New Year Real Estate Website Audit: A Quick Checklist for Busy Agents

A new year means a new opportunity to beat your previous sales records. To achieve that, though, you need to have the right marketing tools in place.

As it happens, there’s no bigger marketing asset than your real estate website, so it’s a good idea to give it a quick check so it can deliver leads year-round.

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Table of Contents

1. Front-end Checklist

2. Back-end Checklist

3. Marketing Strategy

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Luckily, we have a quick real estate website checklist that you can use to keep your site in tip-top shape!

Front-End Checklist

Kick off your real estate website audit by focusing on the first thing visitors will see: your site’s front end. Here are things you need to check or update:

• Photos
  Are the photos on your website still current? If not, adding new ones is an easy but impactful way of sprucing up your site for the new year.

• Website copy
  While you’re at it, check if the copy on your website is still on point. Add new achievements, insert new keywords — anything to make your site enticing to visitors.

• Statistics
  This includes your number of years in the industry, your lifetime sales figures, the number of five-star reviews you’ve received, awards won, and even the copyright year on your website’s footer.

• Blog content
  Been a while since you’ve published something? Get back into the blogging habit this 2024 to reap the amazing SEO benefits (psst… we have a full guide on jumpstarting your real estate blog here).

• Contact info
  If you’ve changed or added business locations in the past year, verify that your address is up to date on your website. Ditto for your contact information.

• Lead forms
  Try filling out your forms and see if the submission actually goes through to your CRM system. Don’t let a faulty form cost you warm leads!

• Newsletter signup
  Newsletters are a great way to build your prospect database — assuming they work. That’s why you should verify that they’re still functioning, just like you did with your lead forms.

• Team members
  Agents and staff come and go, so make sure your team page reflects who’s still on your team.

• Links
  Having dead links on your site not only affects user experience, but it can cause crawling issues for search engines, too. Luckily, tools like Google Search Console and W3C Link Checker let you root out dead links in no time.

• Social Integration
  Look at the integrated social feed on your website to see if the latest content from your timeline is being cross-posted. If not, reach out to your website developer to straighten things out.

• Mobile Friendliness
  We live in a mobile-first world, so make sure your realtor website is just as impressive on phones and tablets as it is on desktops. Is the content easy to read and navigate? Is the interface touch-friendly? Are photos resized accordingly?

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Back-End Checklist

Of course, don’t forget to peek under your real estate website’s hood to make sure everything’s in order.

• SSL certificate
  Your certificate lasts only 1-2 years, so don’t forget to renew it. If you’re unsure, take a look at the URL field on your browser; you should find a padlock icon there and your website address should start with “https” (the “s” meaning “secure”).

• ADA compliance
  We’ve talked about why ADA compliance is important before, but in a nutshell, it makes for a more inclusive browsing experience and is required by law. You can install a browser extension like Accessibility Insights to check how accessible your site is. If it’s not, Agent Image builds websites with accessibility tools like high-contrast and grayscale modes.

• Metadata
  Metadata may not be visible to viewers but it does an important job: telling search engine crawlers what your website is about. It’s always a good practice to review your pages if they have metadata and to update the keywords incorporated into them to bolster your search rankings. Tools like Metatags.io, lets you easily verify if metadata does indeed exist for your pages.

• Site speed
  A slow-loading website for realtors can be penalized by Google. To know whether yours loads quickly, run it through Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

• Domain and hosting
  The last thing you want is for someone to buy your domain name or for your hosting provider to suspend your website. If you haven’t yet, opt-in to automatic payments so you never have to worry about these scenarios.

Marketing Strategy

Having a real estate website doesn’t guarantee visitor traffic — you need digital marketing to make that happen. Don’t forget to take these into account:

• KPIs for the year
  You can’t increase what you don’t track. At the top of the year, lay out exactly the metrics you want to boost, whether that’s new visitors, recurring traffic, dwell time, click-through rate, etc. Checking your Google Analytics 4 dashboard is a great way to set goals for 2024.

• SEO
  We’ve already talked about metadata before, but SEO entails so much more than that. Things to look at include:

  • Updating your keyword list
  • Integrating keywords into headings, body copy, and URLs
  • Constantly publishing high-quality, informative content
  • Internal linking to relevant pages
  • Building backlinks from high-authority sites
  • Creating an updated XML

  (PRO TIP: Agent Image can help you sharpen your SEO strategy!)

• Social Media
  You have all this great content on your website, so why not share them on social media? Not only do you share valuable content, but you also create wider exposure and attract more traffic to your website.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it important to audit my real estate website every year?
An annual audit ensures that your website stays up-to-date with industry trends, technology, and your evolving business needs. It helps maintain high functionality, improve user experience, and keep your branding and marketing efforts consistent and effective.

What tools can I use to check my website's performance?
You can use Google PageSpeed Insights to measure your site’s loading speed, W3C Link Checker to detect broken links, and Accessibility Insights to verify ADA compliance. These tools are quick, reliable, and provide actionable insights to enhance your site.

How does Agent Image assist with website updates and audits?
Agent Image specializes in designing, auditing, and optimizing real estate websites. From ensuring your site’s metadata aligns with SEO goals to integrating the latest design trends, we provide a comprehensive service to keep your website performing at its best.

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Taking the time to give your website an “annual checkup” will pay dividends, especially given the headwinds the real estate industry currently faces. If you're interested in a total overhaul of your website, though, you can tap the expertise of Agent Image and our award-winning team of website designers.

For a FREE consultation, call 1.800.979.5799 or send a message here.