How to Use 360 Tours To Improve Real Estate SEO Strategy

Your website is your showcase; it represents what you sell, it represents your agency, and ultimately it represents you!!!!! As a result, it’s essential to rank higher in search results to generate more traffic from search engines like Google and increase your chances of drawing in new customers.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to all activities aimed at improving your website’s position in a search engine results page (SERP). It is a branch of digital marketing that focuses on improving the quality and quantity of unpaid organic traffic your business pages receive.

Google is the dominant search engine, accounting for over 90% of searches processed globally. There are some regional exceptions; in China, Baidu holds 66% of the market, and Google represents only 10%. Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex are other minority share search engines, but when we talk about website SEO, we usually refer to Google search results.

Why is SEO important?

To increase the number of visitors and, therefore, gain greater brand awareness, prospects and sales, you have to look at the ranking of your website in terms of relevant keywords. The ranking of your web pages is very important because the first three positions on Google receive more than 60% of clicks. If you are not on the first page, then you will receive very little traffic to your site.

3 ways 360 tours improves your SEO strategy

1. Keywords Targeting

First, you need to identify the strategic keywords that you want to rank for in Google’s SERP. How do you identify them? By choosing from those that are regularly typed by the Internet users (search volume). You can use search tools such as Google Keyword Planner for that insight. You need a Google Ads account but signing up is free. Once you have found the search terms that your potential customers use, you can include them in the structure and content strategy to boost your website’s search rankings.

How virtual tours can help you

Adding these keywords analysis to your navigable Matterport space, for instance, will help Google understand that the content of your pages should be shown in searches for those terms. You can add the keywords in the title, add links in the template, and add the address of that analysis, all of which can be tracked in Google.

2. Content quality

Google loves "content", especially new content that visitors to your website will spend time interacting with and sharing. Google's algorithms take into account parameters to determine the quality of your website’s content, such as bounce rate, time spent on the page, and shares. The more useful your content, the better Google will rank your pages.

How Matterport can help you

The Matterport virtual tours speak for themselves. As the market leader in 3D technology, we are proud of the quality of the experience provided by our cameras and software, as well as our "time on the page" statistics. For example, recent studies show that real estate websites or photographs containing virtual tours help generate 4 times more clicks and have a viewing time 5 times longer than other sites. Go beyond 2D photos and offer their world in 3D anywhere and anytime to offer interactive content on your website that will help convert users into future customers.

3. Backlinks

Backlinks are external websites that want to reference your site by linking to it in their own content, directing visitors to your page. The more backlinks you get from high-quality or “authority” websites, the better. Google considers these backlinks another key element of its algorithm in ensuring it displays relevant pages from authoritative websites. 

Google uses your backlinks profile to create an authority score for your website, a measure that allows you to determine which websites have a high value and should be included in the search results. If many high-authority websites direct their visitors to your website (via backlinks), it is a vote of confidence in your content. 

MOZ has created the domain authority score that is now widely used by SEOs. You can find out more about this here and see your DA score for free using this tool.

How Matterport helps build backlinks

Matterport models offer highly shareable and engaging content for high-value websites such as news sites and global brands. As such, if you have an interesting virtual tour on your website relevant to a trending topic, news websites, or other, high-authority sources will include it for their audience. These links can generate huge volumes of traffic directly to your website and improve your domain authority score, which improves your online presence.

SEO is much more than what we've discussed here, but this article should provide a quick overview of how Matterport's analytics can help your SEO and overall real estate digital marketing strategy. Improving ranking in Google is a long-term process, but the quality of your website content will always be fundamental to attracting more visitors to your website and converting them to customers as they find you an interesting and valuable resource.

FAQs about 360 tours & SEO strategy

What is the best way to market a 360 virtual tour?

There are several ways for real estate business owners to promote 360 virtual tours of their properties. They can:

• share on social media

• embed on the official company website

• use for an email marketing campaign

• add to an online listing to appear in Google Street View

Which social media platforms are best for promoting 360 tours?

You can choose to promote a virtual tour of your properties on any social media platform you believe your target audience uses. However, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube are likely to produce the best results since they focus on promoting visual content.

What social media platforms support 360 photos?

At the moment, Facebook is the only social media platform that allows users to upload interactive 360-photos.