brand.

We all know that homebuyers or sellers turn to search engines as they research new listings to buy or real estate agents to consult.

Therefore, ensuring that when they search your real estate agency, your positive reputation is what they see first is critical to your business success.

Ideally, what appears at the top of search engine results influences how homebuyers or sellers think about your business.

That’s definitely why you must control those results as much as possible and take ownership of the message shown to your target audience.

How Does Real Estate Online Reputation Management Improve Businesses?

 Here are some top ways online reputation management will help your business:

1.   Builds Trust

Homebuyers and sellers learn from what they read and make informed decisions. 

At the same time, positive real estate agency reviews and comments from past buyers reveal you are a trusted realtor.

Your real estate business will only have a future if you have customer loyalty. You must monitor your brand’s reputation to build and maintain trust.

2.    Improves Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Online reputation is the modern-day equivalent of word-of-mouth marketing. This is because online reviews allow potential homebuyers or sellers to see what others say about your business.

According to statistics, nearly 50% of consumers say they trust the reviews they read online as much as personal recommendations. 

Therefore, the spread of positive reviews can be equally beneficial to your real estate business.

3.    Expands Opportunities

A well-manicured online reputation has the power to increase your business performance. Firstly, positive online reviews attract new customers and increase your profits. Besides, positive reviews increase your visibility on Google and other search engines. 

We have looked at the three ways a positive online reputation impacts your business. 

Let’s look at how real estate agents can build their online reputation.

Ways To Maintain Positive Real Estate Online Reputation

Here are some ways realtors can manage their online reputation:

Establish Your Online Profiles

The first thing to do should be to establish your real estate brand online. Learn how to build a strong real estate brand online effectively. 

This will include building a robust and easy-to-navigate website for your real estate agency, creating relevant social media platforms for realtors, and creating accounts on popular review websites.

Set up and optimize your Google Business Profile, Facebook account, Zillow, Yelp, and others to begin the process of building and maintaining your online brand reputation.

Establishing and maintaining online profiles can be hectic for savvy realtors who want to focus on serving their customers. 

Consider hiring an online reputation management agency to stay focused on your core business.

You can hire a social media management agency for real estate agents to help you keep your social media platforms updated and monitor brand mentions on all online platforms. 

Ultimately, you can focus on your core business while the digital strategy agency for real estate agents takes care of your online profiles.

Invest in Real Estate Brand Monitoring 

Online brand monitoring refers to the practice of tracking various channels to identify and track the mentions of a brand.

This process helps real estate agents stay updated about their online presence and gather insights into customer feedback, market trends, and brand reputation.

By monitoring your brand online, you know where people mention it and what they say.

Note that online brand monitoring extends beyond monitoring social media channels or social listening. 

Active brand monitoring allows you to maintain your reputation, analyze customer sentiment, and engage your customers.

Suitable web monitoring tools for realtors include Hootsuite, Brand 24, Google Alerts, and SEmRush. Using these tools, you can monitor mentions of your brand, your products, and listings.

Respond To All Reviews Quickly

Online reviews are essential for all homebuyers and sellers to decide which real estate agents to support. 

Once you have established where your brand is getting mentions and from whom, you must respond to positive and negative reviews.

A BrightLocal survey found that up to 97% of people reading reviews also read company responses. The replies influence customer behavior even more than the overall business rating. 

While the business responses help bring in new customers, they also play an essential role in maintaining positive customer relationships.

Here are essential tips when responding to reviews:

• Whether legitimate or not, acknowledge the issue raises, apologize, and take responsibility for answering.
• Don’t limit yourself to a simple thank you or apology.
• Adapt your tone to each review.
• Invite the reviewer to talk further privately so you can investigate what went wrong and create a solution.
• Personalize responses to reviews when possible.
• Once the issue is resolved, post an update and ask the commenter if they are willing to post their update.
• Keep tracking online reviews by using monitoring tools that can track specific keywords.  

When responding to online reviews, be as transparent as possible and talk to the complainant in a kind and respectful approach.

Update Your SEO

Search Engine Optimization is one of the critical elements of reputation management for real estate agents. 

SEO for online reputation management ensures that the first page on SERPs contains positive, accurate information.

By ensuring positive reviews on SERPs, you can reduce the risk of having existing or future negative content impacting your business.

Different approaches to protecting your front page from negative content include:

Increasing the ranking of positive search results

This involves addressing all the SEO aspects for every website page, social media presence, content marketing outlets, directories, etc. 

To increase ranking for these properties, ensure all profiles are up to date with accurate and complete information.

Addressing all content types

The first page of Google search results contains multiple content types and listings. 

Optimize the Google My Business profile, featured snippets, social media profiles, and videos to fill the page with positive content. 

Remember that social media platforms have a high domain authority and will consistently rank for brand searches.

Suppressing negative search results

Suppressing negative results on SERPs is an instance you may require an experienced online reputation management firm, social media management agency, or a real estate SEO agency. 

Experienced professionals will help you get backlinks to increase your positive content on SERPs. Avoid Black-hat approaches, as they will backfire overnight.

Hire an experienced SEO agency for real estate.

An experienced real estate SEO agency can take good care of your SEO for reputation management. 

Experienced professionals guarantee a faster turnaround when protecting your real estate brand identity.

Incentivizing Client Testimonials

Are you wondering how to stand out as a real estate agent? A customer testimonial is one of the best ways to build your brand reputation online and boost conversions. 

Besides offering the best services to homebuyers and sellers, sometimes you need to incentivize your clients to leave positive testimonials.

Incentivizing client testimonials helps you receive a constant stream of new testimonials to showcase and boost your real estate online reputation.

According to Zillow, real estate testimonials can result in featured placement in a real estate agent’s directory. 

Besides, home shoppers and sellers are more likely to connect and can be a source of constructive client feedback.

The events where real estate agents can ask for client testimonials are after providing real estate advice, showing your client their first home, or closing on a property.

You can request real estate reviews via email, call, text, or person.  

Conclusion

The rising dependence on online searches is a positive addition to the real estate industry. Realtors should be more vigilant in monitoring their online reputation to close more deals.

However, with several other things to do, keeping up with online reputation management is only possible if you hire a digital marketing agency.  

Are you looking for a digital reputation management expert? 

Contact High Tide MetaMedia for your free assessment and plan to build and strengthen your online reputation.